Quote:U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed on Friday that American troops are sharing space on Airbase 101, a facility in the capital of Niger, with Russian military forces, but dismissed the Russians’ presence as “not a significant issue here.”
Reuters reported late on Friday that the government of Niger – a military junta known as the “National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland” that took power in a televised coup in July – had allowed Russian forces onto the airbase.
“A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian forces were not mingling with U.S. troops but were using a separate hangar at Airbase 101, which is next to Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, Niger’s capital,” Reuters relayed.
The anonymous official described the situation as “not great.”
Asked about the report of Russian troops at Airbase 101, Austin confirmed that the Russian soldiers were in the facility.
“The Russians are in a separate compound and don’t have access to US forces or access to our equipment,” Austin claimed during a press conference in Hawaii. “And this is something that, you know, again, I’m always focused on the safety and the protection of our troops, something that we’ll continue to watch.”
“But right now, I don’t see, I don’t see a significant issue here in terms of our force protection,” Austin added.
The Russian military presence in Niger is reportedly a direct result of the coup, which placed former presidential guard leader Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani in power. The “National Council” claimed in its initial message assuming power that it would not break any international agreements made by the government of ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, but it rapidly moved to distance Niger from its Western allies. It has taken its most aggressive moves against France, its former colonial ruler, which completed the removal of its troops in December.
The relationship with the administration of leftist American President Joe Biden has been tremendously fraught, as well, characterized by American delegations repeatedly traveling to meet coup leaders in Niger and coming to no significant agreements on the status of the United States presence in the country.
Following the latest visit by American officials to Niger, in March, coup spokesman Col. Amadou Abdramane announced that Tchiani was forcing America to end its military presence in the country on the grounds that the Biden regime had been “condescending” to the junta.
Paraphrasing Biden Admin: Japan Still is a Xenophobic Country
Quote:White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday refused to apologize to Japan after President Joe Biden, 81, called the U.S. ally “xenophobic.”
While delivering live remarks at a campaign fundraiser in Washington, Biden said the United States’s economy was strong due in part “because we welcome immigrants.”
Biden, whom special counsel Robert Hur characterized as “an elderly man with a poor memory,” contrasted America to U.S. ally Japan and adversarial China, and Russia.
“Think about it,” Biden said referencing why their economies allegedly struggle. “Why is China stalling so bad economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia?”
“Because they’re xenophobic,” he said. “They don’t want immigrants.”
Japan is a longtime ally of the U.S. as a counterweight to China’s growing aggression in the Asia-Pacific. Biden recently worked to build trust with Japan. In April, he hosted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a summit and state dinner.
Jean-Pierre refused to apologize for Biden’s comment when asked during Thursday’s gaggle with the White House press pool.
“The president last night described Japan as ‘xenophobic’ along with China and Russia. Was that intentional? a reporter asked Jean-Pierre. “Does the president want to apologize to Japan?”
“The broader case that he was trying to make,” Jean-Pierre replied, “which I think most — most leaders and allies across the globe understand, is he’s — he was trying — he was saying that when it comes to — when it comes to — when it comes to who we are as a nation, we are a nation of — of immigrants. That is in our DNA.”
Jean-Pierre continued to avoid apologizing:
And — and so — and you’ve heard the President say this, and you’ve heard us say it more as an administration. It’s in — it makes us better. We are stronger for it because of the fact that in our DNA we are a nation of immigrants. And I think that’s probably very important to note as well. And that’s what he was —
Quote:May 1, 2024
Germany - Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution
Exercise increased caution in Germany due to terrorism.
Country Summary: Terrorist groups keep planning attacks in Germany. Terrorists may attack with little or no warning. They target tourist locations and transportation hubs. They also target markets/shopping malls and local government facilities. They target hotels, clubs, and restaurants. They also attack places of worship, parks, and major sporting and cultural events. They target schools, airports, and other public areas.
Read the country information page for additional information on travel to Germany.
If you decide to travel to Germany:
Be aware of your surroundings when traveling to tourist locations and crowded public venues.
Follow the instructions of local authorities.
Monitor local media for breaking events and adjust your plans based on new information.
Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive Alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
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Quote:The University of California Riverside capitulated Friday to the demands of pro-Palestinian activists at a campus “encampment,” breaking with the rest of the University of California (UC) system to consider divesting from Israel.
The activists, part of a nationwide effort by anti-Israel activists and organizations — which may have foreign funding, according to the New York City Police Department — also demanded that UC Riverside boycott Israeli universities.
Local KTLA 5 reported:
The encampment began on April 29 as protestors occupied the area beside Bell Tower. The movement was led by the university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
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The UCR Administration agrees to form a task force that includes students appointed by ASUCR’s Diversity Council and faculty appointed by the Academic Senate to explore the removal of UCR’s endowment from the management of the UC Investments Office, and the investment of said endowment in a manner that will be financially and ethically sound for the university with consideration to the companies involved in arms manufacturing and delivery.
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The School of Business has discontinued Global Programs in Oxford, USA, Cuba, Vietnam, Brazil, China, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel.
The UC Riverside chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) portrayed the terms of the deal somewhat differently, claiming triumphantly on Instagram that the institution suspended “all study abroad programs with Israel.”
In addition, SJP claimed that UC Riverside had committed to boycotting the Sabra brand of hummus. “Sabra” is a Hebrew word referring to a native-born Israeli. Some activists claim that Middle Eastern foods like hummus are “stolen” by Israel from Arabs. (Sabra is based in the U.S.)
In return, the students in the encampment agreed to take down their tents, having “won” through coercion.
But it is not clear how UC Riverside’s agreement will comport with existing California law that prevents anti-Israel boycotts, known as “anti-BDS” (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) legislation. In 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed AB 2844, which stipulates the following:
It is the intent of the Legislature to ensure that taxpayer funds are not used to do business with or otherwise support any state or private entity that engages in discriminatory actions against individuals under the pretext of exercising First Amendment rights. This includes, but is not limited to, discriminatory actions taken against individuals of the Jewish faith under the pretext of a constitutionally protected boycott or protest of the State of Israel.
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A person that submits a bid or proposal to, or otherwise proposes to enter into or renew a contract with, a state agency with respect to any contract in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) or more shall certify, under penalty of perjury, at the time the bid or proposal is submitted or the contract is renewed … That any policy that they have against any sovereign nation or peoples recognized by the government of the United States, including, but not limited to, the nation and people of Israel, is not used to discriminate in violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Section 51 of the Civil Code) or the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (Chapter 7 (commencing with Section 12960) of Part 2.8 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code).
You know what's curious about that act? If we translated Jesse M. Unruh's surname, it'd mean unrest, agitation.
Quote:An organizer involved in the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas encampment at the University of Chicago released a list of needed supplies, which includes Plan B, HIV tests, vaseline, and much, much more.
UChicago United for Palestine, which describes itself as a “coalition currently committed to Palestinian liberation and racial justice at The University of Chicago,” posted a list of items needed for the encampment at the university, listing more than two dozen items.
The organization listed the items “needed most” at the top, which include a table, wound-packing gauze, heat gloves, portable chargers, CAT tourniquets, goggles, emergency bandages, trauma shears, and more.
But the list also contained several sexual-oriented items, including dental dams for oral sex, HIV tests, and Plan B.
Additionally, the list asked for menstrual cups, vaseline, disposable stethoscopes, and buckets with lids:
And you wonder why the University of Florida had come up with the catch phrase "this is not a daycare."
Quote:Pro-Palestinian protesters taking part in an encampment at Princeton University began a hunger strike to raise awareness for starving people in Gaza.
The Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD) student organization posted a series of photos on Instagram announcing that pro-Palestinian protests would be launching a hunger strike “in solitary with Gaza.”
“PRINCETON STUDENTS LAUNCH HUNGER STRIKE IN SOLIDARITY WITH GAZA!!” the group wrote.
PIAD explained that as part of the hunger strike, protesters would “abstain from all food and drink” except for water until their demands were met.
“We commit our bodies to their liberation of Palestine,” the group continued. “PRINCETON, hear us now! We will not be moved!”
The PIAD added that they would strike until their demands were met.
PIAD is demanding that the university’s administration meet with protesters and “discuss their demands for disclosure, divestment, and a full academic and cultural boycott of Israel,” and grant students who have been arrested or faced academic disciplinary action full amnesty.
Quote:Brown University caved to radical anti-Israel demonstrators this week, promising that the university’s governing body would consider voting on divestment from Israel if the activists would dismantle their encampment on campus.
According to the Jerusalem Post, that makes Brown the first university to consider divestment from Israel.
In December, 41 anti-Israel activists were arrested after occupying an administration building. In April, activists took over an area of campus known as the Main Green, prompting concern from local Jewish leaders and clergy, who noted that some chants used by activists on and off campus were antisemitic, calling for the elimination of Israel.
Instead of enforcing university policies, Brown — like Northwestern University — decided to capitulate to the mob.
The Brown Daily Herald reported:
The Corporation, Brown’s highest governing body, will vote on divestment from companies affiliated with Israel at its October meeting following an agreement between encampment organizers and University administrators this afternoon. Organizers announced the agreement at a rally.
Organizers have agreed to clear the Main Green encampment by 5 p.m. today and not hold any unauthorized protests through Commencement, which ends May 26. Students in the encampment, which began last Wednesday, have been calling on the University to divest from companies with ties to the Israeli government and drop the charges against the 41 students arrested in a Dec. 11 University Hall sit-in. Charges against the 41 arrested students will not be dropped at this time.
…
Students will still face disciplinary proceedings for their involvement in the encampment, the agreement states.
Quote:Anti-Israel protests have rocked college campuses across the United States in past weeks and now protester arrest numbers are rising as authorities try to end the disruption.
AP reports police have arrested nearly 2,200 people in the period of trouble with no sign of protests – or arrests – ending anytime soon despite police resorting to using riot gear, tactical vehicles and flash-bang devices to clear tent encampments and occupied buildings.
Even as the arrests are being made, students are pleading for special treatment and demanding no records are kept of their lawful detention.
The AP report sets out the methodology for assessing arrest numbers, stating:
A tally by The Associated Press recorded at least 56 incidents of arrests at 43 different U.S. colleges or universities since April 18. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
Police officers behaved admirably by arresting many “radical left,” anti-Israel “lunatics” on the campuses of Columbia University and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), former President Donald Trump said Thursday, as Breitbart News reports.
Trump, who is running as the law and order candidate against President Joe Biden in the 2024 election race, told reporters before entering a Manhattan courthouse radical “morons” should not be allowed to “take over this country.”
Quote:New York Police Department (NYPD) Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard told Fox News‘ Neil Cavuto on Thursday that pro-Palestinian “encampments” at many universities are run by “outside agitators” with funds from “around the world.”
Sheppard said that the NYPD was “very confident” that “outside agitators and influencers” have been present at protests in the city. Often, these “professionals” manage to escape arrest.
“They may just fly in for a day or two, and leave,” he said, adding that they “travel around the country” between protests.
Sheppard added: “And they have funding. They are funded by private individuals around the world sometimes.” He said that students are often easily manipulated by the professional activists to join radical, often illegal, protests.
As Breitbart News noted, one veteran activist, Lisa Fithian, was allegedly seen this week at the site of the Columbia University protests, which ended with a violent occupation of a university building, and intervention by the NYPD.
Quote:China’s state-linked electronics giant Huawei has reportedly been “secretly funding cutting-edge research at American universities” through a Washington-based nonprofit called the Optica Foundation.
A Bloomberg News report on Thursday said Huawei is the sole funding source for a research competition administered by the Optica Foundation, which is in turn managed by a professional association that specializes in visible-light technologies such as fiber optics and lasers. The competition offers a hefty million-dollar reward for optical research projects and receives hundreds of submissions each year.
Bloomberg contacted university officials, applicants for the competition, and even one of the judges, and they all said they had no idea Huawei was involved. Reporters uncovered a private document that specifically instructed the Optica Foundation not to divulge the involvement of the Chinese tech company.
“The existence and content of this Agreement and the relationship between the Parties shall also be considered Confidential Information,” the document said. The agreement it outlines was struck in 2021 and set to last for ten years, which means it will disburse a total of $10 million in awards.
Optical offers ten other “early career prizes and fellowships” that do not appear to be linked to Huawei, but they also feature much smaller cash prizes and grants.
Optica told Bloomberg that Huawei donations were reviewed by legal teams and approved by the board. The foundation insisted there was “nothing unusual” about the practice of donors remaining anonymous.
Legal experts told Bloomberg that Huawei’s donations to Optica are probably legal, but definitely uncomfortable, and there could be some national security ramifications:
Research security specialists said the lack of transparency underlying the arrangement nonetheless violates the spirit of university and US funding-agency policies requiring researchers to disclose whether they’re receiving foreign money.
They also said some of the resulting research is likely to have both defense and commercial relevance. Topics the Optica Foundation singles out in an online post as being “of interest” include “undersea and space-based solutions for the global communications grid” and “high-sensitivity optical sensors and detectors.”
“It’s a bad look for a prestigious research foundation to be anonymously accepting money from a Chinese company that raises so many national security concerns for the US government,” said James Mulvenon, a defense contractor who has worked on research security issues and co-authored a seminal book on Chinese industrial espionage.
