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House Passes Bill to Boost SS Protection
Quote:The House unanimously passed a bill on Sept. 20 to give former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris the same level of Secret Service protection that President Joe Biden gets.
The Enhanced Presidential Security Act, introduced by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), would afford major presidential candidates the same level of security that the president gets. The vote was 405–0.
Additionally, the bill would require the Secret Service director to conduct a review of the protection the president, vice president and major candidates get from the 150-year-old agency. The report would be submitted the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
The Secret Service has come under scrutiny since the July 13 attempted assassination of Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the second apparent assassination attempt at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15.
The Butler shooting resulted in Kimberly Cheatle resigning as Secret Service director. Following the July assassination attempt, Biden directed the agency to increase assets in the protection of Trump, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said at a press conference on Sept. 16.
Rowe said the increased assets included countersnipers, countersurveillance agents, counterassault teams, and drones, which were deployed at the golf course on Sunday. He called the Secret Services measures on the day effective, crediting the swift action of the agent who noticed a rifle sticking through the fence and opened fire.
Lawler said on the House floor on Sept. 20, “Elections are determined at the ballot box, not by an assassin’s bullet,” adding that the assassination attempts “undermines the confidence that Americans have in their government and in the electoral process.”
Torres said that the fact that Trump was not assassinated in Butler was due to “luck,” not the Secret Service’s efforts.
“Hoping for the best or lucking out is not a policy prescription for protecting a president or presidential candidate,” the Democratic lawmaker said on the House floor on Friday.
The Senate would need to pass this measure before it could be sent to Biden’s desk. Republican senators have introduced a version of this measure, but it is unclear whether it will advance in the upper chamber.
Separately, lawmakers are considering providing additional funding for the agency.
Biden said earlier this week that the Secret Service “needs more help,” suggesting that Congress act to provide it with more resources.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) sounded receptive to giving the agency increased funding.
“Congress has a responsibility to ensure the Secret Service and all law enforcement have the resources they need to do their jobs,” he said on the Senate floor on Sept. 16.
“So as we continue the appropriations process, if the Secret Service is in need of more resources, we are prepared to providing it for them, possibly in the upcoming funding agreement.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said earlier this week that he’s skeptical that funding is the best response, though he said he was “looking into” the further funding.
“I think it’s a matter of manpower allocation. We don’t want to just throw more money at a broken system,” Johnson said.
Wannabe Trump Assassin Ryan Wesley Routh
Quote:Americans who had contact with the suspect in an alleged failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, Ryan Wesley Routh, were so alarmed by his erratic behavior in Ukraine that they alerted U.S. officials, who apparently did very little with the warnings.
Routh, 58, was taken into custody on Sunday while lurking in the trees of Trump National Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, with a rifle while former President Donald Trump was playing a round of golf. Routh was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm in federal court on Monday.
Routh’s record was festooned with an astonishing number of the proverbial “red flags,” including a self-published book in which he urged the terrorist-supporting government of Iran to assassinate Donald Trump. His lengthy record of criminal offenses included possessing a “weapon of mass destruction” – a gun illegally modified for fully automatic fire – in 2002.
Routh was an ardent and active supporter of Ukraine. He traveled there soon after the Russian invasion began in February 2022, at first to offer himself as a foreign recruit for the Ukrainian military and then to recruit others after Ukraine declined his offer of service.
A nurse named Chelsea Walsh told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Monday she bumped into Routh a few times in Kyiv and concluded he was “among the most dangerous Americans she met during her month-and-a-half-long stint in Ukraine.”
Walsh was so alarmed by Routh’s conduct that she says she warned Customs and Border Protection (CBP) about him when she returned to the United States. She gave CPB a notebook in which she described over a dozen foreigners who exhibited disturbing behavior in Ukraine, and Routh was at the top of the list, flagged for “predatory behavior.”
Walsh said she initially regarded Routh as “eccentric, but not dangerous,” an assessment she revised after having sustained contact with him, especially since he kept talking about assassinating world leaders.
Another American with experience in Ukraine, former CIA officer Sarah Adams, said Routh developed a reputation among aid groups as a “fraudster” and “whack job.”
Among other disturbing behaviors, Routh frequently claimed to be recruiting foreign fighters as an agent of the Ukrainian government, when he was not. One of his big obsessions in Kyiv was importing U.S.-trained Afghan soldiers to fight for the Ukrainians.
When Routh falsely claimed he had persuaded the Ukrainian military to accept some of these Afghan volunteers, aid groups began blacklisting him and reporting him to the State Department. Adams herself warned humanitarian organizations in Ukraine to stay away from him and claimed the State Department was worried about Routh perpetrating human trafficking and/or immigration fraud.
“A lot of people were trying to get him to stop his activities, or at least prevent people from falling for his scams,” she said.
Later in 2023, Walsh filed reports with the FBI and Interpol because she learned Routh was once again presenting himself as a recruiter for the Ukrainian foreign legion, this time trying to recruit Syrian refugees. He also claimed he had Iraqis lined up and ready to fight.
“No recruitment from Syria or Iraq! I told you this before! Those countries are banned and for good reason,” an irritated Ukrainian International Legion official snapped at Routh in a November 2022 message.
Routh’s response was: “How about Afghanistan???” His exchanges with Ukrainian officials grew more surly and sarcastic as they continued to reject his offers of assistance.
A large number of Afghan soldiers really did try to volunteer for the Ukrainian foreign legion, including some with impressive military credentials, but the Ukrainians were very reluctant to accept them, in part because they were worried about spies and saboteurs. Language and cultural barriers were also an issue. A few Afghans did make their way into the foreign legion, but they did not earn high marks from their Ukrainian commanders.
A March 2023 article at Semafor about the would-be Afghan volunteers quoted none other than Ryan Routh as an “expert” on the topic. He told Semafor he was head of the International Volunteer Center in Ukraine (IVC), a real organization that later said Routh was not a member, much less its leader or founder. The IVC said it has never “collaborated or communicated with him in any way.”
Serial Rapist Now Paroled
Quote:Convicted serial rapist Andrew Luster, 60, is set to be released early from prison thanks to his crimes being classified as “non-violent” thanks to Proposition 57, crafted by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris in 2016.
As the UK Daily Mail notes, Luster was “was convicted of 86 counts of drugging and raping unconscious women in 2003,” and “infamously fled to Mexico during his rape trial – only to be tracked down by Dog the Bounty Hunter. … Initially handed 124 years in prison, depraved Luster’s sentence was revised down to 50 years in 2013 on appeal.”
He was granted parole in August, roughly 20 years after his conviction and less than halfway through his sentence.
The reason: a ballot initiative whose language was approved by Harris when she was California Attorney General.
Proposition 57 is less well-known than Proposition 47, which Harris backed in 2014. Proposition 47 reduced several felonies to misdemeanors, and critics say it is directly responsible for the wave of retail theft across California.
