Quote:President Joe Biden responded to the news that Hersh Goldberg-Polin was one of the bodies that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had discovered in Gaza, and stated “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.”
Biden issued a statement that it was “now confirmed that one of the hostages” killed by Hamas terrorists was Goldberg-Polin. Biden described Goldberg-Polin’s death as “tragic” and “reprehensible.”
“Earlier today, in a tunnel under the city of Rafah, Israeli forces recovered six bodies of hostages held by Hamas,” Biden said in a statement. “We have now confirmed that one of the hostages killed by these vicious Hamas terrorists was an American citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin.”
Biden added that he was “devasted and outraged.”
“Hersh was among the innocents brutally attacked while attending a music festival for peace in Israel on October 7,” Biden added. “He lost his arm helping friends and strangers during Hamas’ savage massacre. He had just turned 23. He planned to travel the world. I have gotten to know his parents, Jon and Rachel. They have been courageous, wise, and steadfast, even as they have endured the unimaginable. They have been relentless and irrepressible champions of their son and of all the hostages held in unconscionable conditions. I admire them and grieve with them more deeply than words can express.”
“I know all Americans tonight will have them in their prayers, just as Jill and I will,” Biden continued. “I have worked tirelessly to bring their beloved Hersh safely to them and am heartbroken by the news of his death. It is as tragic as it is reprehensible. Make no mistake. Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages.”
As Breitbart News previously reported:
Israel’s Army Radio announced Sunday morning local time that Goldberg-Polin had been identified as one of the dead. The immediate cause of death had not been identified. Army Radio also announced that the family of Israeli hostage Orio Danino, 25, who had been abducted after saving people from the music festival, had also been identified as one of the dead. So, too, had Eden Yerushalmi, 24, an Israeli woman who had spoken with her family before being abducted.
Hersh was one of the more than 250 people who were taken hostage after Hamas terrorists launched a land, sea, and air invasion of Israel, leaving 1,200 people murdered.
Goldberg-Polin and other people who had been attending the Supernova festival sought shelter in a roadside rocket shelter. While they were inside, Hamas terrorists were throwing grenades into the shelter, which resulted in the loss of Goldberg-Polin’s left arm from the elbow down.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband Jon Polin recently spoke at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago and spoke about how it was “not a political issue” to call for the hostages to be released.
Why do I get the impression that Hamas members are not shaking right now?
Supreme Leader of Los Zetas Released from US Prison
Quote:Speculation is running wild on both sides of the border following the release from prison of a man once known as the supreme leader of the Gulf Cartel and founder of Los Zetas. Some individuals were expecting him to return to his hometown and reclaim the reigns of his criminal organization. Others claimed he would stay in the U.S. under witness protection. The issue caused widespread speculation and rumors to spread like wildfire.
This week, Osiel Cardenas Guillen, the former top leader of the Gulf Cartel, was released from a U.S. prison, sparking widespread speculation about his future. According to a report from NBC, Cardenas Guillen is in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is facing extradition to Mexico next week, where he has multiple pending criminal charges.
For several months leading up to his release, authorities in Mexico had been hearing rumors about his eventual return to Matamoros and how individuals from the Gulf Cartel were paving the way for him. Other individuals claimed that other leaders within the Gulf Cartel were moving to kill him upon his return to Mexico. Mexican news outlets ran various stories with conflicting versions about the drug lord’s release and potential return to power.
Cardenas became a highly feared figure following his rise to power in the late 1990s when he killed his way to the helm of the Gulf Cartel. Soon after, he consolidated his power by recruiting a group of former soldiers and police officers as his personal guard and hit squad. That group grew in power and became known as Los Zetas.
The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Cardenas on drug trafficking charges in 2000, but it wasn’t until 2003 that Mexican military forces arrested him in Matamoros following a fierce shootout. In 2007, Mexican authorities extradited Cardenas, and he had his initial hearing in Brownsville, where much of the case was kept under seal and out of public view. While Cardenas was facing multiple life sentences if convicted, he pleaded guilty to various charges and, in 2010, received a 25-year prison sentence and was ordered to pay a $50 million fine. While it is believed that he received credit for time served since his extradition, his release this week points to Cardenas having received various sentence reductions due to his cooperation with authorities.
Quote:A reported 10,000 hotel workers in several cities across America are on strike in a push for better wages and a reversal of staffing cuts.
The strike is happening over Labor Day weekend following contract talks with Marriott International, Hilton, and Hyatt, Reuters reported Sunday, citing the Unite Here union.
The outlet continued:
Unite Here, which represents workers in hotels, casinos, and airports across the United States and Canada, said thousands of workers at 25 hotels are on strike in some major travel destinations including San Francisco and San Diego in California, Hawaii’s capital city Honolulu, Boston, Seattle, and Greenwich, Connecticut, with workers from additional cities ready to join the walkout as the Labor Day holiday weekend continues.
The strike is taking place with the industry facing a 9% increase in Labor Day weekend domestic travel compared to last year, according to AAA booking data.
Images show one large group of workers carrying signs that read “Workers Need a Raise” and “Make Them Pay!”:
...
According to Hyatt’s lead of labor relations for the Americas, Michael D’Angelo, its hotels have contingency plans in place to deal with the strikes, the Associated Press (AP) reported Sunday.
He noted that, “We are disappointed that UNITE HERE has chosen to strike while Hyatt remains willing to negotiate.”
There are approximately 1.9 million people working in America’s hotel industry which is about 196,000 fewer than there were in early 2019, per Bureau of Labor Statistics, the AP article noted.
Quote:Enough fentanyl to kill 2.5 million Americans — as well as several pounds of methamphetamine and cocaine — was seized in a South Carolina drug investigation, the FBI announced Monday.
A multi-agency effort focusing on illegal drug distribution in Richland and Lexington Counties unearthed five kilograms (around 11 pounds) of fentanyl, 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of methamphetamine, and 800 grams (1.7 pounds) of cocaine, Special Agent in Charge Steve Jensen with FBI Columbia said:
While he did not name or specify the number of arrests, Jensen said the investigation spanned multiple years and that the fentanyl had the potential to kill 2.5 million people.
“Our work doesn’t end here. We will continue to investigate and hold offenders who are poisoning our communities with illegal drugs accountable,” the agent said in the video statement.
“We will not waver in our commitment to protect citizens of the United States.”
Quote:The California Assembly passed a bill that would ban voter identification requirements from being enacted at local government levels.
Senate Bill 1174, which passed in a 57-16 vote, would “prohibit a local government from enacting or enforcing any charter provision, ordinance, or regulation requiring a person to present identification for the purpose of voting or submitting a ballot at any polling place, voter center, or other location where ballots are cast or submitted, as specified.”
The bill was introduced by California State Sen. David Min (D) and co-sponsored by California state Sen. Josh Newman (D).
“We cannot have 100 different charter cities making up 100 different sets of voting rules, based on fringe conspiracy theories,” Min said in a statement, according to the Daily Pilot. “I have repeatedly told the Huntington Beach City Council members pushing this issue that if they were to produce any evidence of widespread voter fraud, I would lead efforts to change California’s voter eligibility rules. They have not produced any such evidence.”
California Assemblyman Bill Essayli ® reportedly attempted to include an amendment into the legislation that would have prevented illegal migrants from being able to vote in elections, according to the Center Square.
The bill’s passage comes after voters in Huntington Beach voted 53.4 percent in support of a ballot initiative that would require residents to show identification in order to vote in elections starting in 2026, according to Democracy Docket.
In April, California filed a lawsuit against Huntington Beach, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta noted that requiring people to show identification in order to vote was “blatantly and flatly illegal,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
“They have greatly overstated the authority they think they have,” Bonta said in a statement at the time. “They have willfully violated the law, they have brazenly violated the law…. They know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it anyway.”
Quote:On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” House Speaker Emerita Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that while she’s not familiar with the details of California’s legislation to allow illegal immigrants to get taxpayer assistance for buying homes, “making the American Dream of home ownership available to all people is something we have to do for people who are here now” and she wants to move illegal immigrants “to documented.” But ultimately, the issue is up to the states.
Host Bill Maher asked, “The California lawmakers just passed a law — it hasn’t been signed by Gov. Newsom (D) — but giving government assistance to undocumented immigrants to buy houses. That’s kind of a different place than the Democratic Party used to be on immigration, is it not? I’m not going to say that’s what the country’s going to do, but that’s certainly where California is.”
Pelosi responded, “Well, let me just say, immigration had always been a bipartisan issue.”
Maher cut in to say, “But not free housing.”
Pelosi responded, “Well, it’s not free housing, it’s the American Dream being available to more people.” After talking about past immigration statements from Republicans, Pelosi said, “California’s always in the lead, maybe others will follow that lead, but that’s up to those states. But we’re very blessed here with beautiful diversity of our –.”
Maher then cut in to follow up, “So, you’d vote for this law?”
Pelosi answered, “I’m not familiar with exactly what that is, but making the American Dream of home ownership available to all people is something we have to do for people who are here now –.”
Maher cut in to say “This is for the undocumented.”
Pelosi answered, “Well, what I would like to do is move them to documented.”
Pelosi kept speaking, but got drowned out by applause from the audience. Once it died down, she stated, “One of the best things that we can do for our economy is to pass comprehensive immigration reform, so that all of these people are participating more fully in our economy, contributing to it, contributing to Social Security, contributing in every way to it. So, the attitude that we have in California of openness is something we share, whether that translates into particular policy one place or another is up to that region.”
Quote:An imam in upstate New York reportedly told supporters to “take out” Columbia University assistant professor Shai Davidai, who has led counter-demonstrators against pro-Palestinian protests, riots, and encampments.
The New York Post reported Saturday:
Vassar-educated, Utica-based imam Tom Facchine made the plea about business school professor Shai Davidai during an Aug. 20 webinar called “Islamic Political Activism” with various Columbia student groups which promoted and broadcast it.
“That Shai Davidai guy: How do we get him in trouble? How do we create a situation in which he’s in jeopardy?” Facchine, 35, asked. “If you’re able to take out somebody like that and make an example, that might shut up a hundred more.”
The Jersey-born Facchine left Christianity to become atheist, found Marx in college and converted to Islam in 2010.
Columbia has reportedly decided not to take further actions to protect Davidai.
As Breitbart News reported earlier this year, Davidai was barred from campus, ostensibly for his own safety, after administrators allowed a pro-Palestinian encampment to become entrenched. The encampment ultimately ended with activists violently occupying a university building before being removed by police — though many charges were later dropped.
Columbia president Minouche Shafik resigned last month, after her perceived mismanagement of the crisis, which threatens to resume this fall.
Quote:Rapper Fatman Scoop, whose real name was Isaac Freeman, died at 53 after collapsing at a concert in Hamden, Connecticut, on Friday.
Video footage that TMZ obtained of the incident, which took place at Town Center Park, shows Fatman Scoop saying, “If you came to party, make some noise” before collapsing onstage. The music then stops, and the crowd falls silent.
Multiple people then rush to the stage to administer CPR to Fatman Scoop. While this transpired, a man onstage appeared to try to distract the crowd by attempting to keep the show going.
“I just wanna say this, Hamden, where y’all at, make some noise for me,” the man said, which failed to elicit an enthusiastic reaction from the crowd.
“How y’all feeling out there?” the individual added as people behind him performed chest compressions on the “Be Faithful” rapper.
A concertgoer then shouted, “We wanna know what happened to Fatman Scoop!”
“They doing CPR? Oh my God,” another concertgoer proclaimed.
Shortly after that, the “All Night Long” rapper was seen being rushed to a local hospital in a stretcher while an emotionally distraught woman declared, “Lord, touch him. Please, Father God! Touch him, Lord, please, Lord. Please, touch him, Father God. Oh my God!”
Authorities told TMZ they were dispatched for a medical emergency at 8:33 p.m.
This was followed up with multiple reports that the rapper had died.
“Fatman Scoop has died after suffering a medical emergency at a show in Connecticut, according to his tour manager,” the radio station KBXX 97.9 The Box revealed in a Facebook post.
The radio station added that Fatman Scoop “was rushed to the hospital after collapsing during a performance. The incident occurred at The Green and Gold Party summer concert at Town Center Park in Hamden, Connecticut.”
“CPR was administered on-site during the medical emergency before he was taken to the hospital,” KBXX 97.9 The Box added. “Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett has asked the public to ‘please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.'”
Fatman Scoop has died after suffering a medical emergency at a show in Connecticut, according to his tour manager.On…
Posted by KBXX 97.9 The Box on Saturday, August 31, 2024
Quote:Police arrested a 32-year-old woman after six people were hurt in a knife attack on a bus headed to a festival in western Germany. Authorities said Saturday that there was no evidence of a political or religious motive.
Three of those attacked are in life-threatening condition, police said on Friday evening.
The knife attack took place in Siegen, east of Cologne. The bus was on its way to a local festival in the town and at least another 40 people were on board when the attack took place at about 7:40 p.m.
Police and prosecutors said the six people wounded were aged between 16 and 30 and all were from the region. By Saturday morning, three of them had left the hospital after outpatient treatment.
Local authorities planned to go ahead with the festival.
The stabbing in Siegen happened a week after a knife attack in Solingen, a city in the same state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in which a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria who had avoided being deported is accused of killing three people and wounding another eight.
The Solingen attack prompted the governing coalition to draw up plans to tighten knife laws and make deportations easier.
Police said the woman arrested in Siegen was a German citizen with no immigrant roots.
Quote:Two people who were critically injured in attacks while attending London’s Notting Hill Carnival earlier this week have died, police said Saturday.
The Metropolitan Police force said 32-year-old Cher Maximen died early Saturday after being stabbed in the street on Aug. 25. She had been visiting the carnival, billed as Europe’s biggest street party, with her child, who was not hurt.
A 20-year-old local man was arrested and charged with attempted murder, and is now likely to face a murder charge.
Police also announced the death of Mussie Imnetu, 41, who was found unconscious in a west London street with a head injury on Monday night. The chef had been visiting Britain from his home in Dubai.
A 31-year-old London man has been charged with causing grievous bodily harm, and police said the charge would be reviewed after Imnetu’s death.
More than 1 million people each year attend the carnival, a two-day celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture that takes place on the streets of the Notting Hill neighborhood in west London.
Quote:In a Black Lives Matter-inspired move, a British university has cancelled the term “Anglo-Saxon” from its curriculum.
The University of Nottingham has removed “Algo-Saxon” from courses on history and literature to push back against “nationalist narratives”.
According to The Telegraph, a masters-level course, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies, has been renamed as Viking and Early Medieval English Studies.
Another module, a literature course originally named “A Tale of Seven Kingdoms: Anglo-Saxon and Viking-Age England from Bede to Alfred the Great” has been recast as “Early Mediaeval England from Bede to Alfred the Great”.
While the thrust of the “decolonise the curriculum” agenda — which the university pledged to do amid the Black Lives Matter movement — has typically focussed on attacking British history and identity, the university reportedly said that it will seek to “problematize the term ‘Viking’” as well.
Nottingham academics have also been seeking to dismantle “essentialist ideas” about nationality, namely the very concept of a distinct English identity which has unique and fundamental characteristics.
The school is not alone in attacking the history of the Anglo-Saxons, with the University of Cambridge now teaching students that Anglo-Saxons never actually existed as a distinct ethnic group.
The move, ironically made by Cambridge’s leading Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC) studies, was reportedly done in order to promote “anti-racist” ideology.
“One concern has been to address recent concerns over use of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and its perceived connection to ethnic/racial English identity,” the department is reported as saying.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Cambridge University Press academic publication, the Anglo-Saxon England Journal, said that it would be removing Anglo-Saxon from its name to better represent the “international, interdisciplinary and rapidly evolving nature of research in this field”.
Quote:The British taxpayer is footing the bill for a record number of out-of-work migrants, who are reportedly costing the government up to £8.5 billion per year.
A record 1,689,000 foreigners are currently unemployed or otherwise “economically inactive” in the UK, according to analysis of government figures by the Centre for Immigration Control. The think tank noted that the current level is the highest in British history, surpassing the previous high in 2012 of 1,628,000.
Centre for Migration Control researchers calculated that support for unemployed immigrants could cost the taxpayer as much as £8.5 million per year. However, this estimate did not include the costs of asylum seekers and foreign students to the state, meaning the total financial drain of mass migration policies is likely much higher.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Robert Bates, Centre for Migration Control research director, said: “For all the talk of a fiscal ‘black hole’, the Labour Government seem to be missing the glaringly obvious fact that mass migration is causing economic pandemonium.
“There is no reason for us to continue handing out so many long-term visas when we are currently having to bail out over a million migrants who are already in Britain but not working. This is the very definition of a Ponzi scheme, and we will only compound the problem if we do not change course soon.’
“Our elderly are facing a potentially deadly winter as Keir Starmer cancels the lifeline of the winter fuel allowance, but at the same time he is doing nothing to clamp down on workless migrants.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage added: “The economic arguments for mass migration are over.”
Germany: Anti-Mass Migration Policies Favored by People
Quote:Populist anti-mass migration parties made significant gains in state elections in Germany on Sunday, with the right-wing Alternative for Germany projected to have secured a resounding victory in Thuringia.
Exit polls for the east German state of Thuringia have put the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) out on top, with a projected 30.5 per cent of the vote, beating out the neo-liberal centrist Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party formerly led by Chancellor Angela Merkel at 24.5 per cent.
Should the exit polls prove true, it would mark the first time that the AfD was the winner in a state election in Germany.
Separately, in the state of Saxony, the AfD is in a tight race for the top with the CDU, with exit polls projecting the centrist party to have won 31.5 per cent of the vote, compared to 30 per cent for the AfD, broadcaster DW reports.
However, given the slim divide between the two parties, it is still possible that the populist party may yet squeak out a victory in Saxony as well.
Hailing the success of her party, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said that her party should be involved in the state governments, pushing back against reported plans by other parties to band together to block the populists from entering government.
“Under normal circumstances, in order to stick to the customs in this country, the strongest party is exploring, and that is the AfD,” Weidel said referring to Thuringia. “The voters want the AfD to be involved in a government. We have 30 per cent of the voters in both federal states, and without us, a stable government is no longer possible.”
Quote:Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Märtha Louise, married an American self-professed shaman in a wedding ceremony at the culmination of three days of festivities
A Norwegian princess marries an American self-styled shaman in front of a star-studded audienceBy JARI TANNERAssociated PressThe Associated PressHELSINKI
HELSINKI (AP) — Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Märtha Louise, married an American self-professed shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities.
The 52-year-old Märtha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views.
Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests told media outlets that Norwegian and U.S. artists performed at the event along with a gospel choir and a singer representing Norway’s indigenous Sámi people.
“It was fantastic! It was Hollywood meets Geiranger,” Norwegian TV personality Harald Rønneberg described the colorful ceremony to public broadcaster NRK. “It was gospel and love. We laughed, we clapped, and we were touched. It was absolutely beautiful.”
The couple has sold the wedding photo rights to British celebrity magazine Hello! and the film rights to Netflix. The deals prompted protests from Norwegian media, which say the arrangement goes against local practices. The couple have often lashed out against the press while promoting themselves on social media.
The 87-year-old King Harald, who has been in fragile health the past few years, attended his daughter’s wedding together with Queen Sonja and other member of the Norwegian royal house. Crown Princess Victoria and her husband Prince Daniel represented the Swedish royal house together with her brother, Prince Carl Philip, and his wife Princess Sofia. No other European royals attended the wedding.
The wedding comes amid widespread criticism of the couple’s actions and waning support for the Norwegian royals, who have also been plagued by negative reports about an unruly family member who faces preliminary domestic violence charges.
Märtha Louise and Verrett, 49, have attracted headlines with their alternative beliefs. She is fourth in line to the Norwegian throne but said in 2022 that she’ll no longer officially represent the Norwegian royal house.
The princess — she has retained the title — has said she can talk with angels, while Verrett claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits and has a medallion which helps ward off spells and cure diseases.
They became engaged in 2022. Following their marriage, Verrett will not have a royal title or official duties.
MIDDLE EAST
Hamas Killed 6 Hostages Before IDF Could Rescue Them
Quote:The six Israeli hostages whose bodies were found in a Hamas tunnel underneath Gaza Saturday had been shot in the head in the last 48 hours, according to autopsy reports Sunday.
As Breitbart News reported, the Israeli military identified the hostages Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Master Sergeant Ori Danino
Hamas murdered the hostages in the belief that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were closing in. According to IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the soldiers did not know the hostages’ exact location but had rescued one hostage nearby last week and were fighting above ground at the location.
“According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” Hagari said Sunday morning.
Ynetnews.com reported:
All six hostages whose bodies were discovered and recovered from Gaza on Sunday were found with gunshot wounds to their head and other areas, their autopsies showed.
According to the post-mortem, they were executed no more than 48 hours before being found and signs of neglect in captivity were found on their bodies.
Except for one of the hostages, who showed signs of being bound, no evidence of torture was found. However, the condition of their bodies indicated systematic neglect, including a lack of hygiene over a long period. Additionally, indications were present of previous injuries sustained during their abduction, which had been treated over time.
Israel’s Army Radio noted that this is not the first time during the war that Palestinian terrorists have murdered Israeli hostages to prevent their rescue. Notably, in the infamous 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, terrorists murdered Israeli athletes they had taken hostage as West German police attempted a rescue.
Separately, on Sunday, three Israeli police officers were murdered near a checkpoint in the West Bank region of Judea in a drive-by shooting by a Palestinian terrorist.
Quote:Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, the American-Israeli hostage who lost his left hand when being abducted by Hamas from the Nova music festival on October 7, has been found dead in Gaza by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.
Goldberg-Polin was identified after news broke Saturday that the IDF had discovered a number of unidentified bodies in Gaza. Amid rumors spreading throughout Israel on social media, the IDF asked the public to wait before it had identified the bodies.
In a statement, the IDF said:
The IDF located a number of bodies during combat in the Gaza Strip. At this time, the troops are still operating in the area and are carrying out a process to extract and identify the bodies that will last several hours. We ask to refrain from spreading rumors.
Israel’s Army Radio announced Sunday morning local time that Goldberg-Polin had been identified as one of the dead. The immediate cause of death had not been identified.