Quote:The Department of Justice announced the indictment of U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and his wife, Imelda, on charges of accepting bribes. Cuellar, the representative for Texas 28th Congressional District, has been in office since 2005. The indictments come more than two years after agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation served a search warrant on Cuellar’s Laredo home.
DOJ officials stated that the congressman and his wife are charged with accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from an energy company in Azerbaijan. Cuellar and his wife appeared before Magistrate Judge Dena Palermo in Houston.
Prosecutors claim the couple accepted the bribes from the energy company controlled by the Government of Azerbaijan and a bank located in Mexico City. The payments were laundered through sham consulting contracts. The congressman then provided influence for the energy company to affect U.S. foreign policy and to pressure U.S. Executive Branch officials to benefit the bank’s interest, prosecutors stated.
In January 2022, Cuellar’s home on Estate Drive in Laredo was raided by federal authorities. At the time of the raid, Breitbart Texas contacted Cuellar’s Office who confirmed the search warrant was executed at the address and added that “Congressman Cuellar will fully cooperate in any investigation. He is committed to ensuring that justice and the law are upheld,” according to Cuellar’s Press Secretary Dana Yougentob.
According to an Associated Press news report shortly after the raid, Cuellar’s attorney Joshua Berman issued a statement indicating the congressman was not the target of the investigation according to federal authorities. According to law enforcement authorities, the raid on Cuellar’s residence in 2022 was in connection to an ongoing federal investigation related to Azerbaijan and improprieties involving U.S. businessmen with the country.
At the time of the raids, Cuellar was the co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus. According to the CIA world factbook, the oil-rich nation is predominantly Muslim and has a history of corruption. The factbook describes issues within the country stating:
Since gaining its independence in 1991, Azerbaijan has significantly reduced the poverty rate and has directed some revenue from its oil and gas production to develop the country’s infrastructure. However, corruption remains a burden on the economy, and Western observers and members of the country’s political opposition have accused the government of authoritarianism.
Quote:President Joe Biden is opening the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, to illegal aliens enrolled in former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
On Friday, Biden issued a final rule that will open Obamacare rolls to some DACA illegal aliens enrolled in the program. Obama first created the DACA program via executive order, shielding more than a million illegal aliens from deportation through the years.
Previously, Center for Immigration Studies researchers estimated that the cost of opening Obamacare and Medicaid rolls to illegal aliens would cost American taxpayers about $4,600 per illegal alien.
At this rate, Obamacare and Medicaid for DACA illegal aliens has the potential to cost American taxpayers roughly $2.8 billion every year. At the same time, more than 25 million Americans are expected to be uninsured today.
Biden said in a statement:
Nearly twelve years ago, President Obama and I announced the DACA program to allow our young people to live and work in the only country they’ve called home. Since then, DACA has provided more than 800,000 Dreamers with the ability to work lawfully, pursue an education, and contribute their immense talents to make our communities better and stronger.
I’m proud of the contributions of Dreamers to our country and committed to providing Dreamers the support they need to succeed. That’s why I’ve previously directed the Department of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to “preserve and fortify” DACA. And that’s why today we are taking this historic step to ensure that DACA recipients have the same access to health care through the Affordable Care Act as their neighbors
Quote:The communist regime in Cuba sentenced 22-year-old Mayelín Rodríguez Prado to 15 years in prison this week for filming peaceful protests in the town of Nuevitas in August 2022.
Rodríguez Prado, sentenced alongside a group of more than a dozen Cubans who had also participated in Nuevitas protests, received a combined 15-year sentence — the highest among the group — for the alleged crimes of “continued enemy propaganda” and “sedition.”
The 22-year-old Cuban was arrested hours after the August 2022 Nuevitas protests, when hundreds of Cuban citizens peacefully protested against the Castro regime and demanded an end to months of near-endless daily electrical blackouts and other inhumane conditions.
Rodríguez Prado filmed the Nuevitas protests and published the footage on her social media accounts. One of the videos, livestreamed by Rodríguez Prado, showed Cuban police officers beating Cuban citizen José Armando Torrente and three 11-year-old girls, including Torrente’s daughter.
Videos of the girls describing the situation also surfaced on social media. One of the girls, presumed to be Torrente’s daughter, described attempting to fight police officers herself to defend her father.
“I was holding on to my dad, and she was holding on to my dad, and then, to arrest my dad, the police had to hit us,” the girl said. “I also hit them because they hit me.”
Rodríguez Prado was able to speak with the Cuban Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs (CRDHC), a non-government organization, while serving her sentence in Granja Cinco, a maximum-security female prison located in Camagüey.
In the interview, published by Martí Noticias on Thursday, Rodríguez Prado accused the Castro regime’s prosecution of presenting several pieces of falsified evidence in her trial. She also denounced that the prosecution denied the physical abuse of police officers against the minors despite the video evidence she produced. The officers also claimed that she filmed the girls without their parents’ permission.
“They say no, that it was a lie and that I did it in the absence of the girl’s mother and aunt,” Rodríguez Prado said. “Her mother was present there, it is her who directly confirms that I asked her permission.”
Quote:The Islamic regime in Iran has held talks with Cuba’s communist Castro regime to renovate 160 run-down sugarcane factories in Cuba, the Iranian state-run Tasmin News Agency reported Wednesday.
Cuba, once one of the world’s top sugar exporters, has seen its sugar production drop to levels not seen in more than 125 years. Only roughly two dozen sugar mills remain in operating conditions out of more than a hundred on the island.
The announcement of the Iran deal was made during the Iran-Cuba Business Forum, held in Tehran on April 30. During the event, the CEO of Iranian Small Industries and Industrial Parks Organization Farshad Moqimi stated that feasibility studies had started in the “lucrative Cuban market,” adding that results will soon be available to the Iranian economic enterprises that are “interested to cooperate with Cuba.”
Moqimi noted that, following the 39th edition of the Havana International Fair (FIHAV) in November 2023, several Cuban delegations visited Iran to hold talks regarding the renovation and optimization of 160 sugarcane facilities in Cuba.
Cuba’s flagship sugarcane industry has experienced a continued decline throughout the past six decades of communist rule following the rise to power of late dictator Fidel Castro, who nationalized the entire sugarcane industry in 1960. Castro stole sugarcane mills from private ownership, including those that belonged to U.S. entrepreneurs.
During Cuba’s 1959-1960 sugarcane harvest season — the last under private entrepreneurship — the nation yielded 5.6 million tons of raw sugar.
In 1964, Castro promised to increase Cuba’s sugar yield to ten million tons by 1970 at a time when the Soviet Union, Cuba’s main business partner at the time, had agreed to purchase a larger amount of Cuba’s sugar harvest. Under a slogan roughly translating to “The Ten Million Are Happening” (¡los diez millones van!), Fidel Castro forced Cubans into “volunteer” labor for a project that even the pro-Castro New York Times admitted was a failure.
Quote:The communist dictatorship of Nicaragua saw a growth of nearly 12 percent in the amount of remittance money emigrants sent to the country during the first quarter of 2024, mainly driven by remittances sent from the United States, according to a report published by the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa on Sunday.
According to statistics from the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN), remittances sent to the country during the first three months of 2024 totaled $1.14 billion, marking an 11.8-percent increase from 2023’s $1.02 billion in the same time period.
Of the $1.14 billion received in the first quarter of 2024, the report states, $930.7 million came from the United States, representing a staggering 81.6 percent of the total. The increase, according to BCN, means Nicaragua remains the Central American country with the most growth in remittances received.
Since 2023, Nicaragua has experienced a dramatic upsurge in the amount of remittance funding received by locals from Nicaraguan citizens abroad who have either fled or been banished from the communist regime. Dictator Daniel Ortega turned remittances into a crucial funding resource for the economically-ailing regime.
La Prensa estimated that some 800,000 Nicaraguas have left their country in recent years due to Ortega’s growing repression after the April 2018 protests, which saw thousands of Nicaraguan citizens flock to the streets to demand the end of communism in their country.
In 2023, Nicaragua received a record-breaking 4.32 billion euros (roughly $4.6 billion) in family remittances, an amount that represented nearly 30 percent of Nicaragua’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Of the total, $3.56 billion came from the United States. In 2022, Nicaragua received a total of $3.22 billion in remittances, or 23 percent of its GDP.
Quote:An upcoming Caracas-Managua flight route operated by the Venezuelan state-owned Conviasa airline will increase the flow of migrants trying to reach the United States, according to a report published by the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa on Wednesday.
Nicaragua’s communist dictator Daniel Ortega has allowed migrants in recent years to freely pass through the country while on route towards the United States. Experts have suggested that Ortega is seeking to use migration as a “golden opportunity” bargaining tool to negotiate potential sanctions relief with the United States.
Nicaragua presents itself as an alternate route for migrants seeking to reach U.S. territory, as it allows them to avoid passing through the deadly Darien Gap jungle trail located between Colombia and Panama.
Migrants from Haiti, India, and African countries such as Senegal have also begun to reach Nicaragua by air and pass through the country to reach the United States despite the hefty costs incurred by such a long trip in the case of African and Indian migrants. Nicaragua lacks entry visa requirements for most nations. Experts have also denounced that the Ortega regime charges $200 per migrant to use the country’s airports.
Conviasa’s new Venezuela-Nicaragua biweekly Sunday and Tuesday flights will begin operations on Sunday, May 5, according to promotional material published by the airline on social media. The flight route, according to La Prensa, will have a stopover in Havana, Cuba. Since 2022, Cubans have begun to use Nicaragua after the Ortega regime rescinded entry visa requirements for Cuban nationals. President Barack Obama ended policies that allowed Cubans who touch U.S. soil via water to stay in the country legally, creating a new Cuban refugee flow through the southern border: ...
Quote:The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances warned in a report Tuesday of an alarming rise in enforced disappearances of Venezuelan citizens committed by the socialist regime since December 2023.
The U.N. Working Group stressed that Venezuelan citizens who have been subject to disappearance by the state have largely been people exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association, and participation “in matters of public interest.”
The majority of the disappeared, the report stated, are “members of the main opposition political party, as well as members of the Army.”
“As the country gears up for the presidential election in July 2024, enforced disappearances could have a chilling effect and hinder the people’s right to vote freely,” the U.N. Working Group’s experts said.
“These prolonged incommunicado detentions amount to enforced disappearances. They appear to follow a pattern whereby individuals are deprived of their liberty by State authorities, taken to recognized detention facilities and denied fundamental rights and protections such as contact with the outside world and access to legal assistance,” the experts continued.
In the past few months, the regime launched a fierce dissident crackdown known as “Bolivarian Fury.” Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro has claimed that the crackdown is necessary to “dismantle” purported foreign conspiracies against him and other members of his authoritarian regime.
The crackdown has so far targeted more than a dozen members of Venezuela’s only mainstream center-right party, Vente Venezuela, and people close to opposition leader María Corina Machado, as well as other civilians and members of the military.
Among the best-known cases of forced disappearances by the Maduro regime is that of Venezuelan activist and lawyer Rocío San Miguel, who was arrested in February and has not been publicly seen since. The regime accused San Miguel of being involved in a dubious assassination plot against Maduro.
The U.N. Human Rights Office expressed concerns over San Miguel’s arrest — to which the Maduro regime responded by banishing the office’s stationed staff in Caracas.
Quote:Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro accused former Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami — a man actively wanted by U.S. authorities on drug trafficking charges — of working alongside the United States and the Venezuelan opposition to steal from Venezuela’s state coffers and to overthrow him since “at least 2018.”
Maduro’s accusations, levied on Monday evening in the latest episode of his weekly television show With Maduro Plus, came hours after Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab accused former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela James Story and several exiled opposition members of working with El Aissami to steal billions in Venezuelan public funds through a corruption scheme involving the state-owned PDVSA oil company.
Tareck El Aissami was one of the most powerful individuals in the Venezuelan socialist regime elite while a protegé of the late dictator Hugo Chávez. He has long stood accused of maintaining close ties with the Shiite jihadist organization Hezbollah, acting as a middleman and facilitator between Hezbollah and Maduro.
U.S. authorities accuse El Aissami of being a drug kingpin in the service of the regime. In 2017, the administration of former President Donald Trump identified El Aissami as a specially designated narcotics trafficker and imposed sanctions on him. Since 2020, the United States has had an active $10 million bounty in place for any information leading to his arrest and/or conviction.
El Aissami has occupied several high-ranking positions in government in the last 20 years, including serving as Maduro’s vice president between 2017-2018 and as oil minister between 2020 and March 20, 2023. On that day, El Aissami was unceremoniously purged alongside his entire inner circle, accused of stealing billions of dollars in oil revenue from PDVSA in a case that the regime commonly refers to as “PDVSA-Crypto.”
Following his purge, El Aissami disappeared for more than a year. On April 9, 2024, he resurfaced in police custody, facing charges of treason, money laundering, and corruption. El Aissami appeared in photographs in handcuffs and a prison uniform.
Keep in mind that communist regimes love purges. Seriously.
Quote:Colombian far-left President Gustavo Petro announced on Wednesday that he would cut diplomatic relations with Israel on Thursday over its “genocide” in Gaza.
The Colombian president made the announcement during a speech given as part of an official government event commemorating “International Workers’ Day” or “May Day,” a holiday celebrating the murderous ideology of communism.
