Saturday, May 15, 2021

IDF strikes tower in Gaza City - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

​ by Arutz Sheva Staff

Tower targeted by IDF struck housed Hamas intelligence unit responsible for several attacks against Israel.

The IDF on Saturday attacked Jala Tower in Gaza City, in retaliation for barrages of rocket fire on Israeli civilians.

The tower housed the offices of AP, Al Jazeera, and other media companies. It also housed the Hamas military intelligence's research and development unit, which is responsible for several terror operations conducted against the State of Israel and its citizens.

In a statement, the IDF explained that prior to the attack, "the civilians in the building were warned, and provided with ample opportunity to evacuate the building."

The statement also said that the building housed "military assets belonging to the Hamas terror organization's military intelligence."

"The unit used its abilities against Israel in several incidents, in attempts to harm and disrupt the IDF and civilian operations in the area near Gaza."

It added that the building housed civilian media outlets "that the Hamas terror organization uses as human shields. Hamas intentionally places its strategic military assets in the heart of the civilian population in Gaza."

Photos:מג'די פתחי/TPS

 

Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306264

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IDF Chief of Staff: Hamas made a grave mistake, we are attacking with great force - Elad Benari

 

​ by Elad Benari

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi visits Iron Dome battery, praises soldiers for their operational work during Operation Guardian of the Walls.

 

 

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi on Friday visited an Iron Dome battery in southern Israel. During the visit, he spoke with the soldiers and commanders of the battery and praised them for their operational work during Operation Guardian of the Walls.

“Hamas made a grave mistake when it decided to fire on residents of the south, and the IDF went out on an attack, during which we are operating on the basis of plans we prepared in advance, and there are several steps ahead of us that are ready,” he said.

“We are attacking with great force, which includes many achievements which led to significant damage to Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s production array, to weapons that it will take a very long time to rehabilitate,” continued Kochavi.

He praised the air defense fighters for their efforts to protect Israeli civilians from rocket attacks.

“This is an important effort because all of us are protecting the citizens of the State of Israel and these are not simple days for the citizens of the State of Israel. I am strengthened by them and see their resilience, but I find the opportunity to strengthen them and express my appreciation and we will do everything to protect them in the most successful manner,” said the Chief of Staff.

 

Elad Benari

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306239

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450 bombs in 35 minutes: This is how the IDF tricked Hamas - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

​ by Arutz Sheva Staff

IDF publishes unclear notice - causing Hamas to panic, escape into terror tunnels.

 

 

Just after midnight on Friday morning, Israel announced that "air and ground forces from the IDF are now attacking in Gaza. More details to follow."

The military columnists in Israel understood that this meant the armored corps and artillery deployed near Gaza will attack, but the unclear notice led foreign reporters to report the beginning of a ground operation in Gaza.

Now it has been clarified that the unclear announcement was a planned trick by the IDF to eliminate a large number of Hamas terrorists within a short time.

Infantry, artillery, and tanks were moved towards the IDF border, and Hamas believed that Israel was about to begin a ground invasion. As a result, Hamas sent its fighters into its underground tunnel system beneath Gaza City.

On Thursday night, the IDF brought in 160 aircraft and dropped 450 bombs containing over 80 tons of explosives, hitting 150 terror targets in 35 minutes. Hamas' underground city was hit with enormous force, and the IDF collapsed the terror tunnel system, on the heads of the terrorists hiding in the tunnels.

During the attack, many kilometres of terror tunnels were destroyed. As of now, neither Israel nor Hamas is clear on the exact scope of the damage, but according to estimates, a large number of terrorists were buried in the sands beneath Gaza.

 

Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306223

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Americans Have the Right to Know About Biden's Upcoming Deal with Iran's Mullahs - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act?

  • Is the effective US news blackout about the negotiations with Iran meant to keep the allies and American public in the dark to prevent an outrage that may scuttle the administration's effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal -- which Iran by the way never signed?

  • If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act? Is a return to the nuclear deal the price Biden agreed to for Obama's support before the November 3, 2020 election?

  • The American public has the right to know what sanctions the Biden administration are planning to lift because this regime has been killing Americans and taking hostages for almost four decades.

  • "Last week, Iran's chief diplomat allegedly admitted the IRGC calls the shots in Tehran. Now, Iran releases a fake video of the IRGC blowing up our Capitol. The Biden admin's priority should be ensuring Iran cannot carry out such an attack, not capitulating by removing sanctions." — US Senator Pat Toomey, Twitter, May 2, 2021.

Since the nuclear talks began in Vienna between the Iranian regime and P5+1, the Biden administration has avoided being transparent about what is going on with the negotiations and what exactly is being offered to the Iranian regime. Pictured: Kazem Gharib Abadi, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, leaves the Grand Hotel in Vienna, Austria on May 7, 2021, the day the nuclear talks resumed. (Photo by Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images)

Since the nuclear talks began in Vienna between the Iranian regime and P5+1, the Biden administration has avoided being transparent about what is going on with the negotiations and what exactly is being offered to the Iranian regime -- the one that the US Department of Justice has called the "the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism.

Ironically, it has been easier to get information about the talks from the Russian and Iranian leaders than from the Biden administration. While Iran and Russia, for example, have been saying for weeks that they are progressing towards a deal, the Biden administration, at home and in front of the allies such as Israel, has continued to downplay the possibility of a deal with Iran. Is the effective US news blackout about the negotiations with Iran meant to keep the allies and American public in the dark to prevent an outrage that may scuttle the administration's effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal -- which Iran by the way never signed? Or is it meant to keep the public and the Congress's guard down to later surprise them with a deal? If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act? Is a return to the nuclear deal the price Biden agreed to for Obama's support before the November 3, 2020 election?

