Multi-Agency Investigation Results in Charges Against 18 Members and Associates of Violent White Supremacist Gang
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/multi-agency-investigation-results-charges-against-18-members-and-associates-violent-white
Smollett Case Highlights Prosecutor’s Ties to Billionaire Donor Soros
Billionaire financier George Soros and other wealthy liberal donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to help elect Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in 2016, but she is just one of nearly two dozen local prosecutors backed by Soros in recent years.
Foxx, the top law enforcement official in Chicago, is currently under intense scrutiny because of a decision to drop all charges against actor Jussie Smollett on March 26. The “Empire” star was indicted on 16 felony counts last week stemming from an alleged fake hate crime and the filing of a false police report.
Standing next to Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson on March 25, Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the decision not to prosecute Smollett a “whitewash of justice,” and later told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the decision emanating from Foxx’s office was an “abomination.”
“To me, it makes no sense,” said Emanuel. “It makes no legal sense, no common sense, and this is an abomination in my sense of justice.”
Smollett told police in January that he was attacked by two masked men who yelled, “This is MAGA country,” a reference to President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. Smollett, who is gay and black, was walking home from a Subway sandwich store at 2 a.m. in frigid temperatures when he said the alleged Trump supporters attacked him.
But a police investigation found that Smollett had paid two Nigerian brothers with a check to help him stage the alleged hoax.
Foxx, the first African American state’s attorney in Cook County, recused herself from the racially charged case in February, after it was revealed she was backchanneling communication with Smollett’s family.
Text messages surfaced showing Foxx was in contact with former First Lady Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, who is a close friend of the Smollett family.
“I wanted to give you a call on behalf of Jussie Smollett and family who I know. They have concerns about the investigation,” Tchen wrote on Feb. 1.
Foxx officially stepped aside, putting her deputy, First Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Magats, in charge. Chicago’s police union has called for an investigation into her activities.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/george-soros-backed-jussie-smolletts-prosecutor-kim-foxx_2856314.html
Supreme Court tosses $315 million award in USS Cole lawsuit
The Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a nearly $315 million judgment against Sudan stemming from the USS Cole bombing, saying Sudan hadn’t properly been notified of the lawsuit.
The justices ruled 8-1 that notice of the lawsuit should have been mailed to Sudan’s foreign ministry in the country’s capital, Khartoum. The notice was instead mailed to Sudan’s embassy in Washington.
The lawsuit in which the justices ruled involves sailors who were injured in the 2000 bombing of the Cole in Yemen. Sailors and their spouses sued Sudan in a U.S. court, arguing that Sudan had provided support to al-Qaida, which claimed responsibility for the Cole attack. Seventeen sailors died when the ship was struck by a bomb-laden boat. Dozens of others were injured.
In order to alert Sudan to the lawsuit, the group mailed the required notice to Sudan’s embassy in Washington. Sudan didn’t initially respond to the lawsuit in court, and a judge entered an approximately $315 million judgment against the country. Sudan then tried to get the judgment thrown out.
Sudan and the sailors who were suing disagreed about the requirements of a 1976 law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The statute lays out how to properly notify another country of a lawsuit filed in a U.S. court. If other agreements between the countries don’t exist, the law says that notice should be “addressed and dispatched … to the head of the ministry of foreign affairs of the foreign state concerned.”
Lawyers for Sudan and for the U.S. government had argued that the best reading of that phrase is that it requires the notice to be sent to the foreign minister in the foreign country. The Supreme Court agreed.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority , noted that the ruling is “not the end of the road” for the injured sailors and their spouses who sued. They can try resending notice of the lawsuit, this time to Sudan’s foreign ministry in Khartoum. If that fails, they have yet another option, sending it through diplomatic channels.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying he believed the sailors complied with the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act by sending notice of the lawsuit to the embassy.
Andrew C. Hall, a lawyer who represents survivors of the attack, said Tuesday that he was disappointed with the ruling but said that the case would continue along with a second related case filed by family members of the 17 sailors who died in the attack.
Beyond the current case, the high court’s decision will most directly affect victims of terrorist attacks abroad who want to use U.S. courts to sue foreign countries that allegedly provided support for those attacks.
The case is 16-1094, Republic of Sudan v. Harrison.
https://apnews.com/6cfcd87d63964b0297f301b334790b22
New Zealand mosque chairman blaming Christchurch massacre on Mossad
Ahmed Bhamji, the chairman of New Zealand’s biggest mosque, has come under fire for suggesting Israel’s Mossad spy agency and “Zionist business houses” were behind the Christchurch massacre that killed 50 worshipers.
The country’s Jewish community and national human rights institution both condemned the remarks, made on Saturday at a rally in Auckland organized by a group called Love Aotearoa Hate Racism and streamed live on local broadcaster Apna TV’s Facebook page.
