In Israel, an Ugly Tide sweeps over Palestinians
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | April 25, 2016
In Israel’s evermore tribal politics, there is no such thing as a “good” Arab – and the worst failing in a Jew is to be unmasked as an “Arab lover”. Or so was the message last week from Isaac Herzog, head of Israel’s so-called peace camp. The shock waves of popular anger at the recent indictment of an Israeli army medic, Elor Azaria, on a charge of “negligent homicide” are being felt across Israel’s political landscape.
Most Israeli Jews bitterly resent the soldier being put on trial, even though Azaria was caught on camera firing a bullet into the head of a badly injured Palestinian, Abdel Fattah Al Sharif.
In the current climate, Herzog and his opposition party Zionist Union have found themselves highly uncomfortable at having in their midst a single non-Jewish legislator.
Zuheir Bahloul, an accommodating figure who made his name as a sportscaster before entering politics, belongs to the minority of 1.7 million Palestinian citizens, one in five of the population.
Unlike most of Israel’s Palestinian politicians, he preferred to join a Zionist party than one of several specifically Arab parties. Nonetheless, he embarrassed colleagues by briefly pricking the bubble of unreason cocooning the country.
Attacks on soldiers were wrong, said Bahloul, but a Palestinian such as Al Sharif – who tried to stab soldiers at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron – was not a “terrorist” by any normal definition. Terrorists target civilians, Bahloul noted, not soldiers enforcing an illegal occupation.
Other Zionist Union MPs raced to disown Bahloul, while Herzog warned that the party was unelectable as long as it was seen as full of “Arab lovers”.
Bahloul is hardly the first Palestinian politician in Israel to find himself denounced as a “bad” Arab. But the others have mostly sinned by demanding an end to Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Israel is currently promulgating a law to oust such dissenters from the parliament.
Now the earth is shifting beneath the feet of formerly “good Arabs” such as Bahloul, the small number who cling to the belief that a self-declared Jewish state can be fair to them.
It is no longer just the state’s Jewishness that is sacrosanct. The occupation is too.
Salim Joubran, the only Palestinian judge in the supreme court, fell foul of this creed last week as the court considered an appeal from Raed Salah, leader of the northern Islamic Movement, against his jail sentence for incitement to violence.
There is almost continual incitement by Jewish political and religious leaders, but indictments are almost unheard of. Two rabbis who wrote a book, the King’s Torah, calling for the killing of Palestinian babies were investigated but not charged.
In his minority opinion, Joubran thought it reasonable to observe that Salah’s remark urging the Arab world to support the Palestinians with a “global intifada” to protect Jerusalem’s Islamic holy sites under occupation was more rhetorical than a call to arms.
He was wrong. Israelis took to social media calling for an “intifada” against both him and the supreme court.
The ugly political tide turning against the most moderate and pragmatic elements in Israel’s Palestinian minority was also exemplified by threats against Ayman Odeh, leader of the only joint Jewish-Arab party in the parliament.
Odeh’s crime was to describe the assassinations of Palestinian leaders by the Shin Bet intelligence service as “executions without trial”.
Avi Dichter, a former Shin Bet head who is now a legislator in the ruling Likud party, wondered aloud about the merits of assassinating Odeh, before concluding it was not worth “wasting the ammunition”. Dichter knows there is no danger he will face a trial for incitement to violence.
Meanwhile, a TV investigation last week turned a critical lens on the late Rehavam Zeevi, a hero of the occupation. The programme revealed that the general had serially raped and assaulted women under his command, and used underworld connections to silence critics.
Tellingly, however, while the programme highlighted his crimes against Jews, it was largely untroubled by his many well-documented abuses of Palestinians.
Zeevi once proudly boasted of killing prisoners, and famously terrorised Palestinians by flying over their villages with a Palestinian corpse hanging from his helicopter undercarriage.
Later he sat in government as head of a party calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.
When he was assassinated by Palestinians in 2001, he was quickly beatified. Scores of roads and parks are named after him, and a commemoration law requires that his “legacy and values” be taught in schools.