After the Europeans admitted around May 1 that a deal is close to being finalized, the Biden administration finally had no option other than to reveal the truth on May 8 and acknowledge that a deal is in fact on the way.

The Biden administration has also declined to disclose exactly which sanctions it intends to remove against the Tehran regime. Perhaps the Iranian leaders can tell us? Iranian President Hassan Rouhani surprisingly revealed that "We've reached a point where the Americans and the Europeans are saying openly they have no choice but to lift sanctions and return to the [nuclear deal], and that almost all main sanctions have been lifted and talks continue on some details."

When the Iranian president is saying that the Biden administration is going to lift "main sanctions", they will most likely include sanctions on Iran's banking and financial systems, sanctions on some Iranian leaders and organizations that were blacklisted under the Trump administration, sanctions on Iran's exports including oil and metals, sanctions on Iran's shipping sector, sanctions on trading and doing business with the Iranian regime, sanctions on Iran's commercial airlines which have been engaged in smuggling weapons, sanctions which were linked to Iran's terrorist activities, and sanctions on Iran's human right violations.

President Biden also previously said that he would lift sanctions on Iran to get new nuclear deal, and that he will work with allies to reach a good deal. But it appears now that he is planning to lift sanctions to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Furthermore, it appears that allies such as Israel or other regional powers have not been included in the negotiations.

In spite of President Biden's having previously pointed out that he wants a longer and stronger deal with Iran compared to the 2015 one, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the potential new deal will likely be the same. Reaching a deal within such a short time frame suggests that no new issues have been incorporated into the negotiations. In addition, the Iranian authorities have been clear that they will not accept a different deal, which might include curbs on its ballistic missile program or address its aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East.

The potential new deal between Iran and the six world powers would most likely include the previous sunset clauses, which set a firm expiration date for restricting Iran's nuclear program, after which the country's leaders would be free to spin centrifuges and enrich uranium at any level they desired. The potential new deal would most likely make Iran's military sites exempt from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Resurrecting the 2015 nuclear deal would also assist the Iranian regime in rejoining the global financial system and gaining more legitimacy – as well as billions of dollars flowing into the treasury of the regime and its militia groups.

The American public has the right to know what sanctions the Biden administration are planning to lift because this regime has been killing Americans and taking hostages for almost four decades. This is a regime that, while the Biden administration is offering it sanctions reliefs, recently released a video showing the IRGC blowing up the US Capitol.

"Last week, Iran's chief diplomat allegedly admitted the IRGC calls the shots in Tehran," US Senator Pat Toomey tweeted in response to the footage. "Now, Iran releases a fake video of the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] blowing up our Capitol. The Biden admin's priority should be ensuring Iran cannot carry out such an attack, not capitulating by removing sanctions."

 

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US foreign policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17350/biden-upcoming-iran-deal

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How To Assure Repetition of Hamas Rocket Attacks - Alan M. Dershowitz

 

​ by Alan M. Dershowitz

Terrorism will persist as long as... the international community rewards it, as it has been doing for [many] years.

  • There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel.... That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back.

  • The real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful -- terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts. Terrorism will persist as long as... the international community rewards it, as it has been doing for the past [many] years.

  • Hamas has been greatly rewarded by the international community, by human rights groups, by the media, by many academics and by millions of decent people for its indecent double war crime tactic of firing rockets at Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian human shields. Israel has been significantly punished for trying to protect its citizens from these rockets.

  • So here... is the twelve-step program that Hamas and the international community should follow if it truly wants to see terrorism become the primary tactic used against democracies by those with perceived grievances.

  • Step 9: Accuse the democracy of war crimes and bring cases against its leaders and soldiers in courts sympathetic to Hamas around the world. Bringing the lawsuits will create a presumption of guilt, even if the charges are dismissed months or years later.

  • Step 10: Schedule various United Nations "debates" at which tyrannical dictatorships from around the world line up... to condemn Israel for crimes routinely committed by these dictatorships but not by Israel.

  • Step 11: Trot out the usual stable of reliable anti-Israel academics to flood newspapers and television shows with some of the worst drivel about international law, human rights and the laws of war -- drivel that would earn students failing grades in any objective law school course on these subjects.

  • Now here are six steps for those democracies that would actually like to put an end to terrorist attacks against its civilians.

  • Step 4: Never allow human rights, international organizations or war crime tribunals to be hijacked by the supporters or terrorism and the enemies of democracy to punish only those who seek to protect their civilians against terrorism.

  • Not only must terrorism never be rewarded, the cause of those who employ it must be made... worse off as a result of the terrorism than it would have been without it.

  • No wonder Hamas, and other terrorist groups, regard their war crimes tactic as a win-win for terrorism and a lose-lose for democracy.

There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel.... That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back. Pictured: The scene of a building hit by Palestinian rocket fire in the southern city of Ashkelon on May 14, 2021. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

This article was originally published in a slightly different form in 2009. Nothing has changed.

There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel and that other terrorist groups will increase the use of terrorism against civilians around the world. That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back. This is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the recent events in Gaza, but it is not a new lesson. In 2002, in a book entitled Why Terrorism Works, I made a point that is even more relevant today than it was then:

"The real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful -- terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts. Terrorism will persist as long as it continues to work for those who use it, as long as the international community rewards it, as it has been doing for the past thirty-five years."

