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.”
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“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.
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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.
Quote:Claim: Biden’s false claim about inflation was really just making the point that the causes of inflation were already in place when President Joe Biden took office.
Verdict: False and misleading.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday said that President Joe Biden’s false claim that inflation was at nine percent when he took office was intended to point out that the causes that led to inflation reaching that high were in place when he took office in January of 2020.
Biden this week repeated the false claim that inflation was at nine percent when he took office. It’s a statement he first made in an interview last week with CNN’s Erin Burnett. This week he repeated the falsehood in an interview with Yahoo! Finance.
“I think inflation has gone slightly up, it was at 9 percent percent when I came in,” Biden said during the interview. “And, it’s now down around 3 percent percent.”
The year-over-year rate of inflation was 3.5 percent in March, the latest data available when Biden gave the interview. On Wednesday, the Labor Department said inflation had ticked down to 3.4 percent. Inflation has not been three percent or lower since March of 2021. When Biden took office, the consumer price index was up 1.4 percent compared with a year earlier.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Jean-Pierre was asked about Biden’s repeated inflation lie by Fox Business Network reporter Edward Lawrence.
“I want to ask you about how the President talks about inflation. Two times over the past two weeks, the President said inflation was nine percent when he came into office. Is the President misleading Americans on that? Or does it — just not realize that inflation was 1.4 percent when he came into office?” Lawrence asked.
Jean-Pierre replied that the president’s claim should not be taken literally. He was saying inflation was nine percent in order to make the point that the “factors that caused inflation” were in place when he took office.
“The point that he was making is that the factors that caused inflation were in place when he walked into the administration when he took office,” Jean-Pierre said.
Quote:CNN’s Anderson Cooper said Thursday on the network’s coverage of former President Donald Trump’s business record trial that if he were a juror, he would doubt the credibility of witness Michael Cohen after the defense lawyer Todd Blanche’s cross-examination.
Cooper said, “Throughout the day, Michael Cohen, when cornered, he found himself in a corner he does have a pattern of suddenly not understanding the question being asked are seemingly kind of, I mean, one could say buying time to try to figure out what, how he wants to answer. But he definitely suddenly starts to have Todd Blanche repeat questions saying, ‘I don’t quite understand what you mean, I’m confused by the question.’ But this time, Michael Cohen was cornered in what appeared here to be a lie, I think to many in the room.”
He added, “You could tell the import of the moment and everyone in the courtroom could tell and if you were unaware of it, the clicking of every of every reporters’ in the room typewriters, it was like a crescendo because the drama of the moment was so clear to everybody.”
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said, “Let me ask you if if I can put you in the jury box, having just witnessed that piece of cross-examination, do you have doubts that that conversation happened the way Michael Cohen testified?”
Cooper said, “Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it’s devastating for Michael Cohen’s credibility on this, I mean on this one particular topic. It’s hard too, I don’t know. Yes. I think if I was a juror in this case watching that, I would think, this guy’s making this up as he’s going along or he’s making this particular story up.”
Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) responded to President Joe Biden’s prior criticism of the Trump China tariffs by stating that China doesn’t follow market rules and saying that “I’m sure I probably took a shot,” at Trump’s tariffs at the time, “but we also realize that China is playing with a different set of rules.”
Co-host Joe Kernen raised President Joe Biden’s criticism of the Trump tariffs in 2019, where Biden said that “Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs. The cashiers at Target see what’s going on – they know more about economics than Trump” and asked Warner if he thinks Biden’s tariffs are the right call.
Warner responded, “China doesn’t operate on a [market] basis.”
Kernen then asked, “Did you criticize Trump’s tariffs when he put those on China?”
Warner answered, “I’m sure I probably took a shot, but we also realize that China is playing with a different set of rules. I think wait until you see China dump this number of cheap EVs into Germany and the European market and let’s see what the Germans do as well.”
Quote:A barge has collided with the Pelican Island Causeway in Galveston, Texas, damaging the bridge, closing the roadway to all vehicular traffic and causing an oil spill.
The collision occurred at around 10 a.m. local time. Galveston officials said in a news release that there had been no reported injuries. Video footage obtained by CBS affiliate KHOU appears to show that part of the train trestle that runs along the bridge has collapsed.
The ship broke loose from its tow and drifted into the bridge, according to Richard Freed, the vice president of Martin Midstream Partners L.P.'s marine division. Freed said the ship was owned and operated by Martin Operating Partnership L.P., a subsidiary of Martin Midstream Partners, and said that personnel were at the scene.
The captain piloting the vessel had more than 20 years of maritime experience, Freed said.
Emergency management officials and state officials have responded to the scene, along with members of the Galveston police and fire departments, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Texas Department of Transportation.
The collision caused a spill of vacuum gas oil, which can be used to make transportation fuels and other byproducts, according to the Galveston Office of Emergency Management. The agency said that the oil had been visually confirmed in the water and said that about 6 1/2 miles of intracoastal waterway had been closed. The U.S. Coast Guard is responding to the spill, and will determine its extent and initiate "containment and cleanup processes," officials said.
The barge has a capacity of about 30,000 gallons, officials said. The amount that has leaked out is unknown, but Freed said a "limited amount of product" spilled into the waterway.
"At this time, there is no product leaking from the barge," Freed said.
The collision also led to a brief power outage on Pelican Island, Galveston officials said on social media. Secondary power has been restored, officials said.
Quote:Magician David Copperfield, whose real name is David Seth Kotkin, has been accused of engaging in sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior by 16 women, more than half of whom say they were under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged incidents.
The allegations include assertions that Copperfield engaged in sexual activity with three women who were unable to consent, because the magician had drugged them prior, according to a report by the Guardian.
Allegations against Copperfield reportedly span from the late 1980s to 2014.
Notably, this is not the first time Copperfield has been accused of misconduct. One of the 16 women, Brittney Lewis, first went public with her allegations against the famed illusionist in 2018, claiming he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1988, when she was 17.
Another alleged victim told the Guardian that she and her friend had a similar experience with Copperfield, claiming he had drugged both of them before having sex with the two women, and they were therefore both unable to consent to the fornication.
Other allegations involve claims of groping — including touching of breasts — with one woman claiming to have been 15 at the time of the alleged incident.
Family members of the alleged 15-year-old victim said they were seated in the audience during one of Copperfield’s live performances, and claimed they personally witnessed the magician grope her breasts.
Copperfield has “denied any wrongdoing of any kind,” and “never acted inappropriately with anyone, let alone anyone underage,” his lawyers told the magazine, adding that drugs are “not a part of his world.”
“Everyone that knows David Copperfield will tell you that these recent allegations from one newspaper are the exact opposite of who David is,” a representative for Copperfield told Fox News. https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2024/05/...play-fair/
“In fact, David has a record of risking his career to help protect women from powerful predators,” the representative added. “Most of these historic accusations have been made before, and all of them are as false now as they were then.”
The magician’s representative went on to say that Copperfield “requested the ‘evidence’ upon which these false allegations claim to rely and this has not been provided,” adding that while the #MeToo movement “must succeed,” these “false accusations must stop for it to flourish.”
“David will be considering the position with his legal team and will take such steps as may be appropriate over these false and scurrilous allegations,” the representative concluded.
Separately, Copperfield was named in unsealed January 2019 court documents involving the late disgraced financier and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Quote:Seafood restaurant chain Red Lobster has closed one hundred locations around the United States, according to its website.
One hundred Red Lobster locations in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, California, and Florida, were listed as closed on the company website as of Tuesday.
CEO and Founder of TAGeX Brands, Neal Sherman, announced in a post on LinkedIn on Monday that his company would be hosting “the largest restaurant liquidation” through an online auction. The TAGex website listed auctions for 48 Red Lobster locations throughout the U.S. that had been closed and would be auctioning off kitchen items and furniture from the locations.
Red Lobster locations in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Watertown, New York, Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Bloomingdale and Danville, Illinois, were among the restaurants that were closed.
All three locations in Jacksonville, Florida, were also listed as being closed, according to the restaurant chain’s website.
One employee from the Red Lobster in Buffalo, New York, told WKBW that he found out about the restaurant closure from one of the cooks, and not from corporate.
Quote:More than half of the foreign-born immigrant population in the United States under President Joe Biden’s administration is unemployed, according to a recent report.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a report on Monday that showed that just 46 percent of migrants who had arrived in the U.S. “in 2022 or later” were employed as of the beginning of 2024.
“Immigration clearly adds workers to the country, but it just as clearly adds non-workers who need to be supported by the labor of others,” Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, researchers with the CIS, wrote.
This was the case in the past, it is true today, and it will surely be the case for immigrants who arrive in the future. Those who simply see immigration as a source of labor need to understand it is also a source of school children, retirees, and many other non-workers.
The data from the CIS report undermines arguments that supporters of illegal immigration have used to try to point out that migrant workers help the economy by working hard.
The report also found that, since Biden took office in January 2021, the migrant population in the U.S. increased by roughly 6.6 million over the course of 39 months.
As of March 2024, there were 51.6 million foreign-born migrants, 5.1 million more than in 2022. This number made up 15.6 percent of the population in the U.S.
Quote:Democrats in Colorado are using tax dollars to fund free legal assistance for immigrants to double the number of asylum seekers settling there even as officials claim that President Joe Biden’s border crisis is breaking their budget.
In 2022, Colorado Democrats pushed through their state-funded Immigration Legal Defense Fund, which provides free legal advice to immigrants to help them gain legal status. The program is funded by $700,000 in taxes through early 2025, up from the $330,000 the program was handed in previous years.
The revelation comes from a Wednesday article by Rocky Mountain PBS meant to cajole readers into believing that “newcomers” are a boon to the Centennial State. The station nevertheless admitted that tax dollars are going to increase the influx of immigrants into the state.
“Newcomers” is the latest term that liberals are employing now that “migrants” and “immigrants” have all too often become synonymous with the word “illegal aliens.” This moving of the linguistic goalposts, so common on the left when a word or term outlives its usefulness for propaganda purposes, has been deployed throughout the media in 2024 in an effort to rebrand immigrants.
The PBS article focused on asylum seekers who have quasi-legal status and are officially permitted to be in the U.S. while their filings for asylum are being adjudicated.
The article went on to bat down what it called “myth #2,” which is that all asylum seekers are automatically approved for long-term residency in the U.S.
The article pointed out that the state funding has helped to double the share of immigrants who win asylum to stay in Colorado. From 2018 to 2021, only a quarter of the asylum applicants won their cases, but that share has now doubled to 50 percent.
That brought the PBS station to another “myth” it sought to kill: that of immigrants being given free lawyers for their cases. This, the article informed readers, is not the case. Immigrants do not qualify for free representation from public defenders because only legal citizens are guaranteed legal representation.
The article went on to say that there are not enough immigration lawyers in Colorado to service the 73,000 immigration cases on the docket in the state. So, many immigrants go without any representation at all.
Quote:Walmart is reporting an increase in sales as shoppers have reportedly been buying more groceries due to rising fast food prices from inflation.
Speaking on CNBC Thursday, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said the megastore chain saw an uptick in sales this past quarter as more and more customers have traded out fast food for groceries.
“It’s roughly 4.3 times more expensive to eat out than it is to eat at home,” he said. “And that’s benefiting our business.”
Some customers feel that grocery store items have grown cheaper while fast food has grown more expensive. Due to the uptick in sales, Walmart’s stock saw an “all-time high Thursday, after it beat Wall Street’s quarterly sales and revenue expectations, and said it expected its full-year results to be on the high end of, or better than, its previous forecast,” according to CNBC.
Walmart also saw a 3.8% rise in transactions in both its stores and online this past quarter. Meanwhile, restaurants like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Yum Brands have seen a downward trend in sales.
Quote:U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday removed Cuba’s communist regime from the State Department’s list of countries “not cooperating fully” against terrorism.
In a statement reportedly sent to members of the U.S. Congress and media, Secretary Blinken said that Cuban and U.S. law enforcement officials were once again working together on counterterrorism and other related efforts — and as such its inclusion on the list was deemed “no longer appropriate.”
“The department determined that the circumstances for Cuba’s certification as a ‘not fully cooperating country’ have changed from 2022 to 2023,” a U.S. Department of State official reportedly said.
Martí Noticias, a U.S.-based news outlet that focuses on Cuba, reported on Wednesday that it had obtained access to a copy of the statement, which asserted that North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela are still on the list of countries not fully cooperating with U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
The note reportedly stressed that, while Cuba was removed from the list of countries are “not cooperating fully” against fighting terrorism, the country still remains on the official list of States Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) alongside Iran, Syria, and North Korea.
“The law establishes specific legal criteria for rescinding an SST designation,” the statement reportedly read. “Any review of Cuba’s status on the SST list would be based on the law and the criteria established by Congress.”
Cuba appeared on the SST list from 1982 to 2015 prior to the redesignation and was removed during the Castro-friendly administration of former President Barack Obama.
During the administration of former President Donald Trump, the United States designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism in January 2021 due to the Castro regime’s deep ties with international terrorist organizations such as the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Shiite jihadist organization Hezbollah, and Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Marxist terrorist groups.
The communist Castro regime also maintains a relationship with the Sunni jihadist terrorist group Hamas. Hamas terrorists met with a Cuban envoy in Lebanon in February 2023 and the regime has openly condemned Israel in the wake of Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on the country, which left over 1,200 dead and hundreds taken hostage.
Similar to other far-left Latin American regimes and governments, the Castro regime has accused Israel of commiting “genocide” in its self-defense operations against Hamas, but not condemned the explicitly genocidal Hamas goal of destroying the Israeli nation and its people.
Quote:A brawl erupted in the Taiwanese parliament on Friday during a debate over reforms to the legislature. Lawmakers shoved, struck, and tackled each other in a wild melee, climbing over tables to attack each other.
More scuffles flared up throughout the day as tempers remained on edge.
Taiwan’s legislature is no stranger to punch-ups, but Friday’s brawl was an outstanding exhibition of parliamentary pugilism and furniture acrobatics. Some previous battles have involved props, such as water balloons and pig intestines, but this one was pure hand-to-hand combat.
The cause of the fight was a push from the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) Party and its allies to give the legislature more oversight over the government.
Taiwan’s new president, William Lai Ching-te, will be inaugurated Monday. Lai won a commanding victory to succeed outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, but his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost seats, so he will preside over a minority government.
The KMT did not pick up enough seats to form a majority, so it has been pushed into an alliance with a third group, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). One of their mutual initiatives is a proposal to bring criminal charges against government officials accused of making false statements to parliament.
The DPP accused the KMT and TPP of trying to push their proposals through without proper debate and procedures, while the opposition claimed the DPP administration was unreasonably resistant to proper legislative oversight.
“The DPP does not want this to be passed, as they have always been used to monopolizing power,” said KMT lawmaker Jessica Chen, who popped out of the fracas to give an interview while wearing an army helmet.
According to the Taipei Times, the argument escalated from strong language to throwing hands in the hallway outside the legislative chamber. The brawl soon spilled into the chamber, where KMT lawmakers tried to form a human shield around Speaker Han Kyo-yu so he could keep calling for motions to read bills and cast votes.
Quote:Public Eye, a human rights advocacy group based in Switzerland, blasted Chinese fashion giant Shein for demanding excessive overtime from its workers in a 2021 report.
On Sunday, Public Eye released a follow-up report that said, “Illegal working hours and piecework wages remain a typical feature of the everyday lives of the workers interviewed.”
“The ultra-fast fashion company, which has come under pressure, is also arousing suspicion due to its opaque finances and because its founder has disappeared from the scene,” Public Eye added in its new report.
The Swiss advocacy group was referring to Shein’s “fast fashion” business model, which offers customers a huge online inventory of clothing items at extremely low prices. The system works by taking advantage of extremely low shipping rates to send parcels directly to customers around the world, rather than paying for warehouses and distribution centers in different countries.
Fast fashion also relies on extremely low production costs, meaning ultra-cheap labor and materials. The originator of the fast fashion model is generally held to be a Spanish brand called Zara, but Shein took advantage of China’s cheap factory labor – plus textiles harvested by even cheaper labor from outright slaves – to sell a vastly larger range of items at even lower prices.
Public Eye interviewed a baker’s dozen textile workers who toil for Shein and its suppliers at six factories in China – factories that the activists had to find with a bit of detective work, since Shein does not like to discuss its supply network – and found 75-hour weeks are “still the norm,” even though Shein’s code of conduct for suppliers sets a 60-hour limit for the work week.
China Hates Tariffs & Enlists Mexico to Evade Them
Quote:China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday dismissed tariffs that the Biden administration threatened as a “farce,” reserving particular contempt for the administration’s efforts to protect the American electric vehicle (EV) industry from Chinese competition.
The Global Times lectured:
This approach contradicts President Biden’s commitment of not “holding back China’s development” and not “seeking decoupling from China.” It also goes against the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries. To some extent, it can even be understood as the US initiating a new round of tariff friction.
Before announcing the imposition of additional tariffs on China, the US repeatedly spread negative information in an attempt to smear related Chinese technology and products. This is essentially a sign of guilt, trying to manipulate public opinion to cover up the fact that they are politicizing and instrumentalizing economic and trade issues.
Although it did not work very hard to finalize the comparison, the “farce” part of the Global Times’ critique was apparently the Biden administration complaining about the dangers of Chinese EV dumping when “almost zero” vehicles are currently imported from China to begin with.
The Chinese editorialists dismissed the entire Biden trade policy as little more than a “political show aimed at winning voters in an election year” and threatened that Beijing would respond with “resolute measures to defend its own interests.”
Former Global Times editor Hu Xijin piled on with a video editorial blasting Biden’s tariff hike on Chinese EVs from 27.5 percent to 102.5 percent as a sign of “panic and incompetence.”
Hu saw the tariffs as a sign of weakness, a “white flag raised by the U.S.” to admit that America has “given up” in the face of Chinese competition.
Quote:As President Joe Biden announces new United States tariffs on several Chinese products, including Electric Vehicles (EVs), China-based corporations may evade those tariffs by rerouting production through other countries.
This week, Biden announced new tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum, semiconductors, EVs, batteries, critical minerals, solar cells, ship-to-shore cranes, and medical products.
Specifically with EVs, Biden will slap over 100 percent tariffs on China-made EVs as former President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China-made EVs are the only trade policy currently blocking an onslaught of Chinese cars from flooding the U.S. market and severely crippling the nation’s auto workers.