The anti-Arab values Zeevi embodied are in no danger of being discarded. Rather, they are being entrenched. Today, the definition of a “bad Arab” stretches from those, such as Al Sharif, who take up arms against the occupation to those, such as Bahloul, who do nothing more than raise their voice against it.
The trigger-happy soldier Elor Azaria and the peace camp leader Isaac Herzog have more in common than either might wish to admit. In their different ways, both have helped to turn all Palestinians into outcasts – and crush any hope of concessions from Israel to peace.
Mexican authorities obstruct probe of missing students case: report
Press TV – April 25, 2016
A panel of international experts probing the 2014 massacre of 43 Mexican students has accused the government of obstructing its inquiry into Mexico’s most notorious murder case in recent years.
Foreign experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued their final report Sunday, saying the government’s stonewalling stopped them from reaching the truth.
The five-member panel, who has been investigating the case for a year, said Mexican authorities showed “little interest” in moving forward with the probe.
The panel also accused the Mexican government of allowing a smear campaign against its investigation in an attempt to discredit the final report as it prepared to leave the country.
A group 43 students from Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College went missing on the night of September 26, 2014, after they participated in a protest in the south-western city of Iguala, in Guerrero state.
Mexican prosecutors say they were arrested by corrupt municipal policemen and handed over to the local criminal gang of Guerreros Unidos, which apparently massacred them and burned their bodies at a garage dump.
Relatives of the victims dismiss the government version of the incident, accusing authorities of trying to cover up the involvement of senior politicians and army officers in the killings.
The international report also dismissed the government’s narrative, saying there is no evidence that the 43 students were incinerated at the dump.
It said the claim that the students had been burned is scientifically impossible given the heat needed to reduce human remains to ash.
It said the remains of only one student were fully identified after they were found in a nearby river.
“More than a year and a half after the students’ disappearance, we are no closer to knowing what really happened that night but one thing’s for certain: the credibility of the Mexican government is more in doubt than ever,” the report noted.
The case sparked outrage across the country and has led to street protests against President Enrique Pena Nieto.
The report also accused the government of torturing some of the suspects detained in relation to the case.
It said medical report of the suspects shows “significant indications of mistreatment and torture” against 17 of the detainees. More than 100 suspects were detained in the case.
NYU grad student union votes to boycott Israel
Ma’an – April 24, 2016
A graduate student union at New York University on Friday voted in favor of joining the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights.
Two-thirds of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee cast a vote in support of the resolution, which calls on both NYU and its United Automobile Workers union affiliate to divest from all Israeli state institutions — including universities — and corporations “complicit in” Israeli violations.
The resolution proposes that NYU join the movement “until Israel complies with international law and ends the military occupation, dismantles the wall, recognizes the rights of Palestinian citizens to full equality, and respects the right of return of Palestinian refugees and exiles.”
Over 600 union members voted in the referendum, a reportedly larger-than-average turnout for union votes. The 2,000-strong union represents graduate teaching and research assistants at the university.
Some 57 percent of voters made a voluntary individual pledge to participate in the academic boycott against Israel.
The BDS movement has gained momentum over the past year, aiming to exert political and economic pressure over Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory in a bid to repeat the success of the campaign which ended apartheid in South Africa.
Major actors to join the movement this year include British security giant G4S and French telecom company Orange.
The NYU union’s support of BDS comes after US President Barack Obama in February signed into law an anti-BDS trade agreement reiterating that US Congress “opposes politically motivated actions that penalize or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with Israel,” referring directly to BDS activities.
The Israeli leadership has widely condemned the BDS movement as antisemitic or carried out from “hatred of Israel,” while proponents of the movement argue divestment measures are necessary in pressuring Israel to end its decades-long military occupation.
Moves inside the US — Israel’s longstanding ally and number one provider of military aid — to criminalize BDS have meanwhile been slammed by human rights defenders as a violation of free speech.