(Proposition 36, which aims to amend Proposition 47, and which is opposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, is extremely popular, with a recent poll showing 71% of voters in California plan to vote for the anti-crime ballot initiative.)
Proposition 57 sought to reduce overcrowding in prisons by offering early release to non-violent criminals. But it left out a definition of “non-violent” crime, meaning that any crime not on the state’s list of major felonies would qualify.
The Pacific Research Institute warned in 2016:
Voters will find Proposition 57 on their ballots this fall and many will support it as they’ve been led to believe that it is simply a vehicle, according to the ballot language, for “increasing parole and good behavior opportunities for felons convicted of nonviolent crimes.” Supporters include Gov. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris. The Democratic machine, the ruling party in what is essentially a one-party state, is also behind the measure.
…
It’s likely there would be little opposition to the initiative if it were to actually achieve what its proponents say it will. But instead of allowing for the release of truly nonviolent inmates only, the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 would permit release of inmates who have been convicted of brutal acts.
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As written, the measure expressly blocks early release of those convicted of 23 specific violent crimes. Its weakness – a gaping loophole, in reality – is that there is a long list of violent crimes that aren’t a part of that 23. Felons convicted of arson causing great bodily harm, a drive-by shooting, hostage taking, assault with a deadly weapon, attempting to bomb a school or hospital, and several other violent offenses will be eligible for early release, opponents say. A catalog of sexual-assault related crimes, gang-related crimes and crimes against children qualify as “nonviolent” offenses under the early-release program, as well.
Dan Walters recently noted in the Santa Maria Times that attempts to use regulations to broaden the definition of violent crimes were unsuccessful:
Prop. 57 opponents, noting that rape of an unconscious person was among the serious crimes excluded from Brown’s list, argued that the measure could benefit violent sex offenders.
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[A]ttorneys for the 4,400 felons who had been excluded from early parole challenged their legality, arguing that the state could not, by regulation, modify the wording of a voter-approved ballot measure. Eventually the issue wound up in the state Supreme Court, which set aside the regulations in 2020.
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In effect the decision gave date rapists and other sex offenders access to the lenient parole provisions of Prop. 57. They didn’t hesitate to use it, which brings us to Luster, an heir to the Max Factor makeup fortune.
Harris likes to tout her record as a prosecutor, both as District Attorney for San Francisco, and as California Attorney General, but the truth is that her record was one of leniency toward major violent crimes, and diligence in pursuing low-level offenders, such as marijuana users or the parents of truant schoolchildren.
Her role in Proposition 57 was raised by her opponent in the U.S. Senate race in 2016, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA):
At a news conference in downtown Los Angeles Tuesday, Sanchez criticized the ballot measure and Harris’ role in crafting the language for its summary paragraph while serving as the state’s Attorney General. Harris has chosen not to take a position on any ballot measure.
“The ballot title and summary, written by Attorney General Kamala Harris, calls serious violent crimes ‘non-violent,’ including crimes such as rape by intoxication of an unconscious person, human trafficking involving a sex act with minors,” Sanchez said in a statement. “Proposition 57 is the misleading and dangerous ballot initiative that would allow serious, violent criminals out on early release without completing their sentences.”
Proposition 57 was so harmful that even Harris’s successor, Attorney General Rob Bonta, has said that it went too far.
Biden Admin on Nuclearizing Kenya & El Salvador
Quote:The Biden administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the government of Kenya on Tuesday to help it develop “safe and secure” nuclear power technology.
On the same day, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins said she was “delighted to talk about nuclear energy with El Salvador.”
Both of these nuclear dialogues took place on the sidelines of the annual International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conference in Vienna, Austria. The IAEA encourages the “safe, secure, and peaceful use of nuclear energy” by developing countries, in part because it recognizes nuclear power as a clean source of power.
Kenya Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi gave a speech at the conference on Monday in which he detailed his government’s plans to develop nuclear power over the next decade, a plan the Biden administration’s MOU endorsed the next day.
Mudavadi explained that while Kenya currently employs the full panoply of “green” energy technologies — thermal, hydro, wind, solar, biomass — the country is experiencing a major shortfall in energy generation, and there is no way to fill that gap without nuclear power.
Kenya Nuclear Regulatory Authority (KNRA) Director James Keter thanked the U.S. for its offer of assistance on Tuesday.
“We have a lot in our hands. This MoU could not have come at a better time. We will work with industry leaders and every stakeholder to fortify our regulatory framework to ensure the responsible and effective development of our nuclear programme,” Keter said.
Kenya does not actually have a nuclear power plant yet. The first such facility is scheduled to be constructed in coastal Kilifi County in 2027, over the strenuous objections of environmentalists and locals who fear the project will disrupt the tourism and fishing industries.
The Kilifi nuclear project has been stalled by an environmental lawsuit filed in 2023, which claims the “rushed” and “illegal” process of approving the plant was conducted through “clandestine” meetings. Even if these legal hurdles are overcome, Kenya’s first nuclear plant will not go online until 2034 at the earliest.
El Salvador began its push for nuclear power in 2023, seeking to diversify a grid that heavily depends on hydro and geothermal power. Well over half of the country’s electrical generation currently comes from those two sources.
An Illinois-based nonprofit group called the Thorium Alliance signed an MOU with the Salvadoran government in March 2023 to develop thorium-based nuclear power plants, a newer design whose fuel is easier to obtain than uranium, although extensive processing is required to create useful isotopes from raw thorium.
The IAEA met with representatives from El Salvador in March 2024 to discuss plans for nuclear energy, including “the terminology of nuclear law, key elements of comprehensive national nuclear legislation, and El Salvador’s international obligations as a party to the treaties adopted under IAEA auspices.”
“El Salvador will go nuclear because we have a firm commitment to energy transition, environmental protection, and the economic development of our citizens,” Salvadoran energy and mining director Daniel Alvarez said at that meeting.
El Salvador considered its first-ever participation in the IAEA conference in September to be a “historic moment for the nation” and a “significant stride in its energy future.”
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk said at the conference that America remains fully committed to the peaceful development of nuclear power around the world.
Illegal US Immigration Court Located in... Venezuela!?
Quote:A group of criminals set up a fake U.S. “immigration court” inside a Venezuelan prison to scam migrants in New York out of thousands of dollars through false court proceedings and “legal” fees, Univisión reported Monday.
A man who identified himself as Gustavo Cortez Osco reportedly ran the scam. He personally claimed to the news channel that he is a member of the Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization that has now spread to the United States.
Univisión, describing the scam as an “unprecedented scheme in the history of U.S. immigration fraud,” stated that it discovered in an investigation that the scammers pretended to be U.S. lawyers and judges for a fictional immigration court that operated from Tocuyito, a once-overcrowded maximum security prison in Venezuela that the socialist Maduro regime “raided” in October and which now houses one of the two “reeducation camps” for dissidents of dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The scammers allegedly presented their victims with false documents featuring the logos of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Some of the false documents, Univisión explained, featured poor translations from Spanish to English and used legal terminology common in Latin America, but not the United States.