Some Chinese companies have already hinted at evading such tariffs.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) premier automaker, BYD, is planning a factory in Mexico to produce its cheap EVs. At current U.S. tariff rates with Mexico, those cars could be sold in the U.S. market facing hardly any tariffs.
Executives with BYD, which launched a new pickup truck in Mexico this week, have repeatedly claimed they are not interested in entering the U.S. market.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, though, has hinted that the administration is considering tariffs on products arriving from Mexico. Such tariffs would come as Mexico has become the largest source of imports to the U.S., toppling China for the spot.
In the first three months of this year, more than $115 billion worth of products have arrived in the U.S. market from Mexico. Meanwhile, fewer than $100 billion worth of products from China have arrived during the same period.
“Decades of unfair trade by the People’s Republic of China have devastated American communities and weakened our economic security,” Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul said in a statement following the announcement of the new China tariffs.
Paul suggested the tariffs ought to be seen as a starting point in terms of protecting American workers and the nation’s manufacturing base from China, saying, “We look forward to working with the Biden administration and Congress to build on these achievements.”
Quote:Share prices in China’s tottering real estate market perked up on Thursday after news that various levels of the Communist government will begin buying up excess houses, a long hoped-for stimulus that could stabilize real estate prices by cleaning up excess inventory.
Some analysts doubted the government could afford to buy enough property to defuse the trillion-dollar debt bomb that threatens China’s economic future.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Thursday that the government of Hangzhou, a technology hub city and provincial capital that includes the headquarters of the massive Alibaba Group Holding corporation, announced a plan to buy unoccupied homes in one of its districts and rent them out as affordable housing.
Hangzhou’s program was seen as the first municipal government response to a call from the national Politburo for local governments to “digest existing housing inventory.” Another provincial capital, Chengdu, removed restrictions on home purchases in tandem with Hangzhou and could follow its lead on buying excess home inventory, as well.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that the central government’s State Council is soliciting feedback from provincial and city governments on a plan to purchase millions of unsold homes across the country.
Such a plan implemented on a nationwide scale would represent China’s biggest move to stabilize the real estate market, and it would come with a staggering price tag. The SCMP noted that China has something like 3.5 billion square feet of unsold residential property, plus at least 20 million unbuilt or delayed houses, which would cost $443 billion to complete.
Quote:The governments of India and Iran announced a decade-long agreement on Tuesday that would give India control and allow it to develop the port of Chabahar, a stop on the Gulf of Oman that offers India a favorable route to the Persian Gulf.
“Chabahar Port’s significance transcends its role as a mere conduit between India and Iran; it serves as a vital trade artery connecting India with Afghanistan and Central Asian Countries,” Indian Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowald said on Tuesday, signing the agreement in Iran. “This linkage has unlocked new avenues for trade and fortified supply chain resilience across the region.”
The deal may run afoul of the dozens of American sanctions on the Iranian regime, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, the State Department warned on Tuesday.
India and Iran are allies through the BRICS coalition, which includes many of the world’s most formidable rogue states. Along with Iran and India, BRICS unites Russia, China, Brazil, and South Africa – the original members of the alliance – along with newly minted members Ethiopia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Saudi Arabia accepted an invitation to join BRICS in late 2023 but as of February had reportedly not completed the paperwork to be a full member.
The introduction of Iran, a longtime Chinese and Russian ally, to BRICS brought the alliance more directly into the sphere of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East prompted by the unprecedented siege of Israel on October 7 by Iran-backed jihadist organization Hamas. India has been the most reluctant of the BRICS nations to support the Hamas cause, however, openly expressing support for Israel following the October 7 atrocities.
India has attempted to retain trade ties to Iran, though it has recently significantly limited commercial interactions in response to American and global sanctions on Iran’s Islamist regime. The Chabahar port agreement appears to be an attempt to reverse the momentum.
According to the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV, the agreement will give the company India Ports Global Ltd (IPGL) control of freight and container terminals of Chabahar’s largest port. India will control the port for ten years in exchange for spending “$120 million for the supply of strategic equipment of the Port and $250 million on the transport infrastructure of Chabahar.” India already controls many of the operations at Chabahar, as it informally took over the port in 2018 according to the BBC.
Chabahar is across the Gulf of Oman from the nation of Omar, a useful port stop before entering the Persian Gulf and reaching the gulf nations of Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia.
LATIN AMERICA
Argentina Controlling Inflation for the First Time
Quote:The National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina (INDEC) announced on Tuesday that inflation in Argentina continued its downward trend in April, reaching an 8.8 percent rate that month and dropping to a single digit for the first time in six months.
The continued reduction in inflation follows the implementation of President Javier Milei’s “shock therapy” economic measures, which his administration began upon taking office in December 2023 to avoid a hyperinflation spiral in Argentina.
April’s reduction in inflation, in addition to being the first time since October 2023 when it has dropped down to one digit, also marks the fourth month in a row that inflation has significantly fallen in Argentina during Milei’s now five-month presidency.
At the time Milei took office and succeeded his predecessor, socialist former President Alberto Fernández, inflation in Argentina had dramatically spiked to 25.5 percent in December. Since then, Milei’s economic policies and “zero deficit” goals have resulted in consecutive monthly drops in inflation. Inflation fell to 20.6 percent in January, 13.2 percent in February, and 11 percent in March.
Milei celebrated the April 2024 inflation rate announcement on social media by chanting a soccer “Goal!” exclamation, accompanying his post with a picture of him hugging Economy Minister Luis Caputo.
Quote:Federal justice authorities in Argentina ordered 27 raids on Monday against leaders of leftist piqueteros (“picketers”) organizations following hundreds of complaints by local citizens of alleged extortion and blackmail.
The complaints reportedly accused the organizations of threatening individuals if they refused to participate in leftist protests against President Javier Milei.
In Argentina, “picketers” are the name given to leftist “social” organizations that mainly dedicate themselves to protest against the government, often in a violent manner. Some of the existing picketer groups are offshoots of local far-left parties, while others have founded their own parties in recent years. Picketer groups have occupied public ministry positions in previous leftist governments.
The now-ongoing investigation, led by Argentine Federal Judge Sebastián Casanello and Prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita, stems from a formal request made by the Argentine government. In December, when Milei took office, the government established a phone hotline that Argentine citizens can use to denounce personal threats made by picketer leaders.
The hotline began receiving complaints one day before the first picketer-organized protest against Milei, which took place on December 20. Since then, there have reportedly been over 13,000 calls, of which 924 have been used to launch formal probes.
Local media published copies of the text message logs from the phone number, featuring texts Argentine prosecutors have presented as evidence of citizens being pressured and extorted by the picketer leaders.
Argentine citizens who are beneficiaries of state assistance programs denounced in the complaints that picketer leaders forced them to hand over a percentage of the stipend money received and threatened to strip them of the government benefits if they did not participate in protests against Milei.
Quote:Far-left Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing “genocide” through Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas.
“Mr. Netanyahu, you will go down in history as genocidal. Dropping bombs on thousands of innocent children, women, and elderly people does not make you a hero,” Petro wrote in a social media post late Saturday, local time. “You stand next to those who killed millions of Jews in Europe.”
“A genocide is a genocide no matter if you have a religion or not,” he continued. “Try at least to stop the massacre.” Petro — a former member of the Marxist M19 guerrilla, a group that Petro himself has claimed had some of its members train with pro-Palestinian paramilitary forces in Libya in the past — had Colombia break its diplomatic ties with Israel in early May, a decision Hamas reportedly celebrated.
The Colombian far-left president made the accusation against Netanyahu in response to a post the Israeli prime minister made on Saturday in which he stated thathttps://www.breitbart.com/asia/2024/05/17/parliament-brawl-breaks-out-in-taiwan-as-left-tries-to-limit-presidential-power/ Israel would not be “lectured by an antisemitic supporter of Hamas.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wrote:Israel will not be lectured by an antisemitic supporter of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that massacred, raped, mutilated and burned alive 1,200 innocent people on October 7. Shame on you President Petro!
Quote:Pro-regime self-proclaimed Evangelical Christian pastors in Venezuela declared socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro on Wednesday the “protector” of the family according to the “original design” of the Bible.
The regime brought the pastors out at a religious event in the national capital, Caracas.
The Maduro regime has long maintained a contradictory attitude towards Christianity, repressing the nation’s Christian opposition to socialism and instigating violent gang attacks on churches but using Jesus in its socialist propaganda. In more recent years, it has attempted to improve ties with smaller Evangelical Christian groups at the expense of the Catholic Church, proclaiming them “the true church of God” in January 2023.
The political embrace of Evangelical Christians, local experts have explained in the past, is part of Maduro’s plan to garner sympathizers and rehabilitate his tarnished image. Venezuela is an overwhelmingly Catholic country. As of 2020, 71 percent of its population is Catholic, while some 13 percent identify as Evangelical Christians.
In the event on Wednesday — titled the “March for Life, Family, and Faith” — the Evangelical leaders claimed that Maduro had set an “example as a family man” by showing himself together with his wife, Cilia Flores, in official events. The Maduro regime has granted Flores the title of “First Combatant,” a made-up term to elevate her above “first lady” status.
“When I see his [Maduro’s] walks, always next to his wife, I say that is the constitution that God made of the original design of the family,” Pastor Luis Rodriguez, president of the Assembly of God Council of Venezuela Evangelical organization, said.
Any pastors supporting him should be dismissed by the local churches' elders.
Quote:The Chinese Communist government is seeking to take advantage of its friendly ties with the socialist Brazilian government to establish a “Maritime Silk Road” in the Amazon Rainforest, The Argentine news outlet Infobae reported this weekend.
Infobae claimed in its report that China’s plans for an “Amazon Silk Road” calls for Chinese state-owned companies to establish trade routes and business dealings in the Amazon Rainforest region and exploit the area’s rich natural resources, raising concerns about environmental repercussions and potential deforestation.
The plans, according to Infobae, would allow for an “unprecedented geopolitical and economic expansion” in the region as part of China’s “vision of the new multipolar world order” promoted by both Beijing and Moscow.
Brazil is a founding member of the China-led BRICS trade and security bloc. Shortly after taking office for a third presidential term in January 2023, current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his socialist administration began taking steps to “relaunch” Brazil’s relationship with China, which has been the South American nation’s main trading partner since 2009.
Lula traveled to China for an official visit in April 2023, where both countries signed over a dozen agreements covering a wide range of topics such as communication, technology, and commerce. Both countries have also signed a deal to discard the use of the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade, replacing it with the Chinese yuan.
Although the subject of Brazil joining China’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was reportedly discussed during Lula’s visit to China, Brazil is not officially part of the program.
Infobae noted that, while the Brazilian Foreign Ministry denied any participation of Brazil in the BRI, information published in February by the local government of the State of Pará would suggest otherwise, as it announced the arrival of a Chinese delegation of a “Precursor Committee of the Maritime Silk Road in the Amazon.”
Among the members of the Chinese delegation who visited Pará in February were representatives of the Chinese state-owned Zhuhai Sino-Lac Supply Chain Co., a company “specializing in transnational customs operations and warehousing between China and Latin America.” Infobae reported that the company is allegedly building a logistics center dedicated to Latin America in the Gaolan port of the city of Zhuhai in China.
Over the past years, Infobae explained, China has increased its financing of the construction of highways, railroads, and other infrastructure projects in the region. China has also begun importing many of the Amazon’s basic products, such as iron, soy, and beef, which environmentalists often mention as causing widespread deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest.
Quote:The First Capital Command (PCC), Brazil’s largest transnational organized crime syndicate and Latin America’s largest drug trafficking gang, has managed to establish a foothold in Sydney, Australia, according to a report published by the Argentine news outlet Infobae on Thursday.
Infobae reported that, according to information reviewed by the news outlet and reports from the Australian Federal Police (AFP), PCC has set up two cells in Sydney operating in collaboration with a local motorcycle gang controlled by Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta mafia — one of the oldest Italian mafia organizations and a longstanding business partner of PCC in Brazil.
The PCC, described by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2021 as “the most powerful organized crime group in Brazil and among the most powerful in the world,” was originally founded by a group of inmates of Sao Paulo’s Taubaté Penitentiary in 1993 following a violent soccer match between inmates that ended with at least two dead.
Over the past 30 years, PCC has dramatically grown into a full-fledged transnational crime and drug trafficking syndicate boasting over 40,000 members and some 60,000 “contractors.” The PCC has expanded its activities beyond Brazil to the United States, as well as other South American, African, and European nations.
PCC is believed to have formed alliances with other South American drug trafficking organizations, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, which also has an active presence in the United States.
The criminal activities conducted by PCC — which range from murder, prison riots, drug and human trafficking, bank and highway robberies, kidnappings and ransom, money laundering, bribery, loan sharking, and obstruction of justice — reportedly have generated revenues of at least $1 billion since 2020.
"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.
By Ashley Oliver
Donald Trump’s defense attorney grilled Michael Cohen on Monday during the former president’s hush money trial on how Cohen lied about a reimbursement request in 2017 so that the Trump Organization would overpay him by tens of thousands of dollars.
Attorney Todd Blanche questioned Cohen during a third day of cross-examination about the reimbursement, which was incorporated into a larger $420,000 payment plan that is at the center of the charges Trump is facing.
A portion of the money Cohen received from the Trump Organization was a reimbursement for money Cohen paid to a technology company called Red Finch. Cohen admitted that although he told then-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg he was owed $50,000 for the Red Finch expense, he was, in fact, owed roughly $30,000 less than that.
...
“So you stole from the Trump Organization, right?” Blanche asked.
“Yes, sir,” Cohen said.
When asked how Cohen paid Red Finch back for the technology services, Cohen said he went across the street to TD Bank and “just took out cash over a couple of days.”
“You had, what, like a duffel bag of cash?” Blanche asked.
Cohen said he used a brown paper bag.
...
Cohen explained that when Weisselberg, who was crafting the payment plan, asked Cohen how much he needed for Red Finch, Cohen lied and said he needed $50,000 when really he only planned to pay the company $20,000.
The payment plan included a $130,000 reimbursement for Cohen after Cohen paid Daniels hush money in that amount right before the 2016 presidential election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, alleged Trump unlawfully concealed the payment in the Trump Organization’s records. The Trump Organization paid Cohen $420,000 for the technology services, the hush money payment, Cohen’s bonus for legal work he performed, and taxes — and the sum was all categorized as legal fees for Cohen in Trump’s business records.
Blanche’s questioning revealed how Cohen caused a portion of the overall payment to be faulty, and it underscored Cohen’s willingness to lie to Trump. It also undercut prosecutors’ allegation that Trump had detailed knowledge about the payment plan.
Cohen’s theft would have amounted to $60,000 because the amount he testified that he stole was doubled by Weisselberg in the payment plan to account for taxes.
Blanche also pressed Cohen about two phone calls he had on Oct. 26, 2016, during which Cohen claimed he spoke to Trump right before he took out a loan to pay Daniels.
Blanche highlighted how there were numerous significant events going on for Trump the morning of the calls, so it was possible Cohen was not discussing Daniels on those calls.
...
Blanche continued to cross-examine Cohen into Monday afternoon.
The deaths of Iran’s president and foreign minister left the country at a moment of regional and domestic tumult.
The deaths of Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, and foreign minister leave the country without two influential leaders at a particularly tumultuous moment of international tension and domestic discontent, although analysts and regional officials expect little change in Iran’s foreign or domestic policies.
Mr. Raisi, 63, and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian were killed on Sunday in a helicopter crash resulting from a “technical failure,” Iranian state news media reported. They were traveling from Iran’s border with Azerbaijan after inaugurating a dam project when their helicopter went down in a mountainous area near the city of Jolfa. Search and rescue teams scoured a rugged area of dense forest through rain and fog for hours before finding the crash site. There were no survivors.
By Michael Crowley
Following an official U.S. statement that said nothing specifically about Raisi’s record, Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, was scathing at a daily press briefing:
Matthew Miller, US State Department Spokesman Wrote:We have been quite clear that Ebrahim Raisi was a brutal participant in the repression of the Iranian people for nearly four decades.
Some of the worst human rights abuses occurred during his tenure as president — especially the human rights abuses against the women and girls of Iran. That said, we regret any loss of life, and don’t want to see anyone die in a helicopter crash.
Miller added that the Biden administration’s “fundamental approach to Iran has not changed and will not change,” and specifically noted that Americans would stand with Iranians pressing for “an open, free society and democratic participation.”
Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, dismissed a suggestion by a former Iranian foreign minister that American sanctions on Iran’s aviation industry were responsible for the crash.
Matthew Miller, US State Department Spokesman Wrote:Ultimately, it’s the Iranian government that is responsible for the decision to fly a 45-year-old helicopter in what was described as poor weather conditions, not any other actor.
Iran’s former foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, made the comments about American sanctions on Monday, according to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA.
By Leily Nikounazar and Vivian Yee
For some in Iran, the response wasn’t sorrowful.
When they learned that President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter had crashed on Sunday evening, the many Iranians for whom Mr. Raisi was one of the faces of a corrupt, brutally repressive regime waited with bated breath — hoping his era of influence had finally come to an end.
Gallows humor was all over social media. One user posted an image of a bear on X, writing, “Don’t disappoint us,” egging on the bears of the mountain where the helicopter had gone down to finish the job.
by Bailee HillBlack voters reacted to President Biden's commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta over the weekend, accusing him of "race baiting" while his support in the Black community continues to dissipate ahead of November.
New York resident Lou Valentino reacted to Biden's remarks during "Fox & Friends," accusing him of trying to set Black Americans back after his controversial speech.
Lou Valentino Wrote:Race baiter. It's tough to hear that because imagine you going to college for four years… ready to… hit the world, start a career, and… this guy is trying to set you back literally, I don't know, civil rights. I don't know what's going on with the Democrats. This role that they're trying to play, instead of… pulling up and saying, well, 'Here we go. This is your time. Congratulations. Let's kill it. Let's do our best.' Nah, you know what, Lawrence? They don't love you like that.
Speaking at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Biden questioned whether American democracy would work for the African-American graduates.
President Biden Wrote:You missed your high school graduation. You started college just as George Floyd was murdered, and there was a reckoning on race. It's natural to wonder if the 'democracy' you hear about actually works for you. What is democracy? That Black men are being killed in the street.