Dutch columnist detained in Turkey ‘over Erdogan tweet’
Ebru Umar, Dutch writer © wikipedia.org
RT | April 24, 2016
The Turkish police have detained a Dutch columnist over a critical tweet she posted about Turkish President Recep Erdogan, her newspaper said. The woman intends to go back to the Netherlands after being released.
Ebru Umar is a Dutch columnist of Turkish origin, who writes for several newspapers, including Metro. On Saturday, the Turkish police detained her at the resort of Kusadasi and seized her laptop, the newspaper reported.
Umar said she was questioned about critical tweets about the Turkish president. She expects to be released soon and leave for the Netherlands, Metro reported.
Dutch and Turkish officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, the newspaper said.
It comes amid public outcry in the Netherlands over a letter sent by a Turkish consular to its citizens asking to report insults to the Turkish leader they encounter.
The Turkish authorities have launched some 2,000 lawsuits against people accused of insulting Erdogan.
Umar is a regular guest on Dutch TV panels on Muslim-related issues. She has a reputation for being highly critical of Islam and was reportedly targeted with retaliation in Amsterdam.
Venezuela’s Supreme Court Strikes a Blow to the Impunity of Liberal Terror
By LUCAS KOERNER | Venezuelanalysis | April 22, 2016
Last week, the Venezuelan Supreme Court blocked the extremely controversial Amnesty Law passed by the country’s opposition-controlled legislature, which would have pardoned scores of right-wing leaders convicted of violent political crimes.
The bill is applicable to all manner of felonies and misdemeanors committed since January 1, 1999, including “damage to the national electrical system”, “violence or resistance to authority” and even “conspiracy and terrorism”, provided that these crimes were perpetrated in the course of “demonstrations, protests, or meetings for political purposes”.
The opposition’s Amnesty Law even goes as far as to list specific incidents that qualify for amnesty, ranging chronologically from the 2002 US-sponsored coup to the 2014 violent opposition protests known as guarimbas.
In short, the law amounts to a hand-written confession of seventeen years of right-wing terror aimed at overthrowing the country’s democratically-elected Chavista government.
According to the high court, the legislation would enact a “scandalous impunity to the detriment of public morals, subverting the ethical and juridical order of the country”.
Despite the entirely reasonable character of this objection, the ruling was nonetheless derided as yet more evidence of Venezuela’s authoritarian collapse by of the self-anointed ideological guard-dogs of liberal democracy.
Western Apologia for Political Violence
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco accused the top tribunal of “upholding abuse” in sanctioning the criminal prosecution of opposition leaders for “legitimate political activities”.
Given HRW’s highly dubious track record on Venezuela, it is unsurprising that they would categorize as “legitimate” universally outlawed offenses such as “individual terrorism”, “use of minors to commit crimes”, and “mutiny, civil rebellion, treason, military rebellion”.
In regurgitating the law’s perverse logic that these felonies merit amnesty since they were committed with “political purposes”, HRW’s alleged human rights advocacy begins to look more and more like a naked apology for anti-government political violence in Venezuela.
Even more predictable was the response of the Washington Post– the mouthpiece of the US neoconservative establishment– which in a recent editorial cited the Supreme Court ruling in its case for “political intervention” in Venezuela as if US imperial interference in the South American country’s internal affairs was not a long established practice over the last 17 years of leftwing Chavista governance.
Of course, the Western interventionist chorus would be incomplete without the US State Department weighing in on the matter.
In the lead-up to the parliamentary vote on the bill, Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson met with Lilian Tintori, the wife of jailed far right politician Leopoldo Lopez, issuing a call for the “immediate release” of those she termed “political prisoners”.
Absent from her statement was any mention of the fact that Lopez was formally convicted of leading 2014’s violent anti-government protests known as “the exit”, which resulted in 43 dead and hundreds injured, the majority of whom passerby and state security personnel.
An Excess of Judicial Independence?
Following the ruling, the US State Department released its 2015 human rights report in which the body sharply castigated Venezuela for its alleged “lack” of judicial independence as well as its “use of the judiciary to intimidate and selectively prosecute government critics”.