One of the speakers at the rally was businessman Ahmed Bhamji, who is the chairman of Masjid E Umar in the Auckland suburb of Mount Roskill — which describes itself on its Facebook page as the busiest and biggest mosque in New Zealand.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had visited that mosque on the same day as the rally, mourning the victims of the massacre committed by white supremacist Brenton Tarrant.
“I really want to say one thing today,” Bhamji told a crowd of hundreds of people who attended the rally. “Do you think this guy was alone? I want to ask you — where did he get the funding from? … He has been here [for] two years, in New Zealand. Tell me, what has he been doing here for two years? Where was he working? Where was he getting the money from?
“I will not mince words,” Bhamji added. “I stand here and I say I have a very very strong suspicion that there is some group behind him and I am not afraid to say I feel Mossad is behind this.”
A man in the crowd can then be heard shouting: “That’s the truth. Israel is behind this. That’s right!”
Bhamji continued: “And not only them. There are some business houses, also, who are around… you know, Zionist business houses that are behind him. And I think when the investigations come through, the investigations need to look at that angle. Where did he get the money to buy all those guns?
A man in the crowd then interjected and shouted: “Israel!”
Earlier during the rally, socialist activist Joe Carolan, the co-founder of the group that organized the protest, said the war between Israel and the Palestinians had “come home” because 6 of the victims of the Christchurch shooting were of Palestinian origin.
The video of the inflammatory remarks resurfaced on social media on Tuesday, prompting news coverage and angry reactions.
“These conspiracy theories are dangerous lies,” New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses told local website Newshub. “They put the Jewish community at risk, at a time of heightened security concerns.”
“Conspiracy theories — particularly the idea that Jews (whether through the Jewish state or otherwise) are a malevolent controlling force in the world — are at the very core of anti-Semitism,” Moses added.
The Human Rights Commission, New Zealand’s national human rights institution, said: “Prejudice against Jewish people has no place in New Zealand. We must condemn racism, hate and anti-semitism whenever we see it.”
Moses responded by saying the organizers should have publicly called out Bhamji.
“It is unfortunate that they did not appear to put its anti-racism message into practice, by challenging or condemning the racism in their midst,” she told Newshub. “We must call out hateful dehumanizing language, whatever the source, target and circumstances, and even when it is not politically expedient to do so.”
However, Bhamji refused to back down and repeated the allegation when contacted by Newshub.
“Mossad is up to all these things,” he said. “When I talk about Mossad, why should the Jews be upset about it? I made a statement, a lot of other people made statements.”
https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=uziag_1553722772
Slow wheels of justice for the high profile and instant for the cattle
I was offended
Rafi Eitan, spy at center of Israel’s great uranium heist from the U.S.
On September 10, 1968 Rafi Eitan and three other Israeli nationals arrived in Apollo, Pennsylvania, a small city north of Pittsburgh that was home to a company called the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation. NUMEC packaged and stored enriched uranium, which it supplied to nuclear power plants in northeastern United States.
Rafael Eitan, who died Saturday at age 92, was an already legendary intelligence operative by the time he came to America in 1968. In 1960, he led the Mossad operation in 1960 to capture Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi functionary who presided over the liquidation of the European Jews. Eichmann’s trial and subsequent execution was a milestone in world understanding of the Holocaust. As his obituaries noted, Eitan would go on a storied career that including running Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy whose arrest in 1985 cause a serious rift between the U.S. and Israeli governments.
The New York Times obituary mentioned of one of Eitan’s most audacious and consequential operations:
“He was also suspected of being involved in the late-1960s disappearance of at least 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear fuel plant in the Pittsburgh area; many believed that the uranium was diverted to Israel to help its atomic bomb program.”
After an online complaint from pro-Israeli watchdog group CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, the Times deleted the offending facts and appended a correction that was, unfortunately, more misleading than the original. The Times correction stated, “though Mr. Eitan visited the plant around the time of the disappearance, it was never shown conclusively that he had had an important role in it.”
Thus the newspaper of record deprived Eitan of credit for an accomplishment that he denied but almost certainly deserved.
“Rafi was a fighter and a commander of the first order, unique and brave, who led countless daring operations and complex initiatives,” the Mossad said in statement after his death. “The great majority of his operations cannot be publicized but they contributed greatly to the security of the State of Israel.”
One of those operations was the great uranium heist that took place in Apollo, almost six thousand miles from the town of Ramat Hasharon in Palestine where Eitan grew up.
The Times correction notwithstanding, the evidence of Eitan’s involvement was conclusive to 1) the CIA’s scientific directorate; 2) a former CIA Tel Aviv station chief; 3) one of the best-known defense analysts in Washington; 4) a Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigator; and 5) the leading historian of Israel’s secret nuclear program.