The victims were “ordered” to make payments ranging from $300 to $1,000 before proceeding with the false “immigration court hearing.” Rumors of a lawyer “who offered solutions to all kinds of immigration problems,” Univisión said, spread this year among immigrant parishioners of evangelical churches in New York.
According to Univisión, the fake immigration lawyer offered “quicker and cheaper solutions” to asylum, residence, work permits, and other migrant-related legal issues in New York.
Cortez Osco, pretending to be an immigration attorney, reportedly utilized a “western New York” phone number and claimed that he worked in an office building in New Jersey to fool several Hispanic migrant women in the United States. The women reportedly “liked” that Cortez Osco spoke “Spanish with an English accent” and that he was “interested in the hardships they went through” to arrive in the United States.
Univisión explained that one of its reporters verified that the purported office does not exist. Two people who work on the floor where the law firm supposedly operated said they had never heard of it.
Univisión explained that the scammers did not collect the money directly from the victims but used intermediaries with U.S. bank accounts running the Zelle payment system. The victims claimed they were strictly warned not to mention the reason for the payment in the transaction’s description.
The television network stated that it began contacting the recipients of the transactions using payment receipts provided by the scammed victims, but only managed to reach two of the individuals, who “nervously denied” having borrowed their accounts for the transactions. One of the individuals, Univisión explained, identified himself as a Colombian national who worked parking cars in New York. The man said that he would report the situation to the authorities.
Unvisión stated that Cortez Osco himself called the director of Univisión’s investigative team hours after they had finished reaching out to the individuals that received the scammed money. Cortez Osco reportedly used the same number he employed to deceive the victims and “coldly admitted that the whole thing was a scam.”
“I was in this extortion thing for many years,” Cortez Osco reportedly said in the same English accent used for his fake lawyer fraud persona.
Maduro's Head Has a Price Tag on it
Quote:U.S. Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced a bill on Thursday that seeks to increase the bounty on Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro from $15 million to $100 million.
Maduro, presently leading efforts to illegitimately cling to power following the July 28 sham presidential election, is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narcoterrorism charges alongside other top brass figures in his authoritarian regime.
Since 2020, the United States has a $15-million bounty active for any information that can lead to the arrest and/or conviction of Nicolás Maduro.
The bill, titled “Securing Timely Opportunities for Payment and Maximizing Awards for Detaining Unlawful Regime Officials (STOP MADURO) Act,” states that the increased reward funding would not come from American taxpayer money but from assets already seized from Maduro, his regime’s officials, and co-conspirators. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida estimates that Washington has seized approximately $450 million in such assets.
“The time has come for Venezuela to be liberated from the illegitimate regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro,” Sen. Scott said.
“For years, I have urged the Biden-Harris administration to put the full weight of the federal government to put an end to the Maduro regime,” he continued, “but it has refused and continued its failed appeasement that has only enriched and emboldened Maduro and his puppet masters in Cuba at the expense of the Venezuelan people.”
Sen. Scott added that former President Donald Trump “did the right thing” by offering the $15 million bounty on Maduro but that it is “time to up the ante,” citing the recent events of the July 28 sham presidential election, which Maduro fraudulently insists he “won”:
...
Sen. Rubio stated that the United States “must do more” to arrest Maduro. The senator added that he has called for Interpol to issue a red notice for Maduro – a request for member states to arrest him – and pointed out that the bill “builds on that call by increasing the reward for his arrest to $100 million.”
“Maduro is one of the Venezuelan regime’s most corrupt schemers and it’s past time he is held accountable for his crimes,” Sen. Rubio said.
Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), responding to the recent violence in Venezuela, said that Maduro and his regime have escalated their brutal repression of dissidents in the two months following the July 28 sham presidential election. Maduro unleashed a brutal repressive campaign following the sham election that has left at least 25 dead, hundreds injured, and resulted in more than 2,400 arbitrary detentions — including nearly 60 children who remain imprisoned at press time, according to recent reports.
“Maduro’s regime is a criminal enterprise that fuels narco-terrorism, suppresses independent media, and violates human rights with impunity. Last year, I warned that the Biden-Harris Administration’s appeasement of this dictatorship would only embolden Maduro,” Rep. Díaz-Balart said. “Lifting sanctions has endangered our national security, aiding a regime closely allied with dangerous adversaries like Russia, Iran, Cuba, and the PRC [China].”
“Instead of easing sanctions, the Biden-Harris Administration should stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people in their fight for freedom by increasing this bounty and strengthening sanctions,” he continued.
U.S. authorities have long accused Maduro of being one of the leading figures of the Cartel of the Suns, an intercontinental cocaine trafficking operation run by high-ranking members of the Venezuelan military and leaders of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
The Cartel of the Suns, which operates a diffuse “network of networks” ingrained deep within the Venezuelan Armed Forces, stands accused of plotting to “flood” the United States with cocaine.
EUROPE
Russia, Iran & North Korea
Quote:Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran on Tuesday to reportedly discuss “continuous and lasting” cooperation, days after Shoigu made a similar stop in North Korea.
Shoigu, the former defense minister now transferred to serve strongman Vladimir Putin in security capacity, is among the most beloved Russian officials in Pyongyang. Shoigu and his delegation became the first foreign officials allowed in North Korea since the onset of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic in 2023, regaled with a tour of some of North Korea’s most advanced weaponry. The visit, in July of that year, was pivotal for Shoigu’s career as Russia had just thwarted an apparent failed coup by Wagner paramilitary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who insisted he was not interested in overthrowing Putin but ousting Shoigu.
Now working in a less high-profile role, Shoigu made stops to meet the leaders of two of the world’s most anti-American regimes, clearly seeking to bolster geopolitical support.
In Tehran on Tuesday, Pezeshkian – a self-described “moderate” who assumed power after a special election in July – assured Shoigu that his administration was eager to expand ties to Russia. His administration “will seriously pursue the ongoing cooperation and efforts aimed at enhancing the level of relations between the two countries,” the president said, according to the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV.
PressTV noted that high on the agenda of discussion was the upcoming October BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia. BRICS – originally named after members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – officially accepted Iran as a member in January. Ethiopia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates also became members this year, while Saudi Arabia claimed to have accepted an invite to join but reportedly never finalized its presence in the anti-American bloc.
Shoigu reportedly relayed enthusiasm on Putin’s part to welcome the new Iranian president.
“Mr. Putin is eagerly looking forward to meeting with you on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia,” Shoigu was quoted as saying.
Reuters, quoting other Iranian media, stated that Pezeshkian said he was interested in expanding Russia-Iran ties in “a continuous and lasting way.”
The visit appeared similar in form to Shoigu’s stop in Pyongyang on Friday, though North Korea is not a BRICS member. On that occasion, Shoigu met communist dictator Kim Jong-un to discuss “steadily deepening the strategic dialogue between the two countries,” the North Korean flagship media outlet, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), claimed.
