CAIR Hypocrite Participates at Event Moderated by Anti-Gay Imam - Joe Kaufman

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by Joe Kaufman

Islamist Wilfredo Ruiz and his fake persona of ‘civil rights’ and diversity activist.

CAIR-Florida Communications Director Wilfredo Ruiz likes to call his organization a “civil rights group” and uses social media to denounce those who spread bigotry, yet Ruiz himself associates with individuals and groups who spread the same kind of hate. This past month, Ruiz did so once again, when he participated at an event hosted by the Darul Uloom mosque and moderated by the mosque’s imam Shafayat Mohamed, who has been thrown off different local boards for anti-gay speech and has claimed homosexual sex causes natural disasters.

On December 23, 2018, a panel discussion was held at the Pembroke Pines, Florida-based Darul Uloom Institute on the topic of ‘Religion and Politics in America.’ Darul Uloom is infamous for being a haven for a number of al-Qaeda operatives, including ‘Dirty Bomber’ Jose Padilla, who was a student at Darul Uloom, and now-deceased al-Qaeda Global Operations Chief, Adnan el-Shukrijumah, who was a prayer leader at Darul Uloom.

The participants of the forum included local politicians and Muslim community leaders. In over two-and-a-half hours, barely anything of substance or interest was uttered, though one participant, Imtiaz Mohammad, a recent candidate for Florida State House, slammed America and her citizens, saying “America [is] run on hate” and "American people are the most uneducated nation in the world." Panel participant Jay Schwartz, a Pembroke Pines City Commissioner, sat next to Imtiaz with his mouth closed, not saying a word in opposition.

One more participant at the forum that said nothing against Imtiaz’s outrageous statements was Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, the Communications Director for the Florida Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR has been linked, in large part, to the terrorist organization Hamas, both in its formation as a group and its fundraising activities. CAIR-Florida has emulated its national parent by co-sponsoring pro-Hamas rallies and by using extreme rhetoric aimed at demonizing Israel and her supporters.

Ruiz frequently uses social media to denounce what he claims to be hate. His targets are primarily Israelis and those whom he accuses of being ‘white supremacists.’ However, Ruiz is a tremendous hypocrite, as he surrounds himself with those who spread the worst manifestations of bigotry, including ‘white supremacy.’

According to the Facebook page of Ruiz’s personal blog, Analista Internacional, Ruiz founded the Puerto Rico and Connecticut chapters of the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA) and is the group’s legal advisor. AMANA and its President, Sofian Zakkout, are notorious for championing former KKK leader David Duke. In July 2010, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned AMANA for featuring, on its official website, what the ADL called a “venomous” anti-Semitic Duke video. Even now, on the AMANA site, under a video discussing how ‘Israel has no right to exist,’ one can find yet another anti-Jewish Duke video.

In February 2016, Ruiz’s colleague Zakkout, who has repeatedly referred to Jews as “monkeys and pigs,” circulated on social media a report claiming that “the Holocaust was faked.” It begins: “The alleged ‘Holocaust’ of ‘6 million Jews’ at the hands of Adolf Hitler and National Socialist Germany during WWII is the biggest lie ever foisted upon humanity.” It was produced by The Realist Report, an anti-Jew, anti-black, anti-gay independent media outlet, which describes Hitler as “the greatest leader in modern Western history.”

A further example of Ruiz’s blatant ‘bigotry hypocrisy’ is his very participation at the Darul Uloom event. The moderator for the event, the founder and current imam of Darul Uloom, Shaikh Shafayat Mohamed, has a well-known history of actions against the gay community, which have resulted in him being thrown off a number of local boards.

On December 22nd, just one day prior to the Darul Uloom panel discussion, a deadly tsunami hit Indonesia. Nearly 14 years earlier, in February 2005, an article written by Shafayat was published on the Darul Uloom website, entitled ‘Tsunami: Wrath of God.’ In it, he claims that gay sex caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami and that most Jews and Christians, whom he refers to as “People of the Book,” are “perverted transgressors.” The piece is still up on Darul Uloom’s website.

In an August 2015 speech he gave at Darul Uloom, titled ‘Quraan Torah Bible Forbid Man Marrying Man,’ Shafayat barks loudly, “The Bible says that if a man sleeps with a man, he should be killed!” He laments the existence of Muslim homosexuals, decrying, “Don’t deny it. They already got Muslim gay communities… They got it in London and they got it in America.” And finally, he admits/excuses being punished for his actions, saying, “Listen, I used to have a lot of positions in the board in Broward County and, because I spoke out on homosexuality, I got sacked from many boards, because there were a lot of gay people who said, ‘We don’t want him on that board,’ but I had a choice to sit in paradise or… sit on the board and go to hell.”