Army Radio also announced that the family of Israeli hostage Ori Danino, 25, who had been abducted after saving people from the music festival, had also been identified as one of the dead. So, too, had Eden Yerushalmi, 24, an Israeli woman who had spoken with her family before being abducted from the festival.
Six bodies were found; the other three have not yet been identified as of the time of publication of this article.
Update: In a statement, the IDF and the Israel Security Agency (ISA) declared:
Yesterday (Saturday), the IDF and ISA located and recovered the bodies of the hostages Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Master Sergeant Ori Danino, from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area in the Gaza Strip and returned them to Israeli territory.
They were all taken hostage on October 7th and were murdered by the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.
Following an identification procedure carried out by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, the Israel Police, and the IDF Military Rabbinate, the IDF Manpower Directorate’s Hostage team, which is responsible for accompanying the families of the hostages, notified their families. The IDF and ISA send their heartfelt condolences to the families.
The IDF and Israeli security forces are operating with all means to bring home all the hostages as fast as possible.
The voices of Army Radio announcers were heavy and near tears, despite the near-routine nature of military news.
“Our hearts are broken,” the Goldberg-Polin family said, thanking the public for their support and asking for privacy.
"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:A former top aide to New York Govs. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Kathy Hochul (D) used her high-ranking position in the state’s government to peddle influence for China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while profiting millions in the process, an unsealed federal indictment alleges.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors unsealed the indictment against 41-year-old Linda Sun, born in China and a naturalized American citizen, and her husband, 40-year-old Chris Hu. The indictment charges the couple with operating a money laundering and bank fraud scheme thanks in part to Sun’s allegedly acting as an agent of influence for China while working in Cuomo and Hochul’s administrations.
The couple were arrested and arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn on Tuesday.
The 64-page indictment is far-reaching, detailing Sun’s alleged work as an agent for China and her husband’s subsequent illegal business dealings in China. In particular, the indictment lays out how Sun allegedly acted on behalf of the CCP while working for Cuomo, who is called “Politician-1,” and Hochul, who is called “Politician-2.” The indictment states:
The defendant LINDA SUN acted at the order, direction, or request of representatives of the [People’s Republic of China (PRC)] government and the CCP to engage in political activities intended to influence the public, including the [New York State (NYS)] government, with respect to the political or public interests of the PRC government and the CCP.
Sun, in various instances, allegedly prevented Cuomo and Hochul from working, engaging, and speaking with Taiwanese officials. At the same time, Sun allegedly had Cuomo and Hochul make seemingly pro-China statements to appease CCP officials.
During the Chinese coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, for example, the Taiwanese government donated 200,000 masks to New York. When Taiwanese officials pressed why then-Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office had not made any public announcement about the donation, Sun allegedly phoned her contact in the CCP to make them aware that Hochul would be only privately calling to thank such Taiwanese officials for the donation.
“Taipei economic and cultural office donated 200,000 surgical masks. No formal acknowledgment but I will be arranging for [Politician-2] to call their office to thank them. Just wanted to update you,” Sun allegedly wrote to her CCP contact.
That same month, Sun’s CCP contact told her that various China-based organizations would be donating about 1,000 ventilators to New York’s hospital association amid the pandemic. Sun, the indictment alleges, told her CCP contact that she would have then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo call him to thank him for the donation and that she would have him thank China publicly for the donation.
Quote:The Biden-Harris administration said Tuesday that it opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to hold onto the Gaza-Egypt border — known as the Philadelphi Corridor — to ensure weapons cannot be smuggled into Gaza.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a briefing with reporters on Tuesday that the U.S. opposed any long-term Israeli presence in Gaza. He also said that Israel had agreed to a U.S. “bridging” proposal last month that would have required the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to withdraw from “densely populated areas,” which Miller said “includes the Philadelphi Corridor.”
From the State Department transcript:
We’ve made very clear what we believe about the possibility of an ongoing Israeli presence in Gaza, and that’s that we are opposed to it.
I will also say that in the bridging proposal that we put forward, that the Government of Israel agreed to, it did include the removal of the IDF from densely populated areas. That includes the Philadelphi Corridor. Now, there – as I said, there are a number of details that require further negotiation to conclude how the parties will live up to their commitments under the agreement. I’m not going to negotiate on those in public, but that’s what we continue to discuss with the parties.
It remains unclear whether Israel agreed to withdraw from some of the Phildelphi Corridor, or all of it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a length presentation on Monday about why he believed Israel needed to hold onto the Philadelphi corridor to prevent a resurgence of Hamas.
Israeli opposition figures delivered rebuttals on Tuesday in which they largely accepted his argument, but said that Israel could return to the Philadelphi Corridor after withdrawing from it, and questioned his conduct of the war and hostage negotiations generally.
Some of Netanyahu’s critics say that his stance on the Philadelphi Corridor provoked Hamas to murder six hostages last week, though evidence suggests Hamas was primarily motivated by the desire to prevent the hostages’ rescue.
Hamas has accused Israel of changing its demands for a hostage deal but it has never accepted any deal on the table.
Quote:The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar with terrorism on Tuesday, together with six other members of the terrorist organization — nearly 11 months after the Hamas attack on Israel on of October 7.
Three of the terrorists listed in the criminal complaint are already dead, having been killed by Israel. The dead include former Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammad Al-Masri (also known as Mohammed Deif), and Marwan Issa. The living ones include Sinwar, Hamas external chief Khaled Meshaal, and foreign relations head Ali Baraka.
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The DOJ said in a press release:
The Justice Department announced today the unsealing of terrorism, murder conspiracy, and sanctions-evasion charges against six senior leaders of Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. The charges relate to the defendants’ central roles in planning, supporting, and perpetrating the terrorist atrocities that Hamas committed in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 (the October 7 Hamas Massacres), involving the murders and kidnappings of countless innocent civilians, including American citizens, which was the culmination of Hamas’s decades-long campaign of terrorism and violence against Israel and its allies, including American citizens. The defendants are either deceased or remain at large.
“The Justice Department has charged Yahya Sinwar and other senior leaders of Hamas for financing, directing, and overseeing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the national security of the United States,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “On October 7th, Hamas terrorists, led by these defendants, murdered nearly 1200 people, including over 40 Americans, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians. This weekend, we learned that Hamas murdered an additional six people they had kidnapped and held captive for nearly a year, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23 year old Israeli American. We are investigating Hersh’s murder, and each and every one of Hamas’ brutal murders of Americans, as an act of terrorism. The charges unsealed today are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas’ operations. These actions will not be our last.”
Quote:United States authorities seized a $13 million luxury plane used by Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro on Monday after authorities determined that its purchase violated U.S. sanctions imposed on the rogue regime.
The aircraft, identified as a Dassault Falcon 900EX bearing tail number T7-ESPRT, was seized in the Dominican Republic and flown to an air base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The plane reportedly flew to the Dominican Republic earlier this year for maintenance, and remained there until it was seized.
The U.S. Department of Justice said in a press statement that an investigation determined that individuals affiliated with the Maduro regime allegedly used a Caribbean-based shell company to conceal the purchase of the aircraft from a Florida-based company sometime between late 2022 and early 2023.
The aircraft, according to the statement, was illegally exported from the United States to Venezuela through the Caribbean in April 2023. Since May 2023, the plane was used by the socialist regime to transport Maduro and members of his socialist regime. The plane flew “almost exclusively” to and from a military base in Venezuela.
“This morning, the Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
“The Department will continue to pursue those who violate our sanctions and export controls to prevent them from using American resources to undermine the national security of the United States,” said Garland.
The United States, during the administration of former President Donald Trump, issued an Executive Order in August 2019 that prohibits U.S. persons from engaging in transactions with persons who “have acted or purported to act directly or indirectly” on behalf of the Maduro regime.
“Let this seizure send a clear message: aircraft illegally acquired from the United States for the benefit of sanctioned Venezuelan officials cannot just fly off into the sunset,” Dept. of Commerce Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod said. “It doesn’t matter how fancy the private jet or how powerful the officials – we will work relentlessly with our partners here and across the globe to identify and return any aircraft illegally smuggled outside of the United States.”
In addition to transporting Maduro and senior regime officials in the past, the plane was reportedly used by the Maduro regime in December 2023 to fly a group of unjustly imprisoned Americans to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to be exchanged for Maduro’s top money launderer and key financial brain Alex Saab, who was released by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden as part of a prisoner swap deal with the Venezuelan socialist dictator.
The White House claimed shortly after the exchange that Saab’s release was part of the Biden administration’s strategy to curb the flow of Venezuelan migrants that continue to enter the United States.
Dominican President Luis Abinader and Foreign Minister Roberto Álvarez held a press conference on Monday, where they clarified that the now seized Maduro regime-owned aircraft was not registered under Maduro nor the Venezuelan government’s name,
“We must point out that this airplane was not in the name of the Venezuelan government; it was in the name of a private individual,” President Abinader said, pointing out that some 40 airplanes are presently receiving maintenance in the country.
Foreign Minister Álvarez said that the aircraft was retained in May by the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the request of U.S. authorities as part of a criminal investigation process, leading to its seizure on Monday.
Quote:An anti-Israel, pro-terror march in Manhattan on Labor Day brought 5,000 demonstrators into the street, chanting radical slogans, setting off smoke bombs, and overwhelming police who tried to control the illegal demonstration.
The Post added that some New York Police Department (NYPD) officers tried to stop the march, but failed.
The protest was a contrast to the vigil the day before by pro-Israel demonstrators, who had gathered to show solidarity with Israel after Hamas murdered six hostages, including U.S. citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
The New York Post reported:
A massive mob of rowdy anti-Israeli protesters — including some proudly waving terrorist flags — stormed through the Big Apple on Labor Day, lighting flares and setting off smoke bombs as they marched toward the heart of the city.
The unruly demonstrators, who police sources said may have reached as many as 5,000, gathered at Union Square in Manhattan in the early afternoon and began their raucous march to Washington Square Park.
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The crowd held Palestinian, Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah flags, chanting “Free Palestine!” and, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied.” Hezbollah is a Lebanese terror group that has been fighting with the Palestinians against Israel in the Gaza war.
In contrast, a pro-Israel vigil on Sunday had been peaceful, with American and Israeli flags prominently displayed.
The Times of Israel noted:
Some 2,000 people gathered at Columbus Circle in New York on a hot and humid night Sunday for a vigil mourning the six Israeli hostages whose bodies were found in Gaza over the weekend, an impromptu gathering of song, prayer and tears about 24 hours after the news of the captives’ death sent Israel and the Jewish world reeling.
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The crowd waved American and Israeli flags, some of them also featuring the yellow ribbon that symbolizes advocacy for the hostages. Some wore other symbols of the fight for the hostages, such as dog tags or shirts reading “Bring them home now.”
Hamas terrorists shot the six hostages in the head late last week before Israeli soldiers could rescue them. There has been silence from pro-Palestinian groups thus far in condemning what was a brutal, cold-blooded mass murder.
Quote:Pro-Palestinian protesters returned to Columbia University on Tuesday for the start of classes — picketing, calling on students to boycott their classes, and even vandalizing the Alma Mater statue at the center of the New York campus.
The Associated Press reported:
Someone splattered red paint Tuesday on a statue in front of the Low Memorial Library. Outside the gates of the university, a small group of protesters marched on a picket line and urged arriving students and faculty to join them rather than go to class.
“As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student who represented campus protesters in negotiations with the university, told The Associated Press last week ahead of the start of classes. “Not only protests and encampments, the limit is the sky.”
The vandalism was celebrated by the national parent organization of Students for Justice in Palestine.
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House Republicans, who have led inquiries into antisemitism on college campuses, commented on the renewal of Columbia’s protests.
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Last week, a Columbia task force on antisemitism found that the university had failed to stop antisemitism on campus.
Columbia president Minouche Shafik resigned last month after failing to contain last semester’s protests, which ended with the violent takeover of a university building by anti-Israel rioters.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump told computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman that he would “be inclined” to release the client list of disgraced financier and convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein if reelected president.
“Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close?” Fridman asked President Trump during Tuesday’s episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast.
“He was a good salesman,” Trump replied. “He had some nice assets that he’d throw around like islands, but a lot of big people went to that island. But fortunately, I was not one of them.”
Fridman noted, “It’s just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public,” to which Trump replied, “Yeah, it’s very interesting isn’t it? Probably will be, by the way.”
“So if you are able to, you’ll be–” Fridman said, to which President Trump replied, “I’d certainly take a look at it.”
Trump added that the files on President John F. Kennedy are “Interesting, because it’s so many years ago.”
“You know, they do that for danger too, because you know, it endangers certain people,” the 45th president said. “So Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing.”
“But yeah, I’d be inclined to do the Epstein — I’d have no problem with it,” President Trump added, to which Fridman replied, “That’s great to hear.”
The podcaster then asked President Trump, “What gives you strength when you’re getting attacked? You are one of the most attacked people in the world.”
“I think you can’t care that much,” Trump said. “I know people that care so much about everything, like what people are saying. You can’t care too much because you end up choking.”
Quote:Hundreds of homes in the coastal Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes have lost power due to a slow landslide that has resulted in several houses being deemed unsafe for occupancy.
NBC Los Angeles reported:
Power was shut off to an additional 105 homes Monday night due to accelerating landslides in a Rancho Palos Verdes neighborhood.
The latest round of shutoffs occurred at 7 p.m. Monday in the Seaview area of the Los Angeles County seaside community overlooking the Pacific. On Sunday, power was shut off in 140 homes in the Portuguese Bend area. Those residents also remain under an evacuation warning.
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Land movement in Ranchos Palos Verdes has increased across 680 acres following rains in spring 2023. The accelerating slides have buckled roads and damaged homes and utilities.
On Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency in the community.
Last year, ten local homes fell into a local canyon, and residents of some homes were evacuated after being given just 20 minutes’ notice.
Illinois: Judge Says Concealed Carry Ban Violates 2nd Amendment
Quote:A U.S. District Judge ruled Friday that Illinois’ ban prohibiting concealed carry for self-defense on public transportation violates the Second Amendment.
The judge, Ian D. Johnston, issued his opinion in Schoenthal v. Raoul.
The plaintiffs in the case, Benjamin Schoenthal, Mark Wroblewski, Joseph Vesel, and Douglas Winston, all claimed the ban violated the Second Amendment.
Schoenthal, Wrogblewski, Vesel, and Winston’s case was supported by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition.
Judge Johnston noted:
In Illinois, openly carrying firearms is unlawful. Under the Firearm Concealed Carry Act, an individual with a concealed-carry license may generally carry a concealed handgun in public….This general permission, however, does not extend to a list of prohibited areas, including public transportation.
He then pointed to Bruen (2022), noting that it set forward a framework by which gun controls must be analyzed and tested.
Johnston pointed to opinions by Kimberly Foxx, State’s Attorney of Cook County, who argued in support of the ban. He then noted that “Finally, and decisively, whatever is true elsewhere in the law, Ms. Foxx’s proposed framework contradicts Bruen, which rejects the relevance of place to the threshold question of whether certain conduct is covered by the Second Amendment.”
He ultimately ruled that “the Firearm Concealed Carry Act’s ban on carrying concealed firearms on public transportation, as defined in the statute…violates the Second Amendment,” as applied to the plaintiffs.
Second Amendment Foundation founder and executive vice president Alan Gottlieb commented on the ruling, calling it a “significant victory” in which “the court recognized Cook County Attorney Foxx’s argument that the ban was legal because Illinois is acting as a property owner was ‘breathtaking, jaw dropping and eyepopping,’ and that wasn’t a compliment. It demonstrates how far government will reach in an attempt to justify its effort to restrict Second Amendment rights.”
Quote:Today, September 2nd, is a historic day. It is the first time ever that an Islamic cleric will have to stand trial for issuing an assassination fatwa.
In a few weeks, it will be 20 years since policemen wearing bulletproof vests and carrying machine guns arrived at my home. They gave me ten minutes to pack, pushed me into an armoured car and drove me off to an unknown destination. The evening of November 4, 2004, was the last time that my wife and I were in our house. Since that moment, we have been forced to live in various safe houses. We have lost our freedom and privacy. Everywhere I go, I am constantly surrounded by bodyguards.
The same thing happened on that ominous evening to my colleague, fellow member of the Dutch Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fugitive from Islamic Somalia. We had both been fierce critics of Islam and the Islamization of our country, the Netherlands. As a result of this, Islamic death threats or fatwas ordering the Islamic faithful to kill us had been issued.
Since then, Ayaan has left Dutch politics and emigrated to the United States. I stayed and founded my own party, the Party for Freedom (PVV), which is currently the largest party in the Netherlands and the largest party in the ruling government coalition.
I have always been a firm defender of freedom of speech. It is the bedrock of a free society and a functioning democracy. I will never be silenced. Fatwas, death threats, being on the death list of the Taliban and ISIS, nothing will ever stop me from telling the inconvenient truth.
I realize, however, that the fatwas and death threats against me – rare is the day that I do not receive one in my mailbox – are not just intended to silence me, but also to intimidate everyone else not to be as ‘reckless’ as me in voicing their opinion.
Fatwas are a direct assault on freedom of speech. The Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini has never been taken to court for his 1989 fatwa condemning the British author Salman Rushdie to death, but he should have been.
Today, in Amsterdam, the court case begins against two Pakistani citizens, Muhammed Ashraf Asif Jalali (55) and Saad Hussain Rizvi (29). Although the proceedings will be held in their absence, the trial is hugely significant. Not just for me, the victim, but also for the defence of the freedom of speech of every Dutchman and citizen of the free West.
In May 2015, I was present at a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, where cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammed were judged. Islam forbids the depiction of its prophet, but there is no reason why this prohibition should apply to non-Muslims.
The contest in Garland was won by the American illustrator Bosch Fawstin, a former Muslim, for a picture of Muhammed saying “You can’t draw me!” and the artist replying “That’s why I draw you.” As it happened, two Islamic terrorists attacked the Garland cartoon exhibition with semi-automatic rifles and handguns but were shot by police officers before they could cause much havoc, apart from wounding a guard.
Quote:The left-wing Labour Party government in Britain announced Monday that it will be suspending dozens of arms export licences to Israel over concerns of UK weaponry being used to violate human rights in Gaza.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy told the House of Commons that the British government will be suspending 30 of its 350 arms export licences to Israel, including UK-made components used in military drones, helicopters, and aircraft, including fighter jets used by the Israelis.
The move comes after months of protests by left-wing activists and a two-month review conducted by the Foreign Office, The Guardian reports. While the review did not find that British arms exports had contributed to destruction in Gaza, the government found that there was a “clear risk” that they could be used in violations of international humanitarian laws.
Announcing the move, Foreign Secretary Lammy told Parliament: “Facing a conflict such as this, it is this Government’s legal duty to review export licences.
“It is with regret that I inform the House today the assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”
Lammy claimed, however, that the move to cut around 10 per cent of arms licences to Israel, did not represent an “arms embargo” to the Jewish state.
The move comes in the aftermath of the discovery of the bodies of six dead hostages in a Gaza tunnel over the weekend. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) claimed that the hostages, who were taken captive by Hamas terrorists during the October 7th attacks on Israel, were killed by Hamas as Israeli forces were closing in on their position so as to prevent their rescue.
Quote:Ballistic missiles struck a military academy and a nearby hospital in Ukraine, one of the deadliest single attacks by Russian forces against a Ukrainian city since the invasion started again two and a half years ago.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed his nation on Tuesday, stating educational buildings at the Poltava Military Institute of Communications and a hospital were hit by missiles, with one university building being “partially destroyed”. People were trapped inside the rubble, he said, and at the time of his statement that 41 people were known killed, and 180 injured. Later, Ukraine revised the death count to 47 and 206 wounded.
UPDATE 1610 BST — Death toll rises again
The death roll has risen again to 49, and 219 injured. The Ukrainian government has also denied the claims made on local social media that the strike hit a parade of military cadets. The Defence Ministry said, per the BBC: “teaching was in progress at the institution… There was no parade or any other event at the time of the airstrike.”
The strike is the deadliest of the year, according to Reuters.
The original story continues below
According to Ukrainian state media, 11 people were pulled alive from the rubble. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said two Russian ballistic missiles hit Poltava and the amount of time between the missiles being detected and an air-raid warning being given and the impact was so short, many of those impacted were caught as they ran to the bomb shelters.
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The strike blew out windows in hundreds of nearby residential buildings, Ukraine stated. When exactly the attack took place has not been confirmed.
President Zelensky responded to the news of the mass-casualty attack by requesting more air defence systems from his Western backers to defend Ukraine against the “Russian scum”. He said, per Ukraine’s own translation of his comments: “once again, we urge everyone in the world who has the power to stop this terror: air defence systems and missiles are needed in Ukraine, not in a warehouse somewhere.”
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also called on the international community to take action, saying in a statement: “What Russia is doing in Ukraine is pure evil and terror, driven by the objective to eliminate, kill, and ruin. This crime, like others, demands a strong response from the global community. Not just with statements but with decisions and actions that can push this evil back.”
Quote:An Afghanistan-heritage man has been arrested after a car was driven at great speed onto the sidewalk, the suspect allegedly telling police he had acted “on Allah’s orders”.
A man received serious head injuries after a car ran a red light and mounted the pavement in the German city of Darmstadt, colliding with another vehicle before coming to a rest. Pedestrians were able to jump clear, it is stated.
Police are investigating whether the collision may have been deliberate, with the State Criminal Police Office taking over the investigation with amid clashing reports the suspect told police officers he had acted “on Allah’s orders”, or on the instructions of the “almighty”.
A man arrested at the scene is a 24-year-old Afghan heritage male and has been remanded in custody. Alcohol or drug use has been ruled out but a potential mental health history is being investigated, as is a potential extremist terrorism motive, although nothing pertinent has been discovered yet, Welt states.
Nevertheless, the investigations continue “in all directions”. The suspect’s home was raided on Tuesday afternoon, with digital devices and documents seized by investigators.
The Public Prosecutor accuses the suspect of having “at least knowingly accepted the risk of injuring or killing innocent people – in particular the 29-year-old Skoda driver.”
Quote:Right-wingers and populists have devastated legacy left-wing parties in two state elections in Germany, even if a “software error” in one state was blamed for changing the initial official results, taking two seats away from the right.