Kim also addressed “strengthening cooperation to defend the mutual security interests” specifically and, generally, the “international situation.”
“At the talk, there was a wide exchange of views on the issues of Kim Jong Un affirmed that the DPRK [North Korean] government would further expand cooperation,” KCNA continued, “and collaboration with the Russian Federation in the spirit of the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in the future, too.”
The Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty is an agreement Putin signed during a visit to Pyongyang – his first in two decades – in June. The document requires both countries to defend the other in the event of an attack, a mutual defense provision that alarmed international experts, who suggested that Russia may use the agreement to entangle North Korea in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, or may result in Russian forces clashing with South Korea.
Some international observers, including multiple Western governments and that of Ukraine, believe that both Iran and North Korea are already implicated in Putin’s “special operation” to oust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In August, while demanding that Western nations lift limits on the use of their weapons by Ukraine to attack Russian territory, Zelensky claimed that Russia was attacking Ukrainian territory with impunity from its weapons providers, naming Iran and North Korea.
“Defenders of life should face no restrictions on weapons, while Russia uses all kinds of its own weapons, as well as [Iranian] ‘Shahed’ drones and ballistic missiles from North Korea,” Zelensky demanded.
The governments of Britain, France, and Germany announced fresh sanctions on Iran on September 10 for allegedly providing Russia with short-range missiles used in Ukraine. The sanctions followed a wave of dozens of attacks on Ukraine in early September that included a flurry of Shahed suicide drone strikes, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
Like Iran, North Korea has faced accusations of providing weapons used in Ukraine. In August, the South Korean Defense Intelligence Agency claimed that it had documented proof that the Kim regime had deployed over 13,000 shipping containers to Russia that could “hold more than 6 million 152-millimeter artillery shells.”
Silent Immigrant Crisis
Quote:Over one million applications for asylum will be made in Europe this year, extrapolations from the last figures suggest, as Syrians and Afghans continue to overwhelmingly dominate arrivals.
Statistics and analysis by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), a body which strives to “bringing greater convergence to asylum and reception practices across the EU”, clearly show the bloc and its ‘EU+’ area neighbours Norway and Switzerland will welcome over one million asylum applications for the second year running.
Applications in the first six months of 2024 are nearly identical to 2023 at 512,989, the latest figures show. Trends for the past nine years clearly show applications for asylum show a bias towards the second six months of the year, making 2024 a million-plus year all but certain, in line with the 1,143,437 received in 2023.
While the vast majority of applications will pertain to new arrivals in Europe, a fraction — around nine per cent, according to EUAA — are from repeat-applicants, trying again after a previous unsuccessful bid.
In all, the level of arrivals of 2024 and 2023 are the highest since the Europe migrant crisis of 2015-16, when Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany unilaterally declared the continent open. While that migrant crisis was urgent news daily as European nations struggled to handle the sheet volume of arrivals, the Union has become more adept to papering over those cracks in the years since, making the massive numbers of arrivals today something more akin to a silent migrant crisis, often hidden from the front pages.
This is a situation that has been rumbling on for some years, now. Breitbart News reported in 2022 when Europe saw the largest number of arrivals that year since the 2016 crisis, which was also the first year Ukrainian refugees started to arrive in significant numbers. That continues to impact today, and as stated by the EUAA: “the surge in asylum applications and the number of displaced persons from Ukraine – are exerting immense strain on the EU+ asylum and reception systems. National authorities are being pushed to their limits as they strive to accommodate and safeguard those in need.”
“Syrians continued to lodge by far the most applications”, the EUAA noted, making up for 14 per cent of all applications. “Afghans continued to be the second largest nationality group” they stated. As for where migrants go — as reflected by where applications are made — Germany continues to keep its position at the head of the pack. It took 124,000 applications int he first six months of the year, around a quarter of all received in Europe.
Netherlands: Islamic Extremist Stopped by Martial Artist & Another Guy
Quote:An Arabic-speaking knifeman who killed one person and seriously injured another was taken down by members of the public, including a martial arts practitioner, who beat him unconscious in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Police say it’s too early to say what the motive for a stabbing attack in Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second city on Wednesday night that saw a 32-year-old resident of the city killed, and another hospitalised with serious injuries, reports de Volkskrant. The suspect, a 22-year-old associated with the historic Dutch city of Amersfoort was beaten unconscious during the attack and is now under arrest and receiving treatment in hospital.
Witnesses say the knifeman shouted “Allahu akhbar” as he struck, the now well-known saying that has become so associated with terrorist attacks in Europe, and Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-mass-migration politician who is now the power behind the country’s governing coalition reflected the emergence again of the phrase underlined “the Islamisation of the Netherlands”.
Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf states the attack started around 2000 local time in a parking garage under the approach to Rotterdam’s landmark Erasmus bridge (pictured, above), where a knifeman stabbed the individual who was evacuated to hospital alive, but with unspecified serious injuries. From the garage, the attacker when stabbed a man who was rollerskating on the Willemsplein, a popular public square by the bridge.
Members of the public rushed to try and revive the 32-year-old male roller-skater, but he died from his injuries. A personal trainer who witnessed the attack told the paper: “I looked up and saw a light-skinned man, in a dark jacket with a hood, stabbing him. He must have stabbed him at least twenty times”.
The knifeman then attempted to storm a waterfront restaurant but was chased off by diners who fought him with chairs and tables from the establishment. He then tried to gain access to a nearby museum, but had been chased by the chair-wielding diners and was subdued. The personal trainer, who had joined the fight by this time and was using some of his exercise equipment as a weapon against the knifeman, continued in his statement: “I gave him a few taps. I did Krav Maga, the Israeli martial art, on him.
“He was shouting and swearing in Arabic. I didn’t do it alone, but with the people from [the museum] who threw chairs and tables at him. He was unconscious”.
Police say they are aware of witness accounts saying the attacker shouted “Allahu akhbar” during the assault but say they won’t be calling a motive yet. They said in a statement: “We will include that in the investigation, but it is too early to label it at this time”.
The suspect, who is alleged to have carried two “large knives” into Rotterdam before launching an attack, is in police custody.
UK: Rape Victim Censored?
Quote:A British judge reportedly blocked the victim of a child rape gang victim from telling the court she wanted to see her abusers deported back to Pakistan.
During the latest trial involving historic child sex crimes in Rotherham, the Sheffield Crown Court is said to have ordered that the unnamed female victim remove her pleas for the government to send the convicted grooming gang members back to their native Pakistan.
According to a report from GB News, Barrister Matthew Bean said that “whether they [the abusers] remain in this country or not” is something that should be decided by the Home Office and should not be influenced by what “the victim should say one way or another.”
In her original uncensored victim statement, the woman, who began to suffer sexual abuse from grooming gang at the age of 11, had planned to tell the court: “I’d like to request that after sentencing and upon Rudy [Mohammed Amar] and Showabe’s [Mohammed Siyab] release, that they should be deported back to Pakistan as this is where they originated from and came here to exploit children. Thank you.”