Petro – who has nearly single-handedly eroded decades of goodwill between Colombia and Israel in the months following the October 7 Hamas atrocities – previously theatened to cut ties with Israel repeatedly, condemning Israel for executing self-defense actions against the jihadist terrorist group Hamas. Petro has referred to military operations against Hamas terrorists as a “genocide.”
“Here in front of you, the government of change, the President of the Republic, informs that tomorrow diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be broken for having a government, for having a president, a genocidal one!” Petro said.
He did not clarify if his “genocidal” accusation was directed towards Israeli President Isaac Herzog or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In Israel, the prime minister holds more power than the largely ceremonial president.
“I believe that today humanity, all in the streets, by the millions, agrees with us and we with it,” Petro continued.
Hamas reportedly celebrated Petro’s decision in a statement issued on Wednesday, hailing it as a “victory” while calling for other Latin American countries to follow suit.
“We greatly appreciate the position of Colombian President Gustavo Petro which we consider a victory for the sacrifices of our people and their just cause,” Hamas said in a statement.
It's not unusual to see how well a former terrorist and an existing terrorist organization getting along quite well.
Quote:Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro denounced on Tuesday the disappearance of more than a million pieces of ammunition, explosives, and weapons from the inventories of two military bases in northern Colombia.
The missing ammunition and weaponry was detected as the result of an inspection carried out by the Colombian Army in the Tolemaida military base and the 10th Armored Brigade base in La Guajira.
Petro – who was accompanied by Defense Minister Iván Velásquez and Helder Giraldo, the Commander General of the Colombian Military Forces – attributed the disappearance of the military equipment to alleged trafficking networks linked to Colombian and foreign groups. He suggested that the equipment may have ended up in the possession of illegal armed groups and possibly in foreign conflicts such as that in Haiti, where violent gangs have left the country in a state of near-complete collapse.
“With ammunition alone, there are more than a million rounds of ammunition missing,” Petro said.
“The only way to explain this type of shortage is that for a long time there have been networks made up of people from the military and civilian forces dedicated to a massive arms trade using the legal weapons of the Colombian state,” he continued.
According to the Office of the Colombian President, the inspections to the Tolemaida base took place on February 12, while the inspection to the 10th Brigade’s base took place on April 1.
At the end of the inspections, the authorities found that roughly 1.9 million rounds of ammunition of varied calibers were missing, as well as roughly 20,500 grenades of varied types, 2 Spike Missiles, 37 Nimrod missiles, 550 RPG rockets, and other kinds of explosives.
Petro asserted that, in his opinion, the missing military weaponry went to Colombia’s armed groups, without mentioning any specific culprits. Petro also suggested that the missing items may have reached “foreign conflicts, the closest, that of Haiti, seven hours by speedboat from the La Guajira base,” as well as the international arms smuggling market.
Under Petro, the Colombian army can no longer safeguard its own ammunition and weaponry.
Quote:Diana Mondino, the foreign minister of Argentina, concluded her first trip to China on Wednesday representing the libertarian government of President Javier Milei, declaring that Buenos Aires retains a “friendly” policy towards Beijing despite Milei’s campaign promises to distance his country from the Communist Party.
“No matter how Argentina’s internal political situation changes, its friendly policy toward China will not change,” Mondino reportedly told her Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during a meeting on Tuesday.
Mondino spent her four days in the country meeting with both regime-affiliated business leaders – including representatives from notorious regime corporations such as Huawei and Xiaomi – and Communist Party officials, reportedly seeking greater investment in Argentina. Argentina is currently experiencing the worst financial crisis of its history, a product of two decades of socialist rule prior to Milei’s victory in the 2023 presidential election.
Milei, an economist by trade, identifies as a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist who aggressively opposes communism and all forms of what he calls left-wing “collectivism.” On China, presidential candidate Milei declared the genocidal regime “murderous” and promised not to pursue ties with the country.
“I would not promote relations with communists – not with Cuba, not with Venezuela, not with North Korea, not with Nicaragua, not with China,” Milei said in an interview with Bloomberg News in August.
Mondino adopted a much more conciliary tone in Beijing, stating that Argentina would “pursue an open policy and welcomed Chinese enterprises to invest and do business in Argentina,” according to the South China Morning Post. Mondino insisted that commitments made with China during prior socialist administrations would remain in vigor, including projects begun under China’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
“Mondino noted that no matter how Argentina’s internal political situation changes, its friendly policy toward China will not change,” the Chinese state-run CGTN outlet reported. “Argentina adheres to the one-China principle and is willing to continue to promote cooperation in infrastructure construction, trade, investment, finance, tourism, space, Antarctica, ocean and environmental protection under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, she said.”
Quote:Haiti’s transitional council named former senate president Edgard Gardy Leblanc Fils as temporary president of the nation on Tuesday and tapped former youth minister Fritz Belizaire as interim prime minister.
Fils and Belizaire are scheduled to hold their offices until February 2026, when the security situation in Haiti will hopefully have been stabilized enough to hold nationwide elections.
Belizaire will take over from Michel Patrick Boisvert, the former finance minister named interim prime minister by de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry when he tendered his formal resignation last week.
Haiti has not had an elected leader since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. Henry took over as the nation’s chief executive after the assassination and became deeply unpopular with the Haitian people, with many viewing him as a corrupt despot who would do anything to cling to power. He resisted holding elections and refused to resign until February, when street gangs plunged the country into bloody chaos while the prime minister was in Africa, effectively exiling him from the country.
Henry said he would not resign until a transitional council was established to create an interim government. After months of effort, the seven-member council (plus two non-voting observers) was finally sworn in on April 25 amid fresh outbreaks of street violence and death threats from gang leaders. Henry resigned the same day, without admitting he had ever done anything wrong.
Quote:The Chilean news channel Meganoticias reported this weekend that two members of Chile’s Investigative Police (PDI) had allegedly been working with a human trafficking cell of the Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization dedicated to the sexual exploitation of women.
The two officers, identified as Nicolás Ortega Castro and Sebastián Peredo Vera, were detained in March during a crackdown operation held by PDI’s Human Trafficking Brigade, which is known as Bitrap.
The Tren de Aragua is a multinational criminal organization originating in Aragua state, Venezuela, whose crimes had largely been contained until September, when socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro ordered a bizarre “raid” of the prison housing most of the gang’s leadership. The “raid” resulted in the disappearance of gang leader Héctor “the Child” Guerrero and several other high-ranking gangsters and preceded a boom in Tren de Aragua criminal activity across the Western Hemisphere, including in the United States.
The socialist regime in control of Venezuela has repeatedly insisted in the past two months – in the face of mounting evidence of a connection between Maduro and the Tren de Aragua – that the gang simply does not exist.
Chilean prosecutor Carolina Suazo – who charged the two men and other detainees with illicit association, human trafficking, money laundering, and bribery – told Meganoticias that Chilean officials were able to determine that Tren de Aragua received information from PDI based on the testimonies of victims of the human trafficking network, which “led to the initiation of a series of proceedings related to that information.”
According to Meganoticias’ report, Tren de Aragua’s human trafficking cell was made up of 13 people, some of whom are currently in custody and others at large with outstanding arrest warrants. The trafficking cell allegedly kept at least 100 sexual exploitation victims in the vicinity of Plaza de Armas, Santiago’s main square, and used some of the city’s historical buildings, where victims were “permanently monitored and controlled.”
The trafficking victims were allegedly recruited both inside of Chile and abroad by “taking advantage of their situation of vulnerability and, in some cases, also deceiving them in relation to the conditions of payment of the fine that they acquired with the accused.”
Quote:French police on Friday peacefully removed dozens of students from a building at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, who had gathered in support of Palestinians, echoing similar encampments and solidarity demonstrations across the United States.
Students waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans in support of residents of Gaza, as Israel continues its offensive following the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that triggered the Israeli-Hamas war.
The Sciences Po building had been occupied since Thursday evening. The university administration had closed the main buildings and moved classes online.
Pro-Palestinian students were planning to hold a protest later Friday in front of the Pantheon monument, near the elite Sorbonne University, to call for an end to Israel´s offensive in Gaza.
On Thursday, similar protests took place in some other universities across the country, including in Lille and Lyon.
The Prime Minister’s Office said police had been requested to remove students from 23 sites on French campuses on Thursday and “all were evacuated within a few hours.”
A police presence will be maintained near Sciences Po to prevent any further blockades, it said in a statement.
Last week, tensions broke out near the elite university, which counts President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal among its many famous alumni. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators faced each other in a standoff in the street outside Sciences Po. Riot police stepped in to separate the groups.
The protest ended peacefully as pro-Palestinian students agreed to leave.
Quote:Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed reports on Friday that Ankara will ban all imports from and exports to Israel in support of the jihadist terror group Hamas.
“There was a trade volume of $9.5 billion between us,” Erdogan told reporters on Friday. “Ignoring this trade volume, we closed the door.”
Erdogan once again accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of unfairly targeting Palestinian civilians in the ongoing Israeli self-defense operation against Hamas, calling him “relentless” in comments on Friday. The Turkish president objects to the operation, intended to neutralize the group’s ability to invade and ravage Israel, on the grounds that the Israelis are allegedly targeting Palestinian civilians subjugated by Hamas. Netanyahu’s government approved the operation in response to the slaughter of an estimated 1,200 people, abduction of 2,500, and widespread torture, gang rape, and desecration of the corpses of Israelis during Hamas’s siege of Israel on October 7.
Erdogan was among the first world leaders to defend Hamas following the October 7 atrocities, repeatedly insisting that the group is “not a terrorist organization” and comparing Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
In his remarks on Friday, Erdogan condemned both Israel and “all Western countries” for opposing Hamas and allegedly “sparing no efforts to condemn the poverty-stricken Palestinians to death.”
Erdogan’s announcement followed the declaration by the Turkish Trade Ministry on Thursday that Ankara would suspend all import and export ties to Israel.
I'm not surprised to see how Turkey blames Israel for everything and even compares it with the Nazis. Communist parties have followed the same playbook that teaches them how to blame other groups for what they themselves are actually doing.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) failed to concede to Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) after a two-hour meeting Monday in which the duo continued pressing for Johnson to resign and end his coalition government with Democrats.
Greene told reporters after the meeting that she and Massie “had a very long discussion with Speaker Johnson. We’ll be meeting with him again tomorrow based on the discussion and then I’ll have more information.”
The two conservative lawmakers have insisted that Johnson is compromised and will not be Speaker next Congress. They called for him to step down so Republicans can begin moving forward, arguing Johnson’s unofficial lame duck status will hurt Republicans as they fundraise and campaign for November’s elections.
“I have been patient, I have been diligent. I have been steady. And I’ve been focused on the facts,” Greene said. “And none of that has changed.”
The meeting came one day after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) bragged on CBS about controlling the House floor agenda — a characterization many conservatives agree with.
“Even though we’re in the minority, we effectively have been governing as if we were in the majority because we continue to provide a majority of the votes necessary to get things done,” he said. “Those are just the facts.”
Quote:Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Monday said she supports Democrat efforts to keep Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in power.
Pelosi said she backs House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s plot to keep Johnson as the Speaker of the House.
Pelosi said that they are backing Johnson to “support the integrity of the House of Representatives and will not let it be littered up by nonsense.”
Pelosi’s comments come as the Speaker faces a motion from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to remove him as the leader of the House. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) have backed Greene’s motion.
The Speaker reportedly told donors on Sunday that he would support kicking members who block his Democrat-Republican coalition government’s legislative agenda off committees. He also signaled that he would favor changing House rules, such as the motion to vacate, at the end of the congressional term.
Massie has listed Johnon’s “three betrayals”: He has stopped working to pass 12 separate appropriations bill, he rammed through warrantless surveillance of Americans, and he passed a bill containing $95 billion of foreign aid without securing America’s border, which he had promised would not happen.
Jeffries now claims that he and the Democrats are in power, not Johnson and the Republicans, who took control of the House after the 2022 midterm elections.
Now even I suspect he gotta be 100% RINO at this point.
Quote:The pro-Palestinian, antisemitic protests on university campuses across the nation are funded by President Joe Biden’s own political donors — which could explain why he hesitates to condemn them and won’t investigate them.
Biden equivocated last month when asked to react to the protests, saying that he condemned the antisemitism but also condemned those “who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” which puzzled observers.
Research by NGO Monitor and others into the donors behind the protests has turned up familiar names from the Democratic Party bankroll — including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and other liberal philanthropies.
Biden’s Department of Justice has notably refused to investigate the civil rights abuses being committed by the “encampments” — against Jews, journalists, and others — and has also refused to consider RICO conspiracy charges.
The reason may be that he does not want to subject his own political donors to investigation or embarrasment.
Politico reported Sunday (original links):
Two of the main organizers behind protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change. (Gates did not return a request for comment, and Soros declined to comment.)
Another notable Democratic donor whose philanthropy has helped fund the protest movement is David Rockefeller Jr., who sits on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 2022, the fund gave $300,000 to the Tides Foundation; according to nonprofit tax forms, Tides has given nearly $500,000 over the past five years to Jewish Voice for Peace, which explicitly describes itself as anti-Zionist.
Several other groups involved in pro-Palestinian protests are backed by a foundation funded by Susan and Nick Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotel empire — and supporters of Biden and numerous Democratic campaigns, including $6,600 to the Biden Victory Fund a few months ago and more than $300,000 during the 2020 campaign.
Later on Politico posted a slightly modified version of the same report.