Why would Wilfredo Ruiz wish to contribute to an event headed by such a divisive man – prejudiced against homosexuals and others – as Shafayat Mohamed?

Following the June 2016 shooting that took place at the Pulse LGBT nightclub, in Orlando, Florida, perpetrated by Omar Mateen, Ruiz became the spokesman for the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce (ICFP), the radical mosque that Mateen attended. Like Darul Uloom, ICFP has been a haven for terror-related individuals, including ICFP congregant Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, who in May 2014, drove a massive truck bomb into a restaurant in Syria.

Ruiz was brought in to speak out against any potential backlash that the mosque would suffer. Callously discounting the fact that Mateen had just shot and killed 49 innocent people over the simple fact that they were gay, Ruiz stated about the mosque, “This might be the main spot for a hate crime to occur in all the United States.”

The truth is that Wilfredo Ruiz cares nothing about fighting against bigotry, because his life is all about promoting it, from the people he associates with to the organizations he works for and is affiliated with. Ruiz’s deceitfulness should be obvious to every media outlet that wishes to interview him and every group that wishes for him to speak in front of its membership. The only hate that Wilfredo Ruiz speaks out against is the hate that he benefits from.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

Joe Kaufman was the 2014, 2016 and 2018 Republican nominee for United States House of Representatives in Florida’s 23rd Congressional District against Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He is an expert in the fields of counter-terrorism, foreign affairs and energy independence for America. He has been featured on all major cable networks, including Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS and C-SPAN. Joe has been instrumental in getting terrorist charities shut down and terror-related individuals put behind bars. Exactly one month prior to the September 11 attacks, he predicted the attacks by stating in an article that “the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was no aberration” and that it would happen again.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272404/cair-hypocrite-participates-event-moderated-anti-joe-kaufman

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The U.S. Withdrawal from Syria: Implications for Israel - Amb. Dore Gold

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by Amb. Dore Gold

Will Iran's territorial ambitions be thwarted?

Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

Click here for more Diplomatic Dispatch videos.

There are two basic approaches for understanding the implications of the U.S. withdrawal from Syria for Israel. The first appears to play down its significance. According to this view, the American presence in Syria has been over 100 kilometers from the Israeli border, far off in eastern Syria. And it only involves 2,200 troops. In any case, the U.S. went into Syria in order to defeat ISIS, and with the collapse of its so-called territorial caliphate in eastern Syria, it is argued that this mission has been for the most part accomplished.

But there is a second view that is more troubling for Israel. It sees that withdrawal in a larger regional context of the strategic struggle over postwar Syria between Israel and Iran. Iran is not standing still with the defeat of the ISIS caliphate, but rather it seeks to fill the vacuum that has been created. Moreover, Iran has the strongest territorial interests in Syria. It is still recalled that when most of the Arab world backed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War, Syria stood out as Iran’s major regional ally. The Iranians are not going to let Syria go. During the 1970s already, significant Shiite clerics began to regard the Alawite sect, from which Syria’s Assad clan emerged, as true Muslims.

For many Sunnis the Alawites were heretics. The Iranian leadership came to call Syria as a whole the 35th province of Iran. In short, Iran wasn’t going away, but would likely be emboldened by the U.S. pullout and beef up its presence in Syria.

The most tangible expression of the Iranian interest in Syria has been its plan to complete a land corridor from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea. The land corridor would allow Tehran to re-supply Hizbullah in Lebanon and Syria without being dependent on potentially vulnerable air transport of weapons and manpower across the Middle East. For example, after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Washington closed off Iraqi airspace to the Iranians. In recent years, the Iraqi Kurds have rejected Iranian requests to transit their territory on the ground. These incidents have made securing the Iranian corridor across the Middle East a matter of urgency for Tehran, in order to support its ambitions to project its power across the region.

These ambitions are in fact considerable. Iran has been using Shiite militias in Syria that it has recruited from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Yemen. These forces remain under Iranian command. Israel’s outgoing chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot disclosed that Iran’s ultimate goal is to establish a force of 100,000 fighters on Syrian soil. What would be the purpose of such a huge Iranian-backed army in Syria? Jordan would undoubtedly be concerned about this development. For Israel, there is no question but that this force could be deployed against Israel on the Golan Heights. It then becomes understandable why Israel is so adamant about opposing the Iranian military buildup in Syria and thwarting Iran’s land corridor, as well.

Tehran also appeared to be cognizant of the fact that the U.S. presence in Syria was another potential constraint for the planned Iranian corridor. First in 2017, the Iranians appeared to have altered the route of their land corridor, moving it some 225 kilometers to the south in order to get it out of the way from the American military buildup in Syria that began to take shape in 2014. The Iranians believed that the U.S. presence in Syria was directed against them.