The right-populist anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won a state election for the first time, taking 32.8 per cent of the vote in east Germany’s Thuringia. Counts in the AfD’s favour continued to roll in from the evening, building its lead from earlier declarations. The result gives the party 32 seats in the Free State’s 88-seat parliament, the Landtag, far short of an actual majority.
The party almost managed the same feat twice in one night, with a photo-finish in Saxony, also in east Germany, seeing it come just one seat behind the legacy-centre-right party the Christian Democrats. Both right-wing parties come away with fractionally fewer seats than initially stated by the election authorities, however, with a computer error blamed for their share dropping overnight. Apparently, the computers which calculated the number of seats awarded to each party from the vote share percentage had inadvertently been programmed to the wrong electoral system.
This is particularly consequential to the AfD, as it no longer has a blocking minority in the state, which could have allowed it to block certain votes like the appointment of constitutional judges, the state auditors, and even a vote to dissolve the parliament. In such instances, votes need a two-thirds supermajority to pass, and now the AfD is one seat short.
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Also performing well — although little heeded in news reports from outside Germany where a total fixation on the perceived right-wing threat dominates — is a new left-populist political force the BSW, led by former communist Sahra Wagenknecht. The economically hard-left but socially conservative and anti-mass migration party came third place in both states and may potentially become a kingmaker.
In both elections, voter turnout was at historically high levels, and in the case of Saxony, it was the highest state election turnout in modern German history. It was the best state election results yet for the AfD, and absolutely devastating for legacy left-wing and centrist parties, with the Free Democrat liberals and the Social Democrats having their worst election results ever in the race.
In Thuringia, the Green party fell so far that it no longer has any members of Parliament, and the hard-left Linke (left) party tumbled from 29 to 12 seats.
In many cases, responses to the state-level success of the AfD in this election have been dismay in the international press, with the label “far right” routinely applied to the AfD, even as such words lose their power through over-use, and allusions to Nazi-era Germany frequently made. Britain’s The Guardian leads with comments from French liberal politician Valérie Hayer, who reflected on the result: “A dark day for Germany is a dark day for Europe. The election result in Thuringia and Saxony is unprecedented. We shall not let Europe give in to racist, antisemitic, misogynist and homophobic movements.”
Quote:Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a Russian TV interview on Sunday that Moscow would prefer seeing Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House next year because she is more “predictable” than her opponent Donald Trump.
Peskov’s comments were delivered with a dash of sarcasm, as the Russian government insists it has no preferences in foreign elections and never interferes with them.
Peskov therefore treated the question about who the Kremlin favors in the 2024 U.S. presidential election as laughable. His interviewer, regime-friendly TV personality Pavel Zarubin, also made a point of laughing out loud when he asked the question.
“We have no candidate. But, of course, the Democrats are more predictable. And what Putin said about Biden’s predictability applies to almost all Democrats, including Ms. Harris,” Peskov told Zarubin.
Peskov was alluding to Russian President Vladimir Putin saying in a February interview that he preferred now-defunct President Joe Biden to Trump, because he saw Biden as “a more experienced, predictable person, a politician of the old school.”
“But we will work with any U.S. president who the American people have confidence in,” Putin added, with an unmistakable smirk.
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On other occasions, Putin expressed concerns about Biden’s deteriorating mental health, and also denounced the Democrat Party for using the U.S. court system to wage political warfare against Trump.
On all of these occasions, Putin was careful to insist that Russia has no preference in the outcome of the 2024 election and was equally prepared to deal with any U.S. president.
In his Russian TV interview on Sunday, Peskov complained that the United States has “trampled” on Russia’s interests with heavy-handed sanctions over the Ukraine war, and he saw “no prospects” for relations to improve with either a Harris or Trump administration next year.
Peskov also mocked Trump for claiming he could negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war if he wins the election, even before he is formally inaugurated.
“I know both heads of the countries. I know President Putin very well. I want to see the death stopping. There’s death and there’s destruction. They are destroying the whole fabric of a certain part of the world. I want to get it negotiated, and get it done,” Trump told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview in early August.
During a CNN town hall meeting in May 2023, Trump said he could negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours of being elected.
So what is Garland's DOJ gonna do now? Russia might interfere in the elections to make Harris win! Who am I kidding? the USAG couldn't care less about that.
"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:Hunter Biden on Thursday entered a guilty plea to all nine federal tax charges brought against him by special counsel David Weiss, his attorney said in court Thursday, shocking federal prosecutors.
The president's son remains free on bond until sentencing on Dec. 16.
Abbe Lowell, the first son's attorney, said earlier Thursday in federal court that Biden intends to switch his plea and intends to plead guilty. He initially pleaded not guilty.
Federal prosecutor Leo Wise said that "this is the first we are hearing about this."
A source familiar with the special counsel's team told Fox News digital that this is not a done deal for Hunter Biden, and that it's currently just an offer the defense put on the table.
The judge had Hunter Biden agree under oath to no longer remain silent and told him that if he pleads guilty he gives up all of his rights to a trial.
Before the court took a 30-minute break, Judge Mark Scarsi said that "the court doesn’t need the government’s agreement to accept an Alford plea."
The development comes after Hunter Biden's lawyers had prepared to argue he was too high or drunk to pay his taxes.
According to the Justice Department manual, DOJ prosecutors cannot take what is called an Alford plea, "except in the most unusual of circumstances…"
Quote:The retailer known as Big Lots is preparing to file for bankruptcy as other companies across the United States have recently done.
Individuals with knowledge of the situation said the discount home goods store may file as early as Sunday, Bloomberg reported on Friday, noting the company is planning to sell its stores through a court-supervised process.
The article continued:
The company will continue to operate under Chapter 11 protection, the people said, and is in the process of lining up a so-called stalking horse bid, meaning it’s subject to better offers should any materialize. The company has been working with advisers from AlixPartners and Guggenheim Partners on the bankruptcy and sale process.
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Big Lots, which has around 1,400 stores and employs over 30,000 people, has suffered from declining sales for years, including in recent quarters as rising inflation squeezed the wallets of its budget-conscious shoppers. Its share price has plunged to around $0.50, after peaking above $72 in 2021.
The news comes after the restaurant chain Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy followed by affordable gym chain Blink Fitness, and Rite Aid pharmacy closed all its stores in Michigan and Ohio amid that company’s recent bankruptcy filings.
Inflation has been plaguing Americans struggling to make ends meet in President Joe Biden’s (D) economy, and the middle class is now too poor to shop for their needs at dollar stores, Breitbart News’s John Carney reported on Wednesday.
“Dollar Tree’s latest earnings report offers a grim reflection on the state of the American economy. What we are witnessing is not just a minor fluctuation in retail performance, but a broader indictment of an economy that, under the stewardship of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, has manifestly lost its way,” Carney wrote.
2 CBP Officers Might Have Worked with Mexican Cartel
Quote:Federal prosecutors allege that two officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations spent years working with an unnamed drug cartel. The officers allegedly allowed the criminal organization to move large amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamines, cocaine, and heroin through their inspection lanes, court documents revealed.
Jesse Clark Garcia and Diego Bonillo are two CBP officers named in a criminal indictment out of the U.S. Southern District of California accusing them of drug trafficking and drug trafficking conspiracy; both men have been in custody since May. Alex Riggins first reported the case from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The two officers allegedly coordinated with smugglers in Mexico so that certain vehicles filled with drugs would go through their inspection lane. Prosecutors allege that they could allow the smugglers to pass freely in exchange for hefty bribes of tens of thousands of dollars. Details listed in Riggins’s story point to the CBP officers spending thousands on luxury fashion items, European vacations, and high-priced boxing seats in Las Vegas.
The criminal indictment states that in April 2021, a woman drove a Kia Soul to Garcia’s lane at the Tecate port of entry. The woman had several cars in front of her when a lane opened. CBP officers directed her to that lane where authorities found 140 pounds of cocaine and fentanyl and 25 pounds of methamphetamine. As part of the investigation, authorities learned that the woman constantly crossed through Garcia’s Lane, and when he was not in service, she would not cross. Court documents list several other crossings that appear to show both Garcia and Bonillo worked with smugglers so they could wave them through their inspection lanes.
Quote:Canada’s left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) on Wednesday announced it was withdrawing from the coalition keeping Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in power, a blow that could seriously threaten the already-embattled Trudeau’s grip on power.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh announced the breakup in a campaign-style video released by his party.
“Today, I have notified the prime minister that I have ripped up the supply-and-confidence agreement. Big corporations and wealthy CEOs have had their government. It’s the people’s time,” Singh said in the video.
A supply-and-confidence agreement is essentially a promise by a minority party to unconditionally support a larger party, without demanding the powers of a coalition government. In exchange for a few policy concessions, NDP has been keeping Trudeau’s Liberals in power since March 2022 by pledging to support them in no-confidence votes that might otherwise bring the government down.
“The NDP is ready for an election,” Singh declared, presenting his own party as a better choice to carry the left-wing standard because Trudeau is “too weak” and “too selfish” to oppose the Conservatives’ plans to cut government spending.
NDP officials later admitted the video was recorded weeks ago, and the decision to break with Trudeau’s Liberal Party was made months ago. Trudeau’s alleged concessions to “corporate greed” were cited by these officials as the reason for the crack-up.
The BBC spoke to other NDP officials who pointed to Canada’s railroad crisis as a major reason for giving up on Trudeau. The Trudeau administration eventually caved to enormous pressure to order binding arbitration between the railroad companies and labor unions, which NDP saw as a betrayal of the unions.
A more cynical interpretation could be NDP leaping over the rails as Trudeau’s ship sinks. Battered by public disapproval over high inflation and an assortment of policy disasters and scandals, the Liberals are currently running about 18 points behind the Conservatives in the polls. NDP might not be able to do any better, but Singh had very little to lose by boldly insisting that he could.
A badly rattled Trudeau robotically told reporters covering a school lunch event on Wednesday that he hoped NDP “stays focused on how we can deliver for Canadians, as we have over the past years, rather than focusing on politics.”
“An election will come in the coming year, hopefully not until next fall, because in the meantime, we’re going to deliver for Canadians,” he intoned.
The point of all this drama is that the next election might be coming a lot sooner than Trudeau wants. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre immediately called for an early election to break up the moribund Liberal-NDP coalition and give Canadians a chance to recover from left-wing policies. Canadians could find themselves choosing a new prime minister at right around the same time their American neighbors are voting for president.
Quote:Thousands of leftists took to the streets of France Saturday over President Emmanuel Macron’s installation of centrist Michelle Barnier as prime minister.
Protesters poured through Paris and cities across France to back the leftist New Popular Front (NFP), a coalition of social democrats, greens and communists, which with the help from President Macron won the most seats in last month’s legislative elections, despite not winning the most votes, with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally gaining millions more votes than the NFP.
The protests were called for after Macron appointed centre-right Michel Barnier, who previously served as the EU’s Brexit negotiator, as his new prime minister, enraging the far-left, who accused the president of a “coup” and of going against democracy.
Despite claiming the mantle of democratic legitimacy, the New Popular Front had demanded that Macron install Lucie Castets as his next prime minister, a deep state bureaucrat and socialist economist who did not stand in the election.
“If we didn’t get Lucie Castets from the authorities, we will get Lucie Castets from the street,” a student protester said in Marseilles according to Le Figaro. “We are coming to march against Emmanuel Macron’s coup. Today, Emmanuel Macron is trampling on the democratic result and the demands of the students.”
In Paris, the protesters were joined by former presidential candidate and leader of the far-left La France Insoumise party Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who vowed that his supporters in the National Assembly would vote to take down the new Barnier government.
“Emmanuel Macron could have named Lucie Castets prime minister. He didn’t… Because we intended to carry out our program… You guys are used to cheating! Not us! Whatever happens, we will vote to censure such a government,” Mélenchon declared.
According to organisers, some 160,000 joined the demonstration in Paris on Saturday.
Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used a meeting Friday with top United States military leaders and 50 partner nations to call for yet more weaponry even as the Biden administration confirmed it would rush another $250 million in security assistance to Kyiv.
Zelensky added systems that were promised already have been too slow to arrive as he again stated his desire to directly strike at Russia deep behind its borders.
AP reports U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the meeting of the leaders at the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany was taking place during a dynamic moment in Ukraine’s fight against Russia, as it conducts its first offensive operations of the war while facing a significant threat from Russian forces near a key hub in the Donbas.
Zelensky used the public appearance to repeat his view that what’s needed most now is for the U.S. and the West to allow him to use the weapons they provided to reach inside Russia.
The U.S. has not supported this previously out of concern it would further escalate the war.
“We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the divided territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” Zelensky argued to the members.
“We need to make Russian cities and even Russian soldiers think about what they need: peace or Putin.”
Quote:Ukraine´s parliament approved the appointment of a new foreign minister Thursday, two lawmakers said, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to breathe fresh life into his administration with the war against Russia poised for what could be a pivotal phase.
Andrii Sybiha, a former ambassador to Turkey, is the country´s new chief diplomat. He replaced Dmytro Kuleba, who became one of Ukraine´s most recognizable faces on the international stage as he petitioned and pleaded with Western countries to support Ukraine´s war effort.
Sybiha, 49, has been working as Kuleba´s deputy since April.
Zelenskyy wants to replace almost a dozen top officials in his biggest government shake-up since Russia´s full-scale invasion started on Feb. 24, 2022. Other changes included the heads of strategic industries, justice, natural resources and farming.
Parliament´s approval is required for the changes. Ukrainian lawmakers Yaroslav Zhelezniak and Oleksii Honcharenko confirmed the vote to The Associated Press.
Zelenskyy said Wednesday of the reshuffle that Ukraine needs “new energy.”
The war, more than 900 days long, is on the cusp of what could be a key period.
A likely hard winter lies ahead, testing the country´s resolve. Ukraine´s power grid is under severe strain after Russian missiles and drones knocked out around 70% of the country´s generation capacity. That could mean going without heat and water.
On the battlefield, Ukraine is waiting to see whether the military´s gamble with its surprise thrust into Russia´s Kursk border region a month ago pays dividends. Meanwhile, outgunned Ukrainian soldiers are gradually being pushed backward by Russia´s monthslong drive deeper into eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian civilians are at the mercy of Russia´s deadly long-range aerial strikes.
The casualty list from a Russian missile strike Tuesday on a military training school in the Ukrainian city of Poltava grew to 55 dead and 328 wounded, Ukraine´s Interior Ministry said Thursday. A search and rescue operation was continuing.
Quote:Germany’s army rushed an Iris-T air-defence system into service on its own soil for the first time Wednesday having delivered several of the sophisticated systems to war-torn Ukraine to take down Russian rockets, drones and missiles mid-flight.
AFP reports Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the surface-to-air system was part of a long term build-up of German and European defences initiated in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin launching the Ukraine invasion in 2022.
“Russia has been massively rearming for many years, especially in the field of rockets and cruise missiles,” Scholz said at the inauguration ceremony at a base in Todendorf near the northern city of Hamburg.
Putin had broken disarmament treaties and “deployed missiles as far as Kaliningrad”, a Russian exclave located some 330 miles from Berlin, he added.
“It would be negligent not to respond to this appropriately,” the chancellor warned. “A failure to act would put peace at risk. I will not allow that.”
The AFP report notes Scholz, who was joined by Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, said the system was part of the European Sky Shield Initiative, which also includes long-range defences against ballistic missiles.
The German military has ordered six of the Iris-T SLM systems from manufacturer Diehl Defence, to be delivered by May 2027.
Scholz warned Europe, aside from defensive systems, would also need more precision missiles of its own “so that there is no dangerous gap with Russia in this strategically important field”.
Quote:Specialist police have taken over the investigation after a migrant knifeman shouting “Allahu Akbar” raided a police station, declaring he had come to kill police officers.
An Islamist apparently botched an attempted terror attack in the German city of Linz, in the Rhineland-Palatinate on Friday after he rushed a police station with a machete. He attempted to get inside but was foiled by the security door, and was locked in — alone — in the compound by officers, who then tasered him into submission.
The suspect, said to be a 29-year-old Albanian migrant, is reported to have shouted the now-familiar “Allahu Akhbar” as he attempted to strike, and investigating officers searching his apartment found an Islamic State flag hanging on the wall. Police have conceded there was likely an Islamist terror motive, but Welt states he was not on the radar of the intelligence services before today.
He has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and is awaiting trial, with the investigation into the attack being handed by counter-terror officers.
The attempted attack is the second such encounter between German police and suspected radicalised Islamists in two days. On Thursday in Munich a gunman was shot dead by police near the Israeli consulate.
The man, a “Bosnian heritage” Austrian citizen who was armed with a Second World War-era rifle and bayonet was killed after opening fire in a city square that was also adjacent to the former headquarters of the Nazi Party. It is reported the gunman had previously been known to police for possessing Islamic State propaganda.
Quote:A shooting that led to the death of the gunman saw the perpetrator roam and fire a rifle for ten minutes, with police initially unsure whether the rifle was a prop or the real thing.
Bullets struck the Israeli consulate general in Munich, Germany this week in a shooting which ended, as reported at the time, with the gunman being shot dead by responding police officers. The consulate was closed on Thursday morning during the shooting because its staff were attending a memorial for the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre terror attack, where Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israelis, the timing leading police to suspect the Islamist-sympathising perpetrator may have struck because of that anniversary.
The suspect, 18-year-old Emrah I., is said to have arrived with a Swiss military surplus “repeating rifle” with bayonet — possibly the K31 carbine of 1933 — on Thursday morning and was quickly spotted by police officers. Yet, reports Die Welt, those police were initially unsure whether the out-of-time rifle was real or a prop and lost sight of the Austrian citizen, Bosnian-heritage migrant.
Emrah I. fired first at the National Socialism Documentation Centre (‘NS-Dokumentationszentrum München’), a new museum and educational centre built on the site of the former ‘Brown House’ national headquarters of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, which itself was destroyed in Second World War bombing. According to German media, he shot at the building twice. Footage allegedly of the incident shared on German social media shows a gunman being visibly thrown back by the recoil from his rifle.
The migrant gunman then attempted to climb the outer wall of the Israeli consulate general and found he was unable to, and so he opened fire on the building itself. This was also two shots, one of which struck a window. Five other rounds were let off by the teen, including when he ran into a pair of police officers who ordered him to surrender the rifle, when he fired on the lawmen.
Even after now-deceased suspect Emrah I. was gunned down by officers, he still attempted to attack the police from a prone position. In all, he was on the move and firing for around ten minutes, it is stated.
The attack on the Israeli consulate, not just at a time of heightened tensions, but also on the anniversary of a major anti-Israel Palestinian terror attack, has led to discussion of rising antisemitism in Germany, as well as a growing acknowledgement that after a few quieter years, the country could be returning to an era of terror attacks.
That the perpetrator is reported to have been born to an otherwise well-integrated, stable, middle-class family of migrants in neighbouring Austria also underlines the continued risk European nations face from managing diverse populations, where some second and third generation migrants can become vulnerable to online radicalisation.
Emrah I. was known to Austrian police for potential radicalisation, but this information was not passed onto the German authorities. Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports he was investigated in Spring 2023 for membership of a terrorist organisation after Islamic State propaganda was found on his cell phone. This investigation was not ultimately followed up on, and this has sparked a minor scandal in Austria, where whether the government should have more power to snoop on private conversations to catch more future terrorists is being discussed.
Quote:A former Labour councillor has denied encouraging violent disorder in a speech where he called for political opponents to have their throats cut.
Ricky Jones, 57, has again appeared in court to face one count of encouraging violent disorder over an August speech at a ‘peace rally’ held in response to days of disorder across England and Wales. A recording of the event showed Jones shouting through a microphone “they are disgusting, Nazi fascists. We need to cut all their throats, and get rid of them all”, while making a gesture of drawing his finger across his throat.
Court reporting by The Independent notes Jones, who was a Labour councillor and trade unionist at the time of the speech, accepted through his defence barrister Hossein Zahir KC that the words had indeed been spoken, but that he didn’t realise saying them would be illegal.
Jones, who appeared in court by video link from His Majesty’s Prison Wormwood Scrubs where he has been held since his arrest spoke to confirm his identity and plead not guilty to the charge.
The judge set the trial date as January 20th 2025.
Quote:The Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen stepped up the tempo of their attacks on international shipping over the weekend, firing two missiles at a Liberian-flagged container ship on Friday night and then striking Saudi and Panamanian-flagged tankers on Monday.
In the Friday night attack, two missiles fired from Yemen detonated near the Liberian-flagged cargo ship MV Groton. The ship reported no injuries nor significant damage from the attack and continued to its next port of call.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attack, which he said was “carried out by the naval, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and missile forces.”
“This is the second targeting of the ship since it was previously targeted on Aug. 3,” Saree added.
MV Groton was targeted by two Houthi missiles on August 3 in the first Red Sea terrorism incident after an Israeli counter-strike on the Houthi-controlled port city of Hodeidah apparently forced a two-week pause in their assaults on shipping. The missiles fired by the Houthis at the Groton on August 3 also missed their target.
On Monday, a Saudi-flagged crude oil tanker named Amjad and the Panama-flagged tanker Blue Lagoon I were both attacked by the Houthis while sailing fairly close to each other in the Red Sea.
The international Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) said three ballistic missiles struck the Blue Lagoon I as it sailed 70 miles northwest of Yemen’s port city of Saleef.
“All crew on board are safe. The vessel sustained minimal damage but does not require assistance,” JMIC reported.
The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations center (UKMTO) said two projectiles struck the Blue Lagoon I, and a third explosion was detected near the ship.
“Damage control is underway. There are no casualties onboard and the vessel is proceeding to its next port of call,” UKMTO said.
UKMTO reported a second attack near Hodeidah. The Ambrey private security firm said this incident involved a UAV striking a ship, without causing any major damage or casualties.
The second target appears to have been the Saudi-flagged tanker Amjad. The ship is owned by a Saudi state enterprise called Bahri, which did not respond to media requests for comment on the attack, although a source told Reuters on Monday that the Saudi ship was “unlikely to have been directly targeted” by the Houthis.
The Saudis led a military intervention in Yemen against the Houthi insurgents from 2015 to 2023, and have since been trying to disengage themselves from the Yemeni civil war, so a Houthi attack on an oil tanker owned by a Saudi national shipping group would be a provocative action.