What is democracy? The trail of broken promises still leaves Black communities behind. What is democracy? You have to be ten times better than anyone else to get a fair shot. Most of all, what does it mean? As you've heard before, to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn't love him back in equal measure.
Virginia business owner Ajay Brewer reacted to Biden's remarks during "Fox & Friends First," echoing Valentino's sentiment while accusing the Democrats of stifling the freedom of Black voters.
Ajay Brewer Wrote:It's hopelessness, man… it's the party of hopelessness.
"I could say that… I was a Democrat my entire life until I opened my business… It's like a drug… victimhood, and, ‘We can do this for you,’ and to be honest with you the Black folks I surround myself with just want government to get out of the way.
We don't need folks to do things for us. We don't need people to baby us. It's kind of disturbing… that they pander to us in this manner because they can depend on us at a clip of 90% plus, but I think that's going to change this election.
Georgia independent voter Bernadette Wright Wrote:America is changing and people are becoming more sensitive to what's affecting us as individuals, as business owners, as parents. Not just because we're Black, not just because we're women, not just because we're men. They can't keep putting us in these race baskets.
Accountability season is here, and America is ready for someone who's ready to lead from a place of understanding that you're going to have to meet with the states, and you're going to have to meet with the local government if you want to affect individual communities on a micro level.
When it comes to me as an African American, I need you to pay attention to what's going on with my business. It's not always just about, 'Oh, you're Black, so you must need this in your community. They don't even know who we are at this point. We're just looking for somebody to come to the middle and lead.
Biden had also been accused of using the speech to cater to Black voters. After he was announced as commencement speaker in April, students and professors quickly called on the college to cancel the speech.
During the speech, a smattering of Morehouse students and faculty also protested Biden's speech by turning their backs on him.
The protest was not widespread, however, and those participating did not disrupt his address beyond showing their backs. The small protest was a reminder of the continued unrest at college campuses across the country, however, where anti-Israel protests have forced some universities to cancel their commencement ceremonies altogether.
He had hundreds of horror, science fiction and crime films to his credit. He also helped start the careers of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and many others.
by Aljean Harmetz
Roger Corman, who for decades dominated the world of B movies as the producer or director of countless proudly low-budget horror, science fiction and crime films, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 98.
His death was confirmed in a statement by his family posted late Saturday on his official Instagram page.
Mr. Corman produced more than 300 films and directed roughly 50 of them, including cult classics like “A Bucket of Blood” (1959), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964), “The Wild Angels” (1966) and the original “The Little Shop of Horrors” (1960), which he shot for $35,000 in two days on a set left over from somebody else’s movie.
When he got tired of directing, he opened the door to Hollywood for talented young protégés like Francis Ford Coppola (“Dementia 13”), Martin Scorsese (“Boxcar Bertha”), Jonathan Demme (“Caged Heat”), Peter Bogdanovich (“Targets”) and Ron Howard (“Grand Theft Auto”).
Martin Scorsese Wrote:Mr. Corman “was able to nurture other talent in a way that was never envious or difficult but always generous. He once said: ‘Martin, what you have to get is a very good first reel, because people want to know what’s going on. Then you need a very good last reel, because people want to hear how it all turns out. Everything else doesn’t really matter.’ Probably the best sense I have ever heard about the movies.
Among the others Mr. Corman nurtured was Jack Nicholson, who was 21 when Mr. Corman gave him his first movie role, the lead in “The Cry Baby Killer” (1958), and 23 when he had a small part as a masochistic dental patient in “The Little Shop of Horrors.” Before he went on to stardom, Mr. Nicholson acted in eight Corman movies and wrote three of them, including “The Trip,” an uncautionary tale about LSD.
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In addition to being remembered for the opportunities he gave young filmmakers, Mr. Corman was renowned for his ability to make movies with almost no money and even less time. In 1967, for example, Boris Karloff owed Mr. Corman two days’ work.
Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022) Wrote:Roger said: ‘I want you to take 20 minutes of Karloff footage from “The Terror,” then I want you to shoot 20 more minutes with Boris, and then I want you to shoot another 40 minutes with some other actors over 10 days. I can take the 20 and the 20 and the 40, and I’ve got a whole new 80-minute Karloff film.’
The result was the critically praised “Targets,” in which Mr. Karloff played an aging horror film star who confronts a deranged Vietnam veteran on a murderous rampage at a drive-in theater where one of his movies is playing.
In 1970 Mr. Corman formed his own production and distribution company, New World Pictures. What he did next surprised Hollywood: He became the American distributor of Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers.” The film earned Bergman nominations for Academy Awards in 1974 as writer and director; its cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, won an Oscar.
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He is survived by his wife, Julie, and his daughters, Catherine and Mary, according to the statement from his family.
Mr. Corman remained active into the 21st century. He produced for Netflix “Splatter” (2009), a three-part online horror series with a difference: Audience votes determined which characters would be killed. He produced intentionally cheesy monster movies like “Sharktopus” (2010), “Piranhaconda” (2012) and “CobraGator” (2016) for the Syfy channel.
He received an honorary Oscar in 2009, and in 2011 he was the subject of a well-received documentary feature, “Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel,” directed by Alex Stapleton.
Of some note, he produced a b-movie entitled "Deathrace 2000" with David Carradine. Fast forward a few decades and yes, Roger Corman is one of the executive producers of 2008's "Deathrace" starring Jason Statham.
Up is down, left is right and sideways is straight ahead. - Cord "Circle of Iron", 1978 (written by Bruce Lee and James Coburn... really...)
Quote:President Joe Biden claimed Monday to be outraged at the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants against Israeli officials for the war in Gaza — after Biden revoked President Donald Trump’s executive order against the ICC.
Biden reacted to the announcement Monday that the ICC was seeking warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant — as well as against three Hamas terrorist leaders.
In a statement, Biden said:
The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.
However, in April 2021, Biden effectively gave license to the ICC to pursue Israeli — and American — soldiers and leaders over alleged “war crimes” in the fight against radical Islamic terrorists.
As Breitbart News noted Monday, in April 2021, Biden revoked a June 2020 executive order by Trump that slapped sanctions on the ICC for attempting to investigate American and allied soldiers who were not party to the ICC.
In a statement at the time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged the anti-American and anti-Israel bias of the ICC. But he professed hope in “engagement with all stakeholders” and “a broad range of reforms” at the ICC.
Those reforms failed to materialize.
One of the lawyers consulted on the ICC arrest warrants was Amal Clooney — the wife of Hollywood star George Clooney.
The Clooneys are set to host a “star-studded LA fundraiser” for Biden next month.
Quote:House Intelligence Committee leaders and members on Monday called for the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with American provided weapons under certain conditions.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael Turner (R-OH), Ranking Member Jim Himes (D-CT), Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA), and other committee lawmakers wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, urging the Biden administration to convey their “strong support” for the Ukrainians’ request during their protracted conflict with Russia.
Most notably, the intelligence committee lawmakers want Biden to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with American provided weapons:
Our Ukrainian allies are requesting permission to use certain weapons provided by the United States to conduct operations on strategic targets inside Russian and Russian-controlled territory. According to a May 14th report by Politico, the Biden Administration’s current policy is handcuffing Ukraine’s ability to push back on Russian forces near Kharkiv with U.S.-origin weapons. Ukrainian officials have watched for weeks as Russian troops have attacked Ukrainian communities from Russian territory with impunity. Ukrainians have been unable to defend themselves due to the Administration’s current policy. It is essential the Biden Administration allows Ukraine’s military leaders an ability to conduct a full spectrum of operations necessary to respond to Russia’s unprovoked attack on their sovereign land. [Emphasis added]
The lawmakers also want the Biden administration to train more F-16 pilots to “replace Ukraine’s aging and declining fleet of MiG-29s, Su-24s, and Su-25s.”
“According to the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. is on track to graduate only 12 pilots from F-16 training by the end of 2024. Graduating 12 Ukrainian pilots is simply insufficient. Ukraine is at war and slots for Ukraine must be prioritized over other foreign countries,” Turner, Himes, and the other congressmen wrote.
“To meet this continued and unrelenting threat, our allies have requested upwards of seven (7) additional Patriot batteries to protect large urban areas in Ukraine,” the lawmakers added.
Quote:A migrant from the Dominican Republic told reporters that New York’s government is not living up to its promises to help migrants settle in American neighborhoods and to be handed freebies and jobs.
Yaniry Pena spoke through tears to WHEC-TV in a video posted Friday, and blasted officials of New York’s Monroe County for making life much harder than she expected.
According to the report, Pena and her children left their Dominican Republic home and made their way to El Salvador and embarked on a dangerous month and a half trip to the border where they crossed into the U.S.A.
Pena says that she has been traumatized by how she has been treated in New York as she spoke to the news outlet through an interpreter because she speaks no English.
“It’s very traumatic,” the bitter Pena said. “She says it’s been quite traumatic. Everything that has been told to us to come to Monroe County, to Rochester hasn’t been fulfilled.”
After crossing the border, Pena says she made her way to New York and then enrolled in a free housing program in Rochester. When she and her children arrived, they were given a room at the Holiday Inn Downtown for four months before being moved into a free duplex.
Pena said that the living space does not have gas or electric and she still hasn’t qualified for a work permit, even after being in the U.S. for a year.
Quote:On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas argued that the Biden administration “took action” to help secure the border “a long time ago” and has “been enforcing the law from day one,” but sometimes policies take time to have an impact.
While discussing the Senate immigration bill, host Neil Cavuto asked, “Alright, but the President’s doing a lot of things that are in this measure already, and a lot of people criticize him for doing that, what took you so long? Including this measure to shut down the border once there are 4,000 crossings a day, some of these other things to speed up asylum adjudication and try to get it done in 180 days rather than waiting for years, stuff that President Biden could have done all along but didn’t, doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
Mayorkas responded, “Neil, we took action a long time ago. And migration is a very dynamic phenomenon and we are seeing the results, that take time to take hold. We built capabilities in foreign countries, in Guatemala, in Costa Rica, in Mexico as well. And sometimes, they don’t develop overnight, they take time to mature, and we’ll continue to take actions within the confines of our authorities. We need Congress to act.”
Cavuto then asked, “But I guess it struck a lot of people as odd — no disrespect, Secretary, Chad Wolf, your predecessor, was among those saying, we’re almost three and a half years into a crisis, and only now are they starting to take these executive actions, these are actions that we had been pleading with the administration to take for two and a half to three years. What do you say to that?”
Mayorkas answered, “That’s not accurate. That’s what I say. We implemented the asylum officer rule through regulation. We implemented the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule through regulation. We have built additional facilities, deployed enforcement and removal operations officers. This year, we have removed or returned more than 720,000 people who do not qualify for relief under the law, more than any full fiscal year since 2011. We’ve been enforcing the law from day one, despite the political rhetoric that suggests otherwise.”
Now I know for sure why things aren't getting quiet down here in Costa Rica...
Quote:The faculty of Harvard University voted overwhelmingly Monday to reinstate 13 seniors who had been denied permission to graduate by Harvard’s administrative board due to their actions in the pro-Palestinian “encampment.”
The Harvard Crimson reported:
Members of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences overwhelmingly voted to add 13 students back to the list of degrees recommended for conferral in May after the students were initially barred from graduating at Commencement over their participation in the pro-Palestine encampment.
The vote, which took place at the FAS’ degree meeting Monday afternoon, amounted to a stunning rebuke of the Harvard College Administrative Board’s decision to suspend five students and place at least 20 more on probation for violating University policies during the 20-day encampment in Harvard Yard.
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The matter will now be passed along to Harvard’s governing boards: the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers. According to the University’s governing statutes, following faculty approval, degrees are conferred “by vote of the Corporation, with the consent of the Overseers.”
The vote sets up a fight between the faculty and the powerful “Ad Board.”
The “encampment” disrupted campus life for nearly three weeks, staging protests in the middle of the final exam period. Jewish students said that they felt unsafe, especially given the use of antisemitic, militant slogans.
Harvard effectively granted many of the activists’ demands, including meetings to discuss divesting from Israel.
Quote:During a speech in New Hampshire on Tuesday discussing the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, President Joe Biden seemingly had trouble pronouncing the name of the legislation.
Biden highlighted the success of the PACT Act, which expanded health care and other benefits to veterans who were exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, or other toxic chemicals. The PACT Act was signed into law on August 10, 2022.
As he was closing out his speech, Biden seemed to butcher the name of the PACT Act, referring to it as the “pacandlpacatlackack.”
“Let me close with this,” Biden said. “After I signed the pacandlpacatlackack into law, I handed the pen and I signed it with a wiszzfschuna, the most person most responsible for the legislation to a widow and her daughter of a late Sgt. First Class Heath Robinson.”
At the beginning of Biden’s speech, he referenced his eldest and late son, Beau Biden, who died from brain cancer in May 2015, roughly six years after he had served in Iraq.
Biden has often blamed burn pits for his son’s brain cancer.
“I’m proud to announce the VA just granted its one millionth PACT Act claim, one millionth. It’s a major milestone, providing $5.7 million in benefits to 890,000 veterans and their families so far in hand, including 3,000 here in New Hampshire,” Biden said. “It matters because too many service members have not only braved the battlefield, but they also while breathing in toxic fumes and burn from burn pits.”
Biden continued to add that his son, Beau, was “one of those veterans” who had been exposed to toxic fumes from burn pits.
“So, this is personal to me and my family, and to his family and his children,” Biden added.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced in a press release on Tuesday that the department expected “to grant its one millionth PACT ACT-related disability compensation claims to Veterans” since Biden had signed the legislation.
A Harvard-Harris poll from the beginning of May showed that a plurality of voters feel that Biden is “getting worse” as he continues to serve as president. The poll found that 47 percent think Biden has gotten worse, while 29 percent have expressed he is improving.
Quote:Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is losing another senior staffer, continuing a troubling senior staff exodus in the Speaker’s office.
Raj Shah, Speaker Johnson’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, is leaving the Speaker’s office soon, multiple sources told Breitbart News. It was confirmed by Axios Tuesday night after Breitbart News alerted Johnson’s office of an imminent story.
Shah was one of Johnson’s first hires after ascending to the speakership. Shah has been the Speaker’s key messaging staffer since being hired in October, assembling the Speaker’s extensive communications staff largely from scratch.
When confronted late Tuesday evening and told by Breitbart News that this report was forthcoming, Shah did not deny his intent to resign from Johnson’s office but instead asked Breitbart to hold the story. Breitbart declined his request.
Shortly after Breitbart made clear to Shah the intent to break the story, Axios published a story with quotes from Shah and Speaker Mike Johnson.
“Because of the unprecedented circumstances under which I became Speaker, I needed an experienced leader with talent and gravitas to build and drive our message,” Johnson told Axios. “I am grateful Raj agreed to step up and serve. He has become a trusted advisor and built an incredible communications team. Raj has fulfilled his commitment to us and I wish him continued success.”
The team Shah assembled has begun to break apart. At least one communications staffer has left the office recently under murky circumstances.
Sources confirmed to Notus that Anang Mittal, who had served as the Head of Digital for Johnson, had resigned after complaints were made about his performance in the workplace and alleged unprofessional behavior.
Quote:While the Islamic world expressed their condolences for the death of the Iranian President called by critics the “butcher of Tehran”, the European Union stood out among the democratic West by joining in.
Several political leaders of Iran were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday, apparently as their aircraft got into difficulty in bad weather as it returned to the country from neighbouring Azerbaijan. Among those onboard the downed helicopter was Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and the governor of one of Iran’s northern provinces Malek Rahmati, as well as other members of their entourage and crew, Anadolu Agency states.
Breitbart News reported on Ebrahim Raisi in 2023 when he was welcomed to the United States by the Biden White House to attend the United Nations in New York, despite the then-Iranian President being subject to U.S. sanctions for “complicity in serious human rights violations”. Raisi had long before earned the nickname the “Butcher of Tehran” and put on the sanctions list for having “participated in a so-called ‘death commission’ that ordered the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.”
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While Iranian allies were quick to send condolences, Western states have been more circumspect. Nevertheless, European Council President Charles Michel, a Belgian centrist-liberal, was quick to make an expression on behalf of the whole European Union, he said.
Michel wrote on Monday morning: “The EU expresses its sincere condolences for the death of President Raisi and Foreign Minister Abdollahian, as well as other members of their delegation and crew in a helicopter accident. Our thoughts go to the families.”
Theo Francken, a Eurosceptic Member of Parliament also from Belgium who formerly served in that country’s government as immigration minister and who is active in NATO’s middle east group expressed concern at the European message. Responding first to the announcement that the EU was acting in “solidarity” with Iran to help it in the immediate aftermath of the crash, the politician stated: “Are you totally crazy? This guy is a first class mass murderer.
“What’s next? Saving [Putin]? What a club of geopolitical dwarfs is this EU commission”.
What about lamenting how many girls Raisi killed during his tenure as president and even before that?
Quote:The International Criminal Court seeking warrants for the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister and Defence Secretary is “deeply unhelpful” and created a false moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said.
The British government has criticised the International Criminal Court (ICC) for deciding to seek arrest warrants against Israeli figures including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the same time as leading Hamas figures. Speaking during a summit with the Austrian leadership in Vienna on Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “This is a deeply unhelpful development. Of course it is still subject to a final decision, but it remains deeply unhelpful nonetheless”.
He continued, reports the Daily Telegraph: “There is no moral equivalence between a democratic state exercising its lawful right to self-defence and the terrorist group Hamas. It is wrong to conflate and equivocate between those two different entities.”
Sunak’s remarks echo those of U.S. President Biden, who lifted a Trump executive order against the ICC, apparently reasoning the court’s anti-Israel bias could be resolved, and who said yesterday that the application for a warrant is “outrageous”. President Biden said: “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
Underlining the British government position was cabinet minister Michael Gove on Tuesday who told The Times: “There’s a particular narrative that some are seeking to run at the moment which is intended to hold Israel to higher standards than anyone else — double standards — and to de-legitimise Israel for a host of reasons.” The court works to double standards, he said, seeking to arrest Netanyahu but not Syria’s leader Bashar al-Assad, who has waged war against his own territories in the course of a bitter civil war for years.
