Mysterious Group Claims It Captured Israeli Mossad Agents

A mysterious group calling itself the“Freedom Movement”has announced the capture of two officers of the Israeli national intelligence agency, Mossad.

In an official statement, first posted on a Facebook page called “Palestinian Top Secrets” on September 5, the group claimed that the officers were captured while carrying out “cross-border security missions.”

The group shared a video of the alleged Israeli officers in captivity. One of the officers identified himself in Hebrew as “David Ben-Rose.” He supposedly worked undercover for the Mossad as a petrochemicals scientist.

Many Israelis noted on Twitter that Ben-Rose’s Hebrew was not pure enough, indicating that he is not a native Israeli. The Mossad is well-known for recruiting foreigners for cross-border operations.

The second Israeli officer was not identified in the video, as well as a possible third officer that was captured by the group.

“We are fighting against racism and extremism,” the Freedom Movement said in its official statement.

Israel has not commented in the group’s claims, thus far. In most cases, Tel Aviv go public with incidents involving its citizens or service members.

The Israeli silence, the lack of any reports of missing Israeli citizens and the inability to verify the identity of the men on the video indicate that the Freedom Movement claims may be nothing but a hoax aimed at attracting media attention.

https://southfront.org/mysterious-group-claims-it-captured-israeli-mossad-agents-video/

University of Michigan-Dearborn apologizes for segregating cafe event by race after public outcry

"Not reflective of the university's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion"

The The University of Michigan-Dearborn apologized for organizing a virtual cafe event for students that was segregated by race after public outcry and ridicule.

The two cafes were divided for students that were "non-people of color" and those that were "Black, indigenous and people of color."

The zoom videoconference was organized by the university's Center for Social Justice & Inclusion for September 8.

A screenshot from the event explained the purpose of the segregated virtual spaces:

The NON-POC (People of Color) Cafe is a space for students that do not identify as persons of color to gather and discuss their experience as students on campus and as non-POC in the world.

A separate virtual event was planned for BIPOC, students who are Black, Indigenous or people of color from marginalized communities, in order to discuss their experiences under their racial and ethnic identities.

Screenshots from the event were circulated on social media and became the object of much ridicule.

From U of M - Dearborn. The Non-POC Cafe or the “White Cafe.” Anyway, I wonder what the menu looks like for the Non… https://t.co/Ua0rNBjJC7

— Abed A. Ayoub (@Abed A. Ayoub)1599628310.0

The celebrity gossip site TMZ said the event "appeared to hearken back to the days of 'Whites Only' signs in America."

The university apologized in a statement on Wednesday after facing ridicule on social media.

"UM-Dearborn sincerely regrets the terms used to describe the 'cafe' events held on Sept. 8. The terms used to describe these virtual events and the descriptions themselves were not clear and not reflective of the university's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion," the statement read.

"The original intent was to provide students from marginalized communities a space that allowed for them to exist freely without having to normalize their lives and experiences, while also providing students that do not identify as persons of color the opportunity to deepen their understanding of race and racism without harming or relying on students of color to educate them," the statement explained.

"The events were never intended to be exclusive or exclusionary for individuals of a certain race," the statement concluded. "Both events were open to all members of the UM-Dearborn campus community."

https://www.theblaze.com/news/um-dearborn-segregated-racist-cafes

Good Samaritans Thwart Kidnapping After Suspect Tried To Snatch 6-Year-Old Girl Away From Blind Father

LOS ANGELES — A man has been charged with attempting to take a girl from her blind father outside their home last month.

Elijah John Lopez, 24, was charged with one count of attempted kidnapping.

The case was filed on September 4 and he has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

On August 18, the girl and her father, Cesar Palma, were aboard a Blue Line train headed to their home in Huntington Park. Lopez also was on the train, struck up a conversation with Palma and allegedly followed the father and his daughter once they got off. Lopez reportedly asked Palma if he could take the6-year-old home.

They then boarded a bus and Lopez continued to follow them. Once they both got off, Lopez allegedly approached them outside their home and grabbed the girl and tried to pull her away from her father.

The would-be abductor and father struggled and witnesses came to the girl’s aid.