Both of the tanker attacks were also highly provocative because the Houthis created the conditions for a major environmental catastrophe by disabling and sabotaging a third oil tanker, the Greek-flagged Sounion, on August 21.
Quote:Shipping giant Maersk said on Thursday that ongoing disruptions to global shipping that attacks from the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen have caused are making shipping increasingly expensive.
Maersk’s update confirmed that its predictions in July of a “cascading impact” from the Houthi attacks, affecting far more than shipping lines that run through the Red Sea, have come true.
As for the Red Sea shipping lane, Maersk cited data that conclude transits of the Suez Canal are down by 66 percent since Houthi attacks began prompting shippers to reroute their vessels around Africa.
“These disruptions have led to service reconfigurations and volume shifts, straining infrastructure and resulting in port congestion, delays, and shortages in capacity and equipment,” Maersk said.
“The timeline for easing these disruptions and returning to ‘normal’ remains uncertain,” the company added.
The Red Sea situation is a disaster for the Biden-Harris administration, which promised in December to lead a multi-national military operation to protect the shipping lanes. Shipping companies never had much faith in President Joe Biden’s “Operation Prosperity Guardian,” and their skepticism has been justified.
Another humiliation was delivered on Tuesday, as the European Union (EU) naval force in the Red Sea admitted that a salvage operation to recover the burning oil tanker MV Sounion — potentially an environmental catastrophe of fearsome proportions — had to be abandoned because Western forces could not protect the salvage teams from Houthi attacks.
“The private companies responsible for the salvage operation have concluded that the conditions were not met to conduct the towing operation and that it was not safe to proceed. Alternative solutions are now being explored by the private companies,” said a statement from ASPIDES, the EU naval command in the Red Sea.
ASPIDES refused to answer questions about its statement or provide further details. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) likewise failed to explain why an environmental disaster that could be four times the size of the notorious Exxon Valdez incident can only be prevented if the Houthis decide to allow it.
A U.S. defense official confided to the Associated Press (AP) on Tuesday that the U.S. military “has not been asked and has no role in the cleanup or towing of the Sounion.”
“There are no American vessels known to be in the Red Sea at the moment, as the EU mission has taken charge after the Sounion attack,” the AP reported.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed Tuesday that soldiers had discovered a railway track inside a Hamas tunnel underneath northern Gaza.
In a statement, the IDF said:
Since the beginning of the war, the IDF has been working to dismantle and neutralize the underground infrastructure of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Troops from the Engineering Unit of the Gaza Division and the Northern Gaza Brigade, in collaboration with the Yahalom Unit, uncovered and destroyed, based on prior intelligence information, an attack underground tunnel route of Hamas in the Beit Lahia area. The length of the destroyed tunnel route exceeds one kilometer.
The tunnel route that was destroyed was located and investigated over the past few weeks. The troops identified weapons, electrical infrastructure, and a transportation rail within the tunnel route.
Israel is slowly destroying Hamas’s tunnel network, which is thought to extend for hundreds of miles underneath the small territory.
Some tunnels have been large enough to drive vehicles through, including at least one smuggling tunnel underneath Rafah, near the Gaza-Egypt border.
At least some of the remaining Israeli hostages are thought to be held in the tunnels.
"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:Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign tried to blame her and President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan on former President Donald Trump — even though it happened seven months after he left office.
The Harris-Walz campaign released a statement Friday that claimed, “Trump left the Biden-Harris Administration with zero plans for an orderly withdrawal — only a dangerous, costly mess.”
Trump had begun negotiations with the Taliban and reached a deal, but it had not been completed by the time he left office in January 2020. Biden — against the advice of his military advisers — decided to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in September 2021, which prompted the Taliban to sweep into Kabul at the end of August 2021 and topple the U.S.-backed government in a surprise rout. The sudden takeover prompted mass panic and chaos as hundreds of thousands of Americans, foreign civilians, and desperate Afghans scrambled to depart.
The remaining U.S. troops in Kabul at the time, as well as hundreds more who were flown in, were ordered to carry out the withdrawal — as well undertake a massive civilian evacuation effort — under extremely stressful and dangerous conditions from a makeshift fortress at the Kabul International Airport while surrounded by the Taliban.
A suicide bomber infiltrated the crowd surrounding the airport on the final days of the evacuation, and killed 13 American service members. Before departing, U.S. military commanders ordered a drone strike that accidentally killed a humanitarian aid worker and members of his family, including children.
The Biden administration has never held anyone accountable for the bungled withdrawal that played out on television screens across the world, and President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have said they have no regrets.
After Trump recently participated in a ceremony to honor the 13 Americans who were killed, as well as those wounded, the Harris-Walz campaign claimed that Trump was trying to politicize the disastrous withdrawal — even though the families had invited Trump to be there and had given him permission to film the event. The family members of the fallen then released angry statements slamming the Harris-Walz campaign for their criticism.
Despite this, the Harris-Walz 2024 National Security Spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement, “Trump shamelessly attacks the Vice President because he hopes he can trick the country into forgetting that his own actions undermined U.S. strategy and put our troops and allies in harm’s way.”
An Axios reporter noted that while some Republicans also thought Trump had cut a “bad deal” with the Taliban, the Biden-Harris administration had “debated options on trying to change the deal and went [with] Biden’s plan.”
...
National security expert Rebeccah Heinrichs posted on X about Harris’s attempt to gaslight the public, “This is crazy. Biden and Harris have defended their decision and process for the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. Campaign staff are not going to get Americans to buy this.”
...
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller reminded the public that Harris has previously bragged about being the “last person in the room” when Biden decided to withdraw the U.S. troops.
Quote:Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released a scathing report that took a fine-toothed comb to the military's botched 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal and highlighted areas of serious mismanagement.
The Republican-led report opens by harkening back to President Joe Biden’s urgency to withdraw from the Vietnam War as a senator in the 1970s. That, along with the Afghanistan withdrawal, demonstrates a "pattern of callous foreign policy positions and readiness to abandon strategic partners," according to the report.
The report also disputed Biden's assertion that his hands were tied to the Doha agreement former President Trump had made with the Taliban establishing a deadline for U.S. withdrawal for the summer of 2021, and it revealed how state officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them.
Biden was not bound by deadlines in Trump's Doha agreement with Taliban
The report found that Biden and Vice President Harris were advised by top leaders that the Taliban were already in violation of the conditions of the Doha agreement and, therefore, the U.S. was not obligated to leave.
The committee also found NATO allies had expressed their vehement opposition to the U.S. decision to withdraw. The British Chief of the Defense staff warned that "withdrawal under these circumstances would be perceived as a strategic victory for the Taliban."
Biden kept on Zalmay Khalilzad, a Trump appointee who negotiated the agreement, as special representative to Afghanistan – a signal that the new administration endorsed the deal.
At the Taliban’s demand, Khalilzad had shut out the Afghan government from the talks – a major blow to President Ashraf Ghani’s government.
When Trump left office, some 2,500 U.S. troops remained in Afghanistan. Biden himself was determined to draw that number to zero no matter what, according to Col. Seth Krummrich, chief of staff for Special Operations Command, who told the committee, "The president decided we’re going to leave, and he’s not listening to anybody."
Then-State Dept. spokesperson Ned Price admitted in testimony the Doha agreement was "immaterial" to Biden’s decision to withdraw.
The withdrawal: State Department built up personnel, failed to hatch escape plan as it became clear Kabul would fall
The report also details numerous warning signs the State Department received to draw down its embassy footprint as it became clear Afghanistan would quickly fall to the Taliban. It refused to do so. At the time of the withdrawal, it was one of the largest embassies in the world.
In the end, Americans and U.S. allies were left stranded as the military was ordered to withdraw before the embassy had shuttered.
In one meeting, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brian McKeon rejected military officials’ warnings, saying "we at the State Department have a much higher risk tolerance than you guys."
Gen. Austin Miler, the longest-serving commander in Afghanistan, confirmed McKeon’s comments and explained that the State Department did not have a higher risk tolerance but instead exhibited "a lack of understanding of the risk" in Afghanistan.
Asked why McKeon would make such statements, the officer explained, "The State Department and the president were saying it. Consequently, [Wilson] and others start saying it, thinking that they will make it work."
The report lays blame on former Afghanistan Ambassador Ross Wilson, who instead of shrinking, grew the embassy’s presence as the security situation deteriorated.
Revealing little sense of urgency, Wilson was on a two-week vacation on the last week of July and the first week of August 2021.
An NEO, a noncombatant evacuation operation to get personnel out, was not ordered until Aug. 15 as the Taliban marched into Kabul.
There weren’t enough troops present to begin the NEO until Aug. 19, and the first public message from the embassy in Kabul urging Americans to evacuate wasn’t sent until Aug. 7.
And while there weren't enough military planes to handle the evacuations, it took the Transportation Department until Aug. 20 to allow foreign planes to assist.
Wilson fled the embassy ahead of his entire embassy staff, the report found. He reportedly had COVID-19 at the time but got a foreign service officer to take his test for him so that he could flee the country.
Acting Under Secretary Carol Perez told the committee the embassy’s evacuation plan was "still in the works" when the Taliban took over, despite months of warning.
Quote:Vice President Kamala Harris published a policy page on her official website Sunday promising she is “ready to be Commander in Chief on day one,” but she cited one of her most notorious foreign policy gaffes — claiming the United States has a “strong alliance” with North Korea — as evidence.
Harris’s presidential campaign debuted a slightly more detailed page of her stances on policy issues seven weeks after she replaced outgoing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic Party ticket. The page focuses heavily on her experience as a prosecutor and attorney general in California but also features a more limited explanation of her stances on international issues.
“Vice President Harris is ready to be Commander in Chief on day one,” her campaign states. “Vice President Harris has been a tireless and effective diplomat on the world stage.”
A prime example listed on the “issues” page is her visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in September 2022 in which she attempted to reassure the nascent government of conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol of Biden’s commitment to supporting it against the persistent threat of a nuclear North Korea. Biden has not treated the Korean Peninsula as a foreign policy priority during his tenure. During his time in office, communist dictator Kim Jong-un has significantly expanded his influence internationally through broadening alliances with Russia and Iran.
Harris, her policy page states, “has met with China’s Xi Jinping, making clear she will always stand up for American interests in the face of China’s threats, and traveled to the Indo-Pacific four times to advance our economic and security partnerships.”
“She visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone to affirm our unwavering commitment to South Korea in the face of North Korean threats,” it continues, later referring to President Donald Trump as too “dangerous” on foreign policy to return to the White House.
“From advising on tough decisions in the Oval Office and the Situation Room, to serving on the Senate Select Committee on the Intelligence,” the page concludes, “to going after transnational criminal organizations as California’s Attorney General, Vice President Harris brings extensive national security experience.”
The page offers no details on Harris’s visit to the DMZ. Harris visited the inter-Korean border in 2022 and delivered a speech in which her goal was to reiterate how “ironclad” Biden considered Washington’s ties to Seoul. Harris opened the speech, however, by erroneously referring to North Korea as an American partner.
“So, the United States shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea. And it is an alliance that is strong and enduring,” Harris declared.
Harris appears to have misspoken, as the “Republic of North Korea” does not exist. The official name of South Korea is the Republic of Korea, while North Korea refers to itself as the “Democratic Republic of Korea.” Later in her remarks, Harris referred to the “Republic of Korea.”
“I cannot state enough that the commitment of the United States to the defense of the Republic of Korea is ironclad and that we will do everything in our power to ensure that it has meaning in every way that the words suggest,” Harris said at the time.
“Our shared goal — the United States and the Republic of Korea — is a complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the vice president said. The Democratic Party removed “denuclearizing the Korean peninsula” from its official policy platform in August.
OK, either she's as lunatic and senile as Mr. is or she truly cares about Kim Jong-un.
But you know people. They'd love to find a strange explanation on why she just made a slip and how normal it is not to care about South Korea.
Quote:Former first lady Melania Trump raised questions surrounding the assassination attempt on her husband, former President Donald Trump, stating that they “need to uncover the truth.”
In a video posted to X, promoting her upcoming book, Melania, the former first lady spoke about how the assassination attempt on her husband during his rally in Butler, Pennslyvania, on July 13, “was a horrible, distressing experience.”
“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” Melania said. “Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder, why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to the story, and we need to uncover the truth.”
The former president was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part” of his right ear after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire from the rooftop of a nearby building, where he had a direct line of sight of Trump.
Corey Comperatore, a former Pennsylvania fire chief, was shot and killed after Crooks opened fire at the rally. Comperatore threw himself over his daughter and wife as gunshots were heard. Two other men, James Copenhaver, and David Dutch, were also injured.
In the aftermath of the assassination, reports have revealed that a local law enforcement officer encountered Crooks prior to him opening fire.
Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle also revealed that the agency had not placed agents on the roof that Crooks was on because there was a “safety factor” associated with a “sloped roof.” However, prior to the rally, the Secret Service had reportedly deemed the rooftop as a security risk.
As Breitbart News has previously reported, there were multiple security failings during the rally, such as the Secret Service reportedly seeing Crooks on the rooftop around 5:52 p.m., 20 minutes before Trump took the stage, yet nothing was done to prevent Trump from going on stage.
Other reports have revealed that Crooks was reportedly “photographed twice by security officers,” law enforcement officers reported him as being a suspicious person, and other law enforcement officers reportedly radioed that Crooks was acting suspiciously.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently revealed that whistleblowers alleged that the majority of Secret Service agents who were assigned to protect Trump at the Butler rally were actually from the Department of Homeland Security and that they had gone through a “two-hour online webinar.”
Quote:A loophole in Wisconsin election laws poses a significant risk to election integrity, a report finds.
More than 140,000 Wisconsinites can vote in the 2024 election without proving their identify by self-identifying as “Indefinitely Confined,” a new report by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty reveals. Through the loophole, voters can receive an absentee ballot indefinitely without ever showing an ID.
The “Indefinitely Confined” exception has skyrocketed since 2016, when approximately 66,000 voters registered under the status. In 2020 amid the pandemic, 265,979 registered under the exemption, when clerks in Democratic strongholds encouraged voters to exploit the loophole to circumvent Wisconsin’s voter ID requirements in 2020 – a practice later rebuked unanimously by the Supreme Court.
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the state by just over 20,000 votes, in a swing of around 48,000 votes to Democrats from the 2016 election when Trump carried the state.
“Confidence in our elections continues to be dangerously low in Wisconsin and across the country,” WILL Research Director Will Flanders said in a statement. “Voter ID is a popular and well-executed way to keep our elections secure and free of fraud. While the Governor refused to fix this loophole in the years since 2020, efforts must be made by local election clerks to resolve it as much as possible.”
Wisconsin voter ID laws require citizens to show ID to vote in most circumstances. However, ID is not required simply to register to vote.
The “Indefinitely Confined” exception provides a loophole for potential voters to avoid ever showing an ID.
“The indefinitely confined status was designed to provide those who are elderly, sick, or physically unable to get to the polls with an opportunity to vote,” WILL Policy Director Kyle Koenen added. “Although designed with good intentions, as our report shows, the system has a few key flaws that should be resolved.”
State laws require the removal of voters from the indefinitely confined list under specified circumstances. According to WILL, “if a voter does not return an absentee ballot after receiving one, the municipal clerk must notify them that they will be removed from the absentee mailing list unless they renew their application within 30 days. Voters can also be removed upon their request or if reliable information indicates they are no longer eligible, such as when a voter casts a ballot in person.”
However, not all counties comply with state law, WILL alleges. The number of voters using the exemption remains about 144,347.
Quote:Hungary said that it will bus illegal migrants to the European Union capital of Brussels if the bloc attempts to force Budapest into accepting supposed asylum seekers who broke into other EU nations.
In a move reminiscent of Texas Governor Gregg Abbott’s scheme to send illegals to liberal-run cities throughout the United States, Hungarian Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior Bence Rétvári promised to provide migrants with one-way tickets to Brussels.
Standing before a fleet of busses in Budapest on Friday, the Hungarian politician said per Magyarnemzet: “If the European Union forces Hungary to let in illegal immigrants, Hungary will offer the migrants to transport them to Brussels for free after completing the European procedure.”
“The mayor of Brussels reacted to the proposal in such a way that it would turn the everyday lives of the people of Brussels upside down. And Hungary protects the southern border so that the everyday lives of Hungarians are not turned upside down,” he added.
The declaration from Hungary comes as the EU is attempting to impose heavy fines, starting with €200 million due on September 17th, for Budapest’s refusal to acquiesce to accepting in alleged asylum seekers from other European Union countries in a mass redistribution scheme.
Rétvári noted that while other EU nations have left their borders open to waves of illegals, Hungary has been diligent in preventing illegal crossings of its border, including the building of a fence along its southern border.
Rétvári said that the border wall has not only protected Hungary but also protected the EU as whole from further illegal immigration, and therefore, Budapest is looking to counter sue the bloc for services rendered in protecting the EU border. He claimed that since 2015, Hungary has prevented around one million illegal migrants from entering.
“It is outrageous that the European Union does not recognize and financially compensate the Hungarians’ activities, but instead attacks them,” he said.
Speaking at the Cernobbio Forum in Italy earlier this week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned that if Brussels forces countries such as his own to adopt the pro-mass migration policies favoured by elites in Western Europe, it could result in the collapse of the EU as a whole.
“Why do we need it?” Mr Orbán questioned. “It would be much better if the countries which do not wish to follow the common migration policy were granted an opt-out. It would be much better to offer them the possibility of an opt-out than forcing them to combine forces with others, leading to conflicts which would cause the entire European structure to disintegrate.”
Quote:A Russian drone violated Romania’s airspace during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, the NATO member reported Sunday, urging Moscow to stop what it described as an escalation.
The incident occurred as Russia carried out attacks on “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube River in Ukraine, Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said.
Romania deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace, and NATO allies were kept informed, the ministry said. Romanian emergency authorities also issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions.
Preliminary data indicates there may be an “impact zone” in an uninhabited area near the Romanian village of Periprava, the ministry said. It added that an investigation is underway.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Romania has confirmed drone fragments on its territory on several occasions and as recently as July this year.
The Romanian Defense Ministry strongly condemned the Russian attacks on Ukraine, calling them “unjustified and in serious contradiction with the norms of international law.”
Mircea Geoana, NATO’s outgoing deputy secretary-general and Romania’s former top diplomat, said the military alliance also condemned Russia’s violation of Romanian airspace. “While we have no information indicating an intentional attack by Russia against Allies, these acts are irresponsible and potentially dangerous,” he wrote on X.
In Ukraine, two civilians died and four more suffered wounds in a nighttime Russian airstrike on the northern city of Sumy, the regional military administration reported. Two children were among those wounded, the administration said. In the Kharkiv region farther east, overnight shelling killed two elderly women, according to local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.
Quote:The US, UK, France and Germany have imposed fresh sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine.
The measures include restrictions on national carrier Iran Air's ability to fly to the UK and Europe, and travel bans and asset freezes on a number of Iranians accused of facilitating military support for Russia.
Visiting London, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russians had been trained by Iranian forces to use short-range ballistic missiles and that they could be deployed against Ukrainians within weeks.
Iran has repeatedly denied supplying such self-guided weapons to Russia.
At a joint news conference with UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Tuesday, Blinken asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "increasingly relying on support" for Iran and North Korea to help "wage his war of aggression on Ukraine" in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions.
He said the US had recently shared intelligence with its partners showing that dozens of military personnel had been trained in Iran to use the Fath-360 ballistic missile system, which has a maximum range of 75 miles (120km).
Lammy said the move was "a significant and dangerous escalation”.
The missiles are likely to boost Russia's arsenal, enabling it to hit Ukrainian cities close to Russia's borders or areas it already controls at the same time as it deploys its longer-range missiles deeper into Ukrainian territory.
The UK Foreign Office said the US and UK sanctions targeted several key individuals heavily involved in the ballistic missile and drone supply chains.
They included Brig Gen Seyed Hamzeh Ghalandari, who it said was director general for international relations at Iran’s defence ministry and was linked to its exports of defence products to its partners.
Sanctions have also been imposed on five Russian cargo ships for transporting the military supplies from Iran, despite what the UK said were repeated warnings not to do so.
Additionally, several organisations, including some allegedly involved in the production of Iran's kamikaze-style Shahed drones - which Russia has used consistently in attacks on Ukrainian cities - have been sanctioned.
In a statement, the UK, France and Germany - known as the E3 - said Iran's supply of missiles represented a "a direct threat to European security".
But Iran called the Western statements "false and misleading".
Quote:The international world order is “under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War”, the U.K. and U.S. spy chiefs together warned Saturday.
Sir Richard Moore and William Burns – head of the UK Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) respectively – delivered their cautionary tale in a Financial Times opinion piece, adding they saw the war in Ukraine coming “and were able to warn the international community”, in part by declassifying secrets to help Kyiv.
Further work is already being done to “disrupt the reckless campaign of sabotage” across Europe by Moscow, push for de-escalation in the Israel-Gaza war, and counterterrorism to thwart the resurgent Islamic State. The two further wrote:
There is no question that the international world order – the balanced system that has led to relative peace and stability and delivered rising living standards, opportunities and prosperity – is under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War.
For both agencies, “the rise of China is the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century, and we have reorganised our services to reflect that priority.”
On Russia, the heads of MI6 and the CIA said Russian intelligence was waging a “reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe.”
They did not list examples but there has been a spate of mysterious sabotage and arson attacks on infrastructure in the UK, Germany and in the Baltics.
U.S. intelligence also reportedly foiled an alleged Russian plot to assassinate the chief executive of Germany’s leading arms manufacturer.
As well as physical sabotage, the two pinpointed threats posed to Western democracies by Russian information operations.
Both men set out staying the course in resisting Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine “is more vital than ever”, saying Russia “will not succeed in extinguishing Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence”.
“In the 21st century, crises don’t come sequentially,” they wrote. “While significant attention and resources are being deployed against Russia, we are acting together in other places and spaces to counter the risk of global instability.”
UK: Thousands of Prisoners Now Released, More Waiting in the Line
Quote:The UK’s new left-wing government released the first of thousands of prisoners early on Tuesday morning, with convicts saying they had been convinced to vote for the Labour Party for life after gaining their liberty.