Yet the British government is shortly up for renewal in the national general election, and according to polling seems likely to be replaced with a left-wing administration that could be called considerably less sympathetic towards Israel than the Conservatives are. Labour’s pick to be Britain’s next foreign minister David Lammy, a SOAS and Harvard-trained lawyer, used a legalistic approach to condone the ICC’s move against Israel, saying as a signatory of the court’s founding treaty, the UK has a “legal obligation” to fall in line.
Germany Comments on ICC Warrants, France Supports Them
Quote:France “supports the International Criminal Court”, saying it had previously warned Israel about “strict compliance with international humanitarian law,” in the wake of the ICC announcement that it would be seeking an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has said it is seeking arrest warrants for several leading Israeli figures including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their defence minister. In a break with the United States and the United Kingdom, both of which decried the move, France says it is standing behind the court. But there is no European solidarity on the matter, seemingly, as neighbouring Germany — the other pole of power in the European Union — is far more circumspect, asserting Israel has the right to self-defence.
The French diplomatic service responded to the news the ICC was seeking to issue warrants against both Israeli and Hamas figures — creating a moral equivalence between the parties, critics say — by citing the court’s independence as inviolable. They said, Le Figaro recorded: “France supports the International Criminal Court, its independence, and the fight against impunity in all situations.”
France previously condemned the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7th, the communique said, but it ultimately concluded that Israel had failed to heed France’s instructions on how to fight the war.
It continued: “France has been warning for many months about the imperative of strict compliance with international humanitarian law and in particular about the unacceptable nature of civilian losses in the Gaza Strip and insufficient humanitarian access”.
Quote:WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been granted the right to appeal his extradition to the United States by London’s High Court on Monday as judges found assurances from the American legal team were unsatisfactory.
Julian Assange’s fight to avoid being sent to face espionage charges in the United States received a significant victory, as two judges found that assurances from the U.S. that they would not prevent the Australian Wikileaks founder from appealing to the free speech protections guaranteed under the First Amendment during a trial were not sufficient, Reuters reports.
Therefore, the judges ruled that Assange’s appeal against the extradition to the United States could go forward.
The British High Court deferred deciding on the appeal in March, saying that Assange would be granted the right to appeal if the Biden administration failed to provide the court with assurances that America would not seek the death penalty against the Wikileaks founder and “that the applicant [Assange] is permitted to rely on the first amendment, that the applicant is not prejudiced at trial, including sentence, by reason of his nationality, that he is afforded the same first amendment [free speech] protections”.
The hearing on Monday centred around the issue of the First Amendment, with Assange’s lawyers accepting that Washington had provided an “unambiguous executive promise” not to seek the death penalty.
The United States has indicted Mr Assange on 17 counts of espionage and computer misuse, accusing him of collaborating with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) to steal classified documents, which the U.S. has claimed endangered the lives of American intelligence officials and sources. The WikiLeaks founder faces up to 175 years in prison if convicted in the United States.
Quote:The Conservative Party’s mass migration policies are responsible for over a third of the post-coronavirus surge in rental prices in Britain, an analysis has found.
Between mid-2021 and the end of 2023, rent rose in Britain by an average of 30 per cent, of which migration contributed 11 per cent, according to a breakdown from the Capital Economics research firm. Putting the rise into context, during the entire ten years before the coronavirus, rent only rose by 26 per cent.
The firm noted that while rent traditionally increased roughly in line with wages, with wages rising by 27 per cent during the decade before 2021 compared to a 26 per cent rent hike, between mid-2021 and the end of 2023, wages only increased by 17 per cent, compared to the 30 per cent rent spike, adding further fuel to the cost of living crisis in the country.
The anylisis found that the open borders agenda of the poorly-named Conservative government resulted in additional 430,000 households seeking to rent properties between mid-2021 and June of 2023. With approximately 4.9 million rentals within the country, the influx of foreigners drove up demand by nearly nine per cent, Capital Economics said.
Andrew Wishart, the head of the housing service at Capital Economics, told The Telegraph that this was approximately three times the average of 150,000 additional households seeking rentals over every two year period in the preceding decade.
Ben Brindle of the Migration Observatory said: “It just comes back to supply and demand. If you have population growth and the housing stock is not growing as fast, that puts pressure on rents.
Quote:Slovak police are investigating whether the suspected gunman who attempted to kill Prime Minister Robert Fico was not, as initially claimed, a “lone wolf” but had an accomplice.
Left wing terrorist or out-of-control lone wolf, little is officially acknowledged about the alleged gunman, who tried to kill Prime Minister Robert Fico last week. Yet despite the order by the government for police not to reveal his name, a series of leaks and briefings to the press, the identity of the accused Juraj Cintula, his political past, and even his taped confession have been widely disseminated in national and foreign media.
At first it was said Cintula was a “lone gunman”, but now Minister of the Interior Matúš Šutaj Eštok has announced the investigation team is investigating whether he had accomplices. One such line of inquiry is that hours after the attack — while Cintula was in police custody and had no means to do so himself — his Facebook chat history was wiped.
Police have discounted the possibility it was the work of the suspect’s wife, given she lacked the technical competency, reports Konzervatívny denník Postoj (‘The Conservative Daily Post’). The team is also investigating whether Cintula was in chat groups where killing the Prime Minister may have been discussed, or joked about.
Meanwhile, Fico — who was by all accounts close to death after last week’s shooting and survived after a major five hour surgery — is still improving, but remains very unwell. A deputy director of the F. D. Roosevelt University Hospital in Banská Bystrica where Fico is being treated said the recovery “will take a long time” and he still needs rest to convalesce.
The hospital itself said in a separate statement that Fico’s condition is stable, “improving clinically”, inflammation is “slowly decreasing”, and he is communicating.
Pedro Sanchez Didn't Like to Hear About Milei's Joke at All
Quote:A full-blown diplomatic clash has erupted between Spain and Argentina, with Madrid recalling its ambassador to Buenos Aires after libertarian firebrand Javier Milei joked about the corruption accusations against the wife of Spanish socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez over the weekend.
The relations between Spain and Argentina are at a “peak of maximum tension” according to the Spanish paper of record El Mundo, with the Palace of Moncloa recalling its ambassador to the South American nation after its outspoken president, Javier Milei, appeared to refer to Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, as “the corrupt woman” during a speech at a populist party conference in Madrid on Sunday in which he railed against “cancerous” socialism for leading to “slavery and death”.
Sánchez was seemingly so triggered by President Milei’s jibes that he refused to even refer to the president by name, saying: “I am aware that whoever spoke yesterday did not do so on behalf of the great Argentine people. Spain and Argentina are two brother countries, whose people love and respect each other. Between governments, affection is free, but respect is inalienable.”
“Defending Spanish institutions from insults and defamations that foreign leaders may make does not mean ifs or buts, because beyond the ideological is education and patriotism,” Sánchez added.
In an attempt to capitalise on the scandal ahead of the European Parliament elections, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares went on to lay the blame for the diplomatic row at the feet of populist VOX party leader Santiago Abascal, who hosted the VIVA24 conference in Madrid on Sunday which featured Milei as a speaker.
“In this demand for an apology, the one who must apologize first is Abascal and VOX, for having cheered and laughed at those insults,” said Albares.
What about the current leader of Spain insulting the Spanish institutions by letting a First Wife be as corrupt as no other PM's wife has ever been? Or why didn't he resign as the leader of the Parliament right after being exposed?
"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:President Joe Biden revealed that his administration will be canceling more than $7 billion in student debt for 160,000 people.
The White House issued a statement Wednesday announcing that 160,000 people in the United States would have their student loans canceled, erasing a total of $7.7 billion in student debt for those people.
In June 2023, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision to block Biden’s plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt for almost 40 million people.
“Today, my Administration is canceling student debt for 160,000 more people, bringing the total number of Americans who have benefitted from our debt relief actions to 4.75 million,” Biden said in the statement. “Each of those borrowers has received an average of over $35,000 in debt cancellation.”
Biden explained that the 160,000 people who were having their student debt forgiven were people working as teachers, nurses, or even in law enforcement who had enrolled in the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan.
Biden’s latest announcement comes after he announced in April that his administration would be canceling student debt for more than 270,000 people. Those who had their student debt canceled in April were borrowers who were enrolled in Biden’s SAVE Plan.
Quote:Five officials from Cuba’s communist regime — a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism — conducted a secret guided tour of Miami’s International Airport on Monday hosted by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
The secret tour, which reportedly lasted approximately five hours, is part of alleged “law-enforcement cooperation” between both countries and saw Castro regime officials visit the TSA’s control facilities in Miami’s airport, which contain some of the agency’s sensitive computer systems.
The visit of the Castro regime officials prompted the condemnation of the Cuban diaspora in Florida as well as that of local Miami-Dade County and airport personnel, who were allegedly unaware of the planned visit.
Cuba has been designated by the United States as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) due to the communist Castro regime’s deep ties with several international terrorist organizations such as the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Shiite jihadist organization Hezbollah, and Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Marxist terrorist groups.
The Castro regime also maintains ties with the Sunni jihadist terrorist group Hamas and has repeatedly condemned Israel for conducting self-defense operations against Hamas following the terrorist group’s unprecedented October 7 terrorist attack on Israeli territory that left over 1,200 dead and hundreds of hostages.
Cuba appeared on the SST list from 1982 until 2015, when former President Barack Obama, who exercised a friendly stance towards the rogue communist regime, had Cuba removed. Cuba was reintroduced to the list in January 2021 during the administration of former President Donald Trump.
While Cuba presently remains on the United States’ SST list, the administration of President Joe Biden removed Cuba last week from the list of countries that are “not cooperating fully” with the United States in the fight against terrorism.
According to State Secretary Anthony Blinken, Cuba’s inclusion on the list was “no longer appropriate” due to Cuban officials and U.S. law enforcement officials “once again” working together on counterterrorism and other related efforts.
The Castro regime’s TSA-guided tour of the Miami international airport occurred on May 20, Cuban Independence Day. With some minimal aid from the United States, Cuba seceded from Spain on May 20, 1902.
Blood Vials as Part of an Alleged Terrorist Attack?
Quote:Vials of blood in a package addressed to former President Donald Trump were sent to the Republican National Committee (RNC) headquarters, sending the office into lockdown for what Chairman Michael Whatley called a “biological attack.”
A hazmat team was called, and staff were forced to evacuate the Washington, DC, headquarters on Wednesday morning after two vials containing blood from an unknown source were delivered, the New York Post reported.
“Today, vials of blood were sent to RNC Headquarters in DC. We are thankful to law enforcement, who responded quickly and ensured everyone’s safety,” Whatley said in a statement after the building was deemed safe.
“The lockdown has been cleared and staff has resumed their office duties because we remain unintimidated and undeterred in our efforts to elect President Trump to the White House,” he continued.
“This revolting attack comes on the heels of pro-Hamas protestors violently demonstrating on college campuses and deranged Biden supporters physically attacking our campaign volunteers for supporting President Trump,” the GOP leader added.
While Whatley did not confirm to whom the package was addressed, a source familiar with the incident told the Associated Press that Trump’s name was on it.
It is unclear if any message accompanied the biohazard.
Capitol Police announced on X that the package was “cleared by our Hazardous Incident Response Division.”
“The source of the package & its contents will be further investigated,” police added.
Quote:Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Wednesday appeared to back allowing Ukraine to use American-provided weapons to strike Russia or Russian-controlled territory.
One reporter asked Johnson about a House Intelligence Committee letter calling on the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with American-supplied weapons.
The letter stipulates that this would allow Ukraine to strike “Russian-controlled territory” as well as Russian territory and represents a significant escalation in America’s seemingly endless proxy war against Russia.
When asked about the letter and if Ukraine should be allowed to strike Russia with American-provided weapons, he said, “I think we need to allow Ukraine to prosecute the war the way they see fit. They need to be able to fight back. And I think us trying to micromanage the effort there – it’s not a good policy for us.”
This would not be the first time that Johnson has taken an unabashedly pro-Ukraine position.
Johnson has pushed, and passed, the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act (REPO Act), which Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has said would hamstring a future Donald Trump presidency and potentially drive allies toward competing financial systems that Russia and China control.
“The REPO Act, currently debated in the House, would freeze the Russia sanctions in place and require an act of Congress to change. House Republicans must not pass legislation that makes it impossible for Donald Trump to engage in diplomacy,” Vance wrote.
In his memo to Republicans, Vance said that the REPO Act could cause significant blowback to America, including:
Hampering the U.S. Treasuries markets and hindering America’s ability to meet debt obligations
Tying the hands of a future president, including former President Donald Trump
Empowering Russia and China at the expense of the U.S. financial system
The majority of the bill’s provisions are shielded from judicial review
So he'd love the idea of officially declaring WW3 against Russia or wait for Putin to do it first.
Quote:FBI agents were authorized to use “deadly force” if necessary during the raid of Mar-a-Lago when seizing suspected classified documents, according to court filings recently unsealed by Judge Aileen Cannon in the Trump documents case in Florida.
The filings revealed there was an “Operations Order” that contained a “Policy Statement” regarding the “Use of Deadly Force” when seizing documents at Former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
It said, “Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary,” as first highlighted by journalist Julie Kelly.
The authorization of deadly force prompted shock and outrage from former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Trump posted on Truth Social:
WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the “Icebox,” and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!
The FBI issued a statement, arguing that it followed “standard protocol.”
“The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force. No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter,” the statement said, according to ABC News.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump’s defense has rested in the New York business records trial, and closing arguments are set for Tuesday, May 28, 2024.
Trump’s defense rested after finishing questioning Michael Cohen’s former adviser, Robert Costello, shortly after court commenced, as the Hill noted. Jurors will have a full week off before hearing the arguments, as Justice Juan Merchan set closing arguments for Tuesday, May 28.
Merchan cited Memorial Day as a factor in his decision to set closing arguments on May 28, saying, “There is no way we can do what needs to be done in any cohesive manner” before the holiday.
He expects the prosecution and defense’s arguments to last a day and “hopes deliberations will start on Wednesday, May 29,” as the New York Times noted.
Per the Hill, Trump’s team and prosecutors are set to meet later in the day “to debate proposed charges, referring to the legal instructions the judge gives jurors before they begin deliberations.”
Trump ultimately did not testify when the defense presented its case. It was unclear in the lead-up to Tuesday whether he would testify, with one of his attorneys, Todd Blanche, telling Merchan Trump had not decided if he would take the stand.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case, which was brought by Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Bragg’s office alleges Trump committed these offenses by concealing an alleged $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Prosecutors’ case took a hit during Cohen’s cross-examination, as the disgraced former attorney admitted Monday to stealing tens of thousands from the Trump organization, as Fox News reported.
Quote:The large container ship which allided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge, closing the mouth of the Baltimore Harbour in March was floated off and started its journey to a temporary berth for repairs on Monday.
The Singapore-registered MV Davi moved for the first time since March 26th on Monday after it was refloated off the remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge pier, bringing the bridge crashing down. Proceeding at less than one mile an hour, the Davi is expected to be alongside at a marine terminal inside Boston Harbour for initial repairs within three hours.
The ship had been trapped under the remains of the bridge, but last week engineers blew demolition charges which had been painstakingly placed over key joints of the truss’s structure in the preceding weeks, bringing the remains down. That wreckage cleared away and an underwater survey for hidden hazards completed, preparations for todays’ move began on Sunday, with tugs put on standby, anchors and lines mooring the ship in place cut, and some of the 1.25 million gallons of water in the ballast pumped out to regain buoyancy.
The move began a little before five-thirty eastern time Monday morning with high tide, and saw a group of tugs pull the MV Davi north. Once alongside, its containers will be removed for forwarding on other ships or else return to their owners, and patching-up repairs will commence. Once those initial repairs are complete, the MV Davi will be moved — either under tug or its own power — to a larger shipbuilding facility where permanent repairs and recommissioning can take place.
Meanwhile, the path to completely reopening Baltimore Harbour after the March bridge collapse nears, with the Maryland-led Key Bridge Response group saying it expects the 50-foot dredged Federal Channel to be reopened by the end of this month.
Quote:One female Georgia college student is dead after an armed intruder entered the campus and shot her near a bus stop, leaving other students shaken.
The shooting occurred Saturday afternoon at Kennesaw State University, leading to one victim’s death and the arrest of the suspect, WSB-TV reported.
While the school did not release the identity of the victim, university officials confirmed that she was “fatally shot on campus” and that there is currently “no threat to the campus community.”
KSU police and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are working on the case, the school added.
The deadly attack took place on Campus Loop Road, where students typically wait for the bus.
“All I heard was bop, bop, bop, seven or eight times,” said Robert Bowns, who was studying nearby when the shooting occurred. “Five minutes later, I get a report from the campus that there was an armed intruder on campus.”
The KSU Alert emails and social media posts went out shortly after 4:00 p.m., telling students and faculty to “seek shelter in a secure location until further notice.”
Quote:Authorities have opened an investigation into how Matthew Perry received the supply of ketamine that killed him, police said Tuesday.
Los Angeles police are working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with a probe into why the 54-year-old “Friends” star had so much of the drug in his system, LAPD Capt. Scot Williams said in an email.
An assistant found the 54-year-old Perry face down in his hot tub on Oct. 28, and paramedics who were called immediately declared him dead. His autopsy, released in December, found that the amount of ketamine in his blood was in the range used for general anesthesia during surgery. It was listed as the primary cause of death, which was ruled an accident with no foul play suspected, the report said.
Drowning and other medical issues were contributing factors, the coroner said.
The investigation was first reported by TMZ.
People close to the actor told coroner’s investigators that he was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy. The decades-old surgical drug has seen a huge surge in use in recent years as a treatment for depression, anxiety and pain.
But the medical examiner said Perry’s last treatment 1 1/2 weeks earlier wouldn’t explain the levels of ketamine in his blood. The drug is typically metabolized in a matter of hours. At least two doctors were treating Perry, a psychiatrist and an anesthesiologist who served as his primary care physician, the medical examiner’s report said. No illicit drugs or paraphernalia were found at his house.
Perry had years of struggles with addiction dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest television stars of his generation as Chandler Bing alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit sitcom.
Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Way Too Early,” Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) acknowledged that “It is very difficult, once you get aid into Israel, as the United States is finding out now, to ensure that it’s being distributed and getting to Gazans, and that is a huge problem that goes beyond what Israel is or isn’t doing, that it is Hamas and others who are diverting these trucks.” But argued that it’s important to work with Israel to ensure aid gets to people. He also said that there’s an issue because Hamas won’t release hostages and agree to a ceasefire.
Landsman said, “Surging humanitarian aid is a top priority. It has to be a top priority. I was in Israel a couple of months ago, that was the primary mission or objective of our trip, was to pressure all those involved, not just Israel, to surge humanitarian aid, create those conditions. It is very difficult, once you get aid into Israel, as the United States is finding out now, to ensure that it’s being distributed and getting to Gazans, and that is a huge problem that goes beyond what Israel is or isn’t doing, that it is Hamas and others who are diverting these trucks. And so, working with Israel to create those conditions, those humanitarian corridors is critically important. The challenge, obviously, is that Hamas has these hostages, refuses to release the hostages or agree to any ceasefire that’s been proposed, and we need, obviously, for Hamas to agree to a ceasefire. And, if they don’t, for Israel to pursue ending Hamas, getting these hostages out in the most surgical and disciplined way possible.”
Quote:Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) demanded to know from Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday why the Biden administration was placing conditions on Israel that it was not placing on Ukraine, since both were attacked without provocation.
Ukraine is restricted in its use of some American weapons — for example, it may not use U.S. weapons to launch attacks inside Russian territory (much to the dismay of hawkish organizations such as the Atlantic Council).
However, as Perry pointed out in questioning Blinken at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Biden administration has withheld weapons from Israel in an attempt to deter Israel from attacking Hamas in Rafah.
Rafah is a city in southern Gaza where Hamas has concentrated its last battalions. It is also a strategic location that controls access to the Egyptian border. Israel believes that it is the key to victory against Hamas.
But Blinken and the Biden administration have said for months that the danger to civilians of an attack on Rafah is too great. Blinken said again Wednesday that there are other ways to remove Hamas — and did not elaborate.
Perry noted that the Biden administration had insisted that the Israeli government present a comprehensive plan for postwar Gaza.
Yet he said that the administration had made no such demands on Ukraine with regard to territories liberated from Russian control. Blinken claimed that he had laid out a plan in a recent speech in Ukraine (which focused on democracy and reform).
But as Perry noted, Blinken had not provided details of that plan to Congress.
Quote:A California Catholic middle school student was “completely humiliated” by his principal forbidding him from delivering his speech on patriotism before calling the cops on his father for confronting her.
Jimmy Heyward, a 13-year-old student at Saint Bonaventure Catholic School in Orange County, spent hours on his campaign speech as he ran for Commissioner of School Spirit and Patriotism, his parents said.
His mom, Hattie Ruggles, claimed in a petition that principal Mary Flock told Jimmy to remove “everything about patriotism” from his speech, “even though ‘Patriotism’ was a part of the position’s title that he was running for.”
The speech features Jimmy calling for students to respect the National Anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, veterans, and other typical aspects of American patriotism.
Jimmy even stated in his speech that he wanted to “coordinate with Ms. Flock” to organize events for “Holocaust survivors, 9/11 survivors, Japanese-Americans from internment camps, and more.”
“My love for America is my motivation for running,” the teen said. “It is an honor to live in this country.”
A video of Jimmy delivering his full speech at home also features the outspoken student wearing a red hat with the words “Make SBS [Saint Bonaventure School] Great Again.”
Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected calls from French leader Emmanuel Macron for a truce with Russia during the Paris Olympics and criticised the West for seeking a swift end to the war.
The ancient tradition stretching back to Ancient Greece of a truce during the games will likely not be observed during this year’s Olympics in Paris, which will be held from July 26th to August 11th in the French capital.
While French President Emmanuel Macron proposed last month using the occasion for a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, it appears that neither Kyiv nor Moscow are interested in heeding the call for peace.
Responding to Macron’s suggestion in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Friday, President Zelensky argued that an Olympics truce would only be used by Russia to its benefit by moving troops and equipment without fear of being attacked by Ukraine.
“If it’s a truce, an Olympic truce for the duration of the Olympics, a land truce, they will have an advantage,” he said, saying that there is “a risk that they will bring heavy equipment to our territory and no one will be able to stop them”.
“We are against any truce that plays into the hands of the enemy,” Zelensky declared.
The Ukrainian president said that he previously expressed his concerns about the proposal directly to Macron, saying that he told the French president: “Let’s be honest… Emmanuel, I don’t believe it… First of all, we don’t trust Putin”.
Quote:Courts in England are reportedly looking to scrap the requirement for barristers to wear traditional wigs amid claims that they discriminate against lawyers with “Afro-Caribbean hair”.
The iconic manner of dress in English courtrooms may become wokism’s latest scalp as demands have been made to abandon the requirement of barristers to wear wigs in front of the court because they are “culturally insensitive”, The Telegraph reports.
A common practice dating back to at least 1685, the wearing of wigs came under scrutiny following an incident in 2022 when Michael Etienne, a black barrister with a large afro hairstyle, claimed that he faced being in contempt of court if he refused to wear a wig while claiming that the demand represented a form of “hair discrimination”.
While wigs are still required in the crown court, the Court of Appeal, and the High Court, the requirement was ended in 2007 for family, civil and Supreme Court cases in 2007.
Arguing in favour of scrapping the tradition entirely, mixed-race barrister Rachel Bale said that wigs are “not fit for purpose” for people with some black hairstyles.
“Something overlooked often in black culture is that your hair is so inexplicably important and it is completely interwoven with your identity,” she claimed.
Prominent barrister Leslie Thomas KC, also of African descent, has described the wigs as a “ridiculous costume” which allegedly represents the “culturally insensitive climate” in the British judicial system.
“The wigs certainly should go. There isn’t any place in a modern society for barristers to be wearing 17th-century fashion,” he said this week, adding that other “archaic” dress code items should also be scrapped, including bands, collarettes, and wing collars.
A spokesman for the Bar Council said: “Following questions from barristers about wigs and hair discrimination, the Bar Council set up a working group to consider court dress in the context of all protected characteristics.
“The findings of the working group are currently being discussed with the judiciary as part of our regular dialogue on equality and diversity matters.”
Quote:Top Russian diplomat accuses Western countries of being led by “gopniks” — slang for violent petty criminals — and fashionistas, and asserts NATO is the root of all conflict in Europe, but stops short of examining Russia’s own role in the war.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has a long list of complaints against the United States, from political incompetence, provocation, to rewriting history, and to causing nuclear brinkmanship. Russia is innocent of these crimes, apparently, but America’s Western allies are mindless “fashionistas” dancing to the mood music coming from Washington, whatever it might be, the politician railed.
Russia has constantly warned America of these follies, Ryabkov said, and stated because those had been ignored it was now the case that: “they are playing with fire. They have long been in a state of proxy war with the Russian Federation.” Ryabkov, a career diplomat who started his service in the Soviet era and survived the transition into the Russian Federation, said if America continues as it has been, it would become increasingly difficult to prevent a cascade failure in international relations leading to war.
While Ryabkov offers suggestions for why American may not be heeding Russia’s warnings — its leaders having entered a bunker mentality and not taking on external information, for instance — ultimately his put down is that Washington is too stupid and unsophisticated to understand.
Turning around some of the most common criticisms levelled at Putin’s Russia, that it is led by corrupt mafia-gangsters, Ryabkov deployed the Russian nick-name for low-status antisocial petty criminals “gopniks” for the American leadership. America’s European allies don’t escape this onslaught of insults, either, as they are castigated as being led by “fashionistas” who flock to the latest ideas without critical thought.
Quote:Russia has launched a likely space weapon and deployed it in the same orbit as a US government satellite, the Pentagon said.
“Russia launched a satellite into low Earth orbit that we assess is likely a counter-space weapon presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low Earth orbit,” Pentagon spokesman Air Force Major General Pat Ryder told a press briefing late Tuesday.
The Russian “counter-space weapon” launched on May 16 was deployed “into the same orbit as a US government satellite,” he said.
Ryder added that Washington would continue to monitor the situation and was ready to protect its interests.
“We have a responsibility to be ready to protect and defend the domain, the space domain, and ensure continuous and uninterrupted support to the Joint and Combined Force,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment when asked about reports that Moscow had launched a space weapon.
“I can’t comment on this in any way. We act absolutely in accordance with international law, do not violate anything, and have repeatedly advocated banning any weapons in space,” he told a regular press briefing in Moscow.
“Unfortunately, these initiatives of ours were rejected, including by the USA.”
Earlier Tuesday, Moscow accused the United States of seeking to weaponize space after Washington joined other members of the Security Council in voting down a Russian non-proliferation resolution at the United Nations.
“They have once again demonstrated that their true priorities in the area of outer space are aimed not at keeping space free from weapons of any kind, but at placing weapons in space and turning it into an arena for military confrontation,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
Quote:German authorities closed down Munich airport temporarily on Saturday after six climate activists broke through a security fence and glued themselves to access routes leading to runways, officials and local media reported.
The activists from the group Last Generation were protesting flying, the most polluting form of transportation, said the German news agency dpa.
Police have detained the six.
Incoming flights had to be diverted to other airports, an airport spokesperson said. After a couple of hours, the airport’s two runways were reopened though some disruptions to flight schedules may happen, a statement on the airport´s official website said.
Last Generation posted on social media platform X, accusing the German government of “downplaying” the negative effects of flying on the environment instead of “finally acting sincerely.”
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser slammed the protests and called for them to stop. “Such criminal actions threaten air traffic and harm climate protection because they only cause lack of understanding and anger,” she wrote on X.
Fraser also applauded police efforts to bring order back to the airport and called for airport safety measures to be checked.
The general manager of the German Airports Association Ralph Beisel sharply criticized the climate activists´ actions.
Quote:Brexit boss Nigel Farage said that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had opted for “suicide over total obliteration” by calling a Summer election, predicting that the dire state the Tory party finds itself in would only get worse as more time passes.
Farage said that while the election will be held on the same day which America celebrated its independence, the July 4th election will serve as “Deliverance Day” for Britain from “a bunch of charlatans who call themselves Conservatives but govern like big-state liberals”.
The Brexiteer also mocked the manner in which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the general election, from a podium outside of Downing Street in the rain while being drowned out by a protester’s loudspeaker blasting Tony Blair’s Labour Party 1997 election theme tune Things Can Only Get Better.
“The lack of professionalism is unbelievable,” Farage remarked. “To stand there getting soaked in the rain, to read from the notes like a robot, without passion, without belief, without vim, without vigor sums up 14 years of Conservatism and shows why they are going to get wiped in this election.”
The veteran populist campaigner said that the decision by the prime minister to call for a July election — rather than holding off until the Autumn or Winter as was previously assumed — showed that Sunak chose “suicide over total obliteration”.
“As the months go by, it will get worse and worse,” Farage said, predicting that “no planes” will go to Rwanda, referencing the government’s chief aim to stem the boat migrant crisis in the English Channel which hopes to deter crossings by removing illegals to the East African nation.
Quote:Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who held office from June 2021 to June 2022, said on Wednesday that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should be “dismantled and defunded” after its “shameful” bid to arrest current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.
“It’s a shameful moment for the ICC. It’s a total joke because they’re taking the leader of a democracy that’s fighting against a terror group … We fully reject this,” Bennett told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
Bennett said the ICC had allowed itself to become a “political tool” for Israel’s enemies.
“It’s a farce. It’s not about the evidence. It’s not about facts. It’s about politics, and it’s no secret that these international organs are being used by Israel’s enemies time and again to try and tie our hands while we’re fighting against the worst jihad terrorists in the world,” he said.
“We’re being accused of trying to starve the Gazans, but when you look at the evidence, we’ve let in 24,000 trucks, 400,000 tons of food and aid. That’s 30% more than before Oct. 7,” he noted.
“We’ve been bending over backwards to reduce civilian casualties while Hamas is doing everything it can to increase civilian casualties, yet Israel is being accused. We fully reject this. We need to continue and defeat Hamas. That’s the best response to all of this,” he said.
Bennett made similar points on Monday, the day after ICC prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and three Hamas leaders.
Quote:A Palestinian state would spell Israel’s “destruction” and the Biden administration’s repeated pressuring of Israel to accept one is “plain stupidity,” according to Religious Zionism Knesset member Simcha Rothman, who described Hamas as a “terror cartel” that exports terrorism globally, insisting that Israel must defeat the radical Gaza-based Islamist terrorist group to “protect its own security and the security of the world.”
Speaking with Breitbart News at an Israel Heritage Foundation (IHF) event in Israel this week, Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman Simcha Rothman of Israel’s Religious Zionist party addressed the possible formation of a Palestinian state following the completion of the current Gaza war.
Highlighting the widespread view that such a state would serve as an “enormous reward” for terror and “endanger Israel’s very existence,” Rothman noted that while Israel’s right-wing factions, including parties like his own, have held such a view for years, Israelis across the political spectrum continue to reach the same conclusion.
“Just three months ago, 99 Knesset members out of 120 voted that trying to impose a Palestinian state now would be a huge mistake,” he said, emphasizing that “the vast majority of the people of Israel say that a Palestinian state equals the destruction of the State of Israel.”
“The fact that people try to say that this view is only that of the Religious Zionist party, is a lie,” he added.
According to Rothman, the October 7 attacks changed the perception of many of those living in Israel.
“Though this has been my party’s view for many, many years, most Israelis [only fully] understood it immediately on October 7,” he explained, because the brutal massacre was “the [perfect] example” of what happens when Palestinians are granted a state.
Quote:Iran held the second of a week’s worth of funeral events on Wednesday for President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, convening thousands who chanted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” in honor of the late officials.
Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei personally led the prayers on Wednesday, praising Raisi as “noble and devoted” and lamenting his untimely death.
Raisi, Amir-Abdollahian, and six others died on Sunday in a helicopter crash as they attempted to return home from a diplomatic engagement in nearby Azerbaijan. Iranian authorities have announced they will investigate the circumstances of the crash but have not publicly indicated that they do not believe it was an accident, as it occurred in a mountainous forest area during inclement weather. It remains unclear at press time why the president’s helicopter was allowed to fly in significant fog and rain.
Iran held its first funeral for the officials in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, the Iranian province where the helicopter crashed, on Tuesday. On that occasion, Iranian state propaganda outlets claimed that “millions” convened to listen to Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi honor the late president and top diplomat. Iranian state outlet PressTV again claimed on Wednesday that a “millions-strong” crowd assembled for Raisi.
The images orchestrated by the Iranian Islamist regime contrast significantly with widespread reports on Sunday and Monday of Iranians openly celebrating Raisi’s death. Videos surfaced of unknown individuals launching fireworks and sharing sweets following the confirmation of Raisi’s death, a testament to Raisi’s brutal, murderous legacy. In the diaspora, Iranian exiles openly celebrated his demise.
Quote:Anti-regime activists in Iran reportedly said on Wednesday that they received calls from “desperate” officials urging them to attend public displays of mourning for President Ebrahim Raisi.
The regime is cracking down on expressions of joy and relief from dissidents after Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash on Sunday.
The regime quickly sensed it would have a problem with the public response to Raisi’s death, as disgruntled Iranians danced in the streets and launched fireworks to celebrate the news. Women persecuted under Raisi’s vicious crackdown on the Mahsa Amini uprising, and the families of women killed by Raisi’s thug squads, were especially quick to celebrate his demise.
Compounding this uncertainty was the regime’s own ambivalent feelings about the late president and how it wanted to use the helicopter crash for political purposes. Raisi was seen as a protege of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a front-runner to replace him, which also means he had enemies in the endless factional struggles for power in Tehran. He could also prove useful in death as a scapegoat for public discontent about the corruption and incompetence of the Iranian government.
The result was that Raisi’s funeral was a “muted” affair — the most common term used by foreign media covering Wednesday’s events — and only too late did Iran’s rulers realize that turnout for public ceremonies of mourning would be embarrassingly light if they did not make an effort to get people into the streets.
Quote:Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday released a report that accused China of forcibly relocating more than 700,000 Tibetans since 2016, herding rural residents into big cities in a bid to “re-educate” the population while erasing Tibet’s history and culture.
“The Chinese government says that the relocation of Tibetan villages is voluntary, but official media reports contradict this claim,” said Maya Wang, HRW’s acting China director. “Those reports make clear that when a whole village is targeted for relocation, it is practically impossible for the residents to refuse to move without facing serious repercussions.”
HRW previously urged China to halt its forced relocation policies, noting that they violate both international law and China’s own nominal legal standards, but the pleas fell on deaf ears.
According to the report, titled “Educate the Masses to Change Their Minds,” China has been using compulsory “whole-village relocations” to move dozens or hundreds of Tibetans at a time, over their anguished objections.
Chinese officials insist these relocations were “voluntary” and the villagers eventually gave their consent, but HRW noted this “consent” was squeezed out of them with “extreme forms of persuasion,” including “repeated home visits; denigrating the intellectual capacity of the villagers to make decisions for themselves; implicit threats of punishment; banning of criticism; and threats of disciplinary action against local officials who fail to meet targets.”
"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:President Joe Biden is blaming record-setting levels of illegal immigration to the United States on congressional Republicans, suggesting they are standing in the way of “border enforcement.”
On Thursday, a bill to expand legal immigration while permitting tens of thousands of migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border failed in the Senate by a 43-50 vote.
The bill would have, among other things, increased annual green card admissions by 50,000, expedited work permits for migrants released into the U.S. interior, and allowed some 35,000 migrant encounters at the border before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could enforce border controls.
In response to the Senate blocking the bill, Biden claimed Republicans are not interested in “securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system” and that they are “choosing to stand in the way of border enforcement…”
“We must make our border more secure and we must make sure the United States remains a beacon of hope and opportunity,” Biden said. “Today and every day, I remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system.”
The remarks by Biden come as House Republican leadership has detailed 64 actions the president has taken since taking office in late January 2021 that have resulted in record levels of illegal immigration.
Those actions include halting all border wall construction, ending the Remain in Mexico policy, eliminating cooperative endeavor agreements with Central America, eliminating Title 42, and creating a parole pipeline for migrants seeking release into the U.S. interior.
Most recently, the House Homeland Security Committee issued a report projecting that nationwide migrant encounters on Biden’s watch will top 10 million before the end of Fiscal Year 2024 — a record never seen before in American history.