Quote:A shipment of U.S. ammunition bound for Israel last week was halted by the Biden administration for reasons yet to be made clear, a report Sunday claimed.
Israeli officials were left scrambling as to why the shipment was withheld, Axios reported, while CNN declared the decision was unrelated to U.S. opposition to an invasion of the Hamas terrorist stronghold of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Biden administration recently signed off on $26 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Israel in its war against Hamas terrorists but officials have repeatedly warned against moving into Rafah, where over a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering from the war.
The National Security Council said in a statement to The Hill the Biden administration’s backing of Israel has not changed, outlining:
The United States has surged billions of dollars in security assistance to Israel since the October 7 attacks, passed the largest ever supplemental appropriation for emergency assistance to Israel, led an unprecedented coalition to defend Israel against Iranian attacks, and will continue to do what is necessary to ensure Israel can defend itself from the threats it faces.
This is the first time since the Oct. 7 terrorism attack the U.S. has stopped a weapons shipment intended for the Israeli military.
The White House has made clear on a number of occasions it does not support a move by Israel into Rafah.
Last month National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated that it’s “not clear” that it’s even possible for Israel to have “a credible plan” for an invasion of Rafah that the White House would support, as Breitbart News reported.
Quote:Nippon Steel said Friday it has postponed the expected closing of its $14.1 billion takeover of U.S. Steel by three months after the U.S. Department of Justice requested more documentation related to the deal.
Tokyo-based Nippon Steel Corp. said the deal, already approved by U.S. Steel’s shareholders, is still expected to go through.
“Nippon Steel will continue to fully cooperate with the examination of the relevant authorities,” it said in a statement.
The sale has drawn opposition from President Joe Biden’s administration on economic and national security grounds, and from former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential candidate in November’s election.
The new timing could push the closing beyond the election, but Nippon Steel denied the delay was related to that.
Initially the deal was supposed to have closed by September. Now it will close by December, meaning it could still close as early as September, according to a company spokesperson, who requested the anonymity customary at Japanese companies.
More than 98% of the Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp. shares voted at a special investor meeting in April approved the takeover. Nippon Steel has said it has prepared adequate financing to go through with the deal.
Quote:Firearm-related crime is surging in heavily gun-controlled Canada, according to a report from Toronto Star contributor Shaquille Morgan.
Morgan pointed to data from Canadian police, noting “there were 9,198 victims of gun-related crime” in Canada in 2022.
The 2022 figures represented a ten percent jump in the rate of gun-related crime compared to 2021 and a 60 percent jump compared to 2013.
Morgan zeroed in on handguns, explaining that “63 per cent of gun-related homicides were committed with a handgun.”
Canada has stringent gun controls, and Morgan indicated they have gotten even more stringent during the past years. During that time frame “the federal government has expanded background checks, banned 1,500 models of assault weapons, imposed a national handgun freeze and committed $250 million to address the root causes of gun and gang violence.”
Public Safety Canada noted the handgun freeze prohibits “the sale, purchase or transfer of handguns by individuals within Canada, and…bringing newly acquired handguns into Canada.”
One must acquire a license to legally own a gun in Canada, and the process for getting the license requires applicants to take an approved gun safety course.
Quote:Canadian police said they arrested three suspects Friday in the slaying of a Sikh separatist leader last June that became the center of a diplomatic spat with India, and are investigating possible ties between the detainees and the Indian government.
Three Indian nationals in their 20s identified as Kamalpreet Singh, Karan Brar and Karampreet Singh were arrested in Edmonton, Alberta on Friday morning in the slaying of 45-year-old Hardeep Singh Nijjar by masked gunmen outside Vancouver, police said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparked a diplomatic feud with India in September when he said that there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement in the slaying of Nijjar.
India had accused Nijjar of links to terrorism, but angrily denied involvement in the slaying. In response to the allegatio ns, India told Canada last year to remove 41 of its 62 diplomats in the country. Tensions remain but have somewhat eased since.
The three suspects had been living in Canada as non-permanent residents, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Mandeep Mooker said Friday at a news conference in Toronto.
“We are investigating whether there are any ties to the government of India,” Mooker said, adding that it was an “ongoing investigation.”
Quote:José Raúl Mulino, a last-minute conservative candidate in Panama’s 2024 presidential race, was elected in Sunday’s general election with a nearly ten percent lead over his closest rival.
Mulino, a 64-year-old lawyer and former minister of security in the country, campaigned on implementing a crackdown on migration by “closing” the dangerous Darien Gap jungle trail that Panama shares with Colombia, which thousands of migrants from South America and other regions use to reach the United States. Mulino has also vowed to improve Panama’s economy.
The now president-elect ran as a stand-in candidate for former President Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014), who was banned from running for a new term after local courts sentenced him to ten years in prison on money laundering charges in 2023.
Martinelli, whose appeal was denied by the Supreme Court of Panama, sought asylum at the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City in February and has remained sheltered in it since then as local authorities have not granted Martinelli a safe passage out of Panama.
Mulino will take office for a five-year term on July 1, succeeding current center-left President Laurentino Cortizo. Cortizo was not eligible for reelection, as Panama’s constitution states that a president may not be reelected in two consecutive presidential terms.
With more than 98 percent of the votes tallied by Panama’s Electoral Tribunal at press time, Mulino, who ran as the candidate for “Save Panama,” a coalition composed of Martinelli’s conservative Realizing Goals party and the centrist Alliance Party, obtained 34.32 percent of the votes.
Ricardo Lombana, who ran for the Another Way Movement (MOCA) “green” party came in second place with 24.75 percent of the votes, while Martín Torrijs, of the center-right Popular Party, received 16.01 percent of the votes. The voter turnout rate was estimated at 77.63 percent.
Quote:Bolivia’s ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party ousted former President Evo Morales from party leadership on Sunday, seven months after ousting incumbent President Luis Arce.
Morales had Arce banned from the MAS party in October in a power struggle between the two to appear as the MAS candidate on the 2025 presidential election ballot. Morales is term-limited out of running for president as per the Bolivian constitution, a ban the Bolivian Constitutional Court affirmed in January. His time in power, from 2006 to 2019, was marked by promoting the cultivation of coca, the plant used to produce cocaine; accusations of pedophilia, including Morales allegedly fathering a child with a minor; and rampant persecution of political opponents.
Morales resigned voluntarily and fled to Mexico in 2019 after “winning” the last standard presidential election; he fled the country along with most of the pro-Morales leadership of MAS after the Organization of American States (OAS) revealed evidence of fraud in the election.
He has since repeatedly insisted that he was the victim of a “coup” and that he is eligible to run for a fifth term in spite of Bolivia’s constitution establishing a maximum two-term limit for a president and vice president. Morales was able to bypass the constitutional term limits in the past through a series of court rulings, one of which essentially gave him a “free” first term that did not “count” towards the two-term limit.
This weekend, Morales insisted he would be on the ballot regardless of the law and threatened to organize mob actions if the government enforced the law.
At an event in Cochabamba on Saturday preceding his removal from MAS leadership, Morales declared that he would run for president “a las buenas o las malas,” an idiom roughly translating to “by hook or by crook” or “by any means necessary.” Morales threatened to organize riots and road blockades if the country respected its constitution and kept him off the ballot.
MIDDLE EAST
Hamas Suddenly Remembers They Were Negotiating a Ceasefire in Gaza
Quote:The Palestinian Hamas terror organization rushed Monday to claim that it had accepted a ceasefire — just hours after Israel warned residents of Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza, to evacuate due to an imminent invasion.
International media reported Monday evening local time that Hamas had suddenly declared that it had accepted the Egyptian and Qatari terms for a temporary ceasefire, after holding out for weeks against agreeing to a deal with Israel.
But Israeli officials reportedly said that Hamas was “agreeing” to terms that Israel had not proposed or accepted.
The sudden urgency may have had everything to do with Israel’s pending attack, as thousands of Palestinian civilians began leaving Rafah, a strategic town on the Egyptian border and the last place in Gaza Israel has not fully entered.
As Breitbart News reported earlier Monday, Israel dropped leaflets on Rafah and used text messages, phone calls, and other method to warn residents to escape to the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone at the coast and other places nearby.
An Israeli government spokesman, asked whether the warnings were a bluff designed to pressure Hamas to accept a deal, suggested that the invasion plans were very real, and were what Israel had promised to do for several months.
Hamas, suddenly facing its final destruction, appears to be much more eager to real a deal — if one is still possible.
The sticking point in previous negotiations was Israel’s insistence on destroying Hamas militarily and politically so that it cannot return to power in Gaza again. Hamas wanted Israel to commit to ending the war in any hostage deal.
Now, with Israel showing that it is willing to attack Hamas even before the hostages are released, Hamas leaders may be focused on self-preservation. It remains to be seen whether a true ceasefire agreement can actually be reached.
Quote:The Israeli war cabinet voted unanimously on Monday to continue the attack on Hamas’s last stronghold in Rafah — while also sending diplomats to Cairo, Egypt in an effort to explore whether Hamas is really interested in ceasefire.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office posted on Twitter / X (with some translation via Google Translate):
Prime Minister’s Office:
The War Cabinet unanimously decided that Israel continues the operation in Rafah to exert military pressure on Hamas in order to promote the release of our hostages and the other goals of the war.
At the same time, although the Hamas proposal is far from Israel’s necessary requirements, Israel will send a delegation of working-level mediators to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement under conditions acceptable to Israel.
The war cabinet’s decision came after Hamas announced that it had agreed to a ceasefire — under terms that Israel said were not on the table. That, in turn, came after Israel began warning residents of Rafah to begin to evacuate.
The White House seized on the news of Hamas’s “agreement” — though national security spokesman John Kirby could not tell reporters what was in the agreement, nor could he say whether the “ceasefire” was a “trick” by Hamas.
Quote:The government of Israel confirmed on Sunday that it had discovered a terrorist “Hamas command and control center” in a complex run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian issues.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Security Agency (ISA), or Shin Bet, issued a joint statement confirming an airstrike Subday on the facility, which they said intelligence confirmed was being used as “a staging ground for multiple attacks on IDF troops located in Gaza’s central corridor in recent weeks.”
The strike reportedly occurred shortly before Israeli officials confirmed that the country had begun dropping flyers to civilians in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, urging them to evacuate before a military operation against Hamas.
The Hamas terrorist organization has controlled Gaza since 2007. The current military operations against the terrorists are a response to an unprecedented siege of the Israeli homeland on October 7, 2023, in which terrorists invaded the country and engaged in rampant violence against civilians, including the killing of infants, widespread instances of gang-rape, torture, mass executions of entire families in their homes, and the desecration of corpses on camera, filmed and sometimes uploaded to the social media profiles of their victims. Hamas terrorists acted with especially wanton violence against women, the elderly, young children, and the disabled.
Quote:Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) agency reported Sunday that it had been told by international organizations that there was too much aid being sent to northern Gaza, and it should be reduced.
The Jerusalem Post reports, citing a lengthy COGAT thread on X (formerly Twitter):
COGAT added that “In talks between Israeli and UN representatives, including [the] WFP, none of the entities indicated a risk of famine in northern Gaza. They noted that the humanitarian situation is improving and that there is a variety of goods in both warehouses and markets in the north.”
COGAT added that “In talks between Israeli and UN representatives, including [the] WFP, none of the entities indicated a risk of famine in northern Gaza. They noted that the humanitarian situation is improving and that there is a variety of goods in both warehouses and markets in the north.”
“Noting the improved situation, [international organizations] stated last week that the volume of goods transported to northern Gaza must be reduced since the quantities are too high in relation to the population,” wrote COGAT.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer added Monday that 100 aid trucks had been heading into northern Gaza on a daily basis, and reiterated that international organizations have said there is no risk of famine in Gaza.
Markets “both in the north and the south are bustling,” Mencer said, adding that Israel had been told that the amount of goods traveling to northern Gaza “must be reduced” because Israel had been told “the quantities are too high.”
“The issue has never been about getting aid into Gaza, but about getting aid to the civilians in Gaza before it is stolen, and looted, by Hamas,” Mencer said.
The Biden administration has confirmed recently that the supply of aid has increased into Gaza, following an accidental IDF attack on a convoy of World Central Kitchen vehicles last month that killed seven aid workers.
Quote:The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, traveled to Tehran on Monday to meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who warned him to prevent “anti-revolutionary elements” from getting too friendly with the autonomous Kurdish region.
The warning appeared to be a threat intended to dissuade Kurdish cooperation with the United States and any potential cordial ties with neighboring Israel. The KRG maintains friendly relations with the United States and cooperates militarily with Washington, particularly against the Islamic State (Isis) jihadist organization. The KRG’s Peshmerga forces were pivotal in the ouster of the ISIS “caliphate” from its regional stronghold in northern Mosul, and the KRG’s capital, Erbil, took in a large number of persecuted Christians fleeing the Islamic State genocide.
The KRG is an entity in northern Iraq that operates largely independently from Baghdad, though it is not sovereign and attempts to establish a nation of Kurdistan have failed catastrophically. In 2017, following the collapse of the Islamic State “caliphate,” then-Kurdish President Masoud Barzani held a referendum that found the majority of KRG residents wanted to secede from Iraq and found their own country.
Despite the KRG’s key role in helping fight ISIS, the administration of then-President Donald Trump opposed the referendum, ensuring its failure amid a wave of attacks by Iranian proxy forces on the KRG. Barzani stepped down from the office shortly thereafter. Iran, meanwhile, celebrated the KRG defeat as an American failure to establish a “second Israel” in the Middle East, meaning an administration friendly to America and its values.