Over 1,700 extra convicts are being released from UK prisons today, considerably more than would normally be let out in a typical day and nearly double as many who would end their sentences in a week in normal times, it is stated. If the government’s plan continues as advertised, the number of extra prisoners turned out onto the streets early, having served less than half of the court-ordered sentences, will rise to 5,000 in the coming weeks.
The new left-wing Labour government has spent much of its first months in power arresting people — most notably over the anti-child-stabbing and anti-mass-migration protests and riots — and with the already poor inherited state of the prison system, it is running out of space for new inmates. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood says the mass release of prisoners is a sign the government is “tackling the crisis head-on” and necessary to prevent a “total collapse of our criminal justice system that would leave the public less safe”.
Yet justice experts question the wisdom of the move. Speaking to the UK state broadcaster the BBC on Tuesday morning Martin Jones, chief inspector of probation, said offenders released are “almost bound” to be back in jail “within days or weeks” because “things will go wrong in the community”.
He remarked further: “Around about a third of people released from prison each year will be proven to have committed a further offence within a year… And then, of course, there’s a small risk that some of those offences will be serious, and whilst rare, that risk cannot be eliminated.” Meanwhile, chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor said that it is “inevitable” some of these ex-convicts would use their new-found freedom to commit more crimes, reports The Times.
Quote:Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice has questioned why the left-wing Labour Party government is releasing criminals back onto the streets early rather than deporting the thousands of foreign criminals clogging up space in British jails.
In a question posed in the House of Commons, Tice, who serves as Nigel Farage’s second-in-command questioned: “Why, when there are some 10,000 foreign criminals blocking up space in our jails, why aren’t they being removed and deported, simultaneously saving the British taxpayer billions of pounds every year and having the support of millions of British voters?”
This call was seconded by Mark Fairhurst, the national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, who told TalkTV on Tuesday that while there are some difficulties surrounding deportations, such as the need to identify a foreign criminal’s country of origin and for those countries to actually accept returns of their nationals, there is “absolutely no reason why we couldn’t repatriate and create an additional 10,000 spaces.”
“Over the last couple of years, ridiculous as it sounds, we’ve been offering financial incentives for prisoners to go back to their country of origin,” Fairhurst said, noting that this has often happened with Albanian criminals, who still represent the largest foreign cohort in British prisons. The POA chairman pointed out that the UK does have a returns policy with Albania and therefore the government could easily start to remove more Albanian criminals from the country.
Fairhurst also argued that the £4 billion earmarked by the Labour government to invest in building more prisons could be better spent on modernising the current prison system, which he described as “crumbling”, as well as putting money into funding more mental health spaces as there are a “lot of people in prisons with acute mental health disorders because it’s the only place” to put them.
As of the end of March, there were 10,422 foreign criminals in jails in England and Wales, an increase from 10,148 at the same time last year. Foreign offenders make up around 12 per cent of the total prison population, costing the UK taxpayer £47,000 per head to feed, house, and rehabilitate, or around £500 million per year, according to The Telegraph.
UK: Millionaires Wanna Leave Because of Labour Tax Raids
Quote:Nearly ten thousand millionaires are predicted to flee the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom this year amid expected tax raids from the left-wing Labour Party government of Sir Keir Starmer.
While the previous Tory government of Rishi Sunak ushered in the highest tax burden since the Second World War, in large part to pay for the debts accrued during the coronavirus lockdowns, it is widely predicted that the fall budget of the Labour government will see further money grabs by the British state, with likely targets including capital gains and inheritance taxes.
According to a report from The Times of London, a firm which helps wealthy people relocate abroad said that in August — the month after Prime Minsiter Starmer came to power — they had seen a 69 per cent increase in inquiries from wealthier people seeking to leave the UK.
Another similar company, Henley & Partners, estimated that a record 9,500 millionaires will likely leave Britain this year, the highest of any country besides Communist China.
It found a net loss of 4,200 millionaires in the first five months of the year — during which time Labour was widely predicted to come to power — and that a further 5,300 are expected to flee by the end of the year. Popular landing spots for the wealthy and entrepreneurs include low-tax destinations such as Dubai, Singapore, and Switzerland.
The likely flight among the innovative and investor classes has sparked concerns that the looming tax hikes may fall foul of the Laffer Curve and fail to raise the intended funds for the treasury.
Quote:The UK government has refused to reveal the cost of kitting out flats for alleged asylum seekers over concerns of a backlash against migrants.
The independent Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ruled in favour of the Home Office in refusing to abide by Freedom of Information requests about the cost of furnishing an apartment bloc in Hampshire to house some 346 supposed asylum seekers. According to The Telegraph, the flats were said to have been equipped with flat-screen televisions and satellite tv.
John Edwards, the head of the watchdog, said that refusing the FOI request was justified given the potential threat posed to migrants if the public was made aware of how much they were spending on migrant flats.
“While the commissioner appreciates the public interest in the cost of providing accommodation used to accommodate asylum seekers, in his view this is outweighed by the Home Office neither confirming nor denying whether it holds any information falling within the scope of this request,” his ruling stated.
In its arguments to the ICO, the Home Office said that the information was “highly emotive and sensitive” and that previous reports on migrant housing had resulted in public disorder.
“It is common knowledge that vulnerable asylum seekers are targets of reprisals or reactions, and asylum-seeking individuals or groups of asylum-seeking individuals have been threatened and harassed in the past,” the government department said.
Germany to Take Advantage of Sunak's Failed Plan for Migrants
Quote:Germany is looking at taking advantage of the hundreds of millions spent by the British on the now scrapped Rwanda migrant scheme to send its own illegals to the East African nation.
In one of his first acts after coming into office in July, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced an end to the plan to send illegal boat migrants to asylum processing centres in Rwanda rather than allowing them to remain in Britain.
Although the previous Conservative governments had failed to get the scheme off the ground, after the plan was mired in legal challenges kicked off by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after it sensationally stepped in to block a migrant removal flight in the summer of 2022, the UK taxpayer had already sent £318 million to Kigali to construct asylum centres and economic development in the country.
This week, German migration commissioner Joachim Stamp proposed that Berlin take advantage of the investment by the British to send its own illegals to Rwanda as Germany seeks to increase removals in the wake of recent Islamist terror attacks in Solingen and Mannheim and growing anger among the public over the open borders agenda imposed upon the country.
Stamp suggested that the government use “the capacities available there that were originally prepared for this deal with the British,” broadcaster NTV reports.
The neo-liberal Free Democrat politician said that the scheme could be used to deter the use of “hybrid warfare” tactics by Russia and Belarus to send migrants towards the EU’s eastern border to destabilise the bloc. Stamp said that this could amount to removing around 10,000 migrants to Rwanda per year.
“This would mean that Putin and Lukashenko’s propaganda would no longer catch Iraqis, Syrians and Afghans saying: Come here to Minsk or to Moscow and we will take you to Europe,” he said.
“If we could find a third country in this place, that would be excellent. We currently don’t have anyone who has come forward, with the exception of Rwanda.”
Although the policy has not been agreed upon by the other parties of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ‘traffic light’ coalition government, namely the Social Democrats and the Greens, should Germany take advantage of hundreds of millions spent by the British taxpayer, it would likely represent a major political blow for the new left-wing Starmer government in London.
Former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman told The Telegraph: “Germany’s decision to adopt the Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme is more evidence of support within the EU of the need for a meaningful deterrence.
“That Starmer ditched the plan makes the UK look like a soft touch for illegal migrants, makes us now an outlier from other EU states grappling with the migration crisis, and is a waste of the vital work done to get the scheme up and running. A big mistake that Starmer will come to regret.”
Conservative Party leadership candidate Robert Jenrick added: “Labour’s decision to scrap, not strengthen, the Rwanda plan looks more foolish by the day. Across Europe, leaders can see that you need a deterrent to stop illegal migration. Sir Keir has squandered such a highly-prized partnership and is now completely powerless to stop the boats.”
The Labour government has argued that scrapping the Rwanda scheme allowed for investment into targeting the criminal people smuggling gangs operating on both sides of the English Channel, notably the creation of a new Border Security Command task force.
However, more than 7,000 illegals have crossed the Channel since Labour came into power in July, taking the total for the year to over 21,000, compared to 29,437 for the entirety of last year.
Quote:A refugee may have been gang-raped by his fellow countrymen over a disagreement on the regime in Tehran, in an attack in a derelict brewery in a German state.
An Iranian male seeking refuge in Germany was found tied up injured by police responding to reports of screams coming from abandoned buildings in Iserlohn, Sauerland, North Rhine-Westphalia on Saturday night. It is stated the man had been subjected to a gang-rape.
A police helicopter scoured nearby woods leading to four individuals being arrested. The 30-year-old victim was taken by ambulance to hospital for treatment, but the severity of his injuries has not been announced.
Earlier reports discussed the possibility the man-on-man gang rape of a refugee may have been an act of xenophobia by the “right-wing scene”, yet new developments reveal the four arrested men who faced a judge on Monday are also migrants of Iranian heritage. The suspects aged 24, 34, 42 and 46-years-old are residents of the Netherlands and Denmark, but are not natives of Europe.
With xenophobia now “ruled out”, police are investigating a potential political motive, with the Berliner Morgenpost reporting the attackers may have been loyalists to the regime in Tehran and the victim a critic.
Broadcaster NTV cites senior public prosecutor Michael Burggräf who said of the alleged crime: “According to investigations so far, the crime was primarily aimed at sexual humiliation”.
Police are still seeking two more suspects. The investigation is ongoing.
Quote:Germany enacted strict new land border controls Monday in what has been described as a response to irregular migration and growing extremist threats.
“We are strengthening our internal security through concrete action and we are continuing our tough stance against irregular migration,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said at a news conference.
AP reports the ministry said it notified the European Union of the order to set up border controls at the land borders with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark for a period of six months.
They will begin next week on Sept. 16 and comes after a deadly knife attack in Soligen last month killed three people. The perpetrator was a Syrian asylum-seeker who claimed to be inspired by the Islamic State group.
Even more recently, police in Munich exchanged fire with a gunman near the Israeli Consulate last week, fatally wounding him. Authorities said they believe he was planning to attack the consulate on the 52nd anniversary of the attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The latest restrictions enhance those already in place on the land borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders praised Germany’s move and said the Netherlands should do the same.
“Until we achieve strong protection of the EU’s external borders with the new Common European Asylum System, we must increase controls at our national borders even more,” Faeser said.
She noted Germany already has had more than 30,000 rejections of people seeking to cross its borders since last October, with the rush to enter going all the way back to 2015 when then Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the country to all and sundry migrant arrivals.
Quote:Reports published in the past week indicate that Ukraine is struggling to conscript enough soldiers to replace its staggering battlefield losses against Russia.
The Russians have taken horrific casualties as well, but their vastly larger population could be the key to eventually winning a war of attrition.
Fears of a manpower shortage led Ukraine to modify its conscription law in April, removing demobilization limits that formerly rotated soldiers out of service after 36 months on the battlefield. The draft age was also lowered from 27 to 25.
“The enemy outnumbers us seven to ten times,” Joint Forces commander Yurii Sodol told Ukrainian lawmakers when he urged them to remove the demobilization provision.
In July, a 60-day grace period for conscription registration expired. Ukrainian officials estimated the tougher registration laws could make up to four million more conscripts available.
The latest news from the front lines renewed concerns that Ukraine simply cannot keep up with the casualties is has sustained.
Channel News Asia (CNA) noted on Monday that between battlefield losses and people fleeing the country – including men fleeing the country to avoid conscription – Ukraine has lost 10 million people out of a prewar population of 45 million.
Worse still, Ukraine’s population of men under 30 has dwindled from 6 million in 2022 to less than 5 million today, reducing both the pool of potential conscripts and the manpower that would be available for postwar reconstruction. Ukraine’s economic output has dropped by about 25 percent since the war began, with a manpower shortage as one of several factors dragging it down.
“We are now in a war of attrition. It is very difficult to choose between butter and guns,” Ukrainian Deputy Central Bank Governor Sergiy Nikolaychuk told Bloomberg News in a June interview.
Ukraine is trying to compensate for this demographic loss by allowing some 3,000 prisoners to fight on the front lines, and men below the reduced draft age of 25 are finding ways to enlist.
“They can erase all violations you had and pardon you. That means you can start all over again. Such a chance has never been given to anyone before,” an enlisted prisoner told CNA.
Ukrainian women are stepping up to fill jobs that are normally held by men so more men will be free to fight in the war, but Ukraine is still suffering from a significant labor shortage – and that could get worse even if the war ends soon as a fair number of Ukrainian men could leave the country to be with wives and children who emigrated after hostilities began.
Ukraine was already an “old” country with demographics skewing toward 55 and older, which means the loss of so many young people to combat and emigration will make it even more difficult to provide medical and support benefits to an aging population. Elderly Ukrainians forced to relocate by Russian advances are losing their homes and possessions, which will make caring for them even more expensive – and there will be fewer young workers to do it.
Quote:Ukraine launched a major drone attack against Moscow and several other Russian cities on Monday night — possibly the largest Ukrainian offensive involving unmanned aerial vehicles since the war began in 2022.
The Russian military claimed it destroyed 144 of Ukraine’s drones, but some damage and fatalities were still reported.
The governor of the Moscow region, Andrey Vorobyov, said 20 Ukrainian drones were shot down in his area, but others were able to damage apartment buildings and houses in the towns of Lyubertsy and Ramenskoye. Local media photographed fires burning in a few high-rise buildings after the drone strikes.
“A woman was killed, and three more people sustained injuries. Five residential buildings near one of those damaged have been evacuated as emergency services were handling drone debris,” Vorobyov said. If his account is accurate, it would mark the first civilian death in the Moscow region since the war began.
Russian civil and military officials said more drones were intercepted over Tula, Belgorod, Kaluga, Voronezh, Lipetsk, Oryol, and Kursk, the province Ukrainian ground forces invaded in August.
Three airports outside Moscow were shut down temporarily during the attack, causing 48 flights to be diverted. The mayor of Moscow said debris from an intercepted drone damaged a house on the edge of the city, but no other Ukrainian drones were able to reach the Russian capital.
“There is no way that nighttime strikes on residential neighborhoods can be associated with military action,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, condemning the attack.
“The Kyiv regime continues to demonstrate its nature. They are our enemies, and we must continue the special military operation to protect ourselves from such actions,” Peskov said.
Russia has attacked Ukrainian civilian neighborhoods many times during the invasion, including attacks on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Ukrainian military chief Serhiy Popko said Russia attacked Kyiv again on Monday night with a swarm of 46 drones, 38 of which Ukraine’s air force allegedly shot down.
Drone warfare has figured prominently in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with both sides innovating offensive and defensive tactics. Drone swarms — like those both sides reportedly launched on Monday — usually cause minimal damage because the drones are easily intercepted, but Ukraine does not have permission to use U.S. and European-supplied missiles to hit targets deep in Russia, so it must employ drones for long-range attacks. Russian oil facilities are frequent targets for these drone strikes.
Ukraine’s latest innovation, spotlighted in social media videos that the Ukrainian Defense Ministry released, is the “dragon drones” — low-altitude drones that drop extremely hot payloads of thermite on their targets.
These thermite charges, which burn at temperatures of up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, have proven extremely effective at burning away soft cover to expose Russian soldiers to follow-up attacks.
Quote:In a landmark case, the Netherlands has sentenced two Pakistanis to prison for calling on their followers to murder Dutch populist leader Geert Wilders.
The court in The Hague sentenced 56-year-old Imam Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali to 14 years in prison over his issuing of a fatwa death warrant on the head of Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders, who now serves as the main power broker behind the Dutch government, for his role in promoting cartoon contests featuring caricatures of Mohammed.
The court found that Jalali had issued demands for the killing of the populist politician in the English language to increase the chances of the fatwa being taken up by an international audience. It ruled that the calls were made with terrorist intent and that it is likely that Jilali’s followers took the demands seriously, Dutch broadcaster NOS reports.
Meanwhile, the court also sentenced 29-year-old Saad Hussain Rizvi to four years in prison for making death threats against Wilders. Rizvi is the leader of the radical Islamist Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) group. While the Public Prosecution Service had demanded a six-year sentence for the TLP leader, Rizvi was partially acquitted as it was not determined that he had terrorist intent behind his statements.
Despite the rulings, it is unclear if the two men will actually face justice, given that both reside in Pakistan, a country which the Netherlands does not have an extradition treaty with. However, Wilders called for an international arrest warrant against the two Islamists.
Nevertheless, the politician described the ruling as a “pure win”, adding: “I now hope that the Dutch government will also do everything in its power to ensure that those involved will serve their sentences.”
Regardless of whether Jilali or Rizvi serve time behind bars, Wilders said that the decision is “an important signal, also internationally, that pronouncing a fatwa on a parliamentarian does not go unpunished.”
Quote:A Swiss appeals court on Tuesday found Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan guilty of rape and sexual coercion in a Geneva hotel 15 years ago, overturning last year’s lower court acquittal.
AFP reports the court said it “annuls the judgement of 24 May 2023” and sentenced the former Oxford professor to three years in prison, two of them suspended.
Swiss-born Ramadan, 62, is the grandson of the founder of the Islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and wrote his doctoral thesis on his ancestor.
Named by Time Magazine in 2004 among the 100 most influential people in the world for his influence on European Muslims, Ramadan has stirred controversy throughout his intellectual career.
Alongside the now concluded Swiss case, a Paris appeals court ruled in June this year Ramadan should be tried for raping three women between 2009 and 2016, a decision his lawyers have challenged.
The scholar spent more than nine months in pre-trial detention in 2018, but was released in November that year.
Ramadan said he had not carried out “a single act, behaviour or sex act that was not discussed beforehand” with the women despite allegations of slapping, choking, and non-consensual penetration by his many accusers.
Ramadan was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University.
He was banned from entering the United States by the George W. Bush administration in 2004 after it was alleged he donated to the Association de Secours Palestinien (ASP/ Palestinian Relief Organisation) from 1998 to 2002.
The U.S. government considered the ASP a group that funded terrorism by giving some of their donations to the anti-Israel terrorist organisation Hamas which is proscribed in the U.S.
Ramadan’s supporters previously used social media networks to claim the sexual assault allegations were all part of a global “Zionist plot,” as Breitbart News reported.
A global plot that makes criminals serve their sentences in prison is definitely a plot I would love to support.
"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:The cause of death for Chad McQueen, an actor known for his performances in the Karate Kid movies and the son of the late actor and race car driver Steve McQueen, has been revealed.
The actor passed away on Wednesday at the age of 63 in Palm Springs, California.
According to the New York Times, the actor died of organ failure, his longtime attorney and friend, Arthur Barens, confirmed.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our father, Chad McQueen,” Chad’s wife, Jeanie Galbraith and their two children, Chase and Madison, wrote in the statement shared on Thursday, September 12.
In addition to describing Chad as a loving father and committed husband, the family penned, “His passion for racing not only highlighted his exceptional talent but also served as a way to honour his father’s legacy, a testament to the values instilled in him.”
The actor’s health complications were a result of a racing injury he sustained years ago, which led to progressive organ failure and ultimately his death.
AP reports McQueen followed in his father’s footsteps, pursuing both acting and race car driving.
Chad McQueen was involved in more than 25 movies and television shows, as an actor, producer and other roles, but he is most widely recognized for his role as Dutch in the 1984 teen classic The Karate Kid.
While he starred in several films after the hit action franchise, including New York Cop, Squanderers and Red Line, he ultimately engaged more in racing than acting, and he eventually founded McQueen Racing, a company that creates custom cars, motorcycles, and accessories, AP sets out in its report.
His son Chase, who also races, and his daughter Madison now run the company.
Quote:Fulton County, Georgia, Judge Scott McAfee dismissed two of the counts against former President Donald Trump in a RICO prosecution there, ruling that District Attorney Fani Willis lacked standing to bring the charges against him.
Reuters reported:
Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee found that state prosecutors did not have the authority to bring those charges, which related to the alleged filing of false documents in federal court.
McAfee allowed the remainder of the case to move forward, including eight charges against Trump. Trump and 14 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to racketeering and other charges stemming from what prosecutors allege was a scheme to overturn Trump’s narrow defeat in Georgia in the 2020 election.
…
The ruling means that five of the original 13 criminal counts against Trump in the indictment obtained last year have now been tossed out. McAfee in March dismissed six other counts, including three against Trump.
Last month, Trump’s lawyers asked a state appeals court to remove Willis from the case over “racial animus,” after she gave a speech claiming that ethics complaints against her had been filed because of racism.
The ethical complaints were later found to have merit, exposing an inappropriate relationship between Willis and fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade, who was forced to resign from the case.
The news of two charges being dropped against Trump is the latest legal victory for the former president in what he says is a pattern of political prosecutions against him, at both the federal and state levels.
Vice President Kamala Harris tried to use those prosecutions against him in the presidential debate September 10.
NYT Poll: People Blame Kamala for Immigration Crisis
Quote:The majority of likely voters say they blame Vice President Kamala Harris for record levels of illegal immigration at the United States-Mexico over the last three and a half years, a New York Times/Siena College poll reveals.
The poll asked likely voters “How much blame, if any, do you think Kamala Harris as sitting vice president should receive for … problems at the border” — record illegal immigration, in other words — to which 63 percent said they place “a lot of blame” or “some blame” on Harris.
In April of 2021, President Joe Biden asked Harris to lead the administration’s effort in “stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.” As a result, many media outlets and lawmakers began referring to Harris as the “border czar.”
Harris has since tried to distance herself from the issue of illegal immigration.
The poll shows the majority of likely voters are not convinced by Harris’s attempt to distance herself from the border. Only 16 percent of likely voters said Harris bears “no blame at all” for record illegal immigration over the last few years.
Meanwhile, of the majority that do blame Harris, 74 percent are white non-college-educated voters, 51 percent are non-white non-college-educated voters, and 62 percent are white college-educated voters.
Most significantly, perhaps, 63 percent of swing voters said they blame Harris.
Regarding who likely voters trust more on immigration, the poll found that 53 percent favor former President Donald Trump on the issue while a minority of 43 percent favor Harris. Among swing voters, 53 percent favor Trump over Harris.