Currently, about 9.5 million migrants have been encountered at the nation’s borders since Biden took office. Nearly eight million of these migrant encounters have occurred along the porous southern border where new arrivals have a 70 to 90 percent chance of being released into the U.S. interior.
Quote:Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) criticized University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Chancellor Gene Block on Thursday for allowing pro-Israel counter-protesters to screen “vile” images of October 7 atrocities opposite a pro-Palestinian “encampment.”
Omar was questioning Block at a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee to discuss antisemitism at UCLA and other campuses. He testified alongside college presidents from Northwestern and Rutgers.
As Breitbart News noted, the pro-Palestinian “encampment,” which was launched on April 25, took over a public area at UCLA, a public university. Activists used antisemitic rhetoric and barred Jewish students, as well as journalists, from entering.
The university, seeking to avoid confrontation, did not allow University of California police or campus security to intervene, effectively allowing the activists to form their own police force, setting up checkpoints on the campus.
Pro-Israel demonstrators from the surrounding communities, which are heavily Jewish, staged counter-protests. At one point, they set up a large screen showing footage from the Hamas terror attacks of October 7.
The screen, as Breitbart News noted, was partly funded by Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, Jessica. It was placed in a public area.
Omar, casting the pro-Palestinian students, and Palestinians, as the victims, complained about the “vile” footage, without acknowledging that the footage showed Palestinians committing atrocities — the “encampment’s” case.
Omar participated in an encampment at Columbia University. Her daughter, Isra, was banned from the campus.
Omar’s own anti-Israel and antisemitic views are a matter of public record, both before and during her time in office.
Quote:Crowds are gathering for former President Donald Trump’s rally in the Bronx — a Democrat stronghold as Trump sticks to his word in making a heavy play for traditionally blue areas in the 2024 election cycle.
“President Trump is going to speak directly to locals in the Bronx, in the borough, about how their lives have worsened under Joe Biden’s policies, particularly ‘Bidenomics,’ which has led to the highest inflation in a generation,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Spectrum News NY1 ahead of Trump taking the stage in Crotona Park.
Videos are emerging on social media, showing crowds gathering ahead of the former president’s big speech. Some supporters were lined up to see Trump seven hours before the big event.
Trump also shared a video of voters explaining why they support the former president, writing, “THANK YOU—SEE YOU TONIGHT AT 6:00PM EASTERN!”
The rally follows Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — clearly disturbed by Trump’s presence in her home state — admitting that Democrats are engaging in lawfare against Trump to keep him off the campaign trail.
“New York City is blue. Brooklyn is blue. Queens is blue. The Bronx is blue, and he’s got nowhere to go, so he has decided to come to the South Bronx,” she said.
Quote:Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) said Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead” that former President Donald Trump is wasting time in New York, which is “solidly behind Joe Biden,” while the president is “out there winning over the rest of the battleground states.”
Host Jake Tapper said, “So Donald Trump, former President Trump, he’s holding an event shortly in the Bronx in an effort to attract voters of color, Latinos and African-Americans. Historically, a loyal voting block for Democrats, especially African-Americans but the truth is this is, this is a sport, this is a politics of margins. What more to Democrats need to do to solidify and mobilize their base?”
Hochul said, “Well I’ll tell you, what won’t make a difference at all Jake, and that is for Donald Trump to be the ringleader and invite all his clowns to a place like the Bronx. New York will never, ever support Donald Trump for president. We know him better than anyone and that means we understand what he’s all about is just for himself. So this state will go solidly behind Joe Biden for president as it has in the past.”
She added, “So he wants to spend his time doing these made-up fake rallies and pretending they is support here be my guest because while you’re doing that, Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s out there on the other side, making sure he is delivering for all Americans. And so go ahead, spend all the time you want New York because we’ll be with Joe Biden. And Joe Biden is out their winning over the rest of the battleground states.”
Quote:Conservatives across the spectrum have backed Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) bid to be the next Senate Republican leader.
On Tuesday, Scott announced he would run to lead Senate Republicans in the next Congress.
“I believe now is a moment we need dramatic change,” the Florida Republican said.
Scott would compete against Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) number two, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to become the next Senate GOP leader.
Scott has promised that he would bring about the change needed to better the Senate Republican Conference. Scott said:
There have been far too many backroom deals cut in secret, rarely do things go through the committee process, and it’s accepted practice to not allow amendment votes to trillion-dollar spending bills. We are routinely surprised with legislation and asked to vote on it without having had an input or even time to review it.
“Republicans all across America want the Republicans they elected to the U.S. Senate to stop caving in to Democrat demands,” he writes. “This is not an unreasonable request or expectation,” he added.
Conservatives have backed Scott’s rallying cry.
Former Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said that Scott is “by far the best choice.”
“Rick Scott is *BY FAR* the best choice among those running for Senate Republican Leader,” Ramaswamy wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “He successfully led a big business & a big state; there’s no doubt he can do this job.”
“He also possesses a very rare quality in DC: Caring about what voters actually want. I endorse him,” Ramaswamy added.
Charlie Kirk, the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, wrote, “Sen. Rick Scott is a good man. He turned around many businesses. He turned around Florida as governor. He will turn around the US Senate, too. @SenRickScott has my complete and total endorsement to become the next Senate GOP Leader.”
Quote:House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “The Faulkner Focus ” that President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party want open borders to “turn these people into voters and change the outcome of the census is six years.”
Johnson said, “We documented 64 specific executive actions that President Biden and his administrator include Americas, they intentionally took these actions to open the border why they did this by design and that is what so terrible about it. He has had executive authority every day to reverse what he does but he refuses to use it.”
Host Harris Faulkner said, “Does the president seem to you to be up to speed on exactly what’s happening at the border?”
Johnson said, “I think he is in denial. I think that many in his party have demanded, there is an open border informal caucus in the Democratic Party and they pushed this agenda. The reason is, Harris, everybody asked me, I’ve been in 110 cities and 29 states in the last 5 1/2 months around the country campaigning with incumbents and candidates. Everywhere I am no matter where in the country everybody says why would they do this? It is such a catastrophe for the country? Why would the president allow this? They want to turn these people into voters and change the outcome of the census is six years. It sounds sinister and it is and they have exacted untold damage on the country.”
Quote:The border bill that both Democrat and Republican Senate leaders pushed flopped in a floor vote, garnering only 43 votes, which is far short of the 60 votes needed to start debate or the 50 votes needed to pass.
Fifty Senators voted against the bill, and seven —including four GOP Senators — were absent.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was the only Republican who voted for the business-backed bill, which would have accelerated the inflow of economic migrants via asylum and parole loopholes.
Six Democrats and independents joined the GOP no-votes on the doomed bill, likely because it allowed them to signal support for more radical policies without contributing to the bill’s failure. The Democrats and independents voting no were Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA), Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), who is credited with being an author of the bill.
Two Democrats facing tough 2024 elections — Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Sen. John Tester (D-MT) — voted for the cheap labor giveaway to business interests.
The public failure comes after Democrats insisted their loopholed bill was popular and effective, and the establishment media hid the pro-migration purpose of the bill, which was privately negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
The bill was revealed in February but quickly lost support once citizens read the details.
Quote:Senate Democrats have blocked what former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials called “a strong deterrent” against child trafficking at the United States-Mexico border.
On Thursday, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) sought to pass by unanimous consent the End Child Trafficking Now Act which would require DHS to DNA test all adult migrants and the children they arrive with at the southern border to prove they are relatives.
Senate Democrats blocked its passage.
The bill’s goal, Blackburn and other Senate Republicans said, is to end the process of child trafficking where adult migrants bring unrelated children with them to cross the border in the hopes of being released into the U.S. interior.
President Joe Biden’s DHS reportedly ended such DNA testing last year.
Last year, Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Biden administration’s ending DNA testing would ultimately lead to a spike in child trafficking.
“The results are very predictable: A return to more child smuggling, child recycling, and child trafficking. Say you’re a family and we’ll take your word for it,” Ries said.
DHS officials have previously suggested that as many as 3-in-10 children arriving at the border with adult migrants are being trafficked.
Those startling figures are what prompted former President Donald Trump’s administration to expand DNA testing across the border.
Quote:The far-left district attorney of Portland, Oregon, has conceded defeat in his reelection bid to a tough-on-crime contender as voters blame the rising crime in the city on his policies.
Multnomah County DA Mike Schmidt gave up the race to challenger Nathan Vasquez Wednesday evening shortly after election projections were posted, the local NBC station reported.
“It is looking as if I will not be serving another four years as Multnomah County District Attorney,” Schmidt said in a statement obtained by the outlet. “I have called Nathan Vasquez to congratulate him on his victory.”
“While we do not always see eye to eye, I am committed to a smooth transition,” the DA continued. “Thank you to this amazing community for the support they have shown for this campaign. And thank you for the opportunity to serve these past four years. It is an honor I will cherish for a lifetime.”
Schmidt, described as a “Soros-backed progressive” by the Daily Mail, was elected in 2020 with 77 percent of the vote after running on an “equity”-focused platform.
As of 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, Vasquez had won 54 percent of the vote, with Schmidt garnering 46 percent.
Vasquez, labeled a “centrist” by Politico, was a deputy prosecutor under Schmidt who ran on hard-on-crime policies in the nonpartisan primary election that took place this week between the pair. As they were the only two candidates, Vasquez will replace his predecessor after his term ends on December 31.
...
“I am committed to ending open air drug dealing and drug use while helping connect individuals to treatment, to rebuilding the broken relationships between the DA’s office and the community, and to ensuring that victims are the number one priority of my office,” he continued, before thanking Schmidt for his professionalism and service.
Quote:A 13th county in Oregon passed a measure that would allow the county to move forward with efforts to secede from the state and join the Republican-governed state of Idaho.
Voters in Crooks County passed Measure 7-86, also known as the “Greater Idaho” measure, 53 percent to 47 percent on Tuesday, according to the Central Oregon Daily News.
Greater Idaho Executive Director Matt McCaw issued a statement that there was “no excuse left” for the Oregon Legislature or Gov. Tina Kotek (D) to “continue to ignore the people’s wishes.”
“The voters of eastern Oregon have spoken loudly and clearly about their desire to see border talks move forward,” McCaw said in his statement. “With this latest result in Crook County, there’s no excuse left for the Legislature and Governor to continue to ignore the people’s wishes. We call on the Governor, Speaker of the House, and Senate President to sit down with us and discuss next steps towards changing governance for eastern Oregonians, as well as for the legislature to begin holding hearings on what a potential border change will look like.”
Voters in Oregon counties such as Baker, Morrow, Sherman, Union, Lake, Grant, Harney, Klamath, Wheeler, and Wallowa have passed similar measures to the one passed in Crook County.
If successful, the Oregon border would be shifted 200 miles to the west from where it currently is.
“The Greater Idaho movement seeks to move the border between Oregon and Idaho to include 14 full eastern Oregon counties and 3 partial ones,” the movement says on its website. “In addition to the 13 counties who have passed Greater Idaho measures, in 2023 the Idaho House passed a memorial inviting the Oregon Legislature to begin border talks.”
Quote:A SWAT team raided rapper Sean Kingston’s rented South Florida mansion on Thursday and arrested his mother on fraud and theft charges that an attorney says stem partly from the installation of a massive TV at the home.
Broward County detectives arrested Janice Turner, 61, at the 14,000-square foot (1,300-square meter) home in Southwest Ranches, a well-off Fort Lauderdale suburb that is home to many celebrities and professional athletes, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Miami Dolphins star Tyreek Hill.
The sheriff’s office said the investigation is ongoing and declined to release specific details about the charges against Turner or whether her 34-year-old son is also a target. Local media reported that Kingston is out of town and was not present during the raid. Broward County prosecutors referred all questions to the sheriff’s office.
It could not be determined if Turner has an attorney who could comment. Federal court records show she pleaded guilty in 2006 to bank fraud for stealing over $160,000 and served 16 months in prison.
“People love negative energy!” Kingston posted on Instagram on Thursday. “I am good, and so is my mother! … My lawyers are handling everything as we speak.” The post was later taken down.
Florida Department of Corrections records show he is currently on two-years probation for trafficking stolen property. Reporters at the home could see authorities filling a loading van with goods. The mansion was surrounded by expensive sports cars.
The Jamaican-American rapper is best known for his 2007 No. 1 single “Beautiful Girls,” his collaboration with Justin Bieber on “Eenie Meenie” and “Take You There.” In 2011, he suffered near-fatal injuries in a jet ski accident. Kingston, whose legal name is Kisean Anderson, hasn’t had a major label release in more than a decade.
Quote:Illinois Democrats are pushing a bill that will change how criminals are described in state laws and codes with a proposal that would end the use of the word “offender” and replace it with the term “justice-impacted individual.”
House Bill 4409 makes changes to Adult Redeploy Illinois, a program that helps convicts enter halfway houses and escape jail time. The bill is taking heat for including a provision to end the use of the word “offender” to describe criminals in the state’s legal codes.
Democrats were forced to justify the soft-pedaling of terminology.
Chicago Democrat State Sen. Robert Peters, for one, warned against getting “hung up” on the woke wordplay.
“This is good public safety policy. I know we’re getting hung up on a term, but I don’t want to lose sight that we are adding the department of corrections to this bill,” Peters insisted, according to WGN-TV.
Chicago Democrat Rep. Kelly Cassidy added that the change in language is meant to help criminals return to society.
“So, carrying a label of offender for life does not seem appropriate for a system in which we intend to return people to full participation in society,” Cassidy exclaimed.
The few Republicans left in the legislature, though, scoffed at the claims and ridiculed the changes in terminology, calling the ideas budget-busting and soft on crime, the Center Square reported.
“Over and over again, we keep changing the name of how we are referring to those who have entered into criminal activity and each time we make that change, each agency has to make that change on every one of their documents,” said Republican State Sen. Terri Bryan. “Right now in the Department of Corrections, there’s multiple changes that have been made and it’s costing thousands and thousands of dollars just to do a name change. Why is it necessary to make the name change?”
Quote:British police forces have been told to arrest fewer people to reduce the strains on the prison system, sparking warnings that the move could endanger the public.
Internal advice from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has advised local police forces throughout Britain to suspend “non-priority arrests” and stop launching police operations which may result in a “large number of arrests”, the Times of London reported.
“Consideration is to be given to pausing non-priority arrests and any planned operations where large numbers of arrests may take place to ease the pressure within the criminal justice system,” the NPCC memo reportedly stated, adding: “Notwithstanding public protection remains a priority and a considered threat, harm and risk assessment is to be completed when considering any pause in police operations.”
The document said that an instance in which police should not incarcerate a suspect would include alleged burglarers if officers have yet to conduct on-the-scene forensics or have yet to review CCTV footage. It also suggested that forces hold off on non-intelligence operations which could be carried out at a later date.
On the other hand, the advice did urge police forces to continue prioritising large-scale protests and other public events, which the NPCC said should continue to be prioritised.
It comes amid warnings that male prisons may run out of space by June amid a soaring population attributed to continued judicial delays stemming from coronavirus lockdowns and barrister strikes.
In addition to the advice to arrest fewer criminals, the government extended an emergency early-release scheme for convicted criminals, which will reportedly see some prisoners let back onto the streets up to 70 days early starting Thursday.
Britain Should Stop the Unlimited Influx of Immigrats
Quote:The Migration Watch think tank has called on the UK government to impose a hard annual cap on legal net migration of less than 100,000 to alleviate significant social pressures and prevent Britain from devolving into a “fractured society”.
The call comes as Britain gears up for a general election, which will determine the composition of the next government in July. While polling shows migration levels are ever-more of a concern for voters in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, in the United Kingdom the legacy parties which either openly or cryptically promote mass migration still manage to dominate the political sphere.
Conservative party figures such as Boris Johnson told the public that leaving the European Union would allow the UK to “take back control” of its borders, but actually his liberal immigration reforms which opened up access to millions more migrants have resulted in record levels of immigration. Johnson’s post-Brexit reforms were supposedly modelled off the Australian points-based system, however, unlike Down Under, the nominally Conservative government refused to impose a cap on the number of immigrants allowed in per year.
Predictably, this saw net immigration surging to a record high of 467,000 in 2021 and rising further to 745,000 in 2022. Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for 2023 published today show that net migration remained in the high hundreds of thousands.
The ONS has previously predicted that if immigration continues to remain at high levels, the UK population will grow by over six million people as a result of foreign arrivals.
To reduce the strain that mass migration has placed on social cohesion, public services, the housing market, and elsewhere the Migration Watch think tank called for the government to impose an annual cap on net migration of 100,000 or less, which is exactly what the Conservatives promised in their 2010 manifesto when they first took power.
Quote:Germany warned Wednesday it will arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he enters the country following allegations of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a spokesperson has confirmed.
Asked by reporters in Berlin if Germany would execute any ICC arrest warrants if issued against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Steffen Hebestreit, a spokesman for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, said, “Of course. Yes, we abide by the law,” Politico reported.
If ICC judges grant the requested warrants, 124 countries across the world – including every member of the European Union – will be obliged to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant on sight. It is the first time in the court’s history that a sitting Western-backed leader has been targeted by the international court in this manner.
Germany previously wavered on its commitment to arresting Netanyahu, as Breitbart News reported.
ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber justices are considering an application by British prosecutor Karim Khan to charge the two Israeli officials with “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Netanyahu labelled the allegations a “distortion of reality” and accused the prosecutor of “callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging across the world.”
Germany’s decision comes after Israel’s Ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, made a direct plea to the German government to reject the ICC’s proposed arrest warrant.
Quote:Poland is investing about $2.5 billion to step up security and deterrence on its border with Russia and its ally Belarus, the prime minister said Saturday.
Donald Tusk said work on the Shield-East project which includes building proper military fortifications has already begun. Poland is on the eastern flank of NATO and of the European Union and Tusk stressed it bears additional responsibility for Europe’s security.
“We have taken the decision to invest into our safety and first of all, into a safe eastern border, some 10 billion zlotys ($2.5 billion),” Tusk said.
“We are opening a great project of the construction of a safe border, including a system of fortifications and of the shaping of terrain, (of) environmental decisions that will make this border impenetrable by a potential enemy,” Tusk said.
“We have begun these works, to make Poland’s border a safe one in times of peace, and impenetrable for an enemy in times of war,” he added.