Hamas has been greatly rewarded by the international community, by human rights groups, by the media, by many academics and by millions of decent people for its indecent double war crime tactic of firing rockets at Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian human shields. Israel has been significantly punished for trying to protect its citizens from these rockets. Although Hamas suffered a significant military defeat at the hands of the IDF, it has gained a public relations bonanza. Its status in Europe has been enhanced, as it has at the United Nations and throughout the Arab street. It lost the battle on the ground in Gaza, but may have won the war in the hearts and minds of many decent, and many more indecent, people throughout the world. And it won this war with very little cost. Whether the death toll was 500-600, as Corriere della Sera suggested, or 1300 as Hamas has reported, dead civilians serve the interest of Hamas, which considers them martyrs. They do not belong on the cost side of the ledger, according to the bizarre death culture that Hamas perpetuates, but rather of the benefit side of the ledger.

So here, in simple terms, is the twelve-step program that Hamas and the international community should follow if it truly wants to see terrorism become the primary tactic used against democracies by those with perceived grievances.

Step 1: Use terrorism-rockets aimed at civilians, suicide bombings in pizza parlors and discothèques, bombs planted in school buses, shootings in classrooms... as widely as possible against your enemies, to the point where they have no option but respond militarily.

Step 2: Make sure that the terrorists and their weapons, rockets, explosives... are hidden among civilians in densely populated areas.

Step 3: When the inevitable attacks occur, employ human shields, the younger the better. Recruit them voluntarily, if possible, but commandeer them if necessary, even if they are babies or toddlers.

Step 4: Be certain that your terrorist fighters are wearing civilian clothing. Recruit as many women and teenage youngsters as possible to become terrorists.

Step 5: Be ready with video cameras and sympathetic journalists to videotape every single death and transmit the images as widely as possible to media outlets around the world.

Step 6: Recycle images of dead civilians, especially children, and move them from media to media, thus multiplying the number of apparently dead civilians.

Step 7: Be certain that sympathetic doctors and United Nations personnel overstate the number of civilians killed, counting every person under the age of 18 and every woman as a civilian, even if they are terrorists.

Step 8: Circulate totally false reports about civilian casualties and their location by, for example, claiming that numerous civilians were killed at a United Nations school when you know none of the dead were actually inside the school. You can be confident that the media will put your exaggerated reports on Page 1 and when the truth eventually comes out, after careful investigation days or weeks later, it will be buried in the back pages.

Step 9: Accuse the democracy of war crimes and bring cases against its leaders and soldiers in courts sympathetic to Hamas around the world. Bringing the lawsuits will create a presumption of guilt, even if the charges are dismissed months or years later.

Step 10: Schedule various United Nations "debates" at which tyrannical dictatorships from around the world line up at the podium to condemn Israel for crimes routinely committed by these dictatorships but not by Israel.

Step 11: Trot out the usual stable of reliable anti-Israel academics to flood newspapers and television shows with some of the worst drivel about international law, human rights and the laws of war -- drivel that would earn students failing grades in any objective law school course on these subjects.

Step 12: Make sure that Hamas understands that if it repeats its double war crime strategy, it will once again be rewarded, and if Israel fights back, it will once again be punished.

These twelve steps are for use by terrorist groups, nations, and organizations, such as the United Nations, that seem determined to encourage terrorism.

Now here are six steps for those democracies that would actually like to put an end to terrorist attacks against its civilians.

Step 1: Never, under any circumstances, reward an act of terrorism or a group that employs terrorism to achieve its goals.

Step 2: Always punish terrorists and terrorists' groups that employ terrorism against civilians.

Step 3: Never punish democracies that seek to prevent acts of terrorism against their civilians especially when the terrorists hide among their own civilians in order to provoke democracies into killing civilians.

Step 4: Never allow human rights, international organizations or war crime tribunals to be hijacked by the supporters or terrorism and the enemies of democracy to punish only those who seek to protect their civilians against terrorism. This is especially true when the democracies have been patient in responding and have no reasonable alternative course other than military self-defense.

Step 5: Never manipulate the emotions of decent people by showing only the human shields who have been killed by military self-defense actions of the democracies, without explaining that it was the terrorists who caused these deaths.

Step 6: Make certain that the cause espoused by the terrorists is set back by every act of terrorism.

As I wrote in 2002:

"Not only must terrorism never be rewarded, the cause of those who employ it must be made -- and must be seen to be made -- worse off as a result of the terrorism than it would have been without it. The manner by which calculating terrorists define and calibrate the cost and benefits may be different from the way common criminals decide whether to rob, cheat, or bully, but society's response must be based on similar considerations. Those who employ terrorism have their own criteria for evaluating success and failure, and in implementing the immutable principle that those who employ terrorism must be worse off for having resorted to this tactic, we must make them worse off by their own criteria."

The international community, by and large, has been doing the opposite. The message it has been sending has been: keep it up. It will only help your terrorist cause and hurt your democratic enemy. No wonder Hamas, and other terrorist groups, regard their war crimes tactic as a win-win for terrorism and a lose-lose for democracy.

 

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of the book, The Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives and Universities, Hot Books, April 20, 2021. His new podcast, "The Dershow," can be seen on Spotify, Apple and YouTube. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17367/hamas-rocket-attacks

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IDF official to Gazans: Hamas continues to bring destruction and devastation on you - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

​ by Arutz Sheva Staff

COGAT commander to the residents of Gaza: Hamas has arranged for you a holiday without electricity and without water while its leaders hide in bunkers.

 

Ghasan Alyan
Ghasan Alyan                                                                                    IDF Spokesperson's Unit

Ghasan Alyan, commander of the Unit for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), on Friday sent a message to the residents of Gaza.

“Residents of Gaza, in recent days, and especially tonight, you have witnessed the IDF resolutely protecting the citizens of Israel, while Hamas continues to bring destruction and devastation on you,” Alyan wrote in a post published to the Arabic-language Facebook page of COGAT.

“The terrorist organization continues to launch rockets from civilian structures and uses you as a human shield - your children, your women, innocent people who have been killed and injured despite doing nothing wrong,” he added.

“Is that how you imagined your holiday? Hamas has arranged for you a holiday without electricity and without water. A holiday where joy has been replaced by fear. And where are your senior leaders during the holiday? They hide in protected bunkers and leave you in the field.

“It is such a pity that after seven years of rehabilitation and efforts to improve the civilian situation in the Gaza Strip, everything is going down the drain because of Hamas,” concluded Alyan.

 

Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306251

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A Woke CIA? Old News - Humberto Fontova

 

​ by Humberto Fontova

Just ask hipsters Fidel and Che.

 


As backlash began to grow over the CIA's recent recruitment videos, former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright told Fox & Friends recently  that the agency had pushed “woke propaganda”:

“What happens when you hire a bunch of folks who are wokesters going out into the world that is not woke?... As an analyst, are they going to bring nuance to their analysis or are they going to bring any degree of unbiasedness to their job? Of course not. They’re activists now.”

Former secretary of state and director of the CIA Mike Pompeo said the U.S. couldn’t afford to risk national security to “appease some liberal, woke agenda.”

And speaking of "unbiasedness" and of "risking U.S. national security to appease a liberal agenda" by the CIA:

“Me and my staff were all Fidelistas” -- Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s Caribbean Desk chief from 1957 to 1960.

“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except [Republican] ambassador Earl Smith.” -- Robert Weicha, CIA operative in Santiago Cuba.

“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever.” -- Crackerjack Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel, 1958.

“Without U.S. help Fidel Castro would never have gotten into power. The State Department played a large part in bringing Castro to power. The press, the Chief of the CIA Section are also responsible… we are responsible for bringing Castro in power. I do not care how you want to word it." -- Earl T. Smith U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, 1957-59.

In fact, after he was securely in power, Fidel Castro admitted he’d been a Leninist since his early 20’s. Raul Castro had a KGB handler since 1954. And when arrested in Mexico in 1956, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was found to have, in his very wallet, the calling card of the KGB's top Latin American agent, Nikolai Leonov. During his Mexico exile, Fidel Castro was also plotting the future Stalinization of Cuba in meetings with both Leonov and with his Cuban KGB colleague Osvaldo Sanchez.

But never mind all those tacky Cuban “deplorables” frantically warning the ultra-educated CIA officers and analysts of the above. Those McCarthyite Cubans deserve nothing but the back of our manicured hands, huffed the ultra-educated and mostly blue-blooded CIA officers.

But perhaps I—“a rabidly-right-wing-Cuban-exile-with-an-axe-to-grind”--come across as unnecessarily hyperbolic? Or worse, as a loud-mouthed spreader of fake history? Fair enough. Here’s the exact wording from recently declassified CIA documents:

“The U.S. should not be taken in by Pres. Fulgencio Batista’s attempt to label (Castro and Che’s) revolutionary movement as communist inspired, dominated or influenced. A practical way to protect United States interests in this matter would be to make secret contact with Castro…and to offer him support. The most effective means of help to Castro would be arms and ammunition. Air dropping of the arms could work but the most secure means of help would be giving the money to Castro, who could then purchase his own arms. A combination of arms and money would probably be best.” -- Report by the most highly-paid and most highly-“educated” “intelligence” service on earth -- the CIA -- from  Cuba, Nov. 1958.

A full year later, with Cuba infested with KGB and GRU undercover agents, the CIA issues this! “CIA operations in Cuba should be carried out on the assumption that the revolutionary government is basically non-communist  with legitimate reform goals that deserve U.S. respect and support….Our information shows that the Cuban Communists do not consider him a Communist Party member or even a pro-communist…we know the Communists consider Castro a representative of the bourgeoise…Our conclusion, therefore, is that Fidel Castro is not a Communist.” -- CIA report, Nov. 1959.

“There is no advantage to the U.S. in sending an ambassador to a country (himself to Cuba in 1957) if the CIA officials there act on their own and take an opposite position,” wrote ambassador Earl T. Smith in 1962. In other words, Smith was an oddity in the State Dept of the time, an anti-communist Republican who confided in his anti-communist Cuban contacts and thus saw right through the KGB-hatched and mainstream media-spread lies of Soviet assets, the Castro brother and Che Guevara. The CIA people in Cuba, on the other hand, were mostly “woke” hipsters who trusted Castro and Che’s every utterance. 

“They saw in Fidel Castro the hipster who in the era of the Organization Man had joyfully defied the system,” wrote President Kennedy’s adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr about Fidel Castro’s tumultuous, whooping, cheering, foot-stomping reception at Harvard Law school in 1959. Castro was on the same lecture bill as Allen Ginsberg, where the famous “Beat” poet read his beatnik anthem “Howl.”

Dig it, Daddy-O! In 1959 you didn’t get much more “woke” than that! Whoo-whoo! And as history shows, many CIA of the time were quite “with-it!” (i.e. “woke.”)

“So why is this stuff so little known?” many amigos ask.

Well, Castro and Che’s fame (among imbeciles) issues from how he “Overthrew a U.S.-backed dictator! And stood up to the Yankee bullies!" Blah, blah, blah.

So when thorough documentation proves that he was in fact helped into power by those Yankees, his international prestige balloon quickly deflates.

“War against the United States is my true destiny. When this war (the bogus one against Batista) is over, I’ll start that much bigger and wider war.” -- Fidel Castro in a letter to a communist colleague April, 1958—at the very time the CIA was singing his praises as a friend of the U.S.

“Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear- armed,” responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. “That’s precisely WHY I urged Khrushchev to launch them. And of course Cuba would have been utterly destroyed in the exchange.”

"If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.” -- Che Guevara, November 1962.

“What!” Khrushchev gasped, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we start a nuclear war? That we launch missiles from Cuba?....But that is insane!...Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens!” instructed the Soviet premier.

“Humberto Fontova's books (which unabashedly call out and thoroughly document the CIA's backing of KGB assets Fidel Castro and Che Guevara both morally and financially) is “Righting Cuban History,” reads a bitter review of one of my books by retired CIA officer Robert D. Chapman in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Chapman served in Cuba during Castro and Che’s “rebellion.” The review title is itself a denunciation. He doesn’t refer to “righting” from wrong -- but from a right-wing perspective, something utterly anathema to many CIA officers.

"Fontova’s information is based almost exclusively upon exile sources…Fontova often presents pictures of Cuba that never happened," harrumphs Chapman.

Crackerjack CIA officer Chapman was tasked with evaluating the Castro-Che rebels in Cuba from 1957-59. In brief, here’s a review of my books by an enabler of the Stalinist terrorists who, shortly after he helped them into power,  came within a whisker of nuking the U.S.—in brief, a CIA officer who events have proven to be one of the most dangerously inept jack*sses in our nation's intelligence history.

Who can blame Chapman for his hideous embarrassment? After all, here were books thoroughly documenting the criminal stupidity of the CIA’s agents in 1950’s Cuba, among whom he was prominent. 

And these same internationally-acclaimed books became some of Fox News' “go-to” sources on Cuba. Furthermore, these books were being featured on Capitol Hill in special presentations by the chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, where some of America’s most powerful lawmakers stood in line to get signed copies. 

Some of these lawmakers spent long days trying to rectify the decades of damage to our national and hemispheric security wrought by the very terrorist regime Chapman and his CIA colleagues helped into power. So here’s several books, using methodical documentation from many primary sources, that showcase Chapman and many of his CIA colleagues as among the most dangerously inept jack*sses to ever pass a U.S. security clearance.

 

Humberto Fontova

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/woke-cia-old-news-just-ask-hipsters-fidel-and-che-humberto-fontova/

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Floyd Defendant Accuses State of 'Prosecutorial Misconduct' - Jack Cashill

 

​ by Jack Cashill

Another incident of medical misconduct threatens to blow the George Floyd prosecution wide open.

Tou Thao, one of the four Minneapolis police officers charged in the “murder” of George Floyd, filed a motion on Wednesday accusing the State of Minnesota of “prosecutorial misconduct stemming from witness coercion.” If Thao’s accusations are true, and they certainly seem to be, the State has allowed this trial to drift irredeemably far into the brave new world of mob rule.

The charges center on the testimony of Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner.  Baker conducted an autopsy on Floyd on May 26, 2020, the day after Floyd’s death. As yet unaware of the politics of the case, Baker reported his findings honestly, namely that “[t]he autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation. Mr. Floyd did not exhibit signs of petechiae, damage to his airways or thyroid, brain bleeding, bone injuries, or internal bruising.”

Three days later, the State filed its initial complaint against Derek Chauvin. According to the complaint, quoted by Thao,  “The full report of the ME is pending but the ME has made the preliminary findings. The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”

It appears that prosecutors came quickly to the realization that without a charge of asphyxia, they could not accuse Chauvin of Murder-2nd Degree. As of May 29, he had been charged only with Murder-3rd Degree and Manslaughter-2nd Degree, and neither of those charges would have satisfied the largely peaceful protestors busily burning down America

Enter Dr. Roger Mitchell, stage left. A former Medical Examiner of Washington D.C. and current chair of the pathology department at Howard University College of Medicine, Mitchell spoke with Dr. Baker before Baker finalized his findings on June 1. Unsatisfied with the conversation, “Mitchell decided he was going to release an op-ed critical of Dr. Baker’s findings in the Washington Post.” 

According to Thao’s motion, Mitchell called Baker to give him a heads up on the Post article and warned him, “You don’t want to be the medical examiner who tells everyone they didn’t see what they saw,” adding that “neck compression has to be in the diagnosis.”

Following the two conversations, Baker issued a press release containing the final autopsy that now listed “neck compression” among the findings.  On November 5, 2020, state prosecutors met with Mitchell but have not shared the audio of that meeting, if one exists, with Thao’s defense team, Robert and Natalie Paule.

In the Chauvin trial, defense witness Dr. David Fowler, former chief medical examiner for the State of Maryland, ably refuted the asphyxia diagnosis. He argued that Floyd had likely died of a sudden cardiac event.

The physician with whom I have been consulting, Dr. John Dunn, a former chairman of the medico-legal committee for the American College of Emergency Physicians, has come to a similar conclusion. "Asphyxiation was not the cause of George Floyd's death," he argues. "It was cardiac arrhythmia during an episode of excited delirium, a well-known cause of sudden death.”