Prior to traveling to Tehran, Barzani hosted two American senators, Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Ted Budd (R-NC), to discuss security cooperation, underscoring Erbil’s relationship with Washington.
Quote:Iran announced that Shahid Mahdavi, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warship, crossed the equator into the Southern Hemisphere for the first time.
The Shahid Mahdavi is on a “long-distance mission” in international waters, the Iranian state-owned PressTV propaganda outlet reported.
The Shahid Mahdavi is a more than 2.1-ton and roughly 787-foot long container ship that the IRGC, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and formal arm of the Iranian military, converted into a multi-purpose warship capable of carrying helicopters, unmanned aerial drones, and speedboats.
According to Iranian state media, the Shahid Mahdavi is equipped with a three-dimensional phased array radar, sea-to-sea and sea-to-air missiles, and advanced communication systems for electronic warfare. The ship was commissioned into the IRGC Navy in March 2023.
Iranian state media claimed that the warship was “conducting its biggest mission in terms of distance and operation,” without specifying further. Iranian authorities have not publicly disclosed the nature of the warship’s mission at press time.
The deployment of the warship was accompanied by a video that Iranian authorities released on social media to demonstrate the vessel’s capabilities, allegedly showing it launching a Dezful-class ballistic missile capable of striking targets up to 620 miles away.
In February, Iran tested the warship’s missile-launching capabilities by launching a Zolfaqar-class ballistic missile that, according to the Iranian regime, hit its designated target in a desert in central Iran. The Zolfaqar-class missiles reportedly have an approximate range of 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles).
“Our oceangoing warships can be present in every location across the world, and when we can fire missiles from them, there is, accordingly, no safe spot for anyone intending to create insecurity for us,” IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami said during February’s ballistic test.
Quote:The United States Army confirmed reports on Monday that Russia has detained an American soldier.
“On May 2, 2024, Russian authorities in Vladivostok, Russia, detained an American soldier on charges of criminal misconduct,” Army Spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said in a statement:
The Russian Federation notified the U.S. Department of State of the criminal detention in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The Army notified his family, and the U.S. Department of State is providing appropriate consular support to the soldier in Russia. Given the sensitivity of this matter, we are unable to provide additional details at this time.
The soldier was detained in Russia after he had traveled there on his own from South Korea, where he was stationed, according to NBC News, which first reported his detention.
The soldier was not on official business, according to the network. He is accused of “stealing from a woman,” officials said.
The soldier joins fellow Americans — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan — as detainees in Russia. Gershkovich was detained and jailed in March 2023, and Whelan was arrested in 2018.
Tensions are high between the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. is flowing billions in military and economic aid to Ukraine, which is engaged in a hot war with Russia.
The detention of a U.S. soldier in Russia threatens to bring relations even lower and weaken U.S. support for Ukraine, during already growing opposition.
Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said he was “deeply concerned” by the detention.
“I am deeply concerned by reports that a U.S. Army officer has been detained in Russia. Putin has a long history of holding American citizens hostage. A warning to all Americans—as the State Department has said, it is not safe to travel to Russia,” McCaul said in a statement.
Quote:The Russian Military district responsible for occupying eastern Ukraine is to respond to “inflammatory statements… by some Western officials” by drilling with tactical nuclear weapons, Moscow has said.
Russia claims Western provocations while launching a nuclear provocation of its own, saying it will drill its nuclear missile troops, air force, and ships to “practice employing non-strategic nuclear-weapons”. Also known as tactical weapons, the lower-yield atomic bombs are intended for battlefield use to destroy opposing armies and fortifications, rather than whole cities or industries, as with long-range strategic missiles.
A statement by the Russian ministry of defence expressed the intentions of the exercise, while blaming Western states for it happening at all. Russian state media quoted the Kremlin as having said:
The exercise aims to maintain the preparedness of troops and equipment for the combat employment of non-strategic nuclear weapons to react and unconditionally ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Russian state in response to provocative statements and threats by some Western officials against the Russian Federation…
Kremlin media paraphrased this as the exercise being intended to be a retaliation against what it called “inflammatory statements and threats by some Western officials”
Russia’s nuclear forces exercising isn’t exactly unheard of, the Associated Press notes, but this is the first time such a thing has been announced in advance, making clear the apparent intent to intimidate.
Quote:As Ukraine marked its third Easter at war, Russia launched a barrage of drones concentrated in Ukraine´s east where the situation on the front line is worsening. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians in an Easter address to be united in prayer and called God an “ally” in the war with Russia.
Ukraine’s air force said Sunday that Russia had launched 24 Shahed drones, of which 23 had been shot down by air defenses.
Six people, including a child, were wounded in a drone strike in the eastern Kharkiv region, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.
Fires broke out when debris from drones that were shot down fell on buildings in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. No casualties were reported.
Officials in Kyiv urged residents to follow Orthodox Easter services online due to safety concerns. Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv city administration, warned that “even on such bright days of celebration, we can expect evil deeds from the aggressor.”
Zelenskyy called on Ukrainians to unite in prayer for each other and soldiers on the front line.
Kremlin's Most Wanted: Zelensky & His Ex-Officials
Quote:Russia has issued arrest warrants for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as well as several high-ranking former officials including former President Petro Poroshenko.
The wanted list published by Moscow’s Interior Ministry was updated on Tuesday to include President Zelensky. The arrest warrant states that the Ukrainian leader is wanted over a violation of the Russian Criminal code, however, the exact alleged offence has not been published.
Russian state-run media RT suggested that the arrest warrant may be in response to unconventional tactics used by Ukraine, noting that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month in the wake of a suspected Ukrainian attack on the Crimean bridge that threats made by Zelensky to destroy Russian infrastructure demonstrated the “terrorist” nature of Kyiv.
The wanted list was also updated to include former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who came to power following the Western-backed 2014 Euromaidan protests described by Moscow as a coup against Viktor Yanukovych, who was forced out of office by the violent movement after seeking closer economic ties with Russia and rejecting overtures for further EU integration. As with Zelensky, the charges levied against Poroshenko have not been made public by the Kremlin.
The announcements come after multiple other former Ukrainian officials face arrest warrants issued on Friday, including former Finance Minister Aleksandr Shlapak and former central bank chief Stepan Kubiv.
The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, Aleksandr Litvinenko, also had an arrest warrant taken out against him.
Quote:While visiting German troops in Lithuania on Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany was prepared to defend every centimeter of NATO-allied territory in the face of any new threats.
The visit underscores the strategic importance of Lithuania, as well as the other Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Why is Scholz in Lithuania?
Scholz was visiting as Germany prepares to permanently deploy a Bundeswehr brigade of some 4,800 soldiers to support Lithuania's security. It is the first time that postwar Germany is to permanently station troops outside its borders.
"Germany stands unwaveringly on the side of the Baltic states," said Scholz, underlining that Berlin would adhere to its Article 5 commitments as part of NATO.
The three NATO and EU Baltic countries are ardent supporters of Kyiv and fear they may one day be targeted by the Kremlin's military aggression. All thee Baltic nations share a border with Russia and were once part of the Soviet Union.
The Washington Treaty, the founding basis of NATO, stipulates in Article 5 that an armed attack on any member will be deemed an attack against all.
"This means that we protect each other and that every state can rely on us to protect every centimeter of their territory."
The Bundeswehr division will start to arrive in 2025 and is planned to reach full fighting readiness in 2027.
Scholz met Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda at the Pabrade Training Area, a major military facility near the Belarusian border. The troops he met were taking part in NATO exercises taking place there.
Quote:Genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping landed in Paris on Sunday for a European tour beginning in France and including stops in Communist Party-friendly Hungary and Serbia.
France is the first European to establish diplomatic ties with communist China and Xi’s visit will mark the 60th anniversary of that event. It is Xi’s first visit to Europe in five years, since the onset of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic paralyzed most diplomatic engagement around the world.
Xi’s first major engagement on his European tour was a trilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who welcomed him warmly despite overwhelming evidence that Xi is currently conducting the largest-scale genocide of the 21st century. Genocide is a crime that falls under the peremptory norms, or jus cogens, standard, meaning all countries have jurisdiction to arrest and prosecute those credibly accused of committing it. At press time, no reports suggest that French police are preparing to arrest Xi.
Xi emphasized in several statements since landing in Paris that he is looking forward to expanding cooperation with France, particularly in the economic sector – where human rights experts have argued that the ongoing Uyghur genocide makes it impossible for foreign companies to do the due diligence necessary to prevent slave-tainted products from entering their market.
Quote:Two radical climate change alarmist activists were arrested on Saturday after defacing France’s famed Palace of Versailles with orange powder.
In the latest stunt targeting works of art and historic sites, two activists from the Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) collective threw orange powder throughout the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, the Baroque style gallery in the former seat of power for the French monarchy.
According to Le Figaro, citing police sources, the two green activists were arrested and taken into custody by police in Versailles. Fortunately, no permanent damage to the palace or artwork in the gallery was sustained during the incident.
Claiming responsibility for the stunt, the Riposte Alimentaire group said in a statement: “Two citizens involved in the Food Response campaign threw orange powder while running into the famous Hall of Mirrors at the Château de Versailles.
“The Hall of Mirrors is the indecency of a minority which monopolizes power and money while the people die. 350 years later nothing has changed!
“Through this action, Riposte Alimentaire wishes to raise awareness of growing inequalities, allowing a privileged minority to monopolize part of the resources, while the majority of citizens collect the crumbs.”
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is investigating whether evidence seized by the FBI in its raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home as part of special counsel Jack Smith's classified records case was "altered or manipulated."
Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to the Office of Professional Responsibility this week after Smith admitted that seized documents are no longer in their original order and sequence.
Smith and federal prosecutors admitted in a court filing on Friday that "there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans." The prosecutors had previously told the court that the documents were "in their original, intact form as seized."
"The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court," a footnote in the filing reads.
Jordan, in his letter, said the acknowledgment "presents grave concerns" about the Justice Department’s "commitment to impartial justice, whether the Special Counsel’s Office misled a federal court, whether the Special Counsel’s Office strenuously upheld the ‘highest professional standards’ of the Department of Justice."
Jordan is now asking the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility to "hold accountable" attorneys who may have violated the standards.
Jordan is demanding that the office produce all documents and records referring or relating to any allegation of ethical impropriety regarding Smith, top prosecutor Jay Bratt or any other attorney assigned to the special counsel’s office.
Quote:On Thursday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “The Hill,” House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) said that the White House “needs to clean…up” President Joe Biden’s comments on Israel to CNN “and reiterate our support for Israel,” because “To the extent it looks like we are separating from Israel, that just gives Hamas all the more incentive to keep fighting.” He also called on the White House to push the message that Hamas is holding up a ceasefire.
After saying that Biden’s comments weren’t an accurate reflection of the administration’s position, Smith said, “I think that the White House needs to clean it up and reiterate our support for Israel, because I agree with my colleague Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), good friend of mine, with his comment [that the remarks are a signal of weakness]. Right now, the main group holding up a ceasefire is Hamas. We’ve had a ceasefire on the table for three months. Hamas refuses to agree to it, because they insist on Israel basically unilaterally surrendering and Hamas won’t even promise to return the hostages if they do. There is a ceasefire on the table, if Hamas returns the hostages, Israel will agree to roughly a two-month, eight-week ceasefire and Hamas has been blocking that. I think we need to get that message out. To the extent it looks like we are separating from Israel, that just gives Hamas all the more incentive to keep fighting.”
Smith concluded that Biden’s statement is “not political, because there is a very legitimate concern about the way Israel is conducting the war in Gaza. They have not done enough to let humanitarian assistance in. That’s been the case for months now. Now, it’s gotten better in the last four to six weeks. But early on, I think Israel made a huge mistake by signaling to the world that they didn’t care about humanitarian assistance. They’ve made a huge mistake by being slow in allowing that humanitarian assistance into Gaza. And I think they’ve also been not as careful as they should have been in protecting the civilian population in their campaign in Gaza right now. And I think it’s perfectly appropriate for the President to urge them to change that, because if they don’t, it undermines Israel’s security. But that’s different than saying that we’re going to cut them off. So, I think he needs to clarify that, but there’s every reason…to be critical of what Israel has done on certain aspects of the campaign.”
Quote:U.S. acting ambassador to Colombia and the head of the Venezuelan Affairs Unit (VAU) in Bogotá, Francisco Palmieri, said on Monday that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is, once again, willing to ease sanctions on Venezuela’s socialist regime.
Such action would be contingent on dictator Nicolás Maduro taking “meaningful steps” towards implementing a “free and fair” electoral agreement, an offer that appears to disregard that the regime has repeatedly violated and failed to uphold similar deals in the past year.
“Today, I spoke with U.S. companies about sanctions relief. Our policy seeks to encourage inclusive and competitive elections. We remain open to responding positively to meaningful steps toward full implementation of the Barbados Agreement,” a message published on social media from the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela and signed by Palmieri read.
Representatives of the Maduro regime and the Venezuelan opposition met in Barbados in October under the observation of the Biden Administration and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
After a series of negotiations, both sides signed a document known as the “Barbados Agreement,” which tethered the Maduro regime to a series of vague commitments meant to establish the conditions that would lead to holding a “free and fair” presidential election in Venezuela sometime during the second half of 2024.