Second, while most of the U.S. force in Syria has been in the country’s northeast, there is a small but strategically significant force at a Syrian outpost called Al-Tanf near the Iraqi border, the base sitting astride Iran’s route for its resupply corridor. It is one of three border crossings between Syria and Iraq. To protect its forces, the U.S. established a 55-kilometer deconfliction zone around the base. At a minimum, the U.S. force in Syria constituted a trip wire that could trigger an American military response if it was attacked by Iranian-backed militias.

Now, President Trump has clarified that he has no intention of pulling back U.S. forces in Iraq that number some 5,200 troops. He added that Iraq could be used as a base for the U.S. if it was decided “to do something in Syria.” Besides monitoring any potential resurgence of ISIS, the U.S. presence in Iraq could be used “to watch over Iran,” in the President’s words. Trump then stressed “We’ll be watching.” 

Finally, it is useful to recall that the U.S. has contended with the dilemma of what to do with its forces after victory in the past. After the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the U.S. could have pulled out all its troops from the European continent. But the Truman administration realized that the Red Army was not demobilizing and, though the American presence was originally deployed to roll back the Germans, a premature withdrawal would only assure Soviet domination of Europe. America then established NATO and defended the security of the West along with its allies.  A similar initiative is now needed in order to guarantee that Iran’s dreams of regional hegemony will never be realized.


Ambassador Dore Gold has served as President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs since 2000. From June 2015 until October 2016 he served as Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously he served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN (1997-1999), and as an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. View recent publications by Amb. Dore Gold

Source: http://jcpa.org/video/the-u-s-withdrawal-from-syria-implications-for-israel/

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The European Union: An Authoritarian Body with a Humanitarian Face - Jiří Payne

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by Jiří Payne

What the Lisbon Treaty actually created was an authoritarian political system that infringes on human and political rights.

• What the Lisbon Treaty actually created was an authoritarian political system that infringes on human and political rights.
• Article 4 states in part: "...The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union's tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union's objectives." In other words, the interests of the Union are above the interests of individual states and citizens.
• In a democratic system with a healthy balance of power, a ruling coalition can be challenged or replaced by the opposition. This is precisely what is lacking in the EU, as the Treaty of Lisbon requires that European Commission members be selected on the basis of their "European commitment." This means, in effect, that anyone with a dissenting view may never become a member of the Commission. As history repeatedly demonstrates, where there is no opposition, freedom is lost.

The Treaty of Lisbon considers the interests of the European Union to be above the interests of individual states and citizens. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, complained in 2016: "Too many politicians are listening exclusively to their national opinion. And if you are listening to your national opinion you are not developing what should be a common European sense..." (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The Treaty of Lisbon -- drafted as a replacement to the 2005 Constitutional Treaty and signed in 2007 by the leaders of the 27 European Union member states -- describes itself as an agreement to "reform the functioning of the European Union... [it] sets out humanitarian assistance as a specific Commission competence."

What the Lisbon Treaty actually created, however, was an authoritarian political system that infringes on human and political rights.

Take the mandate of the European Commission (EC), for instance. According to Article 17 of the Treaty:

"The Commission shall promote the general interest of the Union... In carrying out its responsibilities, the Commission shall be completely independent... the members of the Commission shall neither seek nor take instructions from any Government or other institution, body, office or entity."

Then there is Article 4, which states in part:

"...The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union's tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union's objectives."

In other words, the interests of the Union are above the interests of individual states and citizens. This is not mere speculation. The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, openly stated in 2016:

"Too many politicians are listening exclusively to their national opinion. And if you are listening to your national opinion you are not developing what should be a common European sense and a feeling of the need to put together efforts. We have too many part-time Europeans."

The same year, Emmanuel Macron -- at the time France's Economy Minister -- gave an interview to Time magazine, in which he warned against the U.K.'s upcoming Brexit referendum by arguing:

"You can suddenly have a series of countries waking up and saying, 'I want the same status as the Brits,' which will be de facto the dismantling of the rest of Europe. We should not replicate the situation where one country is in a situation to hijack the rest of Europe, because they organize a referendum."

Macron's attitude is reflected in the Lisbon Treaty, which imposes regulations on member states to ensure they fulfill tasks determined by the European Commission.

It is noteworthy in this context that of the 36 times that the word "responsibility" appears in the Treaty, only once does it refer to a Commission obligation -- which is that it, "as a body, shall be responsible to the European Parliament." The other 35 refer to obligations of the member states.