Mohammed Amar, 42, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of two counts of indecent assault, while Mohammed Siyab, 49, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars after being convicted of two counts of rape, one count of trafficking, and one count of having sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 13. They were among six men sentenced last week.
Responding to the decision to curtail her remarks to the court, the woman told GB News: “If someone’s not born here and they’re here to exploit children, after the sentences they should be deported. There’s nothing to say that they’ll stop exploiting children. We can deport them and let their own country deal with them.
“The Foreign Office should absolutely give Pakistan full punishment if they refuse to accept grooming gang rapists,” she added. “Those men need to be deported or Pakistan should have its visas restricted.”
UK: 10,000 Immigrants Landed in Britain
Quote:Since the left-wing Labour Party government of Sir Kier Starmer came into power in July, more than 10,000 illegal migrants have reached British shores after crossing the English Channel from France.
Despite promises from Prime Minister Starmer to put an end to the boat migrant crisis in the Channel, 10,024 illegals have been recorded as successfully reaching the UK in people smuggler-operated boats launched from the French coastline since Labour’s victory at the July 4th general election.
The milestone was surpassed as 65 more aliens crossed the busy waterway on Monday, taking the total for the year to an estimated 23,598, according to calculations from the PA News agency, putting this year roughly on par with 2023 when 23,940 crossed the Channel at this point of the year.
The latest illegal crossings come in the wake of yet another tragedy, in which eight migrants drowned to death over the weekend after their flimsy rubber dinghy was ripped apart mid-Channel. A further six, including a 10-month-old baby, were hospitalised as a result of the incident.
This was less than two weeks after another migrant boat capsized, leaving 12 people, including six children and a pregnant woman dead.
The new left-wing government has pinned its hopes of confronting the crisis on further investment in policing operations targeted at human trafficking networks operating on both sides of the Channel.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced over the weekend that £75 million would be redirected from the scrapped Tory scheme to send illegals to Rwanda to invest in the number of border security officers.
Despite abandoning the Rwanda plan, and the hundreds of millions sent to Kigali along with it, during a diplomatic and fact-finding mission to Rome this week, Prime Minsiter Keir Starmer was said to be “very interested” in a similar scheme set to be enacted by the conservative government of Giorgia Meloni to send illegals to Albania to have their asylum claims processed.
The suggestion that the UK could follow Italy in sending boat migrants to Albania has ruffled feathers pro-mass migration elements of Starmer’s back bench, with MPs lambasting the government for seeking advice from what they termed as the “far-right” government of Meloni. This year, the Italian leader’s efforts to reduce illegal migration have resulted in over a sixty per cent decline in illegal alien arrivals.
Whether or not London will seek to join the Albania scheme remains to be seen and critics on the populist right have argued that the only way to meaningfully confront the crisis would be to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and immediately return boat migrants back to the beaches of France, rather than having the British Border Force ferry them onto UK soil, as is the case now.
Commenting on the issue, Reform UK Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe told TalkTv on Monday: “The quickest way to save lives is to
have a zero-tolerance policy as the Australians did, to return people immediately, to make it quite clear that if you come illegally you will never ever settle here legally.”
As we know most of these are young men, 87 per cent of them I think by the Home Office’s own figures are young men, it’s not as if it’s families or you know people that are fleeing war-torn areas. They’re not, they’re coming through safe countries, so these are economic migrants and we are a soft touch. I think it is solvable, but we need the will to solve it
Italy: Winston Churchill's Portrait Recovered
Quote:Canadian and Italian dignitaries on Thursday marked the successful recovery of a photo portrait of Winston Churchill known as “The Roaring Lion,” stolen in Canada and recovered in Italy after a two-year search by police.
At a ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Rome, Italian carabinieri police handed over the portrait to the Canadian ambassador to Italy, Elissa Goldberg, who praised the cooperation between Italian and Canadian investigators that led to the recovery.
The 1941 portrait of the British leader taken by Ottawa photographer Yousuf Karsh is now ready for the last step of its journey home to the Fairmont Château Laurier, the hotel in Ottawa where it was stolen and will once again be displayed as a notable historic portrait.
Canadian police said the portrait was stolen from the hotel sometime between Christmas 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, and replaced with a forgery. The swap was only uncovered months later, in August, when a hotel worker noticed the frame was not hung properly and looked different than the others.
Nicola Cassinelli, a lawyer in Genoa, Italy, purchased the portrait in May 2022 at an online Sotheby´s auction for 5,292 British pounds. He says he got a phone call from the auction house that October advising him not to sell or otherwise transfer the portrait due to an investigation into the Ottawa theft.
Cassinelli, who attended Thursday´s ceremony, said he thought he was buying a regular print and quickly agreed to send the iconic Churchill photograph home when he learned its true story.
“I immediately decided to return it to the Chateau Laurier, because I think that if Karsh donated it to the hotel, it means he really wanted it to stay there, for the particular significance this hotel had for him, and for his wife too,” Cassinelli told The Associated Press.
The famous image was taken by Karsh during Churchill´s wartime visit to the Canadian Parliament in December 1941. It helped launch Karsh´s career, who photographed some of the 20th century´s most famed icons, including Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and Queen Elizabeth.
Karsh and his wife Estrellita gifted an original signed print to the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in 1998. The couple had lived and operated a studio inside the hotel for nearly two decades.
Geneviève Dumas, general manager of the Fairmont Château Laurier, said on Thursday she felt immensely grateful.
“I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to everybody involved in solving this case, and ensuring the safe return of this priceless piece of history.”
Police arrested a 43-year-old man from Powassan, Ontario, in April and have charged him with stealing and trafficking the portrait. The man, whose name is protected by a publication ban, faces charges that include forgery, theft over $5,000 and trafficking in property obtained by crime exceeding $5,000.
MIDDLE EAST
IDF on Airstrikes in Northern Israel
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has told residents of northern Israel and the Golan Heights to remain near bomb shelters as Israel intensified its airstrikes against Hezbollah and the terror group fired hundreds of rockets Friday.
The escalation occurred as Hezbollah reeled from attacks on its officials and operatives through pagers and walkie-talkie devices, and as the Iranian-backed terror group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, gave a speech vowing revenge.
Even as he did so, Israeli warplanes buzzed Beirut and carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah positions.
On Thursday, Israel targeted hundreds of Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon. The IDF said in a statement:
Over the last two hours, directed by IDF intelligence, the IAF struck hundreds of rocket launcher barrels that were ready to be used immediately to fire toward Israeli territory.
Since this afternoon, the IAF has struck approximately 100 launchers and additional terrorist infrastructure sites, consisting of approximately 1000 barrels that were ready to be used in the immediate future to fire toward Israeli territory.
The IDF will continue to operate to degrade the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s infrastructure and capabilities in order to defend the State of Israel.
The IDF instructed residents of northern Israel to stay near shelters, anticipating retaliation by Hezbollah. It removed that warning, then reinstated it Friday, as Hezbollah fired 150 rockets at northern Israel.