As a reward for those promises, Biden issued the Maduro regime a broad oil and gas sanctions relief package in October 2023 that allowed the rogue socialist regime to once again freely sell Venezuelan oil in U.S. and international markets for six months. The package briefly restored the Maduro regime’s main source of revenue and allowed it to broker deals with other countries — such as India, China, Spain, and France — leading to an upsurge in Venezuela’s oil output. Venezuela’s oil production presently remains diminished from its historic output records after over two decades of socialist mismanagement brought the infrastructure of Venezuela’s oil industry and refineries to a state of near-complete ruin.
The sanctions relief package temporarily halted sanctions on the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA imposed during the administration of former President Donald Trump in 2019 — issued in response to the Maduro regime’s years of human rights violations against political dissidents.
That's exactly the way Biden is treating Iran nowadays. Let's give them more money because they no longer care about our policies!
Or they don't believe that Biden would ever harm them. He only cares about Communist and Muslim support right now.
Quote:Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission issued a report on Friday that said the Indian government might have used proxy agents to pour money into the campaigns of preferred candidates in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 general elections.
The report said the recipients of this “illicit financial support” might have been unaware the money was coming from India. The report said Pakistan also sought to influence the elections, while China was far and away the largest and most organized illicit donor.
“Indian officials in Canada have increasingly relied on Canadian and Canadian-based proxies and the contacts in their networks to conduct foreign interference. This obfuscates any explicit link between India and foreign interference activities. Proxies liaise and work with Indian intelligence officials in India and in Canada, taking both explicit and implicit direction from them,” the report said.
“None of the activities met the threshold to pursue criminal investigations,” the report concluded.
“Our systems remain sound. Voters were able to cast their ballots, their votes were duly registered and counted, and there is nothing to suggest that there was any interference whatsoever in this regard,” said Commissioner Marie-Josee Hogue, the primary author of the report.
Hogue’s report nevertheless denounced foreign interference as a “stain” on Canadian elections, which are meant to be free of “coercion or covert influence.”
Quote:The figurehead president of the Cuban communist Castro regime, Miguel Díaz-Canel, arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for a two-day official visit that will include a meeting with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who has been recently inaugurated for a new six-year term as president.
According to the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Díaz-Canel will “address bilateral agenda priorities” following Putin’s inauguration, meeting with other representatives of the Russian government before meeting with Putin on Thursday.
Díaz-Canel will also participate in Wednesday’s meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, representing Cuba in its capacity as an observer member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The envoy will also attend Russia’s annual “Victory Day” May 9 military parade, when Russia commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II.
The Cuban figurehead president is accompanied by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, the head of the Cuban Communist Party’s international relations department Emilio Lozada García, and foreign commerce vice Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, among other members of the Castro regime.
The occasion marks Díaz-Canel’s fourth visit to Russia and the latest since a visit in November 2022. The official visit also occurs amidst the 64th anniversary of the establishment of relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union.
On Wednesday, Díaz-Canel met with former Russian President and current Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who described Cuba as a “reliable partner” and as a “symbol of courage for many generations in the island’s struggle for freedom and independence.”
Medvedev, who asserted that both countries maintain an “intense political dialogue,” expressed Russia’s readiness to address Díaz-Canel’s economic relations and ties between the Communist Party of Cuba and Russia’s United Russia party. Medvedev also thanked Cuba for its “consistent stance” of support towards Russia in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Díaz-Canel said in a social media post that he and Medvedev “noted the progress and results of the relations between our parties and the work potential we still have” during their Wednesday meeting.
Quote:Russia’s nuclear forces are “always combat ready”, President Vladimir Putin said at the nation’s annual Victory Day parade in Moscow, accusing the West of warmongering while insisting his own nation is trying to keep the peace.
President Vladimir Putin addressed a military parade in Red Square at the Kremlin, Moscow on Thursday morning as the country commemorates the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. Russia’s role in fighting Nazi Germany has been central to its self-identity for decades but the annual commemoration has taken on even greater importance in the Putin era, a change underlined by his own remark to the crowd that the day is: “our main and truly national, sacred holiday!”.
Like last year the military parade that follows the leaders’ speech was remarkable due to its brevity, lasting just six minutes from the first vehicle rolling across Red Square to the flypast. Only one tank took part, a heritage Second World War-era T-34, which was followed by a group of light armoured vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, and 15 missile launch vehicles.
In recent years — before Putin decided to invade Ukraine — the parade was several times larger, including quantities of main battle tanks, and even a considerably larger display of vintage vehicles.
While military equipment seemed to be again severely lacking, Russia still managed to put on a display of people, with Moscow claiming 9,000 troops on parade in tyhe unseasonable snow, including troops who have fought in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian strongman — sworn in this week for his fifth term as President after again running essentially unopposed — used the occasion of the parade and commemorations of Russia’s role in defeating fascism in Europe in 1945 to lash out against Ukraine’s Western allies and again invoke the threat of nuclear war.
Sticking to the standard Moscow position that Russia is not the aggressor by invading Ukraine, and that Western states are simply escalating a “special military operation” by helping Kyiv to resist, Putin said the public should “feel confident that together we will ensure a free and secure future of Russia”.
Reading a laundry list of criticisms against Western states, Putin accused them of revanchism, mocking history, justifying neo-nazism, causing new wars, causing ethnic conflict, causing religious conflict, and of having designs on sovereign states.
Quote:Germany’s state security agency is investigating a suspected politically motivated arson after Gaza-related slogans were left at a Berlin town hall that was subjected to an attempted arson attack.
Berlin fire brigade responded with 30 firemen to Tiergarten town hall, a city centre district, where local residents reported hearing glass breaking, a fire burning on the ground floor, and people fleeing the scene. A spokesman for the town said the blaze “could have led to a larger fire” but it was controlled in time thanks to the fast reaction of those living nearby, the brigade saying: “We were able to quickly extinguish the fire”.
Furniture inside the town hall, which is covered with scaffolding during restoration work, was damaged reports Die Welt.
Graffiti at the scene was subsequently discovered, which contained what the German Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism called “anti-Israel slogans and threats”. The messages included ‘If Gaza Burns, Berlin Burns’, and ‘Warning Berlin, We’ll Let it Burn’.
German newspaper Tagesspiegel reports a police spokesman who said initial findings suggest a Molotov cocktail started the fire and that the investigation is treating the fire and the wall writing as linked. The relationship between the two acts is “obvious”, the spokesman said. Consequently, the state security agency has taken over investigating and is considering an act of political arson.
The paper also cites the remarks of Berlin’s anti-Semitism commissioner Samuel Salzborn, who said if the suspicion about arson is proven then “a focus must be placed on the part of the police on the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel escalations of the last few weeks and months”
Hatred is being directed against Jews in Germany, Salzborn said, but violence was also being directed at “central elements of democracy”. The attack against a town hall is an extension of the violence seen at protests, he said.
Quote:Hungary rolled out the red carpet for Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on Thursday as he paid his first state visit to Budapest.
Xi is scheduled to meet with both President Tamas Sulyok and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to sign more than a dozen trade deals, many of them linked to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Hungary was Xi’s last stop after an unusual five-day tour of Europe, his first visit to the continent in five years. As American influence collapses under President Joe Biden, Xi sees an opportunity to rally European states to a post-Western world order that counts Russia as a member in good standing despite its brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Hungary serves as the gateway for Chinese authoritarianism into Europe, as its government has few qualms about China’s human rights violations, just as Hungary has been reluctant to join European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine.
In his remarks from the red carpet, Xi praised China’s “everlasting friendship” with Hungary and said it would not be “restricted by a third party.”
“It is hoped that Hungary will take the opportunity of assuming the rotating EU presidency in the second half of this year to promote the stable and healthy development of China-EU relations,” Xi said.
President Sulyok responded that Hungary has “benefited a lot” from BRI, and would eagerly join three more Chinese-led global development initiatives. Sulyok said these programs would help to prevent “bloc confrontation,” adopting a derogatory phrase China developed to refer to the supposedly aggressive and unreasonable Western powers.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto hailed Xi’s visit as “historic” and said China has become Hungary’s largest foreign investor.
Hungary is Europe’s largest recipient of BRI funding. Hungary also hosts China’s biggest electric-vehicle battery plant on foreign soil and more Chinese companies are looking to build battery factories there.
Quote:Some of the activists in protests backing the goals of the jihadist group Hamas on American college campuses received support and training in Cuba, ADN America reported Tuesday.
ADN America named Manolo De Los Santos, a far-left activist believed to have incited the storming of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall in late April, as having deep ties to the Castro regime and its figurehead president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, with a long track record of political activities in Cuba spanning multiple years.
De Los Santos is the executive director of The People’s Forum, a far-left organization that is highly sympathetic to the Cuban and Chinese Communist Parties and which describes itself as “an incubator of movements for the working class and marginalized communities.”
ADN America noted that its report coincides with a report that the New York Post published on Sunday that said that The People’s Forum has been urging anti-Israel protesters at campuses to “rekindle the bloody Black Lives Matter riots of summer of 2020.”
The People’s Forum is one of several far-left organizations at the forefront of the wave of anti-Israel protests that erupted following Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that left more than 1,200 dead and hundreds taken hostage.
ADN America reported that The People’s Forum organized a protest in Times Square, New York, one day after the October 7 attack, where attendees celebrated Hamas’s actions while waving signs that contained antisemitic slogans and imagery.
According to a 2015 interview, De Los Santos was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to the South Bronx, New York, with his family when he was five years old. The far-left activist reportedly first visited Cuba in 2006 through Pastors for Peace, an organization that is part of the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a coalition of pro-Castro regime organizations in the United States.
At Cuba’s Matanzas Evangelical Seminary, De Los Santos conducted Marxist-driven liberation theology studies — an ideology that experts describe as a creation of the Russian KGB “to enroll Latin leaders” in the erstwhile Soviet Union’s espionage operations.
“[De Los Santos] has been traveling to Cuba since at least 2009 and has been prominently featured in the Cuban-regime press for almost a decade,” ADN America stated in its report.
“Reports indicate that, back in the U.S., he organized rallies in the U.S. to support the Cuban regime and that he is a staunch admirer of Fidel Castro,” the report continued.
“Fidel, for us, is a great example,” De Los Santos said in 2016. “I wish all leaders were like him and many of them had the dignity and integrity of the Commander.”
Cuba’s figurehead president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De Los Santos and other far-left activists in July 2022 with the aim of “elaborating a new consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of social movements and countries, on the path of socialism.”
Quote:The communist regime of Nicaragua canceled on Wednesday a highly controversial $50 billion canal project led by a Chinese businessman after no construction work had been done for the past ten years.
The project, known as the Interoceanic Grand Canal (IGC) or the “Nicaragua Canal,” contemplated the creation of a roughly 172.7-mile-long shipping canal that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans while crossing through Lake Nicaragua, Central America’s largest lake and a crucial freshwater reservoir.
The regime of dictator Daniel Ortega called the canal “the biggest civil engineering project in history” and sought to use it to compete with the nearby Panama Canal in both size and scope. The $50 billion canal project, had it been built, would have given China’s communist government a significant foothold in Central America.
In 2013, the Ortega regime granted a renewable 50-year lease for the construction and handling of the prospective canal to the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development (HKND) company, owned by Chinese businessman Wang Jing.
While the symbolic “groundbreaking” of the project took place in December 2014, no work was done on the canal since then. Wang lost 85 percent of his fortune less than a year after the groundbreaking ceremony. In 2021, Wang and another of his companies, Beijing Xinwei Technology Group, were expelled from the Shanghai Stock Exchange due to “bad practices.”
Under Ortega’s orders, Nicaragua’s National Assembly reformed law 800, which established the legal framework of the canal project and repealed law 840, which granted the concession granted to the HKND company.
The Sandinista lawmakers claimed in an explanatory memorandum that the purpose of the change in the canal’s laws is to “strengthen and update the national legal system” and that it is necessary to “adapt some laws to face such changes and maintain an optimal management within the State of Nicaragua.”
“Within these changes, it is necessary to adapt [The Nicaragua Grand Canal law], according to the new realities and to propitiate a better performance for the benefit of Nicaraguan families,” the memorandum reportedly read.
Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported on Monday that, according to Chinese media reports, Wang, who has “disappeared” from the public eye following the loss of his fortune, is living “a happy life” in the United States.
Quote:Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil accused the United States on Wednesday of “instrumentalizing” migration to harm and promote sanctions on the socialist regime.
Gil made his accusations — directed against the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — after Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Tuesday that the United States will provide a $578-million assistance package to “partner countries” for Latin American migrants in the region, including the millions of Venezuelan refugees who have fled their home country seeking an escape from socialism.
“USAID is an agency of covert political operations. Phonies and liars, the US instrumentalizes migration against Venezuela and promotes sanctions against the Venezuelan people,” Gil wrote on social media. “As usual those dollars, directed to conspiracy, will go to the pockets of the corrupt people of the big names. They will fail!”
According to the Department of State, the $578 million assistance package announced by Secretary Blinken will “help communities to respond to urgent humanitarian needs, expand lawful pathways, and support the regularization and integration of migrants.” Blinken made the announcement during his participation in a meeting of Foreign Ministers in Guatemala this week on the subject of migration.