For a moment, let’s bracket the obscene hypocrisy of these accusations coming from a country that has produced such shining examples of judicial independence such as Bush v. Gore and Citizens’ United and whose judiciary has gone to incredible lengths to guarantee due process to political prisoners such as Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal, and Oscar López Rivera.
Let us be clear: Washington’s problem with the Venezuelan Supreme Court is not its lack of independence, but rather that it is too independent from the country’s neo-colonial oligarchy that it refuses to follow their dictates.
Prior to Chávez, a man of the aristocratic stature such as Leopoldo López– the Harvard-educated son of one of Venezuela’s wealthiest families– would never face conviction for his crimes, which include publicly inciting the violent ouster of the democratically-elected government.
In the eyes of the West, what is thus intolerable about the Supreme Court decision to strike down the Amnesty Law and uphold the conviction of López and dozens of others is not its supposed violation of the rule of law, but its full application against the most powerful elements of Venezuelan society.
Against Liberalism
In a word, the mortal sin of Venezuela’s judiciary was to defy the hegemonic ideology of liberal democracy for whom equality before the law is treated as a mere formalism that is professed but never practiced.
In this regard, the Venezuelan Constitution states that, “The law will guarantee the juridical and administrative conditions so that equality before the law is real and effective… it will especially protect those persons… who find themselves in circumstances of clear weakness and will punish the abuses and mistreatment committed against them.”
This conception of legal equality as a radical defense of the weak and oppressed openly clashes with the liberalism enshrined in the US Constitution in which the principle of “equal protection of the laws” codified in the 14th Amendment is formal in character, lending itself to appropriation by corporations who secured the right to personhood long before African-Americans.
Within this framework, the Venezuelan Supreme Court found that the Amnesty Law is unconstitutional primarily because it amounts to a sanctioning of “contempt for the life, integrity, and dignity of… those harmed by the amnestied acts, affecting their right to access justice.”
That is, the high court ruled that the rights of the victims of right-wing terror– mostly black, brown, and poor– take precedence over the privileges of the perpetrators, much to the outrage of the Venezuelan oligarchy and its US imperial masters.
What is at stake here is not some local politicized skirmish over separation of powers but a profoundly universal ethical dispute over what kind of world we want to live in: one in which the normative order guarantees the life and human dignity of the oppressed, or alternatively one in which their oppressors are given carte blanche to murder and terrorize.
Venezuela’s Supreme Court has been crucified by the powers that be for unacceptably choosing the former.
A Note on Clinton’s Faux-Concern
By Andrew Smolski | CounterPunch | April 22, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s recent comments on the 43 students for La Opinión show the media’s failure to judge her pandering rhetoric against her actual, substantive actions. When she states she is indignant about the case, she erases her role in the violence engulfing Mexico. The corporate media allows this, because their pages never print about the US-role in Mexico’s War on Drugs.
Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. During that time, State Department officials under her direction continued to vet and clear Mexican security forces to receive arms transfers. When she says rhetorically, “If there was something the US could do to help, I would be the first to offer it”, it is the theatre of faux-naivety. She knows quite well that the US could end support for policies militarizing Mexico. It’s just that she is not concerned with human rights if that means demilitarization.
It was under the Clinton State Department that the Merida Initiative continued passed its original 3-year time frame. The Merida Initiative enables the Mexican government to repress dissent, while at the same time increasing Mexican elite dependence on the infusion of US armaments. She has called for more of this Plan Colombia-style policy in the future, which means that under a Clinton presidency we can expect more violence throughout Central America.
So, when Clinton exclaims that she is indignant about the Mexican government’s role in covering up the Ayotzinapa case, it belies the fact that she would support (and possibly ramp up) policies that enable the Mexican government to do exactly what she says is a “violation of the law”. The evidence is quite clear on this point, and reported by countless others, like Dawn Paley, Greg Grandin, and Jesse Franzblau. The fact that the corporate media has ignored the record is typical. Clinton’s pandering hypocrisy, typical as well.
Sadly, Clinton is using the tragedy of the 43 to justify and continue policies that brought it about. That is why I am indignant. That is why we should all be indignant.