The Times of Israel noted that the rockets were fired in waves, and that no injuries had yet been reported.
The conflict on Israel’s northern border began in October with unprovoked rocket, missile, and drone attacks by Hezbollah. Israel evacuated over 60,000 civilians from the area, whom it has vowed will return home safely.
The U.S. insists that there be no escalation, and President Joe Biden warned Hezbollah and its Iranian patron, “Don’t.” However, the Biden administration’s efforts to forge a diplomatic solution appear to have failed.
Israel now faces a major war on a second front — with the advantage, however, of having nearly completed the war against Hamas in Gaza, though it has yet to rescue the 101 Israeli hostages who still remain in Hamas captivity.
Israel Kills Terrorist Wanted for 1983 US Marines Barracks Bombing
Quote:Israel killed Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hezbollah terrorist partly responsible for the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, on Friday as he gathered underground with fellow terrorists in southern Beirut.
In a statement, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said:
Today (Friday), September 20, 2024, IAF aircraft conducted a targeted, intelligence-based strike in the area of Beirut, and eliminated Ibrahim Aqil, the Head of Hezbollah’s Operations Unit and the Commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces, who was also in charge of Hezbollah’s “Conquer the Galilee” attack plan.
During the strike, senior operatives in Hezbollah’s Operations Staff and commanders from the Radwan Unit were eliminated alongside Aqil. Ibrahim Aqil and the Radwan commanders who were eliminated today were planning Hezbollah’s “Conquer the Galilee” attack plan, in which Hezbollah intended to infiltrate Israeli communities and murder innocent civilians.
Aqil’s began his involvement with Hezbollah in the 1980’s, as an operative in its ‘Islamic Jihad Organization’ terror cell, which is responsible for Hezbollah’s terror attacks outside of Lebanon, and was part of many of Hezbollah’s terror attacks in multiple countries against innocent civilians.
Since 2004, he has served as the Head of Hezbollah’s Operations Unit, in which he was responsible for Hezbollah’s bombing attacks, anti-tank missile attacks, air defense, and other military fields.
Additionally, he operated as Commander of the Radwan Forces, the elite unit of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, whose main goal is to conquer the communities of the Galilee and kill innocent civilians and IDF soldiers.
Ibrahim Aqil directed and took part in many terror attacks against innocent Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers.
Aqil was responsible for the anti-tank missile attack toward the Avivim post in 2019 in northern Israel, the terror attack at the Megiddo Junction in 2023, and the infiltration attempts of Hezbollah terrorists into Israeli territory to murder and kill civilians and IDF soldiers during the “Swords of Iron” War.
Aqil directed the terror attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983. He was a wanted suspect in the United States.
The IDF will continue to act to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and will continue to operate in all arenas to protect the civilians of the State of Israel.
The U.S. State Department announced a $7 million bounty last year for Aqil, further explaining in a statement:
Ibrahim Aqil, also known as Tahsin, serves on Hizballah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council.
During the 1980s, Aqil was a principal member of Hizballah’s terrorist cell the Islamic Jihad Organization, which claimed responsibility for the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, which killed 63 people, and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 U.S. personnel.
Also in the 1980s, Aqil directed the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon and held them there.
On Pagers & Weaknesses in China-Dominated Supply Chains
Quote:The explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies that Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorists obtained from foreign suppliers are prompting a good deal of worldwide anxiety about complex technology supply chains, many of which run through China, an authoritarian communist country with a proven track record of weaponizing both technology and international trade.
Hezbollah’s pagers were purchased under the label of a Taiwanese company, which, in turn, said the actual units that exploded in the hands and pockets of the terrorists were made by a shadowy Hungarian firm under a paid licensing agreement. The handheld radios that blew up the next day were discontinued models designed by a Japanese firm that believes the sabotaged units were unauthorized knockoffs.
In both cases, murky supply chains left Hezbollah with technology that did not come from the companies it believed were supplying it. The exact provenance of the nominally Japanese walkie-talkies remained uncertain as of Friday.
Reuters noted on Friday that there is a thriving market for older technology from Asia, where customers are happy to buy still-useful equipment from the early 2010s at discount prices — and those markets are rife with “counterfeiting, surplus inventories and complex contract manufacturing deals” that can make it nearly impossible to track the true source of an item.
Analysts said that slipping some sort of undetectable explosive into Hezbollah’s pagers was an impressive feat, but compromising its supply chains was a relatively simple matter. This is especially true with smaller companies since they lack the resources to police supply chains or comb discount retail websites in search of fake products.
China has dozens of online shops selling walkie-talkies branded by Hezbollah’s chosen brand of Icom, for example, and most of them sell the very same 2014-era discontinued models that literally blew up in Hezbollah’s faces on Wednesday. Icom insists it has not produced that model in years, but Chinese warehouses are full of them and only reluctantly will the dealers admit some of the units are “Chinese-made imitations.”
The Washington Examiner, on Thursday, took Hezbollah’s pagers of doom as a sign that Americans “should be wary of continuing to rely on Chinese supply chains for critical goods in our economy.”
The situation with many popular consumer electronics items in the U.S. is not all that much different from Hezbollah discovering that its “Taiwanese pagers” were actually made by a fishy outfit in Budapest:
Take the ubiquitous iPhone. Despite Apple being an American company, key components of almost every iPhone, including the battery, processor, and camera, are made in China. While China does not have access to Apple’s source code, or at least so it is believed, the Chinese Communist Party’s dominance over the country’s private sector affords it great latitude of action.
Secretly sabotaging tens of millions of iPhone batteries so they overheat on command may seem far-fetched, but it is doable. The risk of malevolent Chinese action with these devices or other technical goods must be considered a real possibility.
China is also a major supplier of broadcasting equipment, computers, and office machine parts. All these products are sabotage threats. Huawei offers an instructive example. Riven with technical “backdoors” that allow vast espionage and sabotage activities, Huawei’s telecommunications network has fortunately been restricted from access to the U.S. market. But the same cannot be said of U.S. allies, such as Hungary.
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analyst and former Commerce Department official Bill Reinsch told Politico that the Hezbollah blasts would “create some degree of panic in the private sector” over supply chain vulnerabilities.
Warehouses around the world are filled with products whose components would be difficult to trace even in carefully regulated shipping chains, let alone the discount knockoff pipeline. Paranoid terrorists are probably pickier about their equipment purchases than most consumers, but Hezbollah wound up with bombs in its radios, and no one is quite certain where those radios were sitting on their long supply chain when the explosives were introduced.
LATIN AMERICA
Venezuela Claims Americans Wanted to Kill Maduro
Quote:Venezuelan Interior Minister and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello announced on Saturday that the socialist regime arrested three U.S. citizens for their alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
As is customary for the Venezuelan regime, Cabello accused the CIA of being behind the alleged plot, offering no evidence to back up the claim. He further accused Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI) of being “neck-deep” in the purported CIA plan.