A statement from the office of the U.S. Department of State’s spokesperson says:
The assistance announced in Guatemala advances the goals of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection and will address humanitarian needs arising from historic levels of displacement, with more than 22 million people displaced across the region, including more than 7.7 million Venezuelans.
Over the past decade the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro has created an unprecedented migrant crisis prompted by the economic collapse of the country under socialism and the pervasive abuse of human rights. The Venezuelan migrant crisis is widely described as the worst of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, matched only by Syria’s and Ukraine’s crises.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that, as of September, at least 7.7 million Venezuelan citizens have fled their country, which represents roughly 27.5 percent of its entire 28 million population.
Quote:The Chinese Communist regime has drafted a law that would require military training for children all the way down to the elementary school level. If the legislation is approved, it could go into effect this year.
Nikkei Asia noted on Tuesday that some Chinese high schools and universities already require students to participate in basic military drills, some of which involve tanks, armored personnel carriers, hand grenades, and rocket launchers. Also, China’s conscription laws were amended in May 2023 to make all university students eligible for the draft.
The new law would require schools to include “defense education” in their budgets, make military training universal at the high school and college levels, and teach the “theory, knowledge, and skills associated with national defense” to even grade-school children.
There are several motives for China’s sudden interest in drafting children for military service, one of which is to frighten the Chinese population into believing they live under constant threat of attack, and only their authoritarian rulers can protect them. Chinese subjects are asking some awkward questions about their sputtering economy; the sight of their teenage children running around with hand grenades might alter their thinking.
The regime in Beijing is also eager to project military strength amid heightened tensions with Taiwan and the Philippines, and it wants to make young people seem like enthusiastic supporters of China’s aggressive agenda. Nikkei Asia quoted a state newspaper, the People’s Liberation Army Daily, claiming that military enrollment among university students has soared to over 1.2 million, thanks in part to hefty government incentives for military service.
Quote:Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal on Wednesday ruled in support of a demand from the island’s Communist-controlled puppet government to ban “Glory to Hong Kong,” the unofficial anthem of the massive 2019 pro-democracy protests.
The Hong Kong government has long sought a court injunction to ban “Glory to Hong Kong,” a defiant anthem that the Chinese Communist Party views as a bit of unfinished business from the protest movement. The song was banned from schools in 2020, and the regime has arrested people for performing the song in public.
Beijing violated Hong Kong’s “Basic Law” to impose a ruthless authoritarian “national security law” in 2020 that was designed to crush the pro-democracy movement by criminalizing all dissent from the regime.
Human rights groups and free nations around the world denounced the bill as an outrage against freedom of speech, but the Communists only made it tougher in March 2024, imposing harsh prison sentences for any speech or action the regime views as “treason” or “insurrection.”
Shutting down “Glory to Hong Kong” proved to be more difficult than the Chinese Communist Party anticipated because the tattered remains of Hong Kong’s Basic Law still made it difficult to throw people in jail for merely singing a song.
Hong Kong judges made obsequious apologies to the regime, singing little hosannas to the purity of its motive while still reluctantly refusing to approve laws that targeted the protest anthem. Thwarted at the courts, the Communist regime demanded foreign Internet service providers block the song, threatening dire consequences if they refused to comply.
On Wednesday, Hong Kongers learned that human rights and the rule of law have finally eroded enough to allow the government to ban the pro-freedom anthem it fears. The Court of Appeal signed off on the regime’s attempt to classify the song as a “weapon,” insisting its creator had meant for it to be used as a weapon of sedition all along.
“In the hands of those with the intention to incite secession and sedition, the song can be deployed to arouse anti-establishment sentiments,” the Court of Appeal said.
Is Your Dog a Panda? Chinese Zoo Tried to Turn Them Into Pandas
Quote:A zoo in communist China was accused of disguising dogs to trick visitors into thinking they were pandas because the zoo did not have the real thing.
The “pandas” were revealed to visitors on Wednesday at the Taizhou Zoo in Jiangsu Province, the New York Post reported on Monday.
However, the “pandas” were actually Chow Chow dogs, a breed that may be one of the world’s oldest, according to the American Kennel Club (AKC).
Reports say zoo officials groomed the dogs and dyed their faces to look like pandas before putting the animals on display.
According to Bore Cure, zoo officials said the dye was harmless, and they dressed the dogs that way because they did not have pandas.
Video footage shows the dogs in their costumes playing in their enclosure as the voices of excited visitors are heard from behind the glass wall:
Some visitors accused the zoo of animal cruelty, but its officials insisted the animals were not harmed in any way.
A spokesperson said, “People also dye their hair. Natural dye can be used on dogs if they have long fur.”
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and J.D. Vance (R-OH) are demanding President Joe Biden block Japan’s Nippon Steel Corporation from buying United States Steel Corporation.
As Breitbart News reported in December, executives with U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel Corporation announced a nearly $15 billion deal, which would have the iconic American steel giant sold off to the Japanese company.
In a letter, Hawley, Rubio, and Vance tell Biden he must live up to his prior statements suggesting his opposition to the foreign acquisition of U.S. Steel by blocking the deal.
“For weeks you have maintained that ‘it is vital for [U.S. Steel] to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated,'” they write:
You have since asserted that it “should remain an American company . . . American-owned and American-operated.” These statements amount to wishes, not declarations, and belie your authority as President of the United States. [Emphasis added]
By law you possess the authority to block the sale of U.S. Steel unilaterally under the Defense Production Act, 50 U.S.C. § 4565(d), or the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. § 1702(a), when a national emergency is declared. You may exercise these powers now. Pronouncements about what you consider “vital” or what you think “should” happen to U.S. Steel are worthless unless you act to keep U.S. Steel under American control.
Your predecessor displayed no such reticence. President Trump exercised his powers to suspend or prohibit foreign transactions unilaterally more than any other president. He forced divestitures to safeguard the American semiconductor industry and protect Americans’ data from firms linked to foreign adversaries. He has already declared that he would block the sale of U.S. Steel. [Emphasis added]
We urge you to summon the courage to do the right thing. Declare whether you will exercise your presidential authority to prohibit or suspend the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon.
The letter comes after Vance, along with Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), John Fetterman (D-PA), and Bob Casey (D-PA), warned of Nippon Steel’s deep ties to China.
Nippon Steel lists multiple “manufacturing bases” in China on its site, including in the cities of Suzhou and Wuhan. Elsewhere in Asia, Nippon has plants in Brunei, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Quote:While speaking at a fundraiser in Seattle, Washington, on Saturday, President Joe Biden said there could be a ceasefire in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas if the U.S.-designated Islamic terror group “would release” the remaining hostages.
“There would be a ceasefire tomorrow if Hamas would release the hostages, the women and the elderly and the wounded,” Biden said. “As I’ve said, it’s up to Hamas–if they wanted to do it, we could end it tomorrow.”
Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, by land, sea, and air, leaving 1,200 Israelis murdered and more than 250 people taken as hostages. While some of the hostages have been released since then – there are still about 130 hostages remaining.
After the attack, Israel launched a self-defense operation in the Hamas-controlled territory of Gaza.
The comments from Biden came days after he said during an interview with CNN that he would withhold artillery and weapons from Israel if they invaded Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold. The week before Biden threatened to withhold weapons from Israel, the United States had halted a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah, they haven’t gone into Rafah yet, if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem,” Biden said during the interview.
Biden’s interview with CNN came after Hamas had fired a barrage of rockets from Rafah toward the Kerem Shalom border crossing, which is used as an entry point for humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip. Four Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and ten others were left wounded from the attack.
The following day, the IDF urged residents to seek safety and evacuate Rafah. Hours after this, Hamas called for a ceasefire. In response, Israeli officials said Hamas was begging for a ceasefire and agreeing to terms that Israel had not even proposed or agreed upon.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump criticized President Joe Biden for setting “the world on fire” and referred to comments made earlier this week that he would withhold weapons and artillery from Israel.
During a rally at Wildwood, New Jersey, on Saturday, Trump referred to comments Biden made during a CNN interview in which he said he would withhold weapons from Israel if it invaded Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold.
Biden’s comments came days after Hamas had fired a barrage of rockets from Rafah toward the Kerem Shalom border crossing, which is used as the main entry point for humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.
In response to Hamas’s attack, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) urged residents in Rafah to seek safety and evacuate before sending tanks into Rafah on Tuesday and taking control of the border crossing it shares with Egypt.
Trump continued to add during the rally that he supported “Israel’s right to win its war on terror.”
“Crooked Joe has not just set our economy on fire, he has truly set the world on fire,” Trump said. “If you want to know how weak and pathetic a president really is, I mean the things they do, just think about this. This week he announced that he will withhold shipping weapons to Israel as they fight to eradicate Hamas terrorists in Gaza. It was shocking to hear it, even while there are still American hostages being held by Hamas.”
...
“They’re saying, October 7 never happened. You know they say that, and Biden has fallen for it. Crooked Joe’s action is one of the worst betrayals of an American ally in the history of our country,” Trump added. “I support Israel’s right to win its war on terror. Is that okay? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s good or bad politically. I don’t care. I mean, you got to do what’s right. It was a terrible attack. October 7 was a terrible attack.”
A poll from the Pew Research Center in March showed that 58 percent of Americans felt that Israel’s reasons for fighting against Hamas were justified. However, 38 percent of Americans felt Israel’s war actions were acceptable, while 34 percent felt they were unacceptable, and 26 percent were undecided.
Quote:Opponents waging lawfare against former President Donald Trump are failing to prevent him from completing the greatest political comeback in history, establishment media reports recently acknowledged.
The numerous indictments against Trump were meant to politically sabotage his reelection campaign, many Republicans believe, buoyed by reports of multiple meetings between the Biden administration and Trump prosecutors. That strategy appears not to be working from Georgia to Florida to Washington, DC. Trump remains the political favorite to win reelection in November, swing state polling shows.
What first appeared to be a “wall of legal obstacles” preventing Trump from mounting the greatest comeback in political history now appears to be “little more than a series of speed bumps,” Politico’s Senior Legal Affairs Reporter Josh Gerstein acknowledged Wednesday:
The four criminal cases that Trump is facing have diverted him from the campaign trail and — as is evident from his speeches and social media feeds — have prompted him to devote an even greater share of his mental energy to his courtroom adversaries.
But, as of now, the wave of prosecutions don’t seem destined to deliver the kind of legal accountability that Trump’s investigators promised — or the devastating political blow to Trump’s presidential prospects that has animated his detractors since the cases were announced with great fanfare over a five-month span last year.
That’s because Trump has benefited enormously from a pileup of postponements. After a pair of delays this week in Georgia and Florida, the most likely scenario for 2024 is that the only trial that Trump will face before the election is the ongoing one in Manhattan: the hush money case, which many lawyers view as the least serious of the four, both in terms of the severity of the alleged wrongdoing and the prospect of prison time.
Several establishment media members echoed Gerstein’s analysis. Kyle Cheney, a congressional reporter for Politico, noted Wednesday that Trump has a serious chance of winning in November because he might not face a jury other than in his ongoing criminal trial:
But the legal snags have raised the odds that Trump might never face a jury in either of the two federal cases, both of which were brought by special counsel Jack Smith. If Trump wins the election later this year and the two federal cases remain pending, he is all but certain to order the Justice Department to unravel them. And his lawyers have foreshadowed efforts to postpone the Georgia trial during a potential presidency, even if it is allowed to proceed by the state courts.
Quote:U.S. District Court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk on Friday granted Gun Owners of America’s (GOA) request for an “expedited briefing” on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) universal background check rule.
The rule is set to go into effect on May 20, 2024, and the GOA, the Gun Owners Foundation, and the State of Texas hope to block it before its implementation.
Kacsmaryk ordered that the ATF respond to the filing for preliminary relief by 5:00 p.m. CDT on May 14, 2024.
Subsequently, the GOA, the Gun Owners Foundation, and the State of Texas must “reply in support of their motion for preliminary relief” by 5:00 p.m. CDT on May 15, 2024.
Breitbart News reported that the ATF’s universal background check rule implements a point-of-sale background check system that both Republican and Democrat-controlled Congresses have refused to enact for decades. The agency’s rule redefines what it means to be “engaged in the business of selling guns,” thereby expanding the instances in which an unlicensed seller — i.e., a private citizen — must use the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to sell/transfer a gun.
The rule changes language in a way that there is no clear line of demarcation between private gun sales and guns sold by Federal Firearms License (FFL) holders. Ambiguity is introduced into the equation, forcing every seller to prove he is not trying to make a profit, lest he be required to ensure the purchaser undergoes the NICS before taking possession of the firearm.
Moreover, Breitbart News pointed out that the ATF’s rule changes language to such a degree that people who smuggle guns into other countries for the purpose of selling them are required to avail themselves of NICS checks. While the rule centers on the gain of “profit” as a test for whether a NICS check must be involved, pages 26-27 of the rule equate “pecuniary gain” with “profit,” opening the door for the ATF to redefine the word “sale” and require a NICS check when a private seller is “bartering” over a gun.
Quote:Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced his proposed $288 billion state budget, which would cut thousands of vacant state jobs and funding to more than 200 state programs in order to close the state’s $27.6 billion deficit.
Newsom revealed his budget proposal on Friday for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which starts on July 1, citing the importance of accountability and responsibility, according to ABC7 News.