The Times correction scants their independent conclusions in favor of less credible denials from NUMEC’s self-interested founders.
Eitan’s unacknowledged role in helping Israel become a nuclear-armed state is documented in a September 11, 1968 FBI report, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. (You can read the document here.)
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/03/center-israels-uranium/
REVEALED: US training ISIS militants at Al-Tanf to attack Syrian oil fields
DAMASCUS – According to sources in the Syrian government army, several thousand militants of the Islamic State (outlawed in Russia), who previously surrendered outside the settlement of al-Baguz on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, were transported to the At-Tanf zone through the territories of Iraq and Jordan under the American escort. Those were mostly people from local tribes dwelling in the Syrian and Iraqi territories. Their families and relatives were sent as hostages to Al-Hol camp in Al-Hasakah province.
Most militants were sent to training camps that account for at as many as ten in the American-occupied territory. There are representatives of the group known as “Majmuat Abu Husam” actively working with them. This is sort of “Bedouin special forces” created by Arab employees of American private military companies in Iraq who later joined ISIS.
In exchange for the possibility of amnesty and the well-being of their relatives, the militants are demanded to take part in an operation aimed to establish control over the territory of the so-called White Desert. What is primarily meant here is the attack against the infrastructure of crude oil extracting and processing in the Homs province, namely the districts of Jisal, Ash-Shair, Mahrur and Tvenan north of Palmyra, as well as the Khneifis phosphate mines. These territories have fallen under control of government troops with the support of Russian aviation in 2017 and remain an extremely attractive target to ISIS terrorists and their patrons.
Apart from that, the Americans are interested in the elimination of government posts along the strategic Deir ez-Zor – Damascus route. Currently, militant groups of the Islamic State that came here through the At-Tanf zone are already demonstrating their aggressive behavior in the White Desert. Over the past ten days, at least twenty Syrian soldiers have been killed in such attacks.
Government forces backed by the Russian airpower continue to locate and destroy the remnants of armed terrorist gangs in the area. According to the Syrian command, about 150 militants, 20 cars with machine guns and 15 motorcyclists have been eliminated in the White Desert in March alone. However the terrorist activity in these areas is not being reduced. Taking advantage of the difficult terrain, a lot of caves and other shelters, the gangs are constantly welcoming reinforcements from At-Tanf, equipping munitions depots and accumulating forces for massive attacks.
The second American focus area, according to the Syrian authorities, is the seizure of territories in central Syria by Kurdish formations of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), established with backing from the Pentagon. Upon completing the armed hostilities in the area of al-Baguz, the SDF command and American instructors refused to send the Kurdish and Arab fighters away, under the pretext of needing them for another landmark operation “against ISIS”. On the outskirts of Raqqa, CIA officers secretly gathered influential sheikhs and invited them to take part in the fight against terrorists west of the Euphrates in exchange for future revenues from the mineral deposits located there. Tribal leaders were promised significant positions in the “confederated democratic state”, which is planned to be created on both sides of the Euphrates under cover of regional US allies.
In the White Desert the Pentagon is obviously working on a plan previously tested in Eastern Syria: to oust the government forces with the hands of terrorists, and then to establish control over the territory of strategic importance and rich in natural resources with the help of Kurdish forces. And that explains why the United States has so stubbornly refused to permit the evacuation of refugees and eliminate the Rukban camp located next to Al-Tanf: under this guise they are training militants to continue their struggle with the Assad government.
https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/03/revealed-us-training-isis-militants-at-al-tanf-to-attack-syrian-oil-fields/
Breaking: Israeli Warplanes Strike Several Targets Northeast Of Aleppo (Video)
In the late hours of March 27, Israeli warplanes carried out several airstrikes on positions inside the Shaykh Najjar industrial area northeast of the city of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
“At 23:00 of Wednesday’s night, 27\3\2019, our air defense systems repelled an Israeli aerial aggression that targeted some positons in the Shaykh Najjar industrial area, northeast of Aleppo. Many hostile missiles were shot down. Loses were limited to materials,” an official statement by the SAA General Command reads.
Syrian pro-government sources confirmed that the Syrian Arab Air Defense Forces (SyAADF) opened fire at Israeli missiles. However, it remains unclear how many missiles were successfully intercepted.
The previous Israeli aerial attack on Aleppo occurred on July 15 of last year. Back then, Israeli media claimed that the airstrikes targeted a position of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The new attack comes only three days after the U.S. recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. This could lead to a dangerous escalation.
https://southfront.org/breaking-israeli-warplane-strike-several-targets-northeast-of-aleppo-video/
https://twitter.com/hashtag/syria?f=tweets&vertical=default