Cabello — a socialist strongman whom Maduro recently appointed to lead his authoritarian regime’s brutal repressive apparatus and whom U.S. authorities actively want on multiple narcoterrorism charges — stated in a press conference on Sunday that the three American citizens were apprehended in the southern Venezuelan city of Puerto Ayacucho, Amazonas. He identified them as Estrella David, Aaron Darren Logan, and U.S. Navy Seal member Wilmer José Castañeda.
The three U.S. citizens, Cabello claimed, are part of a larger group of 14 arrested individuals involved in the purported plot against Maduro. Cabello also accused Castañeda of being a member of a “mercenary group.”
“Castañeda is the head of the operation put in place by the CIA and that is why the White House felt almost as if it had been hit by the capture of this citizen,” Cabello claimed. “The CIA is in charge of this operation.
“And the other, which does not surprise us either, is the National Intelligence Center of Spain,” he continued. “These two captured, they even speak of a group of mercenaries that they are looking for to bring them to Venezuela, with different objectives.”
According to Cabello, in addition to Maduro, the plot also allegedly sought to target Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and himself. The plot, according to Cabello, also called for an “attack” on the Argentine Embassy in Caracas, computer attacks against government systems, and “terrorist attacks” against Venezuela’s water, power, and transportation infrastructure. Venezuela’s infrastructure is presently in a rundown state as a result of more than two decades of socialist mismanagement.
“Imagine a bomb, an explosive. What the Argentine Embassy was going to do, who would they point the finger at in the world? Venezuela,” Cabello said.
For the past several months, the Argentine embassy has housed six Venezuelan dissidents whom Maduro also accused of trying to kill him in 2024. Maduro cut diplomatic ties with Argentina and six other countries in late July after the nation questioned the July 28 sham election, which Maduro fraudulently insists he “won.”
In accordance with international law, Brazil took custody of the Argentine embassy and the dissidents through September, when the Maduro regime abruptly revoked the permission. While the six dissidents remain inside the Argentine embassy, the diplomatic situation remains unresolved at press time.
Cabello also claimed, providing no evidence, that contact information for members of Vente Venezuela, a center-right party led by opposition member María Corina Machado, was allegedly found on the detainees’ phones.
The socialist strongman presented a stockpile of 400 firearms police allegedly seized that Cabello claimed were smuggled into the country to be used in “conspiratorial acts” against the ruling socialist regime.
“This impressive amount of weaponry is just a sample of what has been seized, of what has been captured, of what has been recovered in intelligence operations in our country,” Cabello said. “We have a group of people arrested who are part of this network.”
Cabello claimed that the allegedly seized firearms originated in the United States and further asserted that they arrived in Venezuela in containers with products such as dog food.
In addition to the three U.S. citizens, Cabello announced, two Spanish citizens — identified as José María Basoa Valdovinos and Andrés Martínez Adasme — and a Czech national — identified as Jan Darmovrzal — were arrested. Cabello accused the two Spanish nationals of being members of Spain’s CNI.
The Spanish government denied that the two nationals were intelligence officials. Martínez Adasme’s father told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that his son was on vacation in Venezuela. Czech Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariana Wernerova announced on Monday that the Czech government requested explanations for the arrest of Darmovrzal in an official diplomatic note.
U.S. Department of State officials confirmed the arrest of “one member of the U.S. military” and said it was aware of unconfirmed reports regarding the other U.S. citizens to the Spanish EFE news agency on Saturday, describing the Maduro regime’s plot accusations as “categorically false.”
Chinese Immigrants Crossing Darién Gap
Quote:President of Panama José Raúl Mulino announced on Thursday that local authorities have detected an increase in U.S.-bound Chinese migrants crossing the Darién Gap jungle trail.
The Darién Gap is a 30-mile-wide, 100-mile-long jungle trail that Panama shares with neighboring Colombia and is the only land bridge between South and Central America. In recent years, a dramatic and unprecedented number of migrants have passed through the dangerous jungle trail en route to the United States.
Panama’s Migrant Authority documented 520,085 migrants who crossed the Darién Gap in 2023 — a record-breaking number that doubles the 248,284 logged in 2022. In 2021, authorities documented a total of 133,726 migrants who passed through the trail.
While Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime in their country amply lead the statistics, Panama’s migration authority documented a notable surge in the number of U.S.-bound Chinese nationals passing through the jungle trail in recent years, going from a total of 296 in the entirety of 2010-2019 to 12,070 during the first eight months of 2024. China is now the fourth-largest group by nationality on the list.
In 2023, local authorities documented 25,565 Chinese migrants who passed through the jungle trail, up from the 2,005 logged in 2022.
“We have gone down in terms of [total migrant flow through the Darién Gap], but citizens from Nepal and China appeared in greater numbers in the last few entries,” Mulino said during a press conference.
Mulino, who took office on July 1, vowed to curb illegal immigration through the Darién Gap throughout his presidential campaign. Shortly after taking office, the new Panamanian government began installing barbed wire fences across some of the jungle trail’s routes and signed an agreement with the United States to establish U.S.-funded deportation flights that reportedly started in August. In that same month, the Panamanian government announced that it would launch deportation flight programs to China, India, Ecuador, and Colombia.
Mulino reportedly said during his Thursday press conference that his government is seeking to reach an agreement with Beijing to deport Chinese nationals passing through the Darién Gap but did not provide further details.
In August, Panamanian authorities announced that officers from the Senafront National Border Service dismantled a “VIP” route that Chinese migrants used to pass through the Darién Gap, arresting 15 individuals who managed it.
The “VIP” route, according to local prosecutors, saw its organizers offer Chinese migrants packages ranging from $2,600 to $8,000 per person for a faster, safer passage through the dangerous jungle trail. Passage through the “VIP” route allowed migrants to cross the jungle trail through a different route than the typical paths migrants take, which can take between five and eight days to complete.
According to Panamanian Prosecutor Emeldo Marquez, at least 700 migrants are believed to have paid for the exclusive route.
The Panamanian government reportedly foresees a considerable reduction of migrants passing through the Darién Gap by the end of 2024 compared to 2023 due to the closure of some trails and repatriation flights.
In addition to Panama, Ecuador began cracking down on illegal Chinese migrants passing through its territory by reinstating entry visa requirements for Chinese nationals in July, suspending a visa waiver agreement signed in January 2015 during the pro-China administration of socialist former President Rafael Correa.
While Panama vowed to curb the migrant flow passing through the Darién Gap, migrants can avoid the dangerous jungle trail altogether by flying to Nicaragua, where communist dictator Daniel Ortega maintains a policy of “weaponization” of migrants against the United States, granting U.S.-bound migrants safe passage through Nicaraguan territory in exchange for several fees and “fines” that have resulted in record-breaking profits for the communist regime.
AFRICA
Congo: Americans Sentenced to Death
Quote:The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) handed out 37 death sentences in connection to the May coup attempt against President Felix Tshisekedi. Six of the defendants sentenced to death are foreign nationals, and three of them are Americans.