Pirate Party’s leader detained in Germany for citing poem about Erdogan
RT | April 23, 2016
During a rally supporting comedian Jan Boehmermann, Bruno Kramm, the head of the Berlin branch of Germany’s Pirate Party, was arrested for “insulting a representative of a foreign state” by quoting a line from the comic’s satirical poem slamming Erdogan.
German police arrested Kramm while he was conducting a “literary analysis” of the German comedian’s satirical poem in front of the Turkish embassy in Berlin during a protest held under the slogan “No Power for Erdowahn, Freedom Instead of Erdogan” [Keine Macht dem Erdowahn, Freiheit statt Erdogan], the Morgenpost newspaper reported.
The politician cited a couple of lines from the now-infamous piece that landed Boehmermann in hot water, namely, “Kicking Kurds, beating Christians,” which refer to the Turkish authorities’ reported crackdown on minorities.
Kramm was approached by several police officers as he was reciting the lines and taken into custody. The police dispersed the gathering shortly thereafter.
One of the activists, Franz-Josef Schmitt, posted a photo of a police van, saying that nobody is allowed to visit Kramm.
According to the newspaper, police have accused Kramm of violating a rarely used section of the German criminal code, namely section 103, that prohibits insulting “organs and representatives of foreign states.”
“When people slightly criticize the government in Turkey, they are persecuted, beaten or disappear. In contrast to this, the dictator Erdogan is allowed to significantly restrict the right of assembly and the freedom of expression in Germany merely for a statement, that he beats Kurds and Christians,” Kramm had written in a statement published on the German Pirate Party’s official website.
“Who makes such people agents of inhumane refugee policy, should not be surprised when fundamental rights disappear also in Europe,” he added, referring to the heavily criticized EU-Turkey migrant deal recently praised by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The police had reportedly sanctioned the rally on condition that the activists would not quote any lines from Boehmermann’s poem, because “it may constitute a criminal offense of defamation,” said police spokesman Stefan Redlich, as cited by Morgenpost.
Ahead of the rally, Schmitt wrote that “police have explicitly banned us from performing critical dialectical analysis of the Boehmermann’s poem…otherwise they will bring criminal charges and remove a microphone.”
The party says it has been staging weekly demonstrations in front of the Turkish embassy on Fridays to protest the “systemic terror of censorship, oppression, despotism and killings of the dictator Erdogan.”
Earlier on Friday, Merkel admitted that it had been a mistake to express her personal opinion of the German comedian’s poem, which she condemned for being “deliberately insulting.”
“In hindsight, that was an error,” Merkel said in Berlin on Friday, adding that she feared that her comments might be taken to mean that “freedom of opinion is not important, that freedom of the press is not important.”
However, she didn’t backtrack on authorizing the prosecution of the disrespectful comedian under section 103, despite the public outcry.
“I believe [allowing the investigation] to be correct, same as before,” she stressed, as cited by DW.
Boehmermann suspended his show last week after Merkel heeded Turkish President Erdogan’s calls to begin the proceedings.
Israeli Lobby Forces Swedish Minister to Resign For Comparing Israel’s Pogrom to Nazis
21st Century Wire | April 22, 2016
Another example of intellectual racketeering by an international lobby that is determined to white wash and sanitize the incredible crimes of a rogue nation.