Trump has long campaigned on mass deportations, a crackdown on illegal immigration at the border, and tightening the labor market by stemming the flow of foreign workers into American jobs.
Harris, on the other hand, has vowed to continue Biden’s legacy on immigration, which has welcomed nearly 7 million migrants to the United States since he took office and ensured that the majority of job growth in the labor market goes to foreign workers.
The poll surveyed nearly 1,700 likely voters from September 3 to September 6. The margin of error is +/- 2.8 percentage points.
Quote:A record number of illegal alien sex offenders have been arrested in Maryland, home to several sanctuary jurisdictions, over the last 12 months.
On Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced its 153rd arrest of illegal alien sex offenders in Maryland with 36-year-old illegal alien Madai Gamaliel Amaya of Honduras being arrested in Montgomery Village in August.
Amaya was convicted of second-degree rape in Montgomery County in August 2009 and subsequently deported from the United States in July 2013 by ICE agents. Amaya illegally crossed the southern border, and he was deported from the U.S. again in November 2018.
Amaya then illegally crossed the border for a third time as a got-away and traveled back to Maryland. ICE agents arrested Amaya in August, and he remains in their custody pending deportation from the U.S.
ICE’s arrest of Amaya marks a record number of arrests of illegal alien sex offenders that the federal agency has made in Maryland.
This alarming statistic comes as a FOX45 News investigation discovered that, in Baltimore County, almost ten percent of child sex crime cases involved illegal aliens from Central America who were handed down more lenient sentences by circuit court judges.
In the case of 19-year-old illegal alien Henry Argueta-Tobar of Guatemala, convicted of second-degree rape in July, a circuit court judge in Charles County sentenced him to 20 years in prison and five years of supervised release.
The circuit court, though, suspended all but 190 days of Argueta-Tobar’s sentence.
EUROPE
Russia Grows Tired of 6 British Diplomats aka Spies
Quote:Russia on Friday accused six British diplomats of spying and said it decided to expel them. The U.K. said the “completely baseless” move came weeks ago and was linked to its action in May to revoke the credentials of an attaché at the Russian Embassy and limit Moscow´s diplomatic activities in London.
The latest East-West tensions unfolded as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visits Washington for talks that will include Ukraine´s request to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia. President Vladimir Putin has warned that Kyiv´s use of long-range weapons would put NATO at war with Moscow.
Russia´s Federal Security Service said in an online statement that the Foreign Ministry withdrew the British envoys’ accreditations, and Russian TV quoted an FSB official as saying it was decided to expel them.
The FSB said it received documents indicating the diplomats were sent to Russia by a division of the U.K.’s Foreign Office “whose main task is to inflict a strategic defeat on our country,” and that they were involved in “intelligence-gathering and subversive activities.” It did not identify the six diplomats.
The FSB warned that if other diplomats are found to be carrying out “similar actions,” it “will demand early termination of their missions” to Russia.
Russian TV said the six diplomats had met with independent media and rights groups that have been declared “foreign agents” – a label Russian authorities have actively used against organizations and individuals critical of the Kremlin.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement that the diplomats were carrying out “subversive actions aimed at causing harm to our people.”
“We fully agree with the assessments of the activities of the British so-called diplomats expressed by the Russian FSB,” she added in an online statement. “The British Embassy has gone far beyond the limits outlined by the Vienna Conventions.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said breaking off diplomatic relations with the U.K. was not on the table right now.
In calling the Russian allegations “completely baseless,” the U.K. Foreign Office said the expulsions happened weeks ago, linking them to Britain´s decision in May to revoke the credentials of an attaché at Moscow´s London embassy and to impose a five-year time limit on all Russian diplomats in Britain.
“The Russian authorities revoked the diplomatic accreditation of six U.K. diplomats in Russia last month, following action taken by the U.K. government in response to Russian state-directed activity across Europe and in the U.K.,” the Foreign Office said in a statement. “We are unapologetic about protecting our national interests.”
In May, the U.K. expelled Russia´s defense attaché in London, alleging he was an undeclared intelligence officer, and it closed several Russian diplomatic properties in Britain that it said were being used for spying. About a week later, Russia reciprocated and expelled Britain´s defense attaché.
Quote:Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Wednesday urged China to take a leading role in mediation on the Ukraine war.
“We welcome the Brazil-China consensus – a well-known initiative consisting of six points,” Ryabkov said.
“I think this initiative has ever more support in the Global South. And this meeting of high representatives is the latest example of how the Global South and people who really want to consistently move toward a political settlement are finding good reasons to actively consider this idea,” he said.
“I will tell you that Russia has always expressed its readiness to resume negotiations,” he claimed.
The latter statement is flatly untrue, as Russia often refuses to engage in negotiations, but Russian officials always dismiss the proposals they do not like as unserious and treat them like they never happened.
The “Brazil-China consensus” is a joint statement released on May 23, 2024, after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Brazilian presidential adviser Celso Amorim. Chinese officials incessantly refer to the “six-point plan” but rarely bother to explain what the six points are.
The first point is a call for all parties in the Ukraine conflict to “de-escalate” by not expanding the battlefield, increasing the intensity of the fighting, or provoking the other side. Since Russia created the battlefield in the first place, and has “expanded” it without remorse at every opportunity, this point mostly translates to Russia complaining about effective Ukrainian counterattacks like the invasion of Kursk.
The second point states that “all sides believe that dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis.” China and Brazil called for an international peace conference that would be equally recognized by both Moscow and Kyiv.
The third point calls for more humanitarian assistance to civilians affected by the conflict and encourages all parties to avoid civilian casualties. The fourth rules out nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, while the fifth calls for all parties to avoid attacking nuclear power plants.
The sixth point is a vague call for more international cooperation on issues like energy and food security, relevant to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only because it urges protection of “critical infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines.” Oil and gas pipelines have been in peril throughout the Ukraine conflict.
Quote:A railway behind the front lines of the Ukraine war was bombed and taken out of service this week with a freight train destroyed, Ukraine claims credit while Russia says it is launching a criminal terrorism investigation.
A freight train was derailed with serious damage to the locomotive and 11 boxcars thrown off the track on Tuesday night, closing the rail line leading to Valuyki, Belgorod from the Russian interior. The railhead is just 50 miles away from the frontline fighting at the Vovchansk ‘meatgrinder’ on the Kharkiv front.
Ukrainian state media asserts the derailment was in fact an attack by their partisans, saying the line was blocked by a joint operation of their defence intelligence establishment and Ukrainian special forces. Kyiv claimed the freight train was giving logistical support to the Russian army and it was derailed by means of explosives, “paralysing” a main transport artery.
The Russians, for their part, insisted the train wagons damaged in the strike were empty, and said there were no casualties. Moscow confirmed the track had been blocked and local trains were replaced with buses, while long-distance services were directed to other routes. Two recovery trains had been sent to the scene to clear the tracks.
The Western Region Investigative Department for Transport of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation said they had opened a criminal investigation under the Russian criminal code dealing with terrorist attacks, saying they believed the explosion had been caused by the “interference of an outsider”. Russian state media said one track on the two-track line was re-opened the following day, but no update has been given on the other, suggesting logistical supply in a region with bad roads so close to some of the hardest fighting of the war today remains disrupted by the partisan attack.
While the military application of railways lapsed in the minds of many Western military planners with the end of the Cold War era, they have made a considerable comeback in the course of the Ukraine war, where both sides rely heavily on railway infrastructure to move men and supplies in areas where roads have long been of poor quality and were air transport is next to impossible.
With this return to prominence has some an increased strategic focus, with the railways themselves coming under heavy attack. The early days of the war saw concentrated Russian strikes on Ukrainian railway infrastructure — likely to slow the country receiving external aid — and this continues today. Ukraine in turn have repeatedly used partisan saboteur teams to blow up Russian trains inside Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Russia operates a series of well armed military trains to deter saboteurs but it has been met with limited success, the distances involved making effectively guarding the railways a near impossible task.
Quote:China said Friday it would gradually raise its statutory retirement age, as the country grapples with a looming demographic crisis and an ageing population.
Hundreds of millions of people in China are set to enter old age in the coming decades while the birth rate dwindles dramatically.
The national population fell in 2023 for the second year in a row, with policymakers and experts warning of severe impacts on the economy, healthcare and social welfare systems if action is not taken.
China’s retirement age had not been raised for decades and had been among the lowest in the world.
State news agency Xinhua said top officials in Beijing had decided that “the statutory retirement age for male workers will be gradually extended from the original 60 years to 63 years”.
For women workers the retirement age will be extended “from the original 50 or 55 years to 55 and 58 years, respectively”, depending on the type of job, Xinhua reported.
It said the retirement age would be gradually raised over 15 years from 2025, adding that from 2030, workers would need to make a minimum of 20 years of basic pension contributions instead of the current 15.
The new rules will allow Chinese people “to postpone retirement to an even later date if they reach an agreement with employers”, Xinhua said.
Quote:The Chinese government on Friday announced that it will no longer allow foreign families to adopt Chinese children, ending a program that has found homes overseas for more than 160,000 children since 1992. While Beijing refused to clearly explain its decision, most observers suspected it was a response to declining birth rates in China.
The cutoff of foreign adoptions was so abrupt that families with pending cases had no idea if their adoptions would go forward. When the U.S. State Department sought clarification, Chinese officials said they “will not continue to process cases at any stage.”
“We understand there are hundreds of families still pending completion of their adoption, and we sympathize with their situation,” the State Department said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry mumbled something about bringing foreign adoptions into line with “the spirit of relevant international conventions.”
This might have been a vague reference to Denmark and the Netherlands saying earlier this year that they will no longer allow overseas adoptions. Both of those decisions were prompted by bureaucratic irregularities and allegations of fraudulent paperwork, after a sharp decline in foreign adoptions during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
China is probably more worried that it no longer has children to spare. Overseas adoptions of Chinese children became commonplace during the last years of China’s hideous One Child Policy, which sought to control overpopulation by forcing families to have only one child apiece.
The One Child Policy was notoriously biased against female children in its implementation, as families saw girls as a luxury they could no longer afford. According to China’s Children International, a nonprofit group founded in 2011 to support Chinese adoptees around the world, about 82,000 Chinese children were adopted by American families over the past 30 years, and most of them were girls.
China rather abruptly went from worrying about overpopulation to worrying about demographic collapse after the One Child Policy ended in 2016. Panic is growing in the Chinese Communist Party that it cannot reverse its collapsing birth rates. In the space of a few years, Beijing went from forcing women to abort excess babies to offering a plethora of financial incentives for motherhood, practically begging young families to have children, and even suggesting people who don’t reproduce quickly enough might be traitors. None of these measures has worked terribly well.
University of California at Irvine sociology professor Wang Feng said China’s ban on foreign adoptions marked “the end of an era, and the closing of one of the most shameful chapters of the three and a half decades of social engineering known as one-child policy.”
“The Chinese government created the problem and then they couldn’t deal with the financial constraints and that is why they allowed foreign adoption as a last resort,” Wang told the New York Times (NYT) on Friday.
Guo Wu, an associate professor of Chinese studies at Allegheny College, suggested rising Chinese nationalism could also be a factor in shutting down foreign adoptions.
Guo said China’s nationalists may find the notion that China cannot raise its own children insulting, especially since half of the foreign adoptions have gone to the United States, whose relations with the Chinese government are growing more tense.
“This policy might fulfill that feeling that ‘we don’t need to send our kids to America,’” he said.
Hopeful adoptive families in the U.S. told the NYT they were devastated by China’s sudden halt to the process.
“It’s really hard that there are hundreds of families that are waiting, that have a place prepared and we sit here hopeless, with our hands tied. We loved the country, we love the people and part of my grief is for the connection with China,” said would-be adoptive mother Courtney Moore.
Quote:Former Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who disappeared in June 2023 with no clear explanation and has not been seen in public since, is reportedly working a “low-level job” in Beijing and has no future career prospects, the Washington Post reported this week.
Qin was one of the most extraordinary diplomats on genocidal dictator Xi Jinping’s roster, rising to become the youngest foreign minister in decades after a brief but memorable stint as the Chinese ambassador to the United States.
In that role, Qin earned a reputation as both a belligerent “wolf warrior”-style Chinese diplomat – weaponizing rudeness to berate American counterparts – and as a lover of American culture, seen attending NBA games and visiting U.S. colleges.
Then, suddenly, Qin Gang disappeared. His last public appearance was on June 25, 2023, and he has not been seen. Xi finally fired him from the foreign minister post in July and he lost several other Communist Party positions, but has not publicly faced criminal charges or accusations of corruption. He notably remains a “comrade” of the Party, despite disappearing during an era of purges that took down two defense ministers and several other high-ranking communists in a hail of corruption charges.
The most prevalent theory – in international media and on Chinese social media sites – is that Qin lost his job after having an extramarital affair. The woman implicated, former Phoenix TV journalist Fu Xiaotian, also disappeared from public life in early 2023. Her last social media posts before vanishing show her with an infant son, whose father’s identity remains unknown.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Qin “is alive but … in a position very diminished from his once-lofty perch.” The report, citing anonymous American officials, is the first such detailed report on Qin’s whereabouts currently.
According to the newspaper, Qin is working at “World Affairs Press,” a state-run publisher. The Post sent a journalist to the offices of the publisher, “in an alley in central Beijing,” where no one could confirm if Qin was, in fact, working for the company. None, however, reportedly denied it.
Quote:The Chinese Foreign Ministry bristled on Wednesday at being asked about the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, which took place Tuesday, insisting it does not want China to be “an issue” in the election.
Harris and Trump squared off in a debate hosted by ABC News. Despite the debate featuring a significant amount of foreign policy content and China presenting America’s most dangerous geopolitical threat, moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis did not ask a single question about China. The Communist Party regime only surfaced as a topic in isolated parts of the conversation when Trump or Harris mentioned it.
Trump and Harris engaged in a small exchange on Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese imports, which the Agence France-Presse (AFP) raised during the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s regular press briefing on Wednesday. Spokeswoman Mao Ning refused to address the exchange, insisting, “The presidential elections are the United States’ own affairs. We have no comment on that.”
“That said, we are opposed to making China an issue in US elections,” she added.
The Global Times, China’s top state-run English propaganda newspaper, complained on Thursday – in a different context, the Congressional “China Week” event to discuss Beijing’s threat – that Washington’s relationship to the genocidal Chinese regime was causing so much concern in America. Rather than threat China’s belligerence towards American and the free world generally as a legitimate political issue, the Times dismissed it as a perennial distraction American politicians use to keep the focus away from domestic U.S. issues.
“When it comes to China, politicians from both parties line up one after another to affirm their contention that China is dangerous and poses a real threat to the US and to the world. Dubious legislation follows,” the Times huffed.
“The political discourse in the US when it comes to China lacks common sense, and the more mainstream media attention it gets, the more damage it does to public opinion across the country,” the state newspaper complained. “Regardless of who wins the presidential election in November, there is no reason to expect a change in the rhetoric or its vicious tone.”
Despite the outsized threat communist China presents to American interests – and its long record of human rights abuses, its ongoing colonization of Africa, and its close ties to American enemies such as Russia and Iran – Trump and Harris did not have to answer any questions about China on Tuesday. Indicating the extent to which China looms over so many other political issues in America, Washington’s policies towards China came up, anyway, particularly during a segment on economic policy.
Harris used her time to attack Trump’s approach to China, accusing him of inviting “trade wars” and empowering the Chinese military.
“He invited trade wars — you want to talk about his deal with China?” Harris said. “What he ended up doing is, under Donald Trump’s presidency, he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military — basically sold us out when a policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century.”
In reality, the Trump administration significantly limited American exports of chips and semiconductors to China and more fervently targeted Chinese companies known to be a national security risk, such as the telecommunications corporation Huawei, in its limitations. In 2021, Reuters reported that the Biden-Harris administration “has granted licenses authorizing suppliers to sell chips to Huawei for such vehicle components as video screens and sensors.”
China & Russia to Hold Drills close to Japan & South Korea
Quote:The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that military units had arrived in Vladivostok, Russia, to participate in joint military exercises with Moscow, part of a greater plan to for China to also host the Russian military in exercises in the Sea of Japan.
The Sea of Japan, or East Sea, lies between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, placing the Russian military within close proximity of a nation with which it remains technically at war. As Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace treaty following World War II, and the Russian Federation has also failed to formally end the war, the two nations remain the last two parties to World War II with unresolved hostilities. The major obstacle to signing a peace treaty has been a decades-long disagreement on which country should have sovereignty over the Kuril Islands, which lie between Russia and Japan and are currently occupied by Russia.
Russia and South Korea have also seen relations deteriorate dramatically in the past year over both the Russian government’s flourishing ties to North Korea and South Korea’s support for Ukraine in the ongoing invasion of that country. Russia signed a mutual defense agreement with communist North Korea in July that would, in theory, require Russian forces to enter the battle theater if North Korea were attack. North and South Korea, while not in active hostilities since 1953, are also technically in a state of war.
China is North Korea’s greatest ally and an active opponent to the Japanese government on the world stage, making the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) presence in the East Sea of high concern to both Seoul and Tokyo.
The Chinese state-run outlet Global Times reported on Monday that the PLA would send naval and air assets to both the East Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk to “conduct a series of joint drills and patrols in moves to deepen pragmatic military cooperation.”
Russia forces will also reportedly travel south to participate in Chinese-led exercises.
“China routinely organizes the Interaction series of exercises with Russia and joins strategic exercises organized by Russia, while the two countries also routinely hold joint naval and air patrols,” the Global Times explained. “It highlights China and Russia’s close military ties, and the two militaries’ efforts to further deepen pragmatic cooperation, a Beijing-based military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times.”
The Chinese Defense Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that PLA forces are in Vladivostok to participate in the exercises.
“During the force projection stage, the Chinese troops successfully accomplished multiple batches of materials loading and transfer, personnel movement and ferry flights,” the Defense Ministry narrated. “As for maritime force, the Chinese participating naval taskforce reached the designated sea area at around 4:00 p.m. on Monday, and joined their Russian counterparts to prepare for the following planned exercise.”
The Ministry described the objective of the currently ongoing war games to “deepen the strategic collaboration between the two militaries, and enhance their capabilities in jointly responding to security threats.” It noted that those exercises are separate from a Russian-led exercise known as “Ocean-2024,” which is expected to take place this month.
Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. confirmed on Tuesday that Chinese forces were participating in “Ocean-2024.”
“Ships and aircraft of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army are taking parts in the drills,” Putin said, according to the Russian news agency Tass. “We focus special attention on strengthening military cooperation with friendly countries. It is especially important today, amid the growing geopolitical tension in the world.”
In remarks to the military forces participating in “Ocean-2024,” Putin emphasized that Russia “must be ready for any developments” in the defense of Russia’s “sovereignty and national interests.” The strongman added that Russian forces must be prepared to expect “any military aggression in all directions.”
Quote:Chinese dictator Xi Jinping sent a message to North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-un on Monday congratulating his country on its anniversary, a note international observers described as relatively cold and a potential sign of discord between the two countries.
China is communist North Korea’s closest ally, but has refrained from major displays of support towards the Kim regime in the past year, particularly after Pyongyang published an excoriating screed against Beijing in May for backing a statement vaguely supporting the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. North Korean diplomacy has since trended towards Russia, signing a mutual defense treaty with Moscow in July during strongman Vladimir Putin’s first visit to North Korea in decades.
China and North Korea nonetheless rely on each other significantly for ideological and economic support. Xi’s message hoping to “strengthen communication” with Kim arrives as North Korea escalates belligerent behavior against South Korea, flooding the country with a wave of trash-filled balloons over the weekend. China, in turn, faces growing economic challenges and resistance to its geopolitical agenda from the West.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea’s flagship state propaganda outlet, described Xi’s message as a “heartfelt congratulations” on the anniversary of the founding of communist North Korea.
“I am sure that the Korean people will certainly win a victory, steadily fresh and greater, in the course of promoting the socialist cause of Korean style under the leadership of the WPK headed by you,” Xi reportedly told Kim. WPK is short for the “Workers’ Party of Korea,” the ruling communist party.
Xi promised to “continue to view and deal with the China-DPRK [North Korea] relations at a strategic level and from a long-term angle,” KCNA reported, “and is ready to provide the peoples of the two countries with more welfare and make greater contribution to peace, stability, development and prosperity.”
The Chinese dictator added that Beijing would pursue “developing the traditional China-DPRK friendly and cooperative relations by deepening the strategic communication and boosting coordination.”
The South Korean news agency Yonhap described Beijing and Pyongyang as “relatively estranged” in the context of the founding anniversary message and the upcoming anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries. South Korean sources have reportedly not seen any indication that the two countries will plan any “grand celebrations” together to mark the occasion.
Similarly, Radio Free Asia (RFA) observed that Xi’s message “appeared slightly less effusive” than in prior years and was only the second such message to Kim in the past year, the first being a New Year’s greeting.
While still close allies, North Korea and China have kept a diplomatic distance this year compared to those prior, which appeared to expand following China participating in a summit in Seoul alongside the governments of that country and Japan in May. The trilateral summit, the ninth of its kind in modern history, united the conservative governments of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio with the Communist Party and resulted in a joint statement that outraged North Korea.
“We reiterated positions on regional peace and stability, denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the abductions issue, respectively,” the three countries said in their statement. “We agree to continue to make positive efforts for the political settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue.”
The North Korean regime described the statement as a “grave political provocation” and a “declaration of war,” notably failing to exclude ally China in its condemnation.
Quote:North Korea published photos on Friday of communist dictator Kim Jong-un touring a national “Nuclear Weapons Institute,” where the regime is allegedly enriching uranium to fulfill Kim’s call for an “exponential” increase in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Kim toured the enrichment facility and “acquainted himself with the production of nuclear warheads and current nuclear materials and set forth important tasks for long-term plan for increasing the production of weapon-grade nuclear materials,” according to the regime’s flagship propaganda outlet the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The report featured photos of Kim, accompanied by military officials with their faces blurred out, walking amid rows of machines that appeared to be uranium centrifuges, used to enrich uranium for use in the manufacture of nuclear bombs. KCNA’s documenting of Kim’s tour is an unprecedented report, South Korean media noted – the regime had never before revealed any details of its uranium enrichment program.