He was addressing Polish troops in Krakow, in the south, to mark 80 years since the allied victory in the Battle of Monte Cassino against the Nazis, during World War II.
Poland’s previous right-wing government built a $400 million wall on the border with Belarus to halt massive inflow of migrants that began to be pushed from that direction in 2021, but the current pro-EU government says it needs to be strengthened.
Quote:The families of five female Israeli soldiers still being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza released a three-minute video of the women’s abduction during the October 7 attack, with footage recovered from body cameras and smartphones.
The names of the hostages, according to the Times of Israel, are Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa and Naama Levy. Breitbart News will not publish the footage directly, but it can be seen at the following link.
In the heavily-edited video, the women are seen with their hands bound, standing and then sitting by a concrete wall, presumably at the Nahal Oz military base in Israel, which was overrun for several hours on the morning of October 7.
Several have bloodied faces; one attempts to speak to the terrorists: “I have friends in Palestine.” The gunmen tell them to be quiet. Later, the terrorists perform Islamic prayers by their female captives and shoving them into jeeps.
There are also hints of sexual abuse. One of the terrorists says, according to the subtitles, that the Israeli captives are women “who can get pregnant.” Another says to a bloodied, battered female Israeli hostage: “You are so beautiful.”
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum, which represents the hostages’ families, added a staetment on Wednesday:
We thought hard and really tried to find the words to describe how heartbroken, shocked, and enraged we are in light of the new abduction video of the five female observers. There truly are no words to describe what they did or how they did it. The sadistic, diabolical, barbaric torment that our women endured while treating them like prizes and trophies, just plain objects to do with as they please. All the while praising themselves for their inhumane and monstrous accomplishments. All we know is that no human should have to spend a single moment with them, let alone 229 days. It has never been more clear how urgent it is to bring them home. Now!
Quote:Hamas celebrated Wednesday as Ireland, Norway, and Spain announced that they would recognize a Palestinian state in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks against Israel, prompting Israel to recall its ambassadors from all three.
The Times of Israel reported that Hamas stated: “We consider this an important step towards affirming our right to our land,” adding that it continued to call “on countries around the world to recognize our legitimate national rights.”
Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz announced that Israel would be recalling its ambassadors from all three countries for consultations, and summoned the ambassadors of all three companies for reprimands — a severe diplomatic step.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer noted in a press briefing that all three countries had also been neutral during the Second World War. (Norway was also occupied by Nazi Germany and resisted, with Allied help.)
He added that Ireland’s president at the time had expressed condolences to Nazi Germany on the suicide of Adolf Hitler. Likewise, he said, these countries were effectively endorsing the terrorism and genocidal intent of Hamas.
It was “obscene,” he said, to reward Hamas’s terrorism with Palestinian statehood. “It is a reward. The message will go out far and wide to all terrorist organizations” that murder, rape, and other atrocities would succeed, he said.
Israel has long maintained that the only path to a Palestinian state is through bilateral negotiations to settle issues such as the border and capital of such a state; demilitarization; the settlement of refugee claims; and other disputes.
There is no indication what the structure of a Palestinian state would be — whether it would be a democracy, or a radical Islamist theocracy. Nor is there any guarantee that it would not immediately align with the Iranian regime.
Quote:Political leaders in Saudi Arabia are pressing the administration of leftist President Joe Biden to help the country develop a nuclear program as part of a larger “security” deal that may ultimately include a pathway to normalizing ties with Israel, Reuters reported on Monday.
The discussions regarding helping Riyadh develop nuclear energy, potentially the construction of a reactor and uranium enrichment capacity, reportedly occurred during National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel this weekend. Sullivan met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday to discuss “strategic relations” between Washington and Riyadh, according to the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the “nearly final version of the draft strategic agreements between” the two countries. Sullivan then traveled to Israel to further conversations about such a deal with officials there.
The White House described the Saudi agreement in process as part of a “comprehensive vision for an integrated Middle East region,” suggesting the potential of an agreement regarding Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Israel.
Reuters cited an unnamed “senior U.S. official” on Tuesday who told the outlet that the latest version of the “strategic” agreement with Saudi Arabia “includes a civil nuclear component.”
“The senior official said on Tuesday that the deal would include U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation for the Saudis structured by nonproliferation experts in a ‘rigorous way,'” Reuters reported.
The official was not optimistic that the Saudis would sign onto the deal anytime soon.
“It is not done. Nobody here is going to say this is, you know, just right around the corner,” the anonymous “official” was quoted as saying.
The Saudi news agency al-Arabiya, relying in part of Reuters’ reporting, described the draft agreement as potentially including the purchase of “advanced F-35 fighter jets and other weapons” by Riyadh. It relayed similar information regarding the kingdom’s interest in American help with developing a nuclear program.
Quote:Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh attended the mass funeral Wednesday in Tehran for Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed with Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other officials in a helicopter crash on Sunday.
Officials from other Iranian-backed terror groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, were also in attendance at the event.
The Times of Israel reported:
Iranian state media runs footage of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh attending the funeral of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday.
Haniyeh, the supreme leader of the Palestinian terror group, is based in Qatar and frequently travels across the region.
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Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem is also in Tehran for the funeral.
Haniyeh has a net worth of billions of dollars after siphoning aid money and tax revenues while sending others to die.
The U.S. State Department had sent condolences in advance of the funeral and gathering of terrorist leaders, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended, upon being questioned by the Senate, as the “normal course of business.”
Asked by Breitbart News whether Israel also expresses its condolences, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer replied: “No, we don’t express our condolences.” He said that Raisi led a tyrannical regime that was the only case in which “a UN member, Iran, seeks to destroy another UN member, Israel.”
He added that Israel did not share Blinken’s condolences:
“There are no tears in Israel being shed for the death of this tyrant. … Any of these sort of fake expressions of regret about what has happened to these Iranian leaders — it turns our stomach, to be blunt.”
"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:CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed during a commencement speech at the United States Military Academy West Point that he turned down an offer to play football at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
VERDICT: False.
Biden has previously told different versions of this claim to graduates at the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado.
In his claim, Biden says he applied to the Naval Academy in order to play football. He was appointed to the Naval Academy by former Delaware Sen. J. Caleb Boggs ® in 1965. However, the president graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965, which makes it unlikely he would have applied to attend the Naval Academy then.
Biden continues to claim that he turned down the offer after finding out that NFL Heisman Trophy winners Joe Bellino and Staubach were playing on the U.S. Naval Academy football team then.
Another issue with this claim is that Staubach graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1964, while Bellino graduated in 1961, Fox News reported.
“I was one of ten. I wanted to play football,” Biden told the graduates. “And, the day that I was supposed to go down for the interview, a classmate of mine who was also one of the ten appointed to be chosen from, named Steve Dunning, came to pick me up.”
Biden continued: “I found out two days earlier, they had a quarterback named Roger Staubach and a halfback named Joe Bellino. I said, ‘Oh, I’m not going there,’ I went to Delaware. Not a joke.”
During high school, Biden played football for Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware, and graduated from the Catholic college preparatory school in 1961.
Quote:During an interview with RUSA Radio on Friday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) stated that “we have normalized antisemitism” in a way that wouldn’t be tolerated if it was directed towards another group and there’s been “acceptance even in some of our major media” and an attempt to downplay campus antisemitism.
Adams said, “We’re witnessing a rise in hate across the globe in general, but specifically, after October 7, we witnessed a sharp increase in antisemitism, and we’re clear that New York City has no room for hate. If there’s antisemitism, anti-Sikhism, Islamophobia, anti-African Americans, no matter what the group, we must remain consistent.”
He continued, “What troubles me the most is that we have normalized antisemitism. We would not tolerate any other group being called for the destruction of that group or using very hateful terminologies [for] that group. We would not stand for that. And I’m seeing a normalization of antisemitism in New York, as well as across the globe, particularly through social media, and I think there’s a level of tolerance. [There] has been acceptance even in some of our major media to attempt not to point out that what happened on our college campuses is not antisemitism. I don’t know how you could define it as not. And I think that’s really a precursor for the anti-Americanism. There’s a radicalization of our children, where [they’re] being taught to hate America and hate those of Jewish faith as well, and we need to stop that.”
Does this mean that another surprise raid against the mayor is coming up next?
Quote:Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein exposed a Democrat National Committee’s (DNC) job listing for a project manager to mitigate third-party candidates, indicating Democrat panic over the contours of the race.
Stein posted a screenshot of the job listing for “Independent & Third Party Project Manager” on Friday: [Post on X]
“Wow. @TheDemocrats posted – then deleted – a job for a ‘Third Party Project Manager’ to infiltrate their competition and find ways to take us off the ballot. Is this how they’re ‘saving democracy’?” Stein wrote.
The job posting comes as third-party candidates harm President Joe Biden more than they do former President Donald Trump in national polling. The RealClearPolling average shows Trump leading Biden by 1.1 points (47.5 to 46.4) in a head-to-head race as of Saturday. In the five-way RealClearPolling average, the margin between them expands to 2.4 percent, with Trump leading 41.7 percent to 39.3 percent. Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes 10.5 percent, while independent Cornel West and Stein – all of whom lean left politically – register at 1.7 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively.
A copy of the posting is available on Built In. The DNC appears to be offering $65,000 for the position, where a project manager will oversee and manage third-party-related “work in their respective states.”
The first responsibility listed for the position is following the campaign events of Stein, Kennedy Jr., and West “in the region and sharing intel in real-time.”
Quote:A New Mexico judge has rejected a request by Alec Baldwin to dismiss the sole criminal charge against him in a fatal shooting on the set of the movie “Rust,” keeping the case on track for a trial this summer.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer on Friday upheld an indictment charging Baldwin with one count of involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021. The judge rejected defense arguments that prosecutors flouted the rules of grand jury proceedings to divert attention away from exculpatory evidence and witnesses.
Special prosecutors have denied accusations that the grand jury proceedings were marred and say Baldwin made “shameless” attempts to escape culpability, highlighting contradictions in his statements to law enforcement, to workplace safety regulators and in a televised interview.
Friday’s decision removes one of the last hurdles for prosecutors to put Baldwin on trial in July.
“We look forward to our day in court,” defense attorneys Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro said in an email.
During a rehearsal on the set of the Western film, Baldwin pointed a gun at Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing her and injuring director Joel Souza. Baldwin has maintained that he pulled back the gun’s hammer but not the trigger.
Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to the involuntary manslaughter charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 1.5 years in prison.
Marlowe Sommer rejected arguments that prosecutors acted in “bad faith” after reviewing transcripts of the January grand jury proceedings, noting that prosecutors are not required to present exculpatory evidence.
“New Mexico law does not require a prosecutor to present exculpatory evidence to a grand jury, or require a grand jury to even consider exculpatory evidence after alerted to its existence,” the judge wrote.
Quote:A suspected human smuggler from South Texas is facing federal charges for allegedly shooting several times at U.S. Border Patrol agents who had tried to stop him in a brushy area near the border.
The incident occurred last week in a brushy area near the Texas border town of Progreso. According to a federal criminal complaint filed in Brownsville, Texas, Rafael Arriazola is facing a charge of assaulting a federal officer and a second charge of transporting illegal migrants.
This week, Arriazola appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Betancourt, who ordered that he be held without bond pending further hearings.
A group of migrants from Mexico crossed the Rio Grande and got lost in the brush, the complaint reviewed by Breitbart Texas revealed. After two days of trekking, one of the migrants found a trailer and knocked, asking for help. The woman inside contacted her son Arriazola, who offered to help the migrant get to a relative’s house in Donna. Federal agents claim that Arriazola got a handgun and then went with the migrant to look for the other migrants.
While searching in the brush, U.S. Border Patrol agents spotted and tried to apprehend the pair. The migrant did not resist. However, Arriazola yelled at authorities that he would send them to hell and began shooting toward one of the agents as he fled the scene.
After the shooting, the FBI responded to the scene. Following a short investigation, the agents identified Arriazola and arrested him on May 22 in Progreso. The subject is expected to remain in federal custody pending trial.
Quote:A Turkish migrant who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border into the United States explained that Americans are “right” to be concerned by who is coming into the country.
The migrant, who crossed into the U.S. through the border town of Jacumba, CA, in San Diego County, told Fox News National Correspondent Bill Melugin in an interview that he had paid “around $10,000” to a cartel, adding that he was shocked by the lack of security at the border.
“In fact, American people is right, completely true,” the migrant said during the interview. “Who comes into this country? They don’t know. Okay, I’m good, but how if they’re not good? How if they’re killers, psychopath, else? No guarantee of that.”
In the interview, the man added that there had been “no security, no security check, no background check” at the border.
The Turkish migrant explained to Fox News that it had taken him 24 days to travel to the U.S., traveling through places such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Brazil, and Central America.
Breitbart News has previously reported that the San Diego sector has recently become the busiest border crossing spot for illegal aliens.
Customs and Border Protection officials said that 37, 320 undocumented migrants had been apprehended by agents in the San Diego sector during the month of April. This represented a roughly 300 percent increase from December 2020, at which point the sector reported that 8,510 migrants had been encountered attempting to cross the border.
Quote:The federal government should pay off its self-inflicted debt by selling Americans’ valuable citizenship to wealthy foreigners, a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Thursday states.
Instead of being a nation of citizens with reciprocal duties and rights, the government should “Consider America like a club, with initiation fees required for admission,” the May 23 op-ed said.
The government could start by printing and selling two million shares of citizenship per year, or roughly one extra share for every two Americans born each year, according to the op-ed:
One way to modernize our immigration laws would be to allow market forces to decide who should become new citizens.
…
An example: Sell 8,000 visas to the highest bidders for 250 days a year. Suppose the average price is $30,000. Of the $60 billion in annual visa revenue, devote one-third to more-intense border enforcement, one-third to income-tax reduction (an “immigration bonus” to taxpayers), and one-third to increasing the anemic defense budget. Or apply the money to debt reduction, helping delay the fiscal armageddon threatening the pensions and healthcare of elderly Americans.
The United States “is not a shopping mall,” Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News in response. “This proposal assumes that citizenship is merely a business arrangement when it is, in fact, more like joining a family, he said. “Citizenship is not an economic issue. It is a political and social and moral and, even arguably, spiritual issue. It’s not just about money. By reducing the citizenship to dollars and cents, you’re eliminating any rationale for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship that aren’t remunerative. In other words, if it’s just a matter of money, then why would you, why would anybody, volunteer to defend your country?”
“Almost certainly, this kind of proposal would devalue the citizenships they’re selling by making America less American,” Krikorian said, adding, “Maybe if they were selling ten citizenships a year, then it wouldn’t make a difference. But if they’re talking about two million a year, that would inevitably have a significant effect on the underlying social arrangements that make America successful in the first place.”
Quote:On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” U.S. Fleet Forces Command Commander Admiral Daryl Caudle stated that attempted penetrations of military bases by foreign nationals “is happening more and more. This is something we see probably two or three times a week, where we’re stopping these folks at the gate” in the Navy alone and the nationals come from all different nations and many times have passports and papers.
Caudle said, “This thing of our military bases getting penetrated by foreign nationals is happening more and more. This is something we see probably two or three times a week, where we’re stopping these folks at the gate.”
Co-host Bill Hemmer then cut in to say, “A week?”
Caudle responded, “A week, at least. And this is just Navy alone, where we’re seeing folks trying to come in.”
Caudle added, “A lot of times they have passports, they have papers, yes. But they’re in no way, shape, or form authorized to be on our base, and it’s really hard for us to tell the underlying motive for these type of cases.”
Caudle further stated, “This is Russian, Chinese. This comes from all these different nations. We’re seeing an uptick in it.”
Quote:President Joe Biden promised to designate Kenya as a “Major Non-NATO ally” during a state visit by Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday.
The upgraded status, which has never before been granted to a sub-Saharan nation, gives Biden a success to tout after a string of diplomatic disasters in Africa, as well as giving Ruto a jolt of prestige while he attempts to implement an unpopular and legally questionable decision to deploy Kenyan police to gang-ravaged Haiti.
Biden told Congress he wanted to grant Kenya the enhanced designation in recognition of its “many years of contributions to the United States Africa Command area of responsibility, and globally, and in recognition of our own national interest in deepening bilateral defense and security cooperation.”
“Kenya is one of the United States Government’s top counterterrorism and security partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and the designation will demonstrate that the United States sees African contributions to global peace and security as equivalent to those of our Major Non-NATO Allies in other regions,” he said.
At a joint press conference with Ruto on Thursday, Biden said the designation was the “fulfillment of years of collaboration.”
“Our joint counterterrorism operations have degraded ISIS and al-Shabaab across East Africa. Our mutual support for Ukraine has rallied the world to stand behind the U.N. Charter. And our work together on Haiti is helping pave the way to reduce instability and insecurity,” Biden said.
So when will the Biden admin. accept Milei's request to designate Argentina an official Non-NATO ally?
Quote:California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) promised in 2023 to deliver 1,200 “tiny homes” to help shelter the homeless in several California cities — but none has opened yet, according to a report in CalMatters.
CalMatters.org reported Thursday:
In March 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom stood before a crowd in Sacramento’s Cal Expo event center and made a promise: He’d send 1,200 tiny homes to shelter homeless residents in the capital city and three other places throughout the state.
…
There have been multiple delays and about-faces, over everything from the way the state is funding the units to the ability of local cities and counties to find places to put them. The state has suggested the delays are the fault of local governments. But tiny homes have failed to materialize even when local leaders moved quickly to approve a project site.
In Sacramento, at least, construction for the tiny homes has begun. In San Diego, testing of a proposed site is still under way. In San Jose, a grant from the state took months to arrive; the project will only be completed next summer. And in Los Angeles, there is no approved site yet.
In 2021, Newsom boasted that California had become a model for dealing with homelessness, after the Biden administration adopted his state’s policy of paying for hotel and motel rooms for homeless people, or even buying hotels.
Homelessness continues to be a problem in the Golden State. The homeless population has hit a ten-year low in San Francisco, but was still rising in Los Angeles, as of last year.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that California spends billions of dollars on homelessness, with little to show for the effort.
Quote:Western nations should end their prohibition on Ukraine using their missiles to attack targets within the Russian mainland, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has argued.