Undoubtedly, Swedish minister Mehmet Kaplan was already a controversial figure with links to some dubious Turkish Islamic nationalist groups (see his story below), and his various adversaries wanted him out of politics. However, his past comparisons of the exclusionary, racist and bigoted ethnic cleansing policies of Nazi Germany – to similar policies fueled by the Zionist ideology in the formation and ongoing maintenance of the State of Israel – have strong parallels as evidenced in numerous scholarly works, including author Ilan Pappé’s historical compendium, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. In summary:
“During the 1948 Palestine war, around 720,000 Palestinian Arabs out of the 900,000 who lived in the territories that became Israel fled or were expelled from their homes. The causes of this exodus are controversial and debated by historians. In his own words, Ilan Pappé “want[s] to make the case for the paradigm of ethnic cleansing and use[s] it to replace the paradigm of war as the basis for the scholarly research of, and public debate about, 1948.”[1]
“The thesis of the book is that the forced move of Palestinians to the Arab world was an objective of the Zionist movement, and a must for the desired character of the Jewish state. According to Ilan Pappé, the 1948 Palestinian exodus resulted from a planned ethnic cleansing of Palestine that was implemented by the Zionist movement leaders, mainly David Ben-Gurion and the other ten members of his “consultancy group” as referred to by Pappé. The book argues that the ethnic cleansing was put into effect through systematic expulsions of about 500 Arab villages, as well as terrorist attacks executed mainly by members of the Irgun and Haganah troops against the civilian population. Ilan Pappé also refers to Plan Dalet and to the village files as a proof of the planned expulsions.[2]” (Wikipedia 2016)
Add to this, today’s native Palestinian population is currently under full Israeli military occupation and is being held in what many describe as the world’s largest mass open prisons for the past 70 years – many times longer than similar repressive regimes throughout history. In addition to this, hundred of thousands (and now now millions) of those Palestinians driven from their homes by militant European Israeli settlers in 1948-1950 have been stranded without national status in refugee camps in neighboring Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan.
Critics can argue about which oppressive regimes in history were, or are, more severe to their victims, but no one can rightly argue that the Israeli project to date has been the chief architect of its own highly organized pogrom.
What’s most amazing however, is the misappropriation of language by the intellectual racketeers determine to enforce a politically correct regime of public discourse, and who routinely levy the fallacious charge of “anti–semitism” at anyone who challenges Israel on its own openly racist state policies and systematic abuses of the native Arab Palestinian population who are actual semite people – unlike the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis who settled in Palestine from 1948 onwards who are of European descent, and not Middle Eastern or ‘semitic’ decent.
Israel and its supporters may not like them, but fact are facts.
While it still manages to collect scalps of politicians, entertainers and academics in the west, Israel’s international intellectual extortion racket is already rapidly disintegrating…
Despite efforts by a well-financed international Israeli lobby to silence opposition and to cover-up the state of Israel’s crimes in the western media, millions of conscientious citizens worldwide are now aware of these crimes and have come together to organize a number of boycott and divestment campaigns (BDS) designed to end its brutal apartheid state policies and pressure Israel into recognizing international norms and observing basic human rights for ethnic natives held under its US government-financed military control.
Meanwhile, another trophy for the “antisemitic” racket…
Swedish minister Mehmet Güner Kaplan. © Joakim Berndes / Wikipedia
Swedish minister resigns after comparing Israel to Nazi Germany
Sweden’s housing minister has resigned after footage of him comparing the treatment of Palestinians by Israel to that of the Jews by the Nazis surfaced in local media. The politician has recently come under fire for his alleged ties to Turkish neo-fascist groups.
Mehmet Kaplan, a high-profile Swedish politician of Turkish origin and member of the Green party, was serving as a minister of Housing and Urban Development from 2014 until his resignation on Monday amid mounting controversy over his rumored close ties to the radical Turkish Islamist groups and his video interview from 2009 in which he says that “Israelis treat Palestinians in a way that is very like that in which Jews were treated during Germany in the 1930s.”
Although the statement about Israel`s policies towards Palestinians was made before Kaplan took office, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, from the Social Democrats, said that “Mehmet Kaplan’s overall assessment of the situation is that he will not be able to act as a minister and I share that assessment,” while announcing his resignation from the government.
The publication of the extract from his interview to Somali Star TV by the Svenska Dagbladet daily was the last straw that forced him out of his office.
Kaplan himself, however, denied that he had crossed any ethical line and didn’t offer any apology. He admitted that he had “on several occasions criticized the actions of the state of Israel severely” but stressed that he was not “anti-Semitic.” Instead, he said that he had made decision to resign leave as the excessive media publicity would prevent him from doing his job as a minister.