In a democratic system with a healthy balance of power, a ruling coalition can be challenged or replaced by the opposition. This is precisely what is lacking in the EU, as the Treaty of Lisbon requires that European Commission members be selected on the basis of their "European commitment." This means, in effect, that anyone with a dissenting view may never become a member of the Commission -- something eerily reminiscent of Communism. Article 4 of the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1960, for instance, specifies:

"The leading force in society and in the state is the vanguard of the working class, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a voluntary combat union of the most active and knowledgeable citizens of the ranks of workers, peasants and intelligentsia."

Article11 of the North Korean Constitution includes a similar directive:

"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea shall conduct all activities under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea."

As history repeatedly demonstrates, where there is no opposition, freedom is lost.

In his 1840 book, Democracy in America, the renowned French diplomat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:

"...If despotism were to establish itself in today's democratic nations, it would probably have a different character. It would be more extensive and more mild, and it would degrade men without tormenting them...
"The sovereign, after taking individuals one by one in his powerful hands and kneading them to his liking, reaches out to embrace society as a whole. Over it he spreads a fine mesh of uniform, minute, and complex rules, through which not even the most original minds and most vigorous souls can poke their heads above the crowd. He does not break men's wills but softens, bends, and guides them. He seldom forces anyone to act but consistently opposes action. He does not destroy things but prevents them from coming into being. Rather than tyrannize, he inhibits, represses, saps, stifles, and stultifies, and in the end he reduces each nation to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd..."

De Tocqueville penned these nearly two full centuries ago, but they could easily -- and frighteningly -- be applied to Europe today.

The article was translated by Josef Zbořil

Dr. Jiří Payne is a Czech conservative member of the European Parliament and of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group. He is a former member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic (1993-2002) and co-founder and co-chairman of Friends of Judea and Samaria in the European Parliament. He is co-author of It Can Work Differently: Searching for an Alternative Arrangement of the Continent (2018) and Stolen Europe (2015).

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13476/european-union-authoritarian

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US, Israel exit UN cultural agency over its biased practices - AP and Israel Hayom Staff

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by AP and Israel Hayom Staff

U.S. has demanded "fundamental reform" in the agency that critics denounce as a crucible for anti-Israel bias

UNESCO Director Audrey Azoulay

Photo: AP

The United States and Israel officially quit of the United Nation's educational, scientific and cultural agency at the stroke of midnight, the culmination of a process triggered more than a year ago amid concerns that the organization fosters anti-Israel bias.

The withdrawal is mainly procedural yet serves a new blow to UNESCO, co-founded by the U.S. after World War II to foster peace.

The Trump administration filed its notice to withdraw in October 2017 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed suit.

The Paris-based organization has been denounced by its critics as a crucible for anti-Israel bias: it has been a vehement critic of Israel's sovereignty in east Jerusalem, named ancient Jewish sites as Palestinian heritage sites and granted full membership to "Palestine" in 2011.

The U.S. has demanded "fundamental reform" in the agency that is best known for its World Heritage program to protect cultural sites and traditions.

The withdrawals will not greatly impact UNESCO financially since it has been dealing with a funding slash ever since 2011 when both Israel and the U.S. stopped paying dues after "Palestine" was voted in as a member state. Since then officials estimate that the U.S. – which accounted for around 22% of the total budget – has accrued $600 million in unpaid dues, which was one of the reasons for President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw. Israel owes an estimated $10 million.

UNESCO Director Audrey Azoulay took up her post just after Trump announced the pullout. Azoulay, who has Jewish and Moroccan heritage, has presided over the launch of a Holocaust education website and the U.N.'s first educational guidelines on fighting anti-Semitism – initiatives that might be seen as responding to U.S. and Israeli concerns.

Officials say that many of the reasons the U.S. cited for withdrawal do not apply anymore, noting that since then, all 12 texts on the Middle East passed at UNESCO have been consensual among Israel and Arab member states.

In April of this year, Israel's ambassador to UNESCO said the mood was "like a wedding" after member nations signed off on a rare compromise resolution on "occupied Palestine," and UNESCO diplomats hailed a possible breakthrough on longstanding Israeli-Arab tensions.

The document was still quite critical of Israel, however, and the efforts were not enough to encourage the U.S. and Israel to reconsider quitting.

In recent years, Israel has been infuriated by repeated resolutions which ignore and diminish its historical connection to the Holy Land and that have named ancient Jewish sites as Palestinian heritage sites.

The State Department was unavailable for comment because of the U.S. government shutdown. Earlier, the department told UNESCO officials the U.S. intends to stay engaged at UNESCO as a non-member "observer state" on "non-politicized" issues, including the protection of World Heritage sites, advocating for press freedoms and promoting scientific collaboration and education.