The coup attempt on May 19, 2024, was masterminded by an eccentric opposition leader and businessman named Christian Malanga, whom security forces killed during the attempt. Malanga was a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived in Utah for more than 20 years. He was able to rope a few U.S. citizens into his coup plot, which they claimed he misrepresented as a lucrative security contract or a luxury vacation to Africa.
Some of the people Malanga tried to recruit were high school football teammates of his son, Marcel Malanga. One of those teammates, Daniel Gonzalez, said Malanga offered to pay him up to $100,000 for working four months in the DRC as a security guard. Gonzalez declined the offer because the details sounded sketchy to him.
Marcel Malanga, now 21, was one of the three American citizens sentenced to death on Friday. The other two were Tyler Thompson Jr., 21, a classmate of Marcel’s who reportedly thought he was joining the Malanga family on an African vacation, and Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, 36, a business associate of Christian Malanga.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Friday that the Biden administration was aware three Americans have been sentenced to death but has not yet attempted to intervene in the case or accuse the DRC of wrongfully detaining the U.S. citizens.
“We understand that the legal process in the DRC allows for defendants to appeal the court’s decision,” said Miller, referring to the five-day appeal window that DRC law permits.
“Embassy staff have been attending these proceedings as they’ve gone through the process. We continue to attend the proceedings and follow the developments closely,” Miller said.
Lawyers for the six foreigners sentenced to death sounded far less sanguine about the situation than the Biden State Department. Lawyer Richard Bondo said his clients were not given adequate interpreter services when they were investigated, so they might not have fully understood their jeopardy.
Marcel Malanga said during his trial that he does not speak the languages used in the DRC and claimed he participated in the alleged coup attempt because his father threatened to kill him.
The other three foreign nationals were a Belgian, a Canadian, and a citizen of the United Kingdom. All three were reportedly naturalized citizens of the DRC.
The Belgian, Jean-Jacques Wondo, is a military expert who claimed the Tshisekedi government asked him to consult on reforming its intelligence services. Wondo said he had nothing to do with the coup attempt but was instead framed by adversaries within the DRC intelligence apparatus. Prosecutors insisted Wondo was a key member of the coup, using his contacts within the intelligence services to keep Malanga’s operation secret until he was ready to strike.
Wondo’s wife begged Tshisekedi to grant him leniency because his health is “deteriorating” in prison, and he “urgently needs medical attention.”
Morocco: 152 Arrested for Inciting Mass Illegal Immigration
Quote:The government of Morocco announced on Friday that it arrested 152 people on charges of using social media to incite mass illegal immigration to Ceuta, a Spanish territory on the Mediterranean coast, adjacent to Morocco.
The Moroccan city of Fnideq reported that about three thousand Moroccans, mostly military-age men, attempted to rush the border fence to Ceuta. They were met by a strong deployment of both Spanish and Moroccan security forces. According to both governments, all attempts to cross the border were “foiled.”
The Spanish Interior Ministry said that none of the aspiring illegal immigrants made it into Ceuta, and the situation has been “brought under control.”
Ceuta is part of a smattering of Spanish territories along the North African coast and is an ancient city that was controlled by every empire that rolled through the region until Spain took its turn in the late 16th Century. A similar Spanish “enclave” called Melilla lies on the northern border of Morocco.
Ceuta’s long and colorful history left it with a mixed population of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus, all of which have influenced everything from the city’s architecture to its food. The first sight that greets most visitors is a gigantic bronze statue of the Greek demigod Hercules. The beaches of Ceuta and the nearby scenic mountain of Hacho have made it a popular tourist destination.
Spain declared Ceuta autonomous in 1995 and decided to keep it that way by building an impressive double-layered border fence in 2006. Moroccans periodically try to jump the fences into both Ceuta and Melilla, hoping to get their feet on European soil that lies only a few tantalizing yards away. Some of the aspiring migrants attempt to bypass the fences by swimming around the coast.
Moroccan security officials say there have been at least 45,000 illegal immigration attempts so far in 2024, with 14,000 in August alone. One of the largest successful border penetrations occurred in May 2021, when at least 6,000 Moroccans made it into Ceuta in a single day, mostly by swimming or boating around the fences. Spain accused Moroccan officials of not doing enough to stop that particular invasion.
Morocco is not happy about the Spanish enclaves on its borders, believing those territories should rightfully belong to Morocco. Another point of simmering tension is Morocco’s accusation that Spain coddles the Polisario Front, a separatist movement of the indigenous Sahrawi people who think that a good deal of Morocco rightfully belongs to them.
Spain smoothed some ruffled Moroccan feathers by backing Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara in 2022, and the two governments share a mutual interest in not allowing thousands of Morocco’s young men to decamp to Spanish territory, so when social media influences began putting together a new border rush, both Spain and Morocco took decisive actions to thwart it.
Morocco’s intelligence agency, the DGSN, spotlighted posts on Facebook that allegedly used false information to lure Moroccan youth into swarming the border fence. Some of the migrants were reportedly sub-Saharan Africans who were hoping to push through Morocco en route to Europe.
Clashes with police broke out after the first Moroccan migrants were arrested while trying to reach Ceuta on Sunday and continued until Fnideq city officials said order had been restored on Friday. The police deployed water cannon when protesters threw stones at them.
Ramses II's Sword
Quote:An ancient sword that may have belonged to the army of the Egyptian pharaoh whom Moses liberated the Israelites from in the Old Testament was unearthed by archaeologists, officials say.
The bronze weapon was found in an excavation site in the Hosh Issa district of Beheira Governorate, in the northern part of the country, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a September 4 press release.
The recent archaeological mission, led by Dr. Ahmed Said El-Kharadly of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, uncovered a “series of mudbrick architectural units, including military barracks for soldiers and storage rooms for weapons, food, and provisions from the New Kingdom era.”
Numerous historical artifacts belonging to the soldiers once housed in the barracks were also found, including the sword.
The civilization’s New Kingdom era, which spanned nearly 500 years from 1550 BC to 1070 BC, was defined in part by the massive influence and power of Ramses II, the pharaoh who is thought by some scholars to be the one referenced in the Bible’s Book of Exodus.
A photo of the sword shows a hieroglyphic symbol of the pharaoh:
The Calvin Coolidge Project Wrote:Report: Egyptian archaeologists have announced that they recently discovered a bronze sword bearing the symbol of King Ramesses II, the pharaoh that scholars believe was referenced in the Book of Exodus.
"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.
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My Original Stories (available in English and Spanish)
List of Compiled Binary Executables I have published...
HiddenChest & Roole
Give me a free copy of your completed game if you include at least 3 of my scripts!
Just some scripts I've already published on the board...
KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
My Original Stories (available in English and Spanish)
List of Compiled Binary Executables I have published...
HiddenChest & Roole
Give me a free copy of your completed game if you include at least 3 of my scripts!
Just some scripts I've already published on the board...
KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE
