Author: admin

Interestingly, a new “continent “of multiculturalism is in the making in the shape of a strategic expansion of the BRICS grouping of emerging economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — with more countries keen to join

Post Content

The former president pleaded not guilty to dozens of felony counts on Tuesday.

By Associated Press

The FBI investigators who searched Harold Martin’s Maryland property in the fall of 2016 found classified documents – including material at the top secret level – strewn about his home, car and storage shed.

Unlike former President Donald Trump, the former National Security Agency contractor didn’t contest the allegations, ultimately pleading guilty in 2019 and admitting his actions were “wrong, illegal and highly questionable.” But his expressions of contrition and guilty plea to a single count of willful retention of national defense information didn’t spare him the harsh punishment of nine years in prison.

The resolution of that case looms as an ominous guidepost for the legal jeopardy Trump could face as he confronts 37 felony counts – 31 under the same century-old Espionage Act statute used to prosecute Martin and other defendants alleged to have illegally retained classified documents. Even many like Martin who have pleaded guilty and accepted responsibility have nonetheless been socked with yearslong prison sentences.

“When they decide to pursue a willful mishandling case, it’s to send a message: that we take these cases very seriously,” said Michael Zweiback, a defense lawyer and former Justice Department prosecutor. “They almost always are seeking jail time.”

How much prison time the former president could face in the event of a conviction is impossible to say, with such a decision ultimately up to the trial judge – in this case, a Trump appointee who has already demonstrated a willingness to rule in his favor. It’s also hard to know the extent to which other factors – including the logistical and political complications of jailing a former president – might play a role.

The Espionage Act offense is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, though it’s rare for first-time federal offenders to get close to the maximum. But beyond the retention, prosecutors have also identified multiple aggravating factors in Trump’s alleged conduct, accusing him of seeking to enlist others – including a lawyer and aides – to hide the records from investigators and showing off some to visitors. Some of the other counts in the indictment, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, call for up to 20 years in prison.

Justice Department prosecutors in recent years have used the Espionage Act provision against a variety of defendants, including a West Virginia woman who retained an NSA document related to a foreign government’s military and political issues. Elizabeth Jo Shirley pleaded guilty in 2020 to a willful retention count and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

This month, a retired Air Force intelligence officer named Robert Birchum was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to keeping classified files at his home, his overseas officer’s quarters and a storage pod in his driveway.

Many defendants have pleaded guilty, rather than face trial, though not all have gone to prison. Trump – who also faces charges related to hush-money payments in New York state court – has shown no signs that he could be headed toward a plea deal, vigorously insisting he is innocent and personally attacking Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith hours after appearing in Miami federal court Tuesday.

Despite the details in the indictment, Trump does have some avenues to try to contest the charges.

For one thing, he’s drawn Judge Aileen Cannon, who sided with Trump last year in the former president’s bid to appoint a special master to conduct an independent review of the seized classified documents. Citing the “stigma” she said was associated with an FBI search of Trump’s home, she said a “future indictment” based on items that should’ve been returned to Trump “would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude.”

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit unanimously overturned her ruling, which was widely criticized by legal experts as extraordinary and unusually broad.

Over the next several months, Cannon will make decisions that will shape the trial, including how quickly it will happen and whether any evidence will be kept out.

Prosecutors also face the challenge in Florida – where Republicans have made steady inroads in recent years – of a jury pool likely to be more favorable to Trump than if the case were tried in overwhelmingly Democratic Washington, D.C.

Still, “I think that it might very well be that Jack Smith welcomes a Florida jury because if there is a conviction, it will be much harder to say, ‘Well, that jury was somehow anti-Trump,’” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law school professor and former Justice Department official.

Experts anticipate Trump’s lawyers to echo the former president’s public remarks in trying to get the case dismissed by arguing he was entitled to have the documents and is the victim of prosecutorial overreach. Trump could also try to block prosecutors from being able to use key evidence, such as notes from his lawyer detailing conversations with the former president.

If the case gets to trial, experts say Trump’s attorneys may attempt what’s called “jury nullification” or try to convince jurors that he should be acquitted even if they believe Trump broke the law because the violation wasn’t serious enough to warrant charges and he is being singled out.

“The theme of the defense can be riddled with suggestions of unfairness and selective prosecution – basically trying to convince a jury that even if the former president did what the government says he did, none of this should have ever ended up in a criminal prosecution,” said Robert Mintz, a defense attorney and former Justice Department prosecutor.