The U.S. could potentially seek that status during UNESCO Executive Board meetings in April.

The United States has pulled out of UNESCO before. The Reagan administration did so in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt and used to advance Soviet interests. The U.S. rejoined in 2003.

AP and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/01/01/us-israel-exit-un-cultural-agency-over-its-biased-practices/

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Zionist Union breaks up - David Rosenberg

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by David Rosenberg

Labor splits from Zionist Union, leaving Tzipi Livni's Hatnuah on its own. Labor MK says party aiming for new alliance with Benny Gantz.

Yonatan Sindel/Flash90                                    Livni sits next to Gabbay as he announces split

The Zionist Union, a joint list of the Israeli Labor Party and the smaller Hatnuah faction, has broken up ahead of the elections for the 21st Knesset.

On Tuesday morning, Labor chief Avi Gabbay notified Tzipi Livni, chairwoman of Hatnuah and the senior partner with Gabbay in the Zionist Union, that he was ending the partnership between the two factions.

“I had hoped and believed that the change [in party leadership] and our new partnership would lead to our growth, to a real connection,” said Gabbay.

“But the public is wise, it sees that that isn’t the case, and [the public] moved away. I still believe in cooperation, in making connections, and in making a single big bloc backing change. But the successful alliances require friendship, standing by agreements, and staying faithful till the end. This isn’t what has been happening in this partnership.”

"Tzipi, I wish you every success in the elections, in any party you choose," he said. "We will continue to fight and be committed to the change that the people of Israel want. I entered politics for the people and always be on their side."

Livni, who was sitting next to Gabbay during the announcement but apparently had not been informed of the Labor leader's plans ahead of time, declined to respond immediately following Gabbay's comments.

The split between the erstwhile allies comes just three months before this year’s Knesset election.

The Zionist Union, which won 24 seats in 2015, has fallen in the polls to between 7 to 10 mandates under the leadership of its new chairman, Avi Gabbay, who previously served as Minister of Environmental Protection as part of the Kulanu party.

According to Labor MK Itzik Shmuli, Gabbay split from Livni’s Hatnuah faction in order to form a new alliance with former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz’s newly-formed Hosen L’Yisrael (Resilience for Israel) party, Yediot Ahronot reported. 




David Rosenberg

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/256993

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The Left's Fake News About Pre-Castro Cuba - Humberto Fontova

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by Humberto Fontova

Pathetic media lies and Hollywood clichés.

We all saw it in The Godfather: Part II, the Fake News Media’s top educational source on the Cuban revolution, right? It’s New Years Eve, 1958, in Havana and the “U.S.-backed dictator” Fulgencio Batista says goodbye to his crooked cronies (American and Cuban) at a lavish ball, then hightails it out of the country as the brave, noble and chivalrous Fidel Castro and Che Guevara close in on Havana.

So far so good—as far as the surface details go. But Hollywood’s implications in those scenes actually trash the truth.

Oh, does my phrase “Fake News Media’s top educational source” strike some of my amigos as unnecessarily hyperbolic? Fair enough. Let’s have a look at some evidence.

“I mean everybody who saw 'Godfather II' knows what it was like when Castro took over.” (NBC’s Chris Matthews, winner of the “David Brinkley Award for Excellence in Broadcast”)
 “Everything I know about pre-Castro Cuba I learned from Godfather 2!” (Jon Stewart, long-hailed as the TOP news source for Americans under 40)

In fact, the implications of those Godfather scenes mesh seamlessly with the Media/Academia’s cliché-ridden fables concerning pre-Castro Cuba. To wit:

Cliché no. 1: The plucky Castro brothers and Che Guevara succeeded in toppling a “U.S.-backed dictator,” whose patrons and puppeteers went instantly ballistic at his ousting. The plucky Castro brothers and Che Guevara then “defied” a relentlessly hostile U.S. that worked ceaselessly to topple them.