“This overt action caused the commuting public that was on the train to step forward and tell Mr. Lopez to leave the family alone,” LAPD Capt. Alfonso Lopez said. “One would think that would stop his action, but it did not.”

“His overbearingness while walking to the bus line was so obvious and disturbing to additional Angelenos, that they in turn stepped forward and told Lopez to leave the family alone,” he said.

“When he tried to grab her, that’s when I turned around and started yelling at him, stay the bad-word away from us, that’s when the neighbors stepped in and he started walking away,” Palma said.

“In my mind, I wanted to turn around and fight with him,” Palma said. “But I thought, if I let my daughter go … and he snatches her and he can run with her, how am I going to run after them? It’s unsafe out there — there’s a lot of crazy people. Just hold on to your kids, don’t let them wander off, because anything could happen.”

Lopez fled the scene and was arrested later in San Diego.

“We believe that Elijah Lopez utilizes public transportation to not only traverse between the counties of Southern California, but to target victims,” Lopez said.

If convicted as charged, the defendant faces a possible maximum sentence of 23 years in state prison.

The case remains under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.

https://breaking911.com/good-samaritans-thwart-kidnapping-after-suspect-tried-to-snatch-6-year-old-girl-away-from-blind-father/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/kushner-says-saudi-arabia-bahrain-to-allow-all-israeli-flights-to-use-airspace/

FISA Court Tells FBI Spying Program Violates Rules on Protecting Citizen Privacy Rights, But it Can Carry On

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The US FISA court authorized the FBI to continue using a warrantless surveillance program that taps conversations between Americans and non-citizens overseas despite finding that the government is violating privacy rules.

“There still appear to be widespread violations of the querying standard by the FBI,” chief FISA judge James Boasberg said in a December ruling that was declassified and made public with heavy redactions on Friday, RT reported.

Those querying rules are meant to protect the privacy rights of American citizens and require that the warrantless searches of emails and telephone calls have a foreign-intelligence or law-enforcement purpose.

Boasberg said the FBI last year made at least 87 queries – which are done by collecting data from Google, Verizon and other communication conduits – that “were not reasonably likely to retrieve foreign-intelligence information or evidence of a crime”.

In one such incident, the FBI last August tapped communications involving about 16,000 Americans, despite only seven of those people being tied to the investigation involved. Boasberg rejected FBI claims that the searches were all likely to find foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime, saying that apart from the seven relevant suspects, the queries were “broad” and “suspicionless”.

The FISA court previously ruled that such queries violate privacy rules and directed the FBI to require agents to document why each query is legally justified.

“The FBI is really just starting to implement that documentation requirement on a comprehensive basis,” Boasberg stated, adding, “For that reason, the improper queries described above do not undermine the court’s prior determination that, with that requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

Boasberg granted the FBI its yearly reauthorization to continue using its warrantless wiretapping program. The ruling surfaced just two days after a federal appeals court found that a similar program used by the National Security Agency to spy on Americans was illegal. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed that program in 2013.

Both surveillance programs stemmed from spying activities the government began after the September 11, 2001 attacks. When Congress reauthorized warrantless wiretapping in 2018, it required the FISA court to approve rules each year setting boundaries for how the FBI may collect data under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.

https://fort-russ.com/2020/09/fisa-court-tells-fbi-spying-program-violates-rules-on-protecting-citizen-privacy-rights-but-it-can-carry-on/

Pelosi warns London there will be ‘absolutely no chance’ of UK-US trade deal if it violates Brexit protocol on Northern Ireland

Any violation the Good Friday Agreement by London will make a trade deal between the UK and the US totally impossible, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has warned.

Pelosi issued a strongly-worded statement on Wednesday after British authorities admitted that their new ‘Internal Market Bill’ could violate international law in a “limited way.” The bill would allow the UK to circumvent its Brexit withdrawal agreement with Brussels, particularly in relation to the protocol on Northern Ireland.

"The Good Friday Agreement is the bedrock of peace in Northern Ireland and an inspiration for the whole world,” Pelosi said. “The UK must respect the Northern Ireland Protocol as signed with the EU to ensure the free flow of goods across the border.”