Eight days after Fowler’s testimony, Mitchell wrote an open letter to, among others, Brian Frosh, the Attorney General for the State of Maryland, calling for an “immediate investigation into the practices of the physician as well as the practice of the Maryland State Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) while under his leadership.” Fowler had served 17 years in that position. Less than 24 hours after seeing the letter, Frosh launched a review.

According to Thao’s motion, “The State… knew that a potential expert witness had coerced the State’s main expert witness/the only expert to perform the physical autopsy in the case of State v. Thao. The State did nothing in response to this coercion. Instead, the State knowingly allowed Dr. Baker to take the stand in State v. Chauvin and testified to coerced statements.”

Again, according to Thao’s motion, “Dr. Mitchell’s conduct meets the elements to be found guilty of committing the crime of coercion.” Thao argues that Mitchell used the threat of a Washington Post op-ed to coerce Baker into modifying his opinion. Once Baker obliged him, Mitchell did not follow through on the op-ed.

If that were not mischief enough, the Thao motion continues, “Mitchell unlawfully injured Dr. Fowler’s trade by penning an open letter which resulted in an investigation into every death report in Maryland during Dr. Fowler’s tenure.”

As to how Mitchell’s interference affects Thao and the other police defendants, Thao’s point is inarguable: “Dr. Mitchell’s accusations and spurring of legal fallacies creates a chilling effect for Mr. Thao and violates his due process rights in that it has become extraordinarily difficult to find medical experts who are willing to state that Mr. Floyd’s death was undetermined in fear of their professional reputation and licensure.”

Given what has happened to Fowler -- let alone to Barry Brodd, the defense’s use-of-force expert whose former home was smeared with pig’s blood following his testimony -- Thao’s team will have an extraordinarily hard time recruiting any expert witnesses.

A day after Thao filed his motion, Judge Peter Cahill pushed back his trial and that of his colleagues from its August 23, 2021, scheduled date to March 22. The stated reason was to allow the federal civil rights case against the four to take precedence.  Who knows what the real reason was?

What is most disturbing for those who have been paying attention is that too many conservative commentators and Republican politicians have watched this unfold in silence. What will it take, one wonders, to get their attention?

Image: free SVG

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Jack Cashill’s latest book, Barack Obama’s Promised Land: Deplorables Need Not Apply, is now on pre-sale. See www.cashill.com for more information.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/floyd_defendant_accuses_state_of_prosecutorial_misconduct.html

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The Treason Party’s Swiss Banker - Daniel Greenfield


​ by Daniel Greenfield

The foreign election interference that Democrats love.

 


The Nazis had a Swiss banker and so do the Democrats.

During President Trump’s first year in office, Indivisible, which the New York Times had described as a left-wing version of the Tea Party, launched a smear campaign falsely accusing President Trump of being subject to Russian foreign financial influence.

“Is Trump colluding with Russia?" the leftist group insinuated. "Until we see Trump’s tax returns, we cannot be certain that foreign governments don’t have leverage over Trump.”

Indivisible repeated this slander a few years later when it held a “Nobody is Above the Law Day”, and demanded “full and total transparency” from Trump even while refusing to name its backers.

The leftist group was pushing the same big Russiagate lie that had originated in the Steele dossier assembled by the Hillary Clinton campaign and was taken up by the Mueller investigation. It was part of a coordinated campaign to slander President Trump as a Russian agent.

At the same time, Indivisible was being funded by Hansjörg Wyss: the richest man in Switzerland.

When Indivisible was asked where its money was coming from it refused to be transparent, invoking "privacy" concerns. The privacy was that of its billionaire foreign donor.

Like Soros, Wyss is a European member of the Democracy Alliance with a troubling past as the CEO of a company accused of medical experiments on patients that led to 5 deaths.

Unlike Soros, he’s financing the radical agenda of the Democrats without the pretense of being an American. As the New York Times noted, the Swiss billionaire “has not disclosed publicly whether he holds citizenship or permanent residency in the United States”.

That hasn’t stopped the Treason Party from taking his money to finance their relentless attempts to stage a political coup.

Wyss’ Berger Action Fund plowed $135 million into one of the Left’s biggest dark money machines which funded everything from the smear campaign against Justice Kavanaugh to efforts to change state election laws to benefit the Democrats. The dark money machine is called the Sixteen Thirty Fund. It’s impossible to understand the irregularities in the 2020 election without also understanding the role of the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Nevada’s automatic voter registration ballot measure, backed by the ‘Fund’, added over 140,000 “new voters” in a state that Biden won by less than 40,000 votes.

The richest man in Switzerland has made no secret of his hostility to President Trump. “I consider the actions of the Trump administration to be a catastrophe,” he has said.

Wyss’ Berger Action Fund was a major donor to Eric Holder's National Redistricting Action Fund (NRAF) aimed at reshaping the electoral map to benefit Democrats, and plowed cash into the Fund for a Better Future advocating for a “fair 2020 election” and redistricting.

Then there’s The Hub Project, a Wyss operation which used more dark money to go after Republicans and “dramatically shift the public debate and policy positions of core decision makers.” The Hub Project also operates out of the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Hub fronts like Floridians for a Fair Shake, Keep Iowa Healthy, and North Carolinians for a Fair Economy were part of a machine that went after 19 Republican seats in 2018 on behalf of Wyss and the Democrats.