In fact: Former U.S. Ambassador to Cuba Earl T. Smith, during Congressional testimony in 1960, declared flatly: "We put Castro in power." He referred to the U.S. State Department and CIA's role in aiding, both morally and materially, the Castro rebels, to their pulling the rug out from under Batista with an arms embargo, and finally to the U.S. order that Batista vacate Cuba. Ambassador Smith knew something about these events because he personally delivered the messages to Batista, who was then denied exile in the U.S.
"Me and my staff were all Fidelistas," boasted Robert Reynolds, the CIA's "Caribbean Desk's specialist on the Cuban Revolution" from 1957-1960. "Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State were pro-Castro, except Ambassador Earl Smith." This statement is from former CIA operative in Santiago Cuba, Robert Weicha. The U.S. gave Castro's regime its official benediction more rapidly than it had recognized Batista's in 1952, and lavished it with $200 million in subsidies.
In August 1959, the liberal U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Philip Bonsal, even alerted Castro to a conspiracy against his regime by anti-communist Cubans. Thanks in part to Ambassador Bonsal's solicitude for a regime then insulting his nation as "a vulture preying on humanity!" and poised to steal $2 billion from U.S. stockholders, the anti-Castro plot was foiled, hundreds of the plotters were imprisoned or executed, and the regime that three years later came closest to vaporizing many of America's biggest cities (including Bonsal's home) with nuclear missiles survived.
In 1958, at the very time the U.S. State Dept. and CIA were helping his movement, Castro had written in confidence to a colleague, "War with the U.S. is my true destiny." Castro had sent armed guerrillas to attempt the violent overthrow of four sovereign Latin American countries, stole $2 billion from American businessmen at Czech machine-gun point, invited in thousands of Soviet military and police agents, kidnapped 50 U.S. citizens from Guantanamo Bay, and jailed and executed several Americans before we lifted a finger against him.
In fact, during this period the State Dept. made over ten back-channel diplomatic attempts to ascertain the cause of Castro's tantrums. Argentine President Arturo Frondizi was the conduit for many of these and recounts their utter futility in his memoirs.
Then the coup-de grace: “We ended up getting exactly what we'd wanted all along," snickered Nikita Khrushchev in his memoirs about the Cuban Missile Crisis Resolution:
"Security for Fidel Castro's regime and American missiles removed from Turkey. Until today the U.S. has complied with her promise not to interfere with Castro and not to allow anyone else to interfere with Castro. After Kennedy's death, his successor Lyndon Johnson assured us that he would keep the promise not to invade Cuba."
Henry Kissinger, as Gerald Ford's secretary of state, renewed the pledge. After the Missile Crisis "resolution," Castro's "defiance" of the U.S. took the form of the U.S. Coast Guard and even the British Navy (when some intrepid exile freedom fighters moved their operation to the Bahamas) shielding him from exile attacks. Far from "defying" a superpower, Castro hid behind the skirts of two superpowers, plus the British Empire.
Cliché no. 2: Pre-Castro Cuba was a veritable U.S. colony, greedily exploited by U.S. corporations and by her most notorious gangsters who maintained the hapless island as a sordid casino and bordello teeming with wretchedly poor and desperate natives. Castro and Che Guevara rectified this shameful condition.
The Facts: Cuba’s tourism industry as a whole generated $60 million in 1958. Havana by itself had 42 hotels. The Mob reputedly had financial in interest in seven of these–and these didn’t include Cuba’s biggest hotel, the Habana Hilton. Instead, the biggest hotel on the island was majority-owned by the pension plan of the Cuban Federation of Gastronomic Food Workers. This fully-documented historical datum, needless to add, doesn’t mesh well with the fairy-tale narrative about Cuba’s horribly exploited working class of the time, now does it?

And to cap it all off: in 1950 more Cubans (out of a population of six million) vacationed in the U.S. than Americans (out of 200 million) vacationed in Cuba. At that time, Cubans didn't come to the U.S. in any great numbers to settle. In fact as a percentage of population, Cuba took in more immigrants (primarily from Europe) in the early 20th century than did the U.S. In the 1950's, when Cubans were perfectly free to emigrate with all their property and U.S. visas were issued to them for the asking, fewer Cubans lived in the U.S. than Americans lived in Cuba.

Humberto Fontova

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272407/lefts-fake-news-about-pre-castro-cuba-humberto-fontova

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Video: The Cultural Significance of TikTok - Paul Joseph Watson

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by Paul Joseph Watson

Gen Z trolling culture is the backlash to Millennial outrage culture.

In this new video, Paul Joseph Watson discusses the attack on TikTok by social justice gatekeepers who are enraged that they can't censor the platform.




Paul Joseph Watson

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272401/paul-joseph-watson-video-cultural-significance-paul-joseph-watson

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The Latest Danger from Memes - Julio Rivera

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by Julio Rivera

Ever inventive, sophisticated hackers have now incorporated the use of steganography as a vehicle to deliver infectious malware.

Memes. They can be funny, sad, inspirational, or at other times downright offensive. I have some friends who literally invest significant time daily in checking out the latest viral meme. Whether you like them or not, memes have become big in pop culture. Some of the featured characters have gone on to crossover internet fame. Grumpy Cat, Kermit the Frog, and the “overly attached” girlfriend have entertained Americans for countless hours as they scroll through their timelines on the most downloaded social media apps in the world including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

With the increased popularity of this new medium of expression come new dangers. Ever inventive, sophisticated hackers have now incorporated the use of steganography as a vehicle to deliver infectious malware.