Other Swedish officials were far more critical of Kaplan’s comments, however, with Foreign Minister Margot Wallström calling them “terrible,” the Guardian reported… Read more at RT
FBI informants act as ‘honeypots’ to entrap 21yo ‘ISIS sympathizer’ – report
RT | April 22, 2016
FBI informants acted as ‘honeypots’ to trap a 21-year-old man, posing as love interests to glean information, audio obtained by the Intercept reveals. One woman lured him into making a false claim that he’d tried to go to Syria to fight with Islamic State.
The target of the FBI’s operation was Khalil Abu Rayyan, a Michigan resident. When he met an undercover informant by the name of ‘Ghaada’ online, he quickly became enamored with her. A relationship began, and the two even talked about marriage, children and the future.
But the online relationship ended when Ghaada called it off. Rayyan was heartbroken, but the FBI soon sent another woman, known as ‘Jannah Bride,’ to heal his wounds.
Rayyan opened up to Jannah Bride, even disclosing that he had thought about suicide. He claimed to have bought a rope which he could use to hang himself.
“I bought a rope this morning… it’s not that hard,” he said in the 14-minute audio footage obtained by the Intercept. “In only a minute or two, it would be over.”
Seeing an open opportunity to prey on Rayyan’s vulnerable state, Jannah Bride decided to steer the conversation in the direction of hurting other people.
“Which thought is greater to you right now – hurting yourself or somebody else?” the FBI informant asked.
But despite the FBI’s intentions, Rayyan’s response proved no violent thoughts towards others.
“Well, I mean, I would not like to hurt somebody else… but at the same time, if I did it to myself, it’d be easier. I wouldn’t get in trouble,” he said.
In another attempt to try to trap Rayyan into admitting he was violent, Jannah Bride appeared to take a deep interest in jihad.
To impress her, Rayyan said he had an AK-47, claiming it was purchased for a plan to “shoot up a church,” which was later foiled. He also claimed to have attempted to travel to Syria. However, both stories appeared to be false. He didn’t own the assault weapon, and there is no evidence that he ever bought a ticket to war-torn Syria.
But the claims were enough to prompt the US government to search Rayyan’s home and business a couple of months later. And although they couldn’t find the apparently fictional AK-47, they managed to charge him with unlawful possession of a handgun, which his lawyer says was obtained for self-defense reasons while delivering pizzas in Detroit.
And despite there being no record of a purchased ticket to Syria (or anywhere nearby), the US government now alleges that Rayyan is an Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) sympathizer, the Intercept reported.
What’s more is that the FBI is aiming to keep details of the exchanges with Rayyan completely private. However, Rayyan’s lawyers have asked the court to force the government to turn over all communications between their client and the FBI informants.
According to a filing by the defense, the government has proposed a “limited protective order” that “would have kept sealed anything that even summarized material the government deemed sensitive.” Unsurprisingly, the defense has refused to accept the proposal.
In a motion filed April 15, Rayyan’s lawyers wrote: “The government clearly exploited Rayyan, and blatantly attempted to steer him toward terrorism as an acceptable form of suicide before God.”
The FBI uses more than 15,000 informants in counter-terrorism investigations, according to the Intercept. Recent investigations have focused on alleged IS sympathizers.
Uber Shares Data on 12 Million Riders with Uncle Sam
Target Liberty | April 16, 2016
Uber Technologies on Tuesday released its first ever transparency report detailing the information requested by not only U.S. law enforcement agencies, but also by regulators.
According to Yahoo, the ride-sharing company said that between July and December 2015, it had provided information on more than 12 million riders and drivers to various U.S. regulators and on 469 users to state and federal law agencies.
The company said the agencies requested information on trips, trip requests, pickup and drop-off areas, fares, vehicles, and drivers.
Uber said it got 415 requests from law enforcement agencies, a majority of which came from state governments, and that it was able to provide data in nearly 85 percent of the cases.
A large number of the law enforcement requests were related to fraud investigations or the use of stolen credit cards, according to the report.
Uber said it had not received any national security letters or orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act.
This is what happens in a cashless society. Yellow cabs can’t report anything when you use cash. They don’t know anything.
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USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
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- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