But the “Floridians” and “North Carolinians” were actually the agents and beneficiaries of a secretive foreign billionaire.

Now the Sixteen Thirty Fund is spending big to push the Democrat plot to rig the vote nationwide with H.R.1 giving them totalitarian control over state elections. Pelosi’s legislative scheme would be a playground for massive voter fraud with automatic and same-day voter registration, a welfare-to-voting pipeline, a ban on Voter IDs and a requirement that every state to allow criminals to vote.

Democrats and their media don’t care if the money for their coup is coming from foreign nationals. Their goal is more important: to turn America into a one-party state.

Nor do they care where Hansjörg Wyss got his money in the first place.

Wyss co-founded Synthes, a medical device manufacturer focused on repairing broken bones. In 2010, Synthes pled guilty to illegally experimenting on patients: its president, and its spine division president and two other executives were sentenced to prison. Even though a manager testified that Wyss had made the decision not to go through clinical trials, and owned half the company he was not charged, and went on pumping his fortune into the agendas of the Left.

The 5 people who died were not so lucky.

Citizens United filed for paperwork demanding to know why the Obama DOJ ignored the federal grand jury indictment which listed Wyss as "Person No. 7." One potential reason was the relationship between Wyss and John Podesta: an Obama adviser who went on to chair Hillary's failed 2016 presidential campaign. Wyss still sits on the board of Podesta’s Center for American Progress alongside Stacey Abrams, Neera Tanden, and Julian Castro.

What does Wyss have in common with them? The $6 million he plowed into the Center.

The elderly patients who died on operating tables, some while representatives of Wyss’ company looked on and watched them suffer, matter a lot less to these progressives than Wyss’ millions.

And whether it was George Soros’ Nazi collaboration, Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predations,  Jeffrey Epstein’s child abuse, the role of megadonors Herbert and Marion Sandler in the financial crisis of ‘08, or the deaths of elderly patients used as human guinea pigs by Wyss’ company, the Democrats have never cared how dirty their donors are.

The dirtier the money, the better. Especially when dark money goes into an even darker network where no light can reach.

“Nobody knows me, and I hope that it stays like this,” Wyss once told a newspaper.

Wyss' action fund donated to the Fund for a Better Future which funded The Democracy Integrity Project: which has worked with Fusion GPS, the smear company behind the Steele dossier, and made large payments to Steele and his associates.

Steele’s dossier spread the big lie that President Trump was beholden to foreign interests, while the Treason Party was quietly on the payroll of a ruthless Swiss billionaire.

Just as the DOJ gave Wyss a pass over the Synthes deaths, the IRS and the FEC have ignored a situation in which a foreigner appears to be spending a fortune to influence US elections.

And is now in a position to finance H.R.1’s coup to turn America into a one-party state.

Democrats and their media spent years lying that President Trump was subject to foreign influence and that he was turning America into a dictatorship. The truth has always been that they were the real treason party and they were the ones funded by foreign interests.

The anti-Trump smear campaign was backed by foreign money and their plot to undermine our elections and turn America into a dictatorship of D.C. bureaucrats is funded by foreign money.

But as Wyss said in a speech while quoting Plato, "Those who tell the stories rule society."

It’s time to stop telling the Treason Party’s stories and tell the truth.

 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/treason-partys-swiss-banker-daniel-greenfield/

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DHS Created 'Operation Sentinel' To Combat Human Trafficking - Michael Cutler

 

​ by Michael Cutler

But it should be renamed “Operation Back Rub.”

 


On April 27, 2021 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release, DHS Announces Operation to Target Criminal Smuggling Organizations, that heralded the creation of what was described as a new multi-agency anti-smuggling effort, "Operation Sentinel."

Here is how the press release began:

WASHINGTON — Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas today announced a new counter-network targeting operation focused on transnational criminal organizations affiliated with the smuggling of migrants.

Transnational criminal organizations put profit over human life, with devastating consequences,” said Secretary Mayorkas.  “With the help of our federal and foreign partners, we aim to cut off access to that profit by denying these criminals the ability to engage in travel, trade, and finance in the United States. We intend to disrupt every facet of the logistical network that these organizations use to succeed.”

The new anti-smuggling effort, called Operation Sentinel, is a collaborative effort with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of State, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice.

It is hard to imagine that the Biden administration is sincere about its desire to combat human trafficking and alien smuggling, because, as I noted in my recent article, "Biden Amps Up The Immigration Delivery System," The refusal to declare a border crisis is more than a matter of semantics.

Could it be that the administration created the illusory Operation Sentinel to respond to the concerns of the American public but not to actually combat the smugglers who are part of the immigration delivery system?

On April 19, 2021, roughly one week before the DHS issued the press release about the creation of Operation Sentinel, The Hill published an opinion piece, "Biden's border polls lower than bottom of Rio Grande," that began with the following:

Despite the best efforts of the Biden administration to dismiss criticism or shift blame to the previous president, the American people are increasingly dissatisfied with Biden’s border fiasco.

recent Heritage Action poll in sixteen battleground districts” finds that the White House’s policies on the border and immigration are underwater. The most stunning part of these results is the spreading dissatisfaction across region and party. Everyday Americans are looking through the spin and seeing an administration that is ideologically driven, incapable of effectively dealing with a crisis, and working against the interests of everyday Americans.

When parents are confronted by screaming children, especially in the middle of the night, they generally seek to calm the child so that he/she will go back to sleep and so that they themselves, can go back to sleep. Frequently these harried parents gently rub the upset child’s back, perhaps offer them some slightly warm milk and talk to them in a soft and soothing tone of voice to calm and reassure the agitated child that everything is really okay.