She added that “if the UK violates that international treaty” and Brexit ends up undermining the Good Friday peace accord, there will be “absolutely no chance” of a US-UK trade agreement passing the US Congress.

The explosive admission about the new Internal Market Bill was made by British government officials on Tuesday, triggering international scorn. The London-appointed Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis said the proposals would indeed break international law in a “very specific and limited way.”

The “limited” scale of the law violation has apparently not reassured other parties in the UK-EU divorce saga. EU Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen said that such tricky legal moves “break international law and undermines trust,” warning that the controversial bill might throw London’s trade talks with the bloc under the bus.

Ireland, for its part, said it perceived the admission as a threat from London, with its deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar branding the revelation as a “kamikaze” statement.

https://www.rt.com/news/500314-pelosi-brexit-northern-ireland-trade/

Hunter Biden’s Chinese Firm Helped Buy Out Michigan Automotive Company to Create Jobs Overseas

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden delivered a speech in Macomb County, Michigan, on Wednesday, slamming the practice of outsourcing. Unmentioned was his son Hunter’s ties to a Chinese government acquisition of a Michigan company that is delivering jobs to China, Mexico, Europe, and South America.

“Make it in Michigan, make it in America, invest in our communities and the workers in places like Warren … Getting a good job in 2020 shouldn’t be a lottery … it should be an expectation,” Biden told American auto workers.

Biden’s pitch, though, is muffled by his son Hunter’s ties to the Chinese government.

First detailed in Peter Schweizer’s, president of the Government Accountability Institute and senior contributor at Breitbart News, 2018 New York Times bestseller Secret Empires, Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors of Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), a private equity firm he founded that was funded with $1.5 billion from the Chinese government via the Bank of China.

The dealings of BHR, from which Hunter Biden stepped down in October 2019, were most recently noted in Schweizer’s Profiles in Corruption.

Specifically, Hunter Biden sat on the board of BHR while the firm jointly acquired Michigan-based Henniges Automotive with the Chinese government-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) for $600 million.

Before the Obama-Biden administration approved the acquisition, AVIC had been sanctioned five times since 1993 for military technology violations, according to a report by Seamus Bruner and John Solomon. In 2014, Obama’s Commerce Department was considering sanctions for an AVIC subsidiary.

Schweizer writes in Profiles of Corruption:

When the Chinese government’s BHR was established, Hunter Biden was given a slot on the board of directors — supposedly unpaid while his father was vice president. His actual compensation cannot be known; it is confidential. [Emphasis added]

…

BHR, with Hunter Biden on the board of directors and Devon Archer as the vice chairman and Investment Committee member, engaged in a series of financial deals that served the strategic interests of Beijing. In one of their first deals, the firm took an ownership stake in China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN), a nuclear energy company. The company was charged in 2016 with espionage against the United States. Also charged was an engineer who stole nuclear secrets from the United States. [Emphassi added]

BHR also helped buy out the American precision machining company Henniges. They bought the company in a joint deal with Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a military contractor owned by the Chinese government. Because Henniges’s technology has military application, and therefore national security implications, the deal had to be approved by an interagency committee made up of Obama-Biden administration officials. [Emphasis added]

Hunter Biden’s BHR and the Chinese government-owned AVIC’s joint acquisition of Henniges was finalized in September 2015, giving BHR 49 percent control and ACIV the other 51 percent. The acquisition is one of the largest buyouts by China of an American automotive company in United States history, Bruner and Solomon note:

The $600 million acquisition was one of the largest Chinese takeovers of an American automotive company in history, topping AVIC’s 2010 takeover of Michigan-based Nexteer Automotive for $440 million. The purchase also revealed a pattern of Chinese state-backed takeovers of sensitive American companies which included China’s controversial purchase of A123 Systems for $256.6 million in 2013 after the Obama-Biden CFIUS approved the deal.

While the deal was finalized and afterward, executives at Henniges announced manufacturing expansions in China, Mexico, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and South America.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/09/hunter-biden-chinese-firm-helped-buy-out-michigan-company-creating-jobs-in-china/