The report concluded a week that began with Kim proclaiming he had ordered his military to engage in an “exponential” increase in the number of nuclear weapons North Korea possesses. Kim had first made that call in January 2023, following moves to outlaw denuclearization talks and increase the number of belligerent threats against South Korea and America. Kim has also recently claimed to implement a program to develop indigenously made suicide drones and some sort of “underwater nuclear weapon system” and signed a mutual defense agreement with Russia that would require Moscow to defend Pyongyang in the event of an attack.
KCNA’s article on Kim’s visit to the alleged uranium enrichment facility claimed the dictator offered a glowing review of the complex.
“He highly praised the scientists, technicians and officials in the field of nuclear weapons production for having carried out without fail the plan for producing weapon-grade nuclear materials needed for manufacturing nuclear warheads,” KCNA relayed, “cherishing the firm and steadfast revolutionary spirit and faith to firmly defend the victorious advance of the revolutionary cause of Juche with the strongest nuclear force.”
Juche, or “self-reliance,” is the official philosophy of North Korea under the communist Kim family cult.
KCNA claimed that the facility was “dynamically producing nuclear materials by studying, developing and introducing all the system elements,” granting Kim “great satisfaction.” The report relayed that Kim repeated his call to “exponentially increase the nuclear weapons for self-defence true to the Party’s line of building up nuclear armed forces.”
“He stressed the need to set a higher long-term goal in producing nuclear materials necessary for the manufacture of tactical nuclear weapons,” the report continued, “and concentrate all efforts on bringing about fresh leap forward, setting forth important tasks and orientation.”
Quote:A South Korean military official told Yonhap News on Friday that over 1,300 Chinese-made surveillance cameras have been removed from military bases, including bases near the North Korean border, after the South Koreans belatedly discovered the cameras were capable of transmitting information back to China.
The official added assurances that “no data has actually been leaked” from the compromised cameras, and they were primarily employed for monitoring training fields and base perimeters, rather than highly sensitive tasks such as monitoring the North Korean border.
According to Yonhap, the South Korean company that sold these 1,300 cameras to the military is suspected of falsifying their country of origin. The military is contemplating a lawsuit against the company over this misrepresentation.
Sometime in late July, South Korean military and intelligence officials realized they had littered their military bases with potentially compromised Chinese equipment. Upon closer inspection, they discovered the cameras were “designed to be able to transmit recorded footage externally by connecting to a specific Chinese server.”
Something similar happened in Australia last year, when the Defense and Foreign Ministries discovered their Chinese-made cameras posed a security risk.
In March, the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security completed an investigation that found some Chinese-built cranes installed at American ports contained mysterious cellular modems that were not part of their original design specification or installation contract.
Quote:Brazilian socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday that his government will continue receiving Venezuelan migrants (who are fleeing from the regime of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro), but hopes that its neighbor “returns to normal” so the migrants can go back “as soon as possible.”
Brazil is experiencing a new surge of Venezuelan migrants in the wake of the July 28 sham presidential election, which Maduro and the Venezuelan authorities — all under his control — fraudulently insist that he “won.”
“The Minister for Foreign Affairs [Mauro Vieira] has been instructed and determined by the Presidency of the Republic that we should treat people who are coming to Brazil out of a need to survive with great respect,” Lula said during an interview given to Rádio Norte FM. “You know that human beings are kind of nomadic, when they don’t have a place to eat, when they don’t have a place to work, they look for other places.”
“These people who are coming here will have to be treated well and the federal government has an obligation to help the state of Roraima take care of the education of these people, to take care of the maintenance of these people,” he continued, “because we don’t want these people to come here and spend even more time in need than they already did in Venezuela.”
Lula stated that he will visit Brazil’s northernmost state of Roraima — which neighbors Venezuela — at an unspecified date and discuss the issue of Venezuelan migrants with the state’s governor Antonio Denarium “so that we can definitely treat these thousands of Venezuelans who are in Brazil with great responsibility and respect.”
The Brazilian socialist president added that he hopes Venezuela “returns to normal” so that “these people can return to Venezuela as soon as possible.”
Over the past decade — and as a result of the collapse of socialism in Venezuela, led by the authoritarian socialist Maduro regime — Venezuela is undergoing what has been described as the worst migrant crisis in the Western Hemisphere, matched only in size by the Syrian and Ukrainian migrant crises.
Quote:A growing number of Cubans are forced to scavenge through garbage to find something to eat and survive, the independent outlet Cubanet reported on Wednesday.
Cuba is enduring an extremely dire humanitarian crisis stemming from more than six decades of communism under the authoritarian Castro regime. The communist-caused humanitarian crisis and the Castro regime’s gross mismanagement have caused the decline of the country’s population and the worst migrant crisis in Cuba’s history.
Nearly 90 percent of the remaining population now lives in conditions of extreme poverty in addition to other inhumane living conditions fueled by the collapse of Cuba’s infrastructure. Power blackouts and shortages of water, food, medicine, and other supplies are common, and Cubans have no access to adequate healthcare.
The collapse of Cuban infrastructure also affects the country’s garbage and disposal services — now barely functional — leading to an overflowing accumulation of garbage on the streets of the capital city of Havana.
The mounting garbage dumps, extreme poverty conditions, food shortages, and hunger prompted a surge in the popularity of buzos, or “divers”: individuals who desperately rummage through piles of garbage to find something to eat or sell for their sustenance. In a “good” month, divers reportedly earn only $17 at most.
Quote:Venezuelan Interior Minister and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello claimed on Wednesday evening that a U.S. Navy sailor recently detained by Venezuelan law enforcement officials was part of a “plot” to infiltrate the country and attack socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and his regime.
U.S. authorities confirmed this week that a Navy sailor visiting Caracas was detained on August 30 by Maduro regime security officials. The enlisted sailor was reportedly not on official travel or approved leave when he traveled to Venezuela and is presently in the custody of the Maduro regime’s Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN).
White House spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that they’re “in touch” with Maduro regime officials to “try and get more knowledge and information about this.”
Cabello, widely considered one of the most powerful members of Venezuela’s socialist regime — and actively wanted by U.S. authorities on narco-terrorism and other related charges — claimed during the latest broadcast of his weekly state-media show, Con el Mazo Dando (Hitting with the Mallet), that the detained U.S. Navy sailor sought to “collect the reward” that the United States presently offers for Maduro:
“The news came out from a gringo military officer. A few months ago we alerted our viewers about the plans of extremist groups that will try to infiltrate Venezuela to attempt against President Nicolás Maduro and leaders of Chavismo, all this to collect the famous U.S. bounty,” Cabello said as he read from a letter.
Since 2020, the United States offers a $15 million bounty for any information that can lead to the arrest and/or conviction of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The United States also offers $10 million bounty for any information that can lead to Diosdado Cabello’s arrest and/or conviction.
Cabello, whom Maduro recently appointed as Interior Minister to “bring peace” to Venezuela as the authoritarian socialist regime continues its brutal crackdown on dissidents following the July 28 sham presidential election, asserted that he finds “striking” that the White House claimed to be in communication with the Venezuelan authorities.
“Well, it will be with [former interim President Juan Guaidó] that they are talking, or with [opposition presidential candidate] Edmundo González,” Cabello said.
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab claimed on Thursday that the U.S. Navy sailor was detained in Venezuela after local authorities determined that he “entered without any kind of documentation or support” for his visit.
“He entered without any kind of documentation, without any kind of support for what, what he was coming to the country to do and he is in that process at the moment, that is what I can reveal, I can’t say anything more,” Saab told reporters.
The Venezuelan attorney general further claimed that the detained U.S. sailor “has dual nationality” and that his “main nationality” is Mexican. Saab stated that he cannot give more details about the case until “due process is completed.”
Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh stated during a Thursday press briefing that she did not confirm that the sailor was detained in Venezuela at the end of August while on a personal travel.
Quote:Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González, who claims to have defeated dictator Nicolás Maduro in a sham presidential election in July, left Venezuela and arrived in Spain on Sunday, seeking political asylum.
Spain’s Foreign Ministry announced in a statement that González and his wife were flown from Venezuela on a Spanish Air Force plane, arriving at the Torrejón Air Base in Madrid in the afternoon hours of Sunday local time.
“From now on, the process for requesting asylum will begin, the resolution of which will be favorable in the interest of Spain’s commitment to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans, especially political leaders,” the statement read.
González, a 75-year-old former diplomat, was the only legitimate opposition candidate the socialist Maduro regime allowed on the ballot of the July 28 sham presidential election. His appearance on the ballot was initially intended to be of a placeholder nature in the event the Maduro regime allowed opposition leader María Corina Machado to participate. The Maduro regime ultimately upheld the ban on Machado, preventing her from running.
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp stated on Sunday that the embassy of the Netherlands in Caracas hosted González from July 28, the day of the sham presidential election, to September 5, when he requested asylum to Spain.
Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan authorities — all subservient to him — insist the dictator was the “winner” of the sham election despite the authorities’ continued refusal to publish voter data to corroborate the claimed results.
The Venezuelan opposition published its own voter data, collected from local voting stations directly rather than from the national electoral authority, indicating that González defeated Maduro in a landslide. The international community has widely rejected Maduro’s “victory,” as have many Venezuelans nationwide in protests the socialists responded to with a brutal persecution campaign that left more than 25 dead and roughly 200 injured. Independent human rights groups have documented the arbitrary detention of more than 2,400 individuals — including 129 children, of whom 86 were reportedly released in recent days.
Machado issued a statement on social media after González arrived in Spain, explaining that the opposition candidate’s life was in danger due to the growing threats from the Maduro regime that “demonstrate that the regime has no scruples and no limits in its obsession with silencing him and trying to subdue him.”
“Faced with this brutal reality, it is necessary for our cause to preserve his freedom, his integrity and his life,” Machado said.
The opposition leader stated that González will be “sworn in as Constitutional President of Venezuela and Commander-in-Chief of the National Armed Forces” on January 10, 2025, the date when a new presidential term is slated to begin in Venezuela.
Brazilian Fire Reaches Argentina
If this ever sounds like a copycat trying to recreate the same disaster that has plagued Canada now in South America, it's because you're reading too many conspiracy novels.
Quote:A “smoke screen” caused by the out-of-control fires in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil hit southern neighbors Argentina and Uruguay this week, local Argentine and Uruguayan media reported on Monday morning.
Annual fires are a recurring problem for the Amazon rainforest, nearly 60 percent of which lies within Brazil. In 2024, under the administration of radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Amazon rainforest is experiencing the most severe fires in over a decade.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) stated last week that it documented over 53,600 fires there between January 1 and August 27, 2024 — representing an 80-percent increase from that same period in 2023, when 29,826 were recorded. The number of fires registered by WWF during the first eight months of 2024 is the highest for that period of time since 2010. Lula was also president then, serving his second presidential term from 2007 to 2011.
The currently burning Amazon fires spread into Bolivia this week, burning nearly 4 million hectares’ worth of land, according to local environmentalist organizations. The situation prompted Bolivian authorities to declare a state of national emergency over the weekend, issuing health warnings over the smoke affecting the quality of the air and requesting international aid to help fight the fires.
Argentina’s National Weather Service (SMN) issued a warning on Monday of the arrival of the fires’ smoke to the country’s skies. The warning covers the metropolitan area of the capital city of Buenos Aires, municipalities located north of Buenos Aires, and 13 other provinces and regions where “a significant reduction in visibility” could be experienced.
SMN stressed that “phenomena are expected that may represent inconveniences or difficulties in the normal development of social life.” As a result of the smoke, the weather service suggested that citizens in the affected areas avoid outdoor activities and take respiratory and eye protection measures.
The Argentine weather service explained that the smoke is expected to arrive in the country on Monday but added that the arrival of a front of Patagonian winds could dissipate the smoke sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday.
SMN meteorologist Cindy Fernandez told the local newspaper La Nación that those who could be the most affected by the smoke cloud are people with respiratory problems.
“It is very possible that the smoke will be felt in the city and its surroundings. Especially because it will not only move up high but will also go to the surface and this is what would be harmful to health,” Fernandez said.
The smoke from the Amazon rainforest fires also reached neighboring Uruguay. Uruguayan meteorologist Mario Bidegain told the local newspaper El País on Monday that the smoke cloud will affect Uruguay through at least Tuesday and warned that it could cover “practically the whole country.”
"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:Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with an ABC affiliate for her first solo interview Friday, choosing the same network that got her through this week’s slanted presidential debate — but still managed to stumble through softball questions.
She answered five questions from Action News 6 ABC, a local affiliate of ABC News, in the interview that came just days after the moderators in the ABC debate with Donald Trump assisted her by providing fact checks on the former president but not her.
One of the ABC moderators for the debate, Linsey Davis, is a member of Harris’ sorority and Dana Walden, a Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC, is one of the vice president’s close friends.
Action News 6 ABC anchor Brian Taff asked Harris, 59, what she would specifically do to bring down prices as president.
“Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up as a middle class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard,” she began, before going on about her neighborhood where people “were proud of their lawn.”
“We as Americans have beautiful character. We have ambitions and aspirations and dreams. But not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions,” Harris went on.
She did not say how she would bring prices down but did highlight her proposed policy to give a $25,000 handout to new homeowners and giving tax breaks to new small businesses.
Harris also said she is “obviously not Joe Biden” because she offers an “opportunity economy” and “a new generation of leadership.”
“So, for example, thinking about developing and creating an opportunity economy where it’s about investing in areas that really need a lot of work,” she said, seemingly looking to find words.
The veep said she was not going take “anyone’s guns away” and that she supports the Second Amendment, but will ban “assault weapons” and “universal background checks.”
“They’re literally tools of war,” Harris said.
On what she thinks Trump’s appeal is to voters, Harris again took a few sentences to get to the core of the question.
“I, uh, based on experience and, uh, and, a lived experience know in my heart, I know in my soul, I know that the vast majority of Americans have in common so much more than what separates us,” she said.
“And I also believe that I am accurate in knowing that most Americans want a leader who brings us together as Americans and not someone who professes to be a leader who is trying to have us point our fingers at each other,” she said of Trump, arguing voters want someone with “common sense.”
“I think people are more willing now in light of the hate and division that we see coming out of Donald Trump to say, ‘Hey, let’s put country first.'”
Taff finally asked Harris if there was anything she wanted voters to know about her.
“I don’t know. I mean, probably it’s not very different from anybody watching right now. I love my family, um, one of my favorite things that I lately have not been able to do is Sunday family dinner. I love to cook. I have incredible friends,” Harris said.
“I have a career that really, and I said it the other day, you know, as a career prosecutor, I never asked a victim of crime where they were a Republican or a Democrat. The only thing I ever asked them was, ‘Are you OK?'” she said, arguing she thinks most Americans want that approach.
Quote:The sanctuary state of California may soon offer discounted cellphone service to low-income foreign nationals who do not have Social Security Numbers (SSNs), including illegal aliens.
A proposal before the California Public Utilities Commission would open up the state’s “LifeLine” program, which subsidizes phone bills for low-income Californians, to residents who do not have SSNs, including illegal aliens.
“… the California Universal LifeLine Telephone Service Program (California LifeLine) should extend eligibility to Californians without a Social Security Number (SSN). This decision establishes a process for Californians without an SSN to enroll in California LifeLine,” the proposal reads.
The move would come just after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed legislation that would have used state taxpayer money to help illegal aliens buy homes in California.
Last year, though, Newsom expanded state taxpayer-funded health insurance policies to illegal aliens residing in California — becoming the first state in the nation to do so. About 1.2 million illegal aliens are expected to eventually be using subsidized health insurance.
Today, about 4.7 million illegal aliens and their United States-born children reside in California.
Quote:An illegal alien is accused of murdering a family of four in Irondequoit, New York, on August 31 as citizens suffer under President Joe Biden’s open border policies.
A native of the Dominican Republic, 34-year-old Julio Cesar Pimentel Soriano, was taken into custody on Saturday and charged with four counts of first-degree murder, the Democrat and Chronicle reported on Friday.
The outlet continued:
Fraime Ubaldo, 30, Marangely Moreno-Santiago, 26, and the pair’s two children — Evangeline Ubaldo-Moreno, 4, and Sebastian Ubaldo-Moreno, 2 — were all killed inside the family’s home at 329 Knapp St. Emergency responders were called to the home around 5:20 a.m. on Aug. 31 to battle a fire. Multiple fires were set around the home, which were extinguished by Irondequoit firefighters who then found the four bodies inside. Police said the fires were an apparent attempt to cover up the killings.
Authorities who are still investigating the case have not disclosed the family’s manner of death but said the individuals did not die as a result of the blaze:
In a social media post on Friday, the Irondequoit Police Department announced the arrest and detailed the suspect’s background.
Soriano is allegedly also wanted in the Dominican Republic for another murder in 2019. “It appears Mr. Soriano entered the island of Puerto Rico illegally and obtained fraudulent New York identification. With that identification, he was free to travel from Puerto Rico to the United States mainland,” the agency said:
Please see the update included on our homicide investigation.
Posted by Irondequoit Police Department on Friday, September 13, 2024
After the bodies were found, Irondequoit Police Chief Scott Peters said, “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll remember it for life,” WXXI reported on September 2.
Peters offered more information during a press conference:
Officials are reportedly holding Soriano at the Monroe County Jail without bail, according to the Chronicle.
During his speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July, former President Donald Trump, who is running against Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House in 2024, spotlighted the plight of Angel Families and their loved ones who have allegedly been killed by illegal aliens flooding over the border on Biden’s watch, according to Breitbart News.
Trump stated, “This is my vow: I will not let these killers and criminals into our country.”
Pennsylvania Town Has Way Too Many Haitian Immigrants
Quote:Charleroi, Pennsylvania, like Springfield, Ohio, is also experiencing a growing number of problems from a tidal wave of Haitian migrants flooding into their small town.
While the media focuses on the woes of Springfield, Ohio, and its recent flood of Haitian migrants putting pressure on the small town, other small towns are experiencing similar problems. One of them is Charleroi, Pennsylvania, nestled on the banks of the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh in the western part of the state.
According to the activist group America-2100, the rural town has suffered a 2,000-percent increase in its population of Haitian migrants — and crime and traffic altercations have soared as a result.
Residents have been flooding social media with reports that migrants are attacking people on the street and mugging them, stealing cars, and ending up in traffic accidents throughout the area.
WPXI-TV reported in March that the rising number of immigrant children has stretched the local schools to the breaking point as administrators and teachers toil to educate migrant children, many of whom do not speak English, and some of whom have never gone to school in their entire young lives.
One 11th-grade student told the station that a big problem is that many of these migrant students are really not learning anything despite being enrolled in free schools because they don’t understand what is being said in class.
“The biggest challenge that every Haitian has is they don’t know what you are saying. For you, it’s like blah blah blah, you don’t say nothing you are just sitting in the class listening and you just don’t understand,” the child, who is also a Haitian migrant, said.
Charleroi schools superintendent Dr. Ed Zelich noted that the new students are costing his school hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to accommodate them.
“Just in the last year we had over $400,000, we had to add two ELL [English language learner] teachers, an ELL coach for our teachers, a registrar, an interpreter,” Zelich told WPIX.
Zelich added that the school is expecting another $300,000 to be spent next year and that they need even more from the state.
Star Asks People to Welcome More and More Haitians
Quote:Pop star John Legend is facing mounting public backlash after he lectured Springfield, Ohio, residents on the need to accept the invasion of Haitians who have overwhelmed the working-class town.
John Legend — whose net worth is estimated to exceed $100 million and is a supporter of Kamala Harris — posted a video to Instagram this week urging Springfield residents to “love one another” — specifically, the nearly 20,000 Haitians who have moved into their town in recent months thanks to the Biden-Harris administration’s resettlement of illegal aliens who are given protected status.
“I think all of us need to have the same kind of grace that we would want [for] our ancestors” with “our Haitian brothers and sisters,” he said.
The singer repeatedly emphasized that he grew up in Springfield and even referred to himself in the video using his real name — John R. Stevens. (He even put “John R. Stevens — Springfield, Ohio” in his Instagram bio.)
But his bid for authenticity didn’t ring true to many.
“He lives in a multimillion dollar mansion in Beverly Hills,” one online commenter observed.
“I just love when rich celebrities try to tell us how we should feel about certain situations,” another wrote.
“Maybe they should drop 15,000 immigrants into your neighborhood you live in now and you could experience the hardship yourself,” yet another wrote.
Some are posting a video of Legend and his wife, Chrissy Teigen, giving a virtual tour of their palatial abode.
In his Instagram post, John Legend made no reference to the horror stories Springfield residents have been forced to endure thanks to the Biden-Harris administration’s policies favoring illegal aliens.
In August 2023, a local child was killed when a Haitian driver without a license hit a school bus and forced it off the road.
Biden Doesn't Care About Nippon Steel Taking Over US Steel
Quote:President Joe Biden has voiced his opposition to Nippon Steel buying U.S. Steel, but the federal government appears to be in no hurry to block the deal
Biden administration appears to be in no rush to stop U.S. Steel takeover by Nippon Steel
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has voiced his opposition to Nippon Steel buying U.S. Steel, but the federal government appears to be in no hurry to block the deal.
White House officials earlier this month did not deny that the president would formally block the acquisition. But the necessary report from the government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has yet to be submitted to the White House.
“It’s their process — it’s independent,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Friday. “We have to see the recommendation from CFIUS. That’s the process.”
The proposed takeover carries some heavy political weight in Pennsylvania, a state that both Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump view as a must-win in November’s presidential election. U.S. Steel is headquartered in Pittsburgh.
Biden, Harris and Trump have all come out against the deal. Biden is close with the United Steelworkers, the labor union whose members work for U.S. Steel and worry about the loss of job protections. Supporters of the merger note that U.S. Steel’s older mills could be shuttered without the improved corporate balance sheet that a merger could produce.
The Washington Post initially reported on Sept. 4 that the deal would be blocked by the federal government, only to then report on Friday that any ruling on the merger would be delayed.
Quote:Per Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a whistleblower claims that the lead Secret Service agent on the day that former President Donald Trump was shot in the head had been promoted even after she failed at least one key training exam.
Despite this exam failure, former and disgraced Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle promoted the agent. The whistleblower says the agent in question is from the Pittsburgh office and was the advance agent that fateful day.