With the United States reportedly reconsidering its ban on Ukraine using American weapons against targets within Russia, Jens Stoltenberg said that the escalation is justified and likely necessary in order for Kyiv to deter further aggression from Moscow as it seeks to gain further ground within the former Soviet state.
“I think the time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they are put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine because, especially now when a lot the fighting is going on in Kharkiv, close to the border,” Stoltenberg told The Economist.
“To deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves”.
The outgoing NATO chief argued that Russia is waging a war of aggression. Therefore Ukraine has the right to defend itself “and that includes also striking targets on Russian territory.”
“It is legal, it is legitimate, and we are helping Ukraine with upholding that right and that should include the ability to also strike targets on Russian territory,” the Norwegian politician said.
Earlier this month, the UK became the first NATO nation to sign off on Ukraine using their weapons, including Storm Shadow missiles, to make strikes on targets within Russia. Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that Ukraine “absolutely has the right to strike back at Russia.”
Quote:Finance officials from the Group of Seven rich democracies said they had moved toward agreement on a U.S. proposal to squeeze more money for Ukraine from Russian assets frozen in their countries. But the ministers left a final deal to be worked out ahead of a June summit of national leaders.
“We are making progress in our discussions on potential avenues to bring forward the extraordinary profits stemming from immobilized Russian sovereign assets to the benefit of Ukraine,” the draft statement said, without providing details.
Despite the progress made at the the meeting in Stresa, on the shores of Lago Maggiore in northern Italy, a final decision on how the assets will be used will rest with the G7 national leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, next month at their annual summit in Fasano, in southern Italy.
Host Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said that “progress has been made so far” but that there were “legal and technical issues that have to be overcome.”
“It is not an easy task but we are working on it,” he said at a news conference following the end of the meeting.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko joined the finance ministers and central bank heads at their concluding session on Saturday.
The U.S. Congress has passed legislation allowing the Biden administration to seize the roughly $5 billion in Russian assets located in the U.S., but European countries have a strong voice in the matter since most of the $260 billion in Russian central bank assets frozen after the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion are held in their jurisdictions.
Citing legal concerns, European officials have balked at outright confiscating the money and handing it to Ukraine as compensation for the destruction caused by Russia.
Quote:Ukrainian forces have secured “combat control” of areas where Russian troops entered the northeastern Kharkiv region earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
“Our soldiers have now managed to take combat control of the border area where the Russian occupiers entered,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Friday evening.
Zelenskyy’s comments appeared to be at odds with those made by Russian officials.
Viktor Vodolatskiy, a member of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said Russian forces now controlled more than half of the town of Vovchansk, three miles (five kilometers) inside the border, Russian state news agency Tass reported Friday.
Vovchansk has been a flashpoint for fighting since Russia launched an offensive in the Kharkiv region on May 10.
Vodolatskiy was also quoted as saying that, once Vovchansk was secured, Russian forces would target the cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk in the neighboring Donetsk region.
No independent confirmation of the claims was immediately possible.
Quote:President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Sunday that Russia is preparing to intensify its offensive along Ukraine’s northern border, as the death toll rose to 14 in an aerial bomb attack on a large construction supplies store in the city of Kharkiv.
The bombing of Kharkiv on Saturday afternoon also left 43 injured and 16 missing, Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said initially after the attack.
In a video statement from Kharkiv, Zelenskyy said that Russia is preparing offensive actions 90 kilometers (55 miles) northwest of Ukraine’s second largest city. He said that Russians “gather another group of troops near our border.”
He did not specify where the troops are being assembled, but Ukrainian officials have expressed strong concern about the Sumy region. Both Kharkiv city and Sumy with about 250,000 people are within about 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the Russian border.
Moscow’s troops have in recent weeks captured villages in the Kharkiv area as part of a broad push, and analysts say they may be trying to get within artillery range of the city. Ukrainian authorities have evacuated more than 11,000 people from the region since the start of the offensive on May 10.
Russian forces are carrying out offensive attacks across the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, with pitched battles in the Chasiv Yar direction of the Donetsk region, where “the intensity of the hostilities is quite high” according to a statement from Ukraine´s General Staff. “The defense forces are taking measures to prevent the advance of the enemy,” the statement said.
Quote:Ukraine’s Western backers are sending new tranches of weapons and supplies to keep the nation in the fight, but Russia attempts to taunt the effort, insisting no weapon can overcome their invasion.
Boast and bluster from Russia on the Ukraine war as it attempts to persuade Western nations their continuing support for Ukraine is pointless and only leads to people being killed. The remarks come from Russian diplomat Maxim Buyakevich, per Moscow government media, in an apparent bid to persuade that resisting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is pointless.
Buyakevich is said to have stated: “Kiev’s sponsors have no weapons capable of drastically changing the situation on the ground. Decisions to send more batch of already combat-tested weapons will only protract the military confrontation, causing more deaths and destruction”.
The inadequacy of comparative weapons systems is tricky ground for Russia, which has lost its apex fighting units in colossal numbers since its invasion began and even now refuses to deploy its limited number of next-generation tanks, apparently for fear of losing them in combat. Where Russia has seen success is in absolute weight of numbers-type fighting, where its huge legacy stocks of artillery ammunition and ability to retrofit large air-drop bombs with rudimentary guidance-glide kits has allowed the Federation to pound Ukraine with high explosives.
Western allies of Ukraine, on the other hand, appear to have a comfortable lead in the technological sophistication of weapons systems but have struggled to deliver these weapons in sufficient quantities. Even the absolute simplest weapons like artillery shells which haven’t meaningfully changed in decades suffer from seriously constrained supply chains and an industrial base not optimised for wartime.
It isn’t as if Russia has been invulnerable to Western weapons so far either. Beyond losing thousands of tanks, per Ukrainian estimates it has also sustained approaching half a million military casualties. While the exact proportion of that figure being killed or injured is unknown, according to Kyiv’s official figures, the half-million figure for Russia’s armed forces will be reached in the coming days.
Quote:The Labour Party will reportedly give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote in one of its first acts if victorious in the general election, in an apparent attempt to cement their grip on power.
Labour sources have told The Times of London that should the party take control of Downing Street — as is widely predicted to happen at the July 4th election — a Sir Keir Starmer government would look to lower the voting age in England within its first year in office.
The move would add around 1.5 million teens to the voter rolls, marking the largest expansion of the electorate since the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 by the Labour government of Harold Wilson in 1969.
Confirming the planned change, Starmer told Sky News on Saturday: “If you can work, if you can pay tax, if you can serve in your armed forces, then you ought to be able to vote.”
With low-information young voters tending to favour left-wing parties, the move would likely increase the number of voters for Labour, with a recent YouGov survey finding that Labour holds a 57 per cent to 8 per cent advantage over the Conservative Party among 18 to 24-year-olds.
YouGov’s director of political analytics, Patrick English said: “We would generally expect that lowering the voting age would be electorally advantageous to Labour, as younger people are significantly more likely to back them over the Conservatives, or indeed any other party.
“However, we also know that young people are among the most unlikely voter groups to actually turn out. So, any advantage Labour have in terms of raw support among this potential new block of young voters will be significantly reduced at the ballot box by their low participation rates.”
Quote:British police say four people were hurt and one was arrested when supporters of Iran’s authorities clashed with anti-government protesters at a London event marking the death of President Ebrahim Raisi.
The Metropolitan Police force said officers were called Friday evening to “reports of disorder” at a venue in the west London area of Wembley, where an event was being held to mark Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash. Protesters had gathered outside the venue and clashes broke out, police said.
The force said one person was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder. Four people were treated by paramedics for injuries that are not thought to be life-threatening or life-changing.
Police ordered those gathered to disperse and said Saturday that detectives would examine social media footage and other evidence to see whether more offenses had been committed.
Raisi, a pillar of Iran’s hard-line Islamic regime, died alongside the country’s foreign minister and six others in a crash in the country’s mountainous northwest on Sunday. He was interred Thursday at Iran’s holiest Shiite shrine.
Some Iranian expatriates have welcomed Raisi’s death. London is home to a large Iranian community, most of whom left in the years since the country’s Islamic revolution in 1979.
Quote:President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday started the first state visit to Germany by a French head of state in 24 years, a three-day trip meant to underline the strong ties between the European Union’s traditional leading powers.
The visit was originally meant to take place last July but was postponed at the last minute due to rioting in France following the killing of a 17-year-old by police.
While Macron is a frequent visitor to Germany as Paris and Berlin try to coordinate their positions on EU and foreign policy, this is the first state visit with full pomp since Jacques Chirac came in 2000. Macron and his wife, Brigitte, are being hosted by Germany´s largely ceremonial president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
It is “proof of the depth of the friendship between France and Germany” that Macron is visiting as Germany celebrates the 75th anniversary of its post-World War II constitution and before it marks the 35th anniversary in November of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Steinmeier said.
Steinmeier is holding a state banquet for Macron at his Bellevue palace in Berlin on Sunday evening before the two presidents travel on Monday to the eastern city of Dresden, where Macron will make a speech, and on Tuesday to Muenster in western Germany. The state visit will be followed later Tuesday by a meeting between Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and ministers from both countries at a government guest house outside Berlin.
Quote:The first evacuation flights for tourists stranded in France’s Pacific territory of New Caledonia took off Saturday, the high commission in the archipelago said, as President Emmanuel Macron’s government sought to defuse the crisis.
The international airport in the capital Noumea has remained closed for more than a week and all commercial flights have been cancelled due to the unrest until at least Tuesday.
“Measures to send foreigners and French tourists home continue,” the high commission, which represents the French state, said in a statement.
The tourists departed Saturday from the Magenta airfield in Noumea aboard military aircraft headed for Australia and New Zealand, according to an AFP journalist.
They will then have to take commercial flights to mainland France.
“I came on vacation to visit my best friend… The conflict broke out and I got stuck,” in Noumea, Audrey, who did not give her last name, told AFP.
Australia and New Zealand had already begun repatriating their nationals on Tuesday.
The situation has been gradually easing for the many people trapped in the territory that has been shaken since May 13 by riots over planned voting reforms.
Seven people have been killed in the violence, the latest a man shot dead on Friday by a policeman who was attacked by protesters.
New Caledonia has been ruled from Paris since the 1800s, but many indigenous Kanaks still resent France’s power over their islands and want fuller autonomy or independence.
France is planning to give voting rights to thousands of non-indigenous long-term residents, something Kanaks say would dilute the influence of their votes.
Quote:On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, blasted the U.N. as an enemy of “the values of America and the free world” that is used to “whitewash” the crimes of dictators and rogues and argued that unless there are fundamental reforms to the organization, the United States should give consideration to defunding the U.N.
After blasting the organization’s mourning for Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, Erdan stated, “I think that the most important thing is to understand that the U.N. has lost all of its credibility. It is no longer an organization that truly defends human rights. And I think that unless it [goes] through fundamental changes, the American administration should really maybe consider seriously [defunding] the U.N. I’m not sure that your viewers are aware of the fact that they are paying $19 billion, almost $20 billion every year, and instead of strengthening your values, the values of America and the free world, you are weakening your values. Because today, the U.N. is being used by dictators and rogue states to whitewash their crimes. Iran was also elected recently to chair the human rights Social Forum. You can’t make these things up.”
WHO on Pandemic Treaty
Perhaps it should have been called the Tyranny Treaty instead.
Quote:No deal. That was the message for World Health Organization (W.H.O.) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday after his proposed global pandemic treaty was rejected after two years of closed-door meetings in Geneva, Switzerland.
AP reports Roland Driece, co-chair of W.H.O.’s negotiating board for the agreement, acknowledged countries were unable to deliver an agreed proposal. W.H.O. had hoped a final draft treaty could be agreed on at its yearly meeting of health ministers starting Monday in Geneva.
“We are not where we hoped we would be when we started this process,” he said, adding that finalizing an international agreement on how to respond to a pandemic was critical “for the sake of humanity” even as a host of countries disagreed with the basic principle that unelected, unaccountable, health bureaucrats could somehow decide major global decisions on government policies.
Earlier this month, U.S. Republican senators wrote to the Biden administration, arguing the draft treaty focused on issues like “shredding intellectual property rights” and “supercharging the WHO.” They urged Biden not to sign off.
Driece said the World Health Assembly next week would urge participants to make “the right decisions to take this process forward” to one day reach a pandemic agreement “because we need it.”
Addressing a sullen final day of negotiations, the W.H.O. chief insisted, “This is not a failure.”
“We will try everything — believing that anything is possible — and make this happen because the world still needs a pandemic treaty,” Tedros said. “Because many of the challenges that caused a serious impact during COVID-19 still exist.”
Despite the desire of W.H.O. career bureaucrats to push ahead with the scheme, Britain’s department of health had already said it would only agree to an accord if it adhered to British national interest and sovereignty.
Quote:Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador claimed that this week’s outrage over the fatal shooting of a young boy during a failed kidnapping was manufactured as a way to hurt his government image due to the upcoming elections.
The shooting took place this week in the city of Paraiso, Tabasco, where a group of gunmen shot and killed 11-year-old Emiliano, who was walking along a street with his mother, Breitbart Texas reported. The incident went viral when a video captured the moment when Emiliano yelled out, “I don’t want to die,” only to die hours later at a local hospital. Initial information pointed to the shooting having been an attempted kidnapping and the boy having been shot while trying to defend his mother.
During his morning news conference, Lopez Obrador said the murder was “very lamentable”; however, since it was electoral season, his opposition was working to hurt him by focusing on news about violence, particularly in Tabasco, his home state.
Lopez Obrador said that some of the information shared about the case was false as a way to maximize outrage. He claimed that the case wasn’t an attempt to kidnap Emiliano’s mother but that the gunmen had gone after the 11-year-old boy. The Tabasco government issued a statement claiming that the gunmen had gone straight for Emiliano, pointing to him having been a target of the attack, Mexico’s Proceso reported. The case has sparked further outrage as journalists in Mexico claim the government is trying to blame the 11-year-old boy for his murder as a way to divert blame away from the failed strategies of Lopez Obrador.
Quote:Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker ® revealed that his daughter and son-in-law had died after being attacked by gangs while serving as missionaries in Haiti.
Baker wrote in a Facebook post early Friday morning that his heart was “broken in a thousand pieces,” after his daughter, Natalie Lloyd, and his son-in-law, Davy Lloyd had been “attacked by gangs.”
“My heart is broken in a thousand pieces,” Baker wrote. “I’ve never felt this kind of pain. Most of you know my daughter and son-in-law Davy and Natalie Lloyd are full time missionaries in Haiti. They were attacked by gangs this evening and were both killed. They went to Heaven together.”
Baker continued to ask for prayers for his family, adding that they “desperately need strength.”
“And please pray for the Lloyd family as well,” Baker added. “I have no other words for now.”
My heart is broken in a thousand pieces. I’ve never felt this kind of pain. Most of you know my daughter and son-in-law…
Posted by Ben Baker on Thursday, May 23, 2024
Baker’s daughter and son-in-law had been serving as missionaries in Port au Prince for Missions in Haiti. The organization was founded in 2000 by David and Alicia Lloyd, the parents of Davy.
Missions in Haiti released a newsletter in May 2023 which said gangs had “taken control of even more area in and around Port au Prince.”
The newsletter added that the “gang leader” of their area was in control of “one of the ‘nicer gangs’ in Haiti.”
Are You American? Xi Jinping Wants You To Visit His Country
Quote:The Chinese government held a “tourism leadership summit” to entice Americans to spend their money in China, featuring a personal invite from genocidal dictator Xi Jinping.
Xi sent a personalized message to the event, in the city of Xi’an, emphasizing the importance that “cultural and people-to-people exchanges” hold in the eyes of the Communist Party for improving relations with America. Organizers and state media noted that the China-U.S. Tourism Leadership Summit used to be an annual event but had not been held since 2019, the last year before the Communist Party began locking down entire cities in response to the coronavirus outbreak beginning in Wuhan late that year.
Xi’an was the site of some of Xi’s most brutal lockdowns, in December 2021 and October 2022.
“We warmly welcome American tourists to travel to China, meet Chinese friends, experience Chinese culture, visit beautiful landscapes, and experience the real China,” Xi said in his message to the event, according to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.
Xinhua cited Xi as saying:
It is hoped that all walks of life in the two countries will take this summit as an opportunity to have in-depth exchanges, build consensus, and take active actions to promote personnel exchanges through tourism cooperation, continue China-U.S. friendship with cultural and people-to-people exchanges, and help the San Francisco vision turn into reality, Xi said.
The Global Times, another Chinese government propaganda outlet, reported that leftist American President Joe Biden also sent a letter to the organizers and attendees at the tourism summit inviting Chinese nationals to travel to America.
“The U.S. welcomes the people of China to discover our cities, learn about our history, and engage with our people in destinations across the country,” Biden reportedly wrote.
Quote:China stepped up its “punishment” military drill around Taiwan on Friday, staging mock missile attacks and bombing runs against the island, plus simulated attacks on foreign vessels that might come to Taiwan’s aid.
The Chinese jets participating in the drill were clearly armed with live missiles.
The first day of China’s military drill, which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) described as “punishment” for Taiwan electing “separatist” President William Lai Ching-te, was a bit less provocative. There was plenty of belligerent rhetoric from Beijing, but Taiwanese officials said the PLA was not doing anything it had not done before, and the drill was not nearly as large as the military tantrum China threw after former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
The second day of the latest exercise was more provocative, as Chinese bombers flew in attack formations, and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships practiced seizing control of the Taiwan-controlled islands near the Chinese coast.
Taiwanese security officials said the PLAN also practiced attacking foreign ships near Taiwan and harassing civilian vessels with coast guard ships.
On Friday, the PLA released an animated video that showed Chinese missiles destroying the Taiwanese cities of Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Hualien — attacks that would condemn millions of people to a fiery death if conducted for real. The video labeled China’s missiles as “sacred weapons to kill independence,” a slogan the PLA seems to have grown fond of.
"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.
![[Image: SP1-Scripter.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Scripter.png)
![[Image: SP1-Writer.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Writer.png)
![[Image: SP1-Poet.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Poet.png)
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Of some note, he produced a b-movie entitled "![[Image: QrnbKlx.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/QrnbKlx.jpg)
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![[Image: BwtNdKw.png%5B]](https://i.imgur.com/BwtNdKw.png%5B)
Now I know for sure why things aren't getting quiet down here in Costa Rica...