Steganography is defined as data hidden within data. In computing, it is sometimes purposed as an encryption technique used to protect files. It can also be used to facilitate encrypted messaging. In the past, jihadists have employed a communication tool called MuslimCrypt, which uses steganography. Steganography can also be applied to video and audio files and has now found a malicious application via image files. 

According to reports, although the use of steganography to deliver malware via memes is thought to have originated in 2017 (when the Twitter account sharing the infected meme was created), it has only recently started to quickly spread via the popular Matrix Morpheus memes.

Research conducted by Trend Micro, the popular security intelligence blog, identifies the new threat, detected as TROJAN.MSIL.BERBOMTHUM.AA, as being introduced to systems via a legitimate service (Twitter). The trojan then employs the use of a commonly used meme to draw in the victim. The malicious tweets could not be removed until the account was disabled by Twitter. Twitter deleted the profile on December 13^th of 2018.

The potential threat of widespread outbreaks involving steganography should be enough to keep IT professionals monitoring the personal use of computers on their networks in both the private and government sectors awake at night. Once the trojan is inconspicuously installed, it has the ability to download malicious memes from social media accounts you may be following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others to your computer.

It then begins to execute preloaded commands from the malware file hidden within the meme. The “print” command hidden in the meme allows the malware takes a screenshot of the infected machine before obtaining server information from commonly used text upload and sharing app Pastebin. The collected information or command output is then uploaded to a specific URL address.

This poses a threat to private businesses that carry proprietary business information and intellectual property on their systems. The stolen information can potentially be leveraged for profit, via sale of this ill-gotten intelligence to competitive businesses within the same industry. American businesses have already suffered as a result of stolen intellectual property, as the United States Trade Representative’s 2018 report into China's intellectual property theft found that "Chinese theft of American Intellectual Property currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually."

Individual consumers can be victims of financial crimes as a result of steganography, as the infection initiates hidden "print" commands, which take screen captures containing usernames, passwords, birthdays, social security numbers, and potentially even credit card information from their victims.

Our government networks, ranging from election databases, to Industrial Control Systems (ICS) used to control many of our critical infrastructure, to even weapon commands systems are all potential victims as well.

We’ve already seen a 2018 cyberattack, carried out by Chinese government-backed hackers, that compromised the computers of a naval contractor working on a Navy submarine and underwater programs project. This attack netted the Chinese government 614 gigabytes of data, including plans related to a supersonic anti-ship missile scheduled to be introduced by 2020 and other details about undersea warfare.

So, how will businesses, individuals, and the government deal with this threat? One potential remedy would be the instituting of department wide bans on social media in the work setting while operating work computers.

This potentially unpopular remedy could help, but given the plethora of other threats, including the deception campaigns known as “Active Security” and “Total Security”, that disguise threats as legitimate security programs in order to profiteer from stolen data and financial information, will we ever be able to fully secure our data systems?

Julio Rivera

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/the_latest_danger_from_memes.html

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The International Criminal Court appoints a Palestinian official who overlooked torture in Palestinian jails - Ezequiel Doiny

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by Ezequiel Doiny

A joke that is not the least bit funny

On December 26, 2018, Ambassador Alan Baker reported for the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs:

The election of the Palestinian Attorney-General, Dr. Ahmad Barrak, to serve as a member of the “Advisory Committee on Nominations” of judges of the International Criminal Court, if it were not so serious, could be seen as comical. It cannot but invoke the ancient Latin maxim “ovem lupo commitere,” or in its literal and colloquial version “to set the wolf to guard the sheep.”
This sums up the acute absurdity to which respected international institutions in the international community, and particularly the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, have descended. Sadly, they have permitted themselves to be abused and manipulated by an irresponsible Palestinian leadership, intent on hijacking international organizations for obvious and blatant political purposes….

Headquarters of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands

Photo credit: Vincent van Zeijst

The election of the Palestinian Attorney-General, Dr. Ahmad Barrak, to serve as a member of the “Advisory Committee on Nominations” of judges of the International Criminal Court should be cancelled because while Dr. Ahmad Barrak acted as Attorney General of the Palestinian Authority, Human Rights Watch reported that the PA used threats, arbitrary arrests and violent abuse, including beatings, electric shocks and stress positions to crush dissent.