Hawley appeared on Fox News with Jesse Watters on Thursday. Here’s the clip:
HAWLEY: The lead advance agent that day in Pennsylvania, the agent in charge of Trump’s entire trip in Pennsylvania — this agent actually failed one or more of her training exams when she first joined the Secret Service. I mean, the pattern that is emerging here, Jesse, from whistleblowers who come to me over and over again is that the Trump rally was undermanned … they did not have people who had experience … and, now, this advance agent, I’m told, may have failed one or more of her training exams and was known not to be a top quality agent. This is absurd, and the fact that the director will not level with the American people about what’s going on here is just totally unacceptable.
Watters then connected the dots by reminding people that Cheatle had made it a priority “to make 30 percent of the Secret Service women.” So, if the whistleblower is correct, even after this woman failed at least one training exam, Cheatle put her in charge of protecting Trump during his entire Pennsylvania trip.
Hawley went on to say that he is being told that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “is leaning on the Secret Service not to comply with [our] document requests.”
“There’s a cover-up going on,” Watters said, “now, that’s definitive.”
Yes, it is.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), one of the most partisan leftists on Capitol Hill, told reporters that he believes “the American people are going to be shocked, astonished, and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures by the Secret Service in this assassination attempt on the former president.”
“I think they also ought to be appalled and astonished by the failure of the Department of Homeland Security to be more forthcoming,” he continued.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told Fox News that an “interim report” will be “coming out shortly,” but there is still “a lot more information that we need to find.”
That is two Democrats expressing their frustration with the DHS and Secret Service in an era where anything involving Trump becomes insanely partisan.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said both parties are working together to release a bipartisan report. He also expressed frustration with acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe for slow-walking promised information.
“So, he’s making the commitment to, you know, provide more information,” Johnson said of Rowe. “But we’re hoping to get this preliminary report out before this work period.”
Trump was shot in the face on July 13, exactly two months ago, and we know no more about these unforgivable security failures today than we did then.
Biden & Starmer on Ukraine Launching Long-Range Missiles
Quote:British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden on Friday delayed a decision to let Ukraine fire long-range Western-supplied missiles into Russia, a plan that sparked dire threats from Moscow of a war with NATO.
Starmer told reporters at the White House that he had a “wide-ranging discussion about strategy” with Biden but that it “wasn’t a meeting about a particular capability.”
Before the meeting officials had said Starmer would press Biden to back his plan to send British Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine to hit deeper inside Russia as allies become increasingly concerned about the battlefield situation.
But the Labour leader indicated that he and Biden would now discuss the plan at the UN General Assembly in New York the week after next “with a wider group of individuals.”
As they met with their teams across a long table in the White House, backed by US and British flags, Biden played down a warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin that allowing Ukraine to fire the weapons would mean the West was “at war” with Russia.
“I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin,” Biden told reporters when asked about the comments.
But while Biden said it was “clear that Putin will not prevail in this war,” he is understood to be reluctant to grant Ukraine’s insistent demand to be able to use long-range US-made ATACMS missiles against Russian territory.
US officials believe the missiles would make a limited difference to Ukraine’s campaign and also want to ensure that Washington’s own stocks of the munitions are not depleted.
The two leaders said they also discussed the war in Gaza, with Britain having recently suspended arms deliveries to Israel over concerns that they could be used to violate international humanitarian law.
The US, Israel’s main military and diplomatic backer, has held off such a step.
Biden and Starmer agreed on their “ironclad commitment” to Israel — but stressed the “urgent need” for a ceasefire deal and a “need for Israel to do more to protect civilians” in Gaza, the White House said in a readout.
The White House had earlier played down the chances of a Ukraine decision coming from Friday’s visit by Starmer, the Labour leader’s second to the White House since he took office in July.
“I wouldn’t expect any major announcement in that regard coming out of the discussions, certainly not from our side,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky however pushed Kyiv’s Western allies to do more.
Hochul's Chinese Aid Turned Spy in the White House
Quote:A former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) who is allegedly a Chinese spy reportedly toured the White House in May.
Linda Sun was reportedly under federal investigation at the time, the New York Post reported on Friday, noting, “The May 8 visit was facilitated by Sun’s former boss, Queens Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), the congresswoman’s office confirmed Friday.”
Sun previously worked as a high-ranking aide for Hochul and disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).
The Post article continued:
Last week, Sun, 41, and her husband, Christopher Hu, 40, who also is listed on White House visitor logs, were slapped with sprawling charges of violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling and money laundering conspiracy. They have pleaded not guilty.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors allege Sun used her position under Hochul and Cuomo to turn the governor’s office into a virtual mouthpiece for the People’s Republic of China and Chinese Community Party.
In exchange, she allegedly received gifts and millions of dollars in bribes — which she and her hubby used to buy real estate, including their Manhasset mansion, and luxury cars like a 2024 Ferrari Roma.
Before the FBI arrested Sun and Hu, the agency raided their home in July, according to Breitbart News:
The outlet also reported that the couple was eventually arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn. The outlet then detailed some of the accusations against Sun:
Sun, in various instances, allegedly prevented Cuomo and Hochul from working, engaging, and speaking with Taiwanese officials. At the same time, Sun allegedly had Cuomo and Hochul make seemingly pro-China statements to appease CCP officials.
During the Chinese coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, for example, the Taiwanese government donated 200,000 masks to New York. When Taiwanese officials pressed why then-Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office had not made any public announcement about the donation, Sun allegedly phoned her contact in the CCP to make them aware that Hochul would be only privately calling to thank such Taiwanese officials for the donation.
Several New York Republicans are now calling for an investigation into Hochul after Sun, a naturalized American citizen who was born in China, was arrested, according to Breitbart News.
Quote:Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) announced the arrival of the first bus of migrants under its new “Secure Emerging Mobility Corridor” program. The program offers migrants free transportation, including meals and security from the Mexico/Guatemala border to ports of entry in the United States, where they will be admitted under the Biden-Harris CBP One app.
The first bus arrived early Wednesday morning in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, located just across from McAllen, Texas. The bus carryied migrants from several Central and South American countries.
The government of Mexico provided the migrant’s travel under a program announced after a series of meetings between the Biden-Harris administration and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The binational immigration meetings, held in August, expanded the geographic region in Mexico where migrants could access the CBP-One smartphone application to schedule admission into the United States to claim asylum and secure release into the country.
The new corresponding transportation program allows authorities in Mexico to better manage the timing of the flow of migrants traveling into the country’s interior by scheduling the free travel service with the migrant’s appointment enter the United States under the CBP One program. Up to 1,450 migrants are released into the United States daily under the Biden/Harris CBP One asylum application. The migrants are not required to pass a credible fear interview, which is usually the first hurdle to a successful asylum claim. Congress never authorized this immigration program.
The buses depart from two southern Mexico cities, Villahermosa, Tabasco, and Tapachula, Chiapas, and arrive at one of eight designated U.S. land ports of entry that allow for the entry of more than 500,000 migrants to enter under the CBP-One smartphone application yearly.
The government of Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) first announced the new program in a Spanish-language notice issued in early September, referring to the initiative as the “Secure Emerging Mobility Corridor.” Before the geographic expansion of service under the CBP-One smartphone application and the coordinated free bus program in Mexico, appointments could only be made in central and northern Mexico. The new coordinated appointment and bus program will allow the Biden-Harris administration to regulate the flow of migrant travel through Mexico.
The CBP One smartphone application is separate from the recently reinstituted Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan program, which allows up to 1,000 migrants to fly into the United States daily. Between the two Biden-Harris programs, more than 800,000 migrants are released into the United States yearly to pursue asylum claims.
Quote:New York’s highest court threw out former President Donald Trump’s request to lift his gag order in his business records case.
The New York Court of Appeals dismissed Trump’s appeal to lift the gag order that limits him from making public remarks against his prosecutors or their families.
Trump’s attorneys requested Judge Juan Merchan lift the order after his conviction, arguing the gag order limits his First Amendment rights and that lifting the order would be in the public’s interest before the presidential election.
Yet, the court’s ruling said that “no constitutional question is directly involved” in dismissing Trump’s appeal.
Despite Thursday’s dismissal, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s successful conviction of Trump may be in jeopardy.
Merchan recently delayed Trump’s sentencing until November 26, 2024 — after Election Day. After a previous delay, Trump’s sentencing had been set for September 18.
Trump requested Merchan throw out his conviction after a Supreme Court ruling in July that said that presidents enjoy presidential immunity for official acts. That request prompted the initial sentencing delay.
The former president also has accused Merchan of profiting financially from his prosecution. The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed his daughter, Loren Merchan, for all documents related to her company’s work for Democrat campaigns that fundraised on the trial over which Merchan sat.
The case is Trump v. Merchan, No. 2024-521, in the New York Court of Appeals.
Quote:Tiffany Henyard, the Dolton, Illinois, Democrat dubbed as “America’s worst mayor,” is again under fire for throwing an $85,000 taxpayer-funded party featuring performances from R&B singer Keke Wyatt and rapper J. Holiday — with barely anyone attending.
Henyard, who has labeled herself as “Supermayor” of the Chicago suburb, is also a supervisor of Thornton Township, which encompasses Dolton.
At her “Taste of Thornton Township” party that took place in August, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by WGN Investigates revealed that Henyard paid Wyatt $30,000 to sing for 30 minutes and gave J. Holiday $20,000 for a set of the same length.
The township also rented inflatable bounce houses for $6,600 and paid for comedians, a sound system, event staff, and more — bringing the total bill for taxpayers to at least $85,769.
There have been unconfirmed claims circulating on social media that only 70 people attended the party, meaning that Henyard allegedly spent more than $1,200 per person:
Former Dolton Trustee Valeria Stubbs was one of the attendees and called it a “flop.”
Jennifer Robertz, a resident of the township’s village of Lansing, told WGN she was “flabbergasted” at the cost of the event.
“I was pissed off. That’s my money. That’s the people’s money.”
“This is all for the babies,” Henyard said in a Facebook video viewed by the outlet. “They don’t show you this side of Tiffany Henyard: The productivity.”
Henyard is currently the subject of a “special investigation” conducted by former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was hired by the Village of Dolton to look into her outlandish spending habits and alleged abuse of office, Fox News reported.
Lightfoot revealed at an August village board meeting that the town’s general fund balance dropped from $5.61 million to a deficit of $3.65 million in just two years under the mayor:
The “special investigator” also shared that Henyard made many expensive purchases at retailers like Amazon, Target, Walgreens, and Wayfair with the village credit card, Breitbart News reported.
One credit card statement Lightfoot shared revealed a whopping $33,000 Amazon order made on January 5, 2023.
“These are somebody using the credit card and charging these amounts using your tax dollars,” Lightfoot told the angered people of Dolton, which has around 20,000 residents.
In a town where 20.2 percent of residents live in poverty according to U.S. Census records, Henyard has a salary of nearly $300,000 with her mayor and supervisor jobs.
Quote:White House national security spokesman John Kirby trashed a group of veterans in an email sent in error to Fox News on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
As Fox News reported on Wednesday, Kirby responded to an email query from Fox about criticisms by a veterans’ group about the Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan by accidentally hitting “reply all” before disparaging the veterans.
Fox reported:
“Obviously no use in responding. A ‘handful’ of vets indeed and all of one stripe,” Kirby said in a “reply all” email chain Wednesday afternoon that appeared to be intended for White House staffers, but which also included Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital had reached out to the White House earlier Wednesday afternoon regarding critical comments from four veterans, including Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., who blasted Kirby for his Monday press conference that they said provided “cover” for the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal.
…
Kirby’s message was sent in error, with him following up with a Fox News Digital reporter, “Clearly, I didn’t realize you were on the chain.” Kirby sent the email while traveling with President Biden on the anniversary of 9/11.
On Monday, Kirby pushed back against a House Republican report on the Afghanistan withdrawal by blaming former President Donald Trump for, among other things, negotiating with the Taliban — ignoring the fact that talks with the Taliban actually began under the Obama administration, via Qatar, in 2013, in Obama’s second term in office.
Kirby retired from the U.S. Navy as a Rear Admiral. He served as Pentagon spokesman during the Afghanistan pullout, including the murder of 13 U.S. service members in the ISIS-K terror attack at Abbey Gate in August 2021.
Quote:Federal agents arrested two top border city officials who are accused of demanding cash bribes from a business owner.
Information provided to Breitbart Texas by the U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed that on Thursday morning in Edcouch, Texas, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested City Manager Victor Hugo De La Cruz and City Councilman Rene Flores. The arrest came after a Federal Grand Jury handed down a four-count indictment accusing them of various bribery charges on September 2. The two city officials are expected to go before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Scott Hacker on Friday morning.
According to federal prosecutors, from June to September 2019, the two city officials demanded bribe payments from the owner of a marketing company in Brownsville. Prosecutors claim that the business owner collected two separate $3,000 payments for marketing work from the City of Edcouch, and he allegedly made two kickback payments of $1,000 to the city officials.
The arrests come almost a year after federal authorities raided the Edcouch City Hall in October 2023. In that same operation, authorities also raided the city hall of the neighboring city of Elsa. Details of the raids remain unclear; however, local news outlets claimed the case was tied to 8-liner businesses in the area.
Quote:A freight train crashed into an 18-wheeler hauling a military artillery vehicle that became stuck on the tracks in South Carolina, video shows.
The semi-truck, which appeared to be carrying an M109 Paladin Howitzer, was crossing the train tracks in Goose Creek on Thursday afternoon when it was struck, Fox News reported.
Video captured by eyewitness Jennifer Clinton and her son shows the train blaring its horn at the obstacle before violently plowing through it, damaging the street crossing in the process:
“My son’s a little shook up, but yeah, we’re okay,” Clinton said, adding that “it was devastating to see.”
The outlet reported that a man seen running out of the semi-truck declined medical treatment.
Goose Creek Police said that no injuries were reported.
It is unclear where the Howitzer, a mobile weapon that is typically manned by a four-person crew, was heading or to what unit it belonged.
The extent of the damage to all vehicles involved is also not immediately known.
Quote:Popular grocery store chain Aldi announced on September 4 that it is raising its minimum wage to $18 and $23 an hour due to the company’s growth.
Aldi’s press release further noted that it is looking to hire more than 13,000 store and warehouse workers nationwide as the holidays approach and the company opens additional stores.
The announcement continued:
Known for its commitment to competitive compensation, the new national average starting wages for open ALDI store and warehouse positions will be $18 and $23 per hour, respectively, based on market and position.
At ALDI, those working more than 30 hours a week have access to healthcare insurance, paid time off and more. In 2023, the retailer also introduced new perks in response to employee feedback, including flexible scheduling and 100% paid parental and caregiver leave.
It is important to note that California’s mandate that fast food workers receive a minimum wage of $20 an hour took effect in April, and Breitbart News pointed out, “Minimum wage hikes tend to eliminate jobs for the most vulnerable, least-skilled workers in jobs that do not produce enough revenue to support the high-wage level.”
Aldi is planning to add 800 stores across the United States in the next five years, the Associated Press (AP) reported in March. The news comes as people are grappling with inflation and trying to save money in President Joe Biden’s America.
“Inflation has led many consumers to change the way they shop. Tired of prices that remain about 19%, on average, above where they were before the pandemic, consumers are seeking new avenues to cut down on spending,” the AP article said, noting that shoppers are choosing store-brand items, buying at discount stores, or purchasing fewer items.
Quote:A new wave of intense cartel fighting forced government officials to order the shutdown of school activities as locals locked themselves indoors in the state of Sinaloa. The measures follow several days of fighting as two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel clashed with minimal interference from federal police and military forces.
The Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya sent multiple alerts and a video asking the public to remain calm and take precautions. In the video, Rocha Moya claimed that government police and military forces were working to minimize the effect of the cartel battles on the local public.
The violence began this week and followed weeks of tension as a faction loyal to recently captured Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada seeks revenge from the Chapitos faction for the betrayal and arrest of their leader. The Chapitos faction comprises the sons of jailed Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. It is believed that Los Chapitos blamed El Mayo for their father’s capture.
As Breitbart Texas reported, Joaquin Guzman Lopez allegedly called a secret meeting with El Mayo and some top politicians in late July. It was during that meeting that Guzman and his gunmen kidnapped El Mayo and put him on a plane that landed near El Paso, Texas, where U.S. authorities were waiting for them. Since then, both Guzman and El Mayo have been in U.S. custody awaiting trial.
The capture led to weeks of tension as locals awaited for war to break out between two of Mexico’s most powerful drug families. It is believed that the family of El Mayo had been quietly building up their forces before striking.
Quote:The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed between Nicaragua’s communist regime and China has had little to no effect on improving the Nicaraguan economy, the local newspaper La Prensa reported on Friday.
China has reportedly only bought roughly one percent of Nicaragua’s exports since the start of the agreement, much less than expected.
Nicaragua and China signed an FTA last year that came into effect at the start of January 2024. Communist dictator Daniel Ortega described the agreement last year as a “lifeboat” for his Sandinista regime and “the best Christmas gift,” claiming that the deal with China was a “strategic” step to overcome U.S. sanctions.
Nicaraguan authorities offered very sparse details of what the FTA with China entails to local media weeks before its start, with little to no transparency on the information provided beyond listing textiles, meat, coal, paper, wood, and cardboard as some of the materials that Nicaragua would export to China through the agreement.
La Prensa, after reviewing official reports from the Nicaraguan Commerce and Trade Ministry, found that China only purchased 1.2 percent of Nicaragua’s total exports during the first eight months of the FTA, worth a total of $62.8 million.
The Nicaraguan newspaper pointed out that, despite tensions between the U.S. and Nicaragua due to Ortega’s “weaponization” of migrants against America, the United States represented 48 percent of Nicaragua’s total exports during the first eight months of 2024, paying the country a total of $2.45 billion.
Quote:Environmentalists in the western Venezuelan state of Zulia denounced on Thursday that several marine animals were found dead and covered in oil in Lake Maracaibo — highly polluted by the constant oil spills that the socialist regime causes.
Lake Maracaibo is Venezuela’s largest lake and one of the oldest in the world, home to the Catatumbo lightning, a unique atmospheric phenomenon over the mouth of the Catatumbo River where it empties into Lake Maracaibo that causes a near-perpetual lightning storm in the lake.
The constant oil and chemical spills that the socialist regime has caused — which leftist activists and/or environmentalist organizations often fail to report and condemn — have heavily polluted the lake, leaving 70 percent of its roughly 5,200-square-mile-wide surface contaminated with oil, chemicals, and a highly toxic, foul-smelling, and potential carcinogenic bacteria locally referred to as verdín (“greenery”).
Venezuela’s Union Radio reported on Thursday that locals found a dolphin, a sea turtle, and a manatee dead and covered in oil in the vicinity of the Vereda del Lago, a park in Zulia’s capital city Maracaibo.
“We had never seen this scenario. The putrid smell that spreads throughout the city, the degraded scenery of Lake Maracaibo, the oil spills, the dead animals of … incredible biodiversity,” environmental biologist Adelso Pineda said. “We are talking about a manatee, a species that is on the verge of extinction.”
The heavily polluted state of Lake Maracaibo has dramatically affected the local fishermen, who depend on their trade to sustain themselves and their families. Union Radio reported that cleanup works in Lake Maracaibo have been “paralyzed” for two months.
“We cannot go out because the oil damages our nets, and there is no one to compensate us because this is a problem for everyone, for the oil company that is not aware of this and does not pick it up, as in previous times,” Edinson Araujo, a local fisherman, told Union Radio.
Araujo further asserted to the local outlet Caraota Digital that the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA “is not concerned” about the situation and does not seek to deal with oil spills in the lake, stating that “they do not clean it [oil], as in previous times.”
The Maduro regime has not publicly commented on the discovery of the dead and oil-covered animals at press time. Instead, officials from the Institute for the Control and Conservation of Lake Maracaibo Basin (ICLAM) — an entity under the Maduro regime’s “Ecosocialism” Ministry — announced on Thursday that they held an “environmental monitoring day” at the lake and allegedly collected samples to be used on “physical-chemical analyses to determine the amount of nutrients in the water.”
Cuban Dissidents Claim EU is Supporting Cuban Regime
Quote:The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC) called this week for the European Union to cease its financial support of Cuba’s communist regime, denouncing the regime’s support of Russia in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Since 1988, the European Union has maintained direct relations with Cuba that have resulted in the communist regime receiving hundreds of millions of euros in financing, ARC leaders noted at an event in Lithuania.
The EU’s multi-million-euro financial assistance deal with Cuba appears to have had no effect on the improvement of living conditions of Cuba’s citizens, who are forced to live in conditions of extreme poverty and other inhumane conditions as a direct result of more than six decades of communist mismanagement.
Cubans are currently experiencing the collapse of their population and the worst migrant crisis in its history. The communist regime’s politics have forced Cubans to endure severe shortages of food, medicine, and other basic supplies in addition to constant power blackouts of up to 12 hours at a time, severe water shortages, rampant inflation, and a derelict healthcare infrastructure.
“We are in Spain raising our voices for a free Cuba and to demand the end of the European Community’s subsidy to the Castro dictatorship,” ARC secretary-general Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat told the independent outlet ADN Cuba on Tuesday.
Gutiérrez Boronat; Julián Obiglio, the president of the Union of Latin American Parties; former Cuban political prisoner Jorge Luis García “Antúnez,” and other activists held an encounter on Monday with Spanish senators in which they expressed their calls to end the European financing of the Castro regime. The Cuban activists also urged effective support from Western democracies to Cuban opposition and resistance.
“It is inconceivable that with more than a thousand political prisoners in Cuba, among them my brother Loreto Hernandez, that Europe continues to finance the dictatorship and repression on the island,” Garcia said.
The founder of the outlet ADN America, Gelet Martinez Fragela, emphasized that “every euro that the Cuban regime receives from the European community is an open letter for the continuation of repression in Cuba and an economic incentive for the Castro elite not to leave power.”
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
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Why do I get the impression that Hamas members are not shaking right now?![[Image: SP1-Scripter.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Scripter.png)
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Russia might interfere in the elections to make Harris win! 
Who am I kidding? the USAG couldn't care less about that. 
lunatic and senile as Mr. 
is or she truly cares about Kim Jong-un. 
conspiracy novels. 