This comes a month after state officials agreed to reduce California’s deficit by $17.3 billion after Newsom announced in January that the state’s deficit was $37.9 billion. The state deficit ended up being closer to $45 billion, which was $7 billion more than Newsom and state officials had estimated.
“These are programs, propositions that I’ve long advanced — many of them,” Newsom explained. “But you’ve got to do it. We have to be responsible. We have to be accountable.”
Under Newsom’s proposal, 260 state programs would also have their funding slashed. Cuts consist of $2 billion to broadband that would have helped to expand high-speed internet connections, $500 million that was going to be used to improve the state’s water storage system, and $272 million that would have gone to improving employment services for California’s welfare system, among other things.
Other cuts consist of closing housing units with more than 4,000 beds throughout 13 prisons in the state, saving almost $81 million. Additionally, $300 million that was helping to provide state and local health departments with COVID-19 pandemic-related help would be slashed, according to ABC7.
As the state faces an estimated deficit of $28.4 billion for next year, Gov. Newsom added that it is important for the state to solve the deficit not only for the current year but for the following year as well.
Quote:4:03 AM: A 15 minutes’ notice was issued to pro-Palestinian student demonstrators to vacate the premises.
Within minutes, encampment affiliates and other pro-Palestinian student demonstrators were escorted out of Kresge Oval and onto Mass Ave..
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7:38 AM: In a statement to the MIT community at 7:38 a.m., President Kornbluth detailed the events of this morning and presented a timeline of key events since the establishment of the encampment up to its removal. Kornbluth writes that she “had no choice but to remove such a high-risk flashpoint at the very center of our campus.”
Later in the day, pro-Palestinian protesters and their supporters held a rally on campus to protest the removal of the encampment. Some chanted, “Oink, oink, piggy, piggy / we’re going to make your life sh*tty,” The Tech reported.
The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that 33 people were arrested at the Philadelphia campus, “including” students:
Penn Police officers in riot gear, with the assistance of Philadelphia Police, arrested 33 individuals at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at around 6 a.m. on Friday.
The arrests and clearing of tents took place on the 16th day of the encampment, which began on the afternoon of April 25. Up to 40 tents took up one square of College Green ufntil [sic] Tuesday, when at least eight tents were moved over as the encampment expanded east of the Ben Franklin statue. Penn Police officers completed arrests after about an hour, including by moving several individuals out of their tents.
...
The spokesperson added that approximately 33 individuals were arrested “without incident” and cited for defiant trespass. They said that, after searching the encampment, Penn Police found “several long lengths (6-10 feet) of heavy gauge chains, as well as smaller chains with nuts and bolts attached that could be used as weapons.”
Quote:The United States government has “contingency” plans in place for the “continuity of government” in case of an unexpected attack or emergency, Cliff Sims, who served as the deputy director of national intelligence under former President Donald Trump, said during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday.
When asked about the U.S. government’s “doomsday” bunkers, which Sims talks about in his newly released book, The Darkness Has Not Overcome: Lessons on Faith and Politics from Inside the Halls of Power, Sims confirmed that the government has plans in place for these doomsday bunkers.
“You know, you probably always wondered, I know I did, ‘Does the government really have plans for all of these things?’ And what I learned when I got to the office of the director of national intelligence is, well, sure enough, we do,” Sims said. “And there are these series of locations around the country, a lot of them built during the Cold War, that were made to survive various different doomsday scenarios.”
“One of the things that the government does on a fairly regular basis is they do a continuity of government or continuity of operations planning and exercises. So, we — one day, while I was in the office of the director of national intelligence — were taken to one of these locations, and I had to get clearance to even talk about some of it in the book. But, what I lay out is basically: we show up at this location, and a giant metal blast door opens in the side of a mountain, and we go inside this kind of cool, dark, damp tunnel with moisture on the walls from rainwater trickling down hundreds and hundreds of feet above, and we’re on golf carts, basically going into an underground city.”
“When we get there, there are office spaces there. There are living quarters there. There are computer systems there. There are video monitors kind of monitoring things all over the country. Anything you could possibly imagine to be able to respond to one of these disaster scenarios or an attack or anything like that is at our fingertips. And, also, anything that we would need to live for an extended period of time. There was even a made-to-order grill with a full staff, full kitchen, and everything where you could order hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, I mean, anything that you could possibly imagine to try to have some semblance of normal life under such scenarios,” Sims added.
Sims added that during his tour of the doomsday bunker, he got to see the living quarters that he would be in if there were a disaster or an attack and ran through different types of scenarios and exercises.
Quote:Homeless alcoholics are getting free beer and vodka under a taxpayer-funded pilot program in San Francisco as city leadership grapples with the homelessness crisis plaguing its streets.
The city’s Department of Public Health runs the Managed Alcohol Program (MAP) to give doses of alcohol to the addicted, Fox News reported on Saturday.
Officials hope the program will “keep the homeless off the streets” and decrease incidents in which emergency services have to step in.
“Experts say the program can save or extend lives, but critics wonder if the government would be better off funding treatment and sobriety programs instead,” Fox noted.
In 2020, the San Francisco Health Department confirmed that officials were giving alcohol, tobacco, medical cannabis, and other substances to people to keep them from going outside to get it themselves during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, Breitbart News reported at the time.
Per the Fox article, the California Health Care Foundation said in 2020 nurses and trained workers administered managed alcohol programs in homeless shelters and transitional and permanent homes.
The foundation said it is “one method to minimize harm for those with alcohol use disorder.”
“By prescribing limited quantities of alcohol, the model aims to prevent potentially life-threatening effects of alcohol withdrawal, such as seizures and injuries,” the foundation added.
The program was established during the pandemic and has reportedly expanded. Now, it operates inside a former hotel in the Tenderloin district and has a $5 million annual budget.
Adam Nathan, the CEO of an AI company and chair of the city’s Salvation Army, criticized the program online after visiting the site.
“The whole thing is very odd to me and just doesn’t feel right. Providing free drugs to drug addicts doesn’t solve their problems. It just stretches them out. Where’s the recovery in all this?” he said.
Google Leaving San Francisco?
Well, I can't blame them for making that decision.
Quote:Tech giant Google is reportedly preparing to exit its 300,000-square-foot office at One Market Plaza in San Francisco when its lease expires in April 2025.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that One Market Plaza, a prominent downtown office complex boasting stunning views of San Francisco Bay, is bracing for the departure of its second major tenant in just a year. Google, which has occupied the expansive office space since 2018, will be moving out once its lease expires next April, as confirmed by a company spokesperson on Tuesday. This move follows the recent exit of Visa, which relocated its employees to Mission Rock.
The decision to vacate the waterfront office comes amidst Google’s flexible approach to office attendance, with many of its employees already working remotely. One Market Plaza, one of the city’s largest office properties and a defining feature of its skyline, encompasses 1.6 million square feet across two high-rise towers and an 11-story annex building known as the Landmark.
According to Google spokesperson Ryan Lamont, the company will continue to occupy the smaller Landmark building while moving out of the Spear Tower. Lamont declined to comment on the duration of Google’s planned stay in the Landmark building but reaffirmed the company’s commitment to maintaining a long-term presence in San Francisco.
Real estate market insiders suggest that Google plans to consolidate its operations from One Market to the nearby 345 Spear St., where the company currently leases about 400,000 square feet. These sources indicate that Google is likely to renew its lease at 345 Spear St. once it expires next year, although Lamont refused to comment on this potential move.
The news of Google’s impending departure comes just months after Paramount and Blackstone successfully negotiated a three-year extension, with a one-year option, on a $975 million loan for One Market Plaza that was set to mature in February. The partners managed to secure the extension by making a $125 million payment on the maturing debt. Market participants suggest that securing such a deal would have been more challenging had Google announced its exit earlier.
Quote:The Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a 40-year prison sentence for David DePape, the man convicted of attacking now-former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband in October 2022.
Federal prosecutors said Friday that the sentence would “reflect the nature and circumstances of the offense,” USA Today reported on Saturday.
When the initial incident happened at the Pelosi residence in San Francisco, California, police were dispatched to the scene and later said DePape attacked Pelosi’s husband, Paul, with a hammer, Breitbart News noted.
Body camera footage of the incident shows the attack on Paul Pelosi; his call to 911 was also made public, Breitbart reported in January 2023.
Jurors later convicted DePape of assault for the attack on the elderly man, whose skull he fractured, according to an AFP report from November.
“He was also found guilty of attempting to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, the then-speaker of the House of Representatives, who was not at home at the time,” the report continued:
At the time of the October 2022 attack, Democrat Nancy Pelosi was second in line to the presidency and a regular target of far-right conspiracy theories.
Jurors heard how DePape — a Canadian former nudist activist who supported himself with occasional carpentry work — had initially planned to target Nancy Pelosi, planning to smash her kneecaps if she did not admit to her party’s “lies.”
Quote:A U.S. Border Patrol agent will spend a year and a half in prison for trying to smuggle a female migrant from El Salvador into Texas.
This week, 42-year-old Fernando Castillo went before a U.S. District Judge in El Paso, who sentenced him to 18 months in prison. According to information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, Castillo pleaded guilty in February to one count of bribery of a public official.
According to the criminal complaint filed in the case, Castillo had been working at a migrant processing center in El Paso when a female migrant from El Salvador, who also was a citizen from Mexico, came in. Initially, the woman was going to be removed to El Salvador. However, Castillo said he would help her and have her released to Mexico.
While the woman was in custody, Castillo drove her in a van and told her that he could get her immigration papers for $5,000. The papers would allow her to be released and allowed to stay in the country. Castillo claimed that he would give the woman a Notice to Appear document and remove her from the system so that she could stay indefinitely.
The woman initially declined and was removed to Mexico. Once in Mexico, the woman discovered that Castillo had stolen $500 from her belongings. She returned to the port of entry to tell authorities. At that point, she met with federal investigators who began to investigate Castillo, who had been trying to call the woman’s cell phone.
The agents had the woman speak with Castillo and agree to his offer of getting false documents for $5,000 while they continued the investigation. A few days later, they arrested Castillo after he logged into a computer system and made changes to the woman’s file to obtain fraudulent documents so she could enter the country.
Quote:In a setback to the prosecution of migrants involved in a massive border breach in March, El Paso County Court at Law #7 Judge Ruben Morales dismissed 211 individual cases involving migrants charged with rioting at a border crossing. According to Morales, a procedural error transferring the cases from the local district court to his county court meant he lacked jurisdiction and was obligated to dismiss the charges.
According to a report by the El Paso Times, Judge Morales, a Democrat, issued his ruling during Wednesday’s court sessions, saying, “If I don’t have jurisdiction, there’s nothing I can do on these cases except dismiss them.” The cases stemmed from an incident on March 21, near an area known as “Gate 36” in El Paso, where hundreds of migrants stormed past Texas Army National Guard soldiers. Several soldiers sustained injuries as a large group of migrants breached concertina wire and “no-climb” fencing, hoping to surrender to the Border Patrol.
The migrants will be released to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and will be processed for asylum or removal. At a Thursday press conference, Republican District Attorney Bill Hicks told media representatives he felt strongly that appropriate procedures were followed and that his office intends to appeal Judge Morales’s ruling. El Paso County Assistant District Attorney Kyle Lasley, who represented the state in the riot prosecution case against the migrants, also disagrees with Morales’ dismissal of the cases.
At the press conference, Hicks told reporters if the court of appeals reverses Morales’s decision, arrest warrants will be issued for those migrants who have been released into the United States. Any of the accused migrants who have been removed from the country will face charges upon re-entry.
The ruling did not address those migrants charged with more serious offenses in the incident. Those cases still before the courts include seven migrants currently in custody and two others who are not in custody and face outstanding arrest warrants. Those migrants facing more serious charges include:
Junior Evaristo Benitez-Martinez, 21, of Venezuela (rioting – felony, criminal mischief and assault public servant)
Keider Jose Zurita Aponte, 21, of Venezuela (rioting – felony, criminal mischief and assault public servant)
Gregori Jose Guilarte-Acosta, 18, of Venezuela (rioting – felony, criminal mischief and assault public servant)
Omar Alejandro Graterol Colmenares, 27, Venezuela (rioting – felony, criminal mischief and assault public servant)
Joshua Fernando Garcia Juarez, 18, of Guatemala (rioting – felony)
Luis Jesus Chacon, 27, of Venezuela (rioting – felony)
Martin Elias Villasis Cedeno, 46, of Ecuador (rioting – felony)
Quote:The escalation of migrant arrests in the Swanton Sector continues with back-to-back weekly records in April. The sector located along the U.S.-Canada border continues to experience record-shattering migrant apprehensions — month after month.
This week, Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia reported his agents arrested 492 migrants during the week of April 28 to May 4. This record-shattering number of arrests exceeded the total number of migrants detained in the sector that covers eastern New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire during the entire Fiscal Year 2021 — the year President Joe Biden took office.
Garcia reported that the previous weekly record came just one week earlier when Swanton Sector agents arrested 220 migrants during the week of April 22.
According to an unofficial Border Patrol report reviewed by Breitbart Texas, during the month of April, agents in the Swanton Sector apprehended nearly 1,500 migrants, more than double the apprehension of only 676 migrants in April 2023. Year-to-date totals for Swanton stand at more than 6,600 migrants, up nearly 100 percent over last year.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
News of the World
If we translated Jesse M. Unruh's surname, it'd mean unrest, agitation.
Seriously.
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