The Palestinian security forces "systematically" abuse and torture opponents and critics in what could amount to crimes against humanity and undermine Palestinian accusations against Israel, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
"Systematic torture as part of a government policy is a crime against humanity," Omar Shakir, HRW's Israel-Palestine director, told AFP.
The rival authorities of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas both used threats, arbitrary arrests and violent abuse, including beatings, electric shocks and stress positions, the New York-based rights group said in a report released in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Both particularly focus on those allegedly affiliated with the rival faction, including protesters, dissidents, journalists and bloggers, with the aim of crushing dissent, the report said..."

On December 2, 2018 Bejamin Kerstein reported in the Algemeniner about an interview between the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat on Deatche Welle’s TV show Conflict Zone,

Facing a series of withering questions from hard-nosed interviewer Tim Sebastian, Erekat sought to defend himself and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on issues ranging from their dealings with the Trump administration to the peace process, corruption, and PA human rights violations...
Sebastian then asked about a recent Human Rights Watch report that found 147 incidents of “shocking abuse” by Palestinian security forces. Erekat protested that a committee had been formed to “investigate every single matter.”
“You say this every time. You have exactly the same answer,” said Sebastian.
“The people who committed these atrocities will be held accountable. That’s my promise,” Erekat replied, then said, “Security figures in certain areas were fired. They were demoted.”
“How many?” asked Sebastian.
“I really can’t…” said Erekat.
“It doesn’t mean anything unless you have a number,” asserted Sebastian.
“I will get you the number,” Erekat replied.
Pressed further on the issue of human rights abuses, Erekat cried, “When it happens we stop it! We admit it! We don’t hide it! We don’t find excuses! We don’t buy people!”
Sebastian pointedly asked Erekat, “Aren’t you ashamed of all this?”
“In some cases I’m ashamed, yes,” Erekat said, but added, “Sometimes I can’t because I’m a young Authority. I’m 23 years old. I cannot differentiate between freedom of expression and incitement.”
Asked what a future Palestinian state would look like, Erekat responded, “The future Palestinian state would look like the discussion that’s going on now. The future of the Palestinian state will be the future of democracy, human rights, women’s rights, accountability, transparency, and the rule of law. This is my promise.”
“So very different from what you have now,” Sebastian noted dryly.

On March 30, 2013 David Rose wrote in the Daily Mail:

Chilling confessions made by a former official from the Palestinian Authority:
Said in nineties people were tortured 'badly' and 'beat them hard'....
Nowadays, he adds, the preferred method is termed ‘shabeh’ – the hooding and tying of the prisoner in a variety of agonising positions for up to eight hours. He does not elaborate on the details, but claims: ‘It works with 95 per cent of the subjects.’ It also takes considerable skill: ‘You have to deal with it as if you were playing a guitar. Each case has its own specialty.’
This extraordinary interview is the first admission by a former perpetrator of the widespread torture of Palestinians – not by Israel, but by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
...Just what ‘it’ means was described by a very recent victim, a professional man in his 40s who was freed without charge two weeks ago after more than a month in Mukhabarat detention.
‘For most of the time I was held, they gave me shabeh every day,’ he says. ‘Always I was hooded, and sometimes they tied my arms in front of me and attached me to the wall, leaving me like that for long, long hours, on tiptoes. You have pain in the arms, in the legs and in the body, and swelling in your muscles. Often I could also hear screaming from the prisoners.
‘But it was worse when they suspended me with my arms tied behind me. Your body is curved, like a banana. Most of the time they do not let your feet touch the ground.’ He showed me his arms and hands – they were still puffy and swollen. ‘During the shabeh, they looked much worse,’ he added.
In another variant, the suspect was hog-tied – laid on his back on top of a chair with his wrists and ankles lashed together beneath the seat. Usually the torture happened at night: ‘When you’re exhausted, they take you back to your cell.’
He was arrested because someone claimed he had an illegal weapon. ‘But I’ve never had a weapon and I am opposed to Islamic extremists. I’ve criticised the PA at social gatherings – maybe that’s why someone denounced me. That was the worst thing of all – that I was in jail at the hands of my own Authority.’..."

Ezequiel Doiny is author of "Obama's assault on Jerusalem's Western Wall"

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/the_international_criminal_court_appoints_a_palestinian_official_who_overlooked_torture_in_palestinian_jails.html

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Video: The Truth About the 'Yellow Vest' Protests - Paul Joseph Watson

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by Paul Joseph Watson

Are we witnessing a European Spring?

In this new video, Paul Joseph Watson unveils The Truth About the 'Yellow Vest' Protests, and he asks: Are we witnessing a European Spring? Don't miss it!




Paul Joseph Watson

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272400/paul-joseph-watson-video-truth-about-yellow-vest-paul-joseph-watson

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