Therefore, perhaps, “Operation Sentinel” should be more appropriately be named “Operation Back Rub.”

Clearly the White House understands that millions of Americans are extremely unhappy with the crisis on the U.S. Mexican border, that these irate Americans needed to be soothed, and their understandable concerns assuaged -- hence “Operation Sentinel” was created to placate agitated Americans.

Simply declaring the creation of an operation can be utterly meaningless if adequate resources are not committed to the effort and there is a lack of meaningful oversight.

To determine just how sincere the administration is about addressing human smuggling, we need to consider a number of questions to peel back the curtain on Operation Sentinel and find out if the administration is going to commit meaningful resources to this operation.

Here are a few such questions:

  1. How long will this operation run?
  2. How many agents from each member agency are to be assigned to this operation? Are they to be exclusively dedicated to Operation Sentinel or will they carry collateral assignments?
  3. Are full-time prosecutors also being assigned to this operation? If so, how many?
  4. How many analysts and other support personal will be assigned to Operation Sentinel?
  5. How much money is going to be dedicated for various operational expenses associated with this operation?
  6. How will oversight be conducted and what will the critical elements of the agents a’ job description and evaluations of those assigned to this operation include? (In other words, what constitutes “success”?)

These questions that address the resources that will be brought to bear in this new operation are important and are the questions that true journalists must ask, but there is another overriding question that causes me to believe that in reality, Operation Sentinel is nothing more than a public relations ploy that is not only doomed to fail, but was designed, from the outset, to fail.

But before we get to that “show stopper” we need to understand that for Biden and his globalist supporters, the immigration system has become a delivery system that delivers an unlimited supply of cheap and exploitable labor, an unlimited supply of foreign tourists, an unlimited supply of foreign students and, to the delight of immigration lawyers of both the Democrat and Republican Parties, an unlimited supply of clients for immigration law firms.

The immigration delivery system also delivers a huge supply of potential union members, and tenants who will force the price of housing through the roof -- increasing the wealth for those in the real estate and banking industries.

That is good news for those who are feeding at the very lucrative immigration trough, literally and figuratively “making out like bandits; not, however, good news for the growing population of the homeless Americans resulting from housing prices soaring through the stratosphere while Americans face job loss and wage suppression.

Consider that the policies of the Biden administration that encourage and embolden aspiring illegal aliens from all over the world, to head for the United States, are still in place even after DHS announced the creation of a multi-agency task force to supposedly combat human trafficking.

Such a task force is certainly a good idea, but to be successful, the administration must begin by turning off the powerful magnets that draw these aliens from around the world to the United States in the first place.

Sanctuary polices of cities and states further undermine and counter any efforts to combat these smuggling operations.

While the DHS press release claims: “We intend to disrupt every facet of the logistical network that these organizations use to succeed,” that statement ignores the most critical facet: the smuggled aliens and the incentives for them to come to the United States by whatever means they choose, knowing that ICE has been essentially ordered to “stand down” and the Biden administration has terminated all of the successful measures implemented by the Trump administration to gain control over our nation’s borders.

Now here is the “Show Stopper”: How can the Biden administration be serious about dismantling alien smuggling operation while ignoring the smuggled aliens themselves, who are at the heart of these criminal operations?

This would be the equivalent of creating an operation that targets narcotics trafficking organizations but then seizes no illegal drugs found during the course of the investigation, instead actually allowing the drugs to be sold on street corners.

Biden’s immigration policies severely restrict ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents from arresting illegal aliens unless the aliens in question are aggravated felons.

Speaking from my own personal experience as a former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agent, generally immigration agents build cases against human trafficking organizations by arresting illegal aliens and then questioning them about the way that they managed to enter the United States.

Eventually enough aliens are arrested who are willing to cooperate with the ongoing investigation to identify the smugglers and provide addresses of safe houses and other such facts that lead to a successful investigation and subsequent prosecution.

Under Biden's restrictions, however, ICE agents today are not able to arrest illegal aliens who may have the information that is required to conduct successful investigations into alien smuggling and human trafficking

In the past ICE agents encouraged such illegal aliens to cooperate with their investigations and become cooperating witnesses and informants by offering these aliens the opportunity to remain in the United States for a limited period of time with permission to lawfully work. When their cooperation was of a sufficient importance, aliens could be rewarded with visas that would enable them to become permanent residents of the United States and thus have their immediate family members join them in the U.S. as lawful immigrants.

However, by executive order, the Biden administration has implemented a de facto amnesty which further hobbles any efforts to identify and dismantle alien smuggling operations. As a result, under Biden’s policies, illegal aliens have no incentive to cooperate with law enforcement authorities or abide by any of our laws.

It has been said that we only have one chance to make a first impression. For millions of people around the world the first impression of the United States is how we enforce or fail to enforce the first American laws they are likely to encounter -- our immigration laws.

Biden’s message is clear: violations of these vital laws, that are supposed to protect national security, public health, public safety and the jobs and wages of Americans, will not only be tolerated, but richly rewarded.

This is why, in my view, DHS’ “Operation Sentinel” should be renamed “Operation Back Rub.” Perhaps, Biden could set up kiosks around the country to serve up some slightly warm milk for concerned Americans, to go with the press release that serves as the predication for my commentary today

 

Michael Cutler

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/dhs-created-operation-sentinel-combat-human-michael-cutler/

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