Robert Kelner, a Washington criminal defense lawyer, said while an outright acquittal seems unlikely given the volume of evidence, a pathway for a mistrial exists if Trump attorneys can persuade even one juror to acquit on grounds that the president enjoyed the absolute authority to declassify information.

That authority ended the moment Trump left the presidency, but even so, “some jurors will likely find it hard to rationalize convicting him for something that he previously had the absolute authority (to do) simply because he didn’t file the right forms and do it at the right time,” Kelner said.

In the end, facing a mountain of evidence and the prospect of years in prison, Trump’s best hope may be a tactic he often pursues: Delay, delay, delay, said Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor and head of Fordham University Law School’s Criminal Defense Clinic.

“His best defense may be to try to ride out the election cycle, be elected as president and therefore be in charge of the Justice Department before the case goes to trial,” she said.

The post How much prison time could Trump face if convicted? Past cases saw steep punishment for document hoarders appeared first on World Israel News.

Americans continue converting to Islam and joining ISIS.

By Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine

Cole James Bridges went to a high school in Clarkesville, Tennessee and worked at a Papa Johns pizza place near Akron, Ohio before joining the United States Army. Mateo Ventura was a high school student in Wakefield, Massachusetts.

Within a week of each other in June 2023, Bridges pled guilty to plotting to help ISIS kill American soldiers, while Ventura was arrested for trying to provide aid to the Islamic State.

Bridges and Ventura, 20 and 18 years old, like Trevor Bickford, 19, of Maine, who was hit with federal charges this year for attacking NYPD police officers with a machete in Times Square, and Xavier Pelkey, 18, also of Maine, who pled guilty in April after trying to recruit two underage teens for a terrorist attack in Chicago, show the rate at which ordinary American teens are converting to Islam and plotting terrorist attacks.

While we made everyone take their shoes off at the airport and labored to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan and Iraq, Islamic terrorists won the hearts and minds of our children.

Our national security establishment feverishly imagined vast Al Qaeda attack plots while ignoring the real attack. An attack so deep and so wounding that it is far more devastating than September 11. It was an attack aided and abetted by the government, our cultural establishment and entertainment industries which urged Americans to learn about and embrace Islam.

Teenagers like Bridges, Ventura, Bickford, Pelkey and many others did. While Muslim immigrants still make up a significant percentage of Islamic terror plots, they increasingly come from American teenagers who converted to Islam. And, unlike past Muslim terror converts who followed a familiar path from drug dealing to prison to terrorism, these are our boys.

Except they’re not ours anymore.

Bridges lyrically spoke of the Islamic terrorists of ISIS as “brothers who have been fighting to establish a khilafah” or caliphate, and “have inspired me a lot, they’re (sic) love for Allah.”

Ventura wanted to fight a “war on kuffar” or non-Muslims.

Bickford carried an Islamic text and had underlined the words, “fight in the Name of Allah and in the Cause of Allah. Fight against those who do not believe in Allah. Wage a holy war.” He wrote in his journal that he wanted a traditional Muslim burial and did not want to be buried “in the land of the kuffar”. If he died while killing Americans, he did not want to be laid to rest in America.

Pelkey, who changed his name to Abdullah, wrote that he wanted to “burst thru the door of Jihad in america and strike fear in the hearts of these kafirun nothing pisses these american kuffar off and scares em more than a term they use ‘homegrown terrorist.’”

Their plans for Islamic mass murder, Bridges wanted to attack the 9/11 memorial, Pelkey was going to burst into a synagogue separate the adults from the children, and then kill the adults, have received what little attention a broken country has to spare for the kind of story that people don’t even pay attention to anymore. We are so busy fighting each other that we hardly even look up when the next generation converts to Islam and signs up with Al Qaeda or ISIS.

Americans used to associate Islamic converts with black nationalist groups, but this is no longer the case. Latinos, like Bridges (raised by a stepfather, his mother’s last name was Gonzalez), are the fastest growing population of converts, but a quarter of converts to Islam are white.

In the UK, young white Muslim converts like 19-year-old Matthew King, whose mother turned him in after an attack plot on British soldiers, or Lewis Ludlow, who changed his name to Ali Hussain and pled guilty to scouting out targets like St Paul’s Cathedral and Madame Tussauds, are also becoming more commonplace.

There are certain common denominators among Muslim converts as there are among school shooters. Bickford was being raised by a stepfather while Ventura had been bullied in school. Bickford’s father had died of a drug overdose, and Pelkey was living with his mother and an autistic younger brother.

Like most cults, the new mosque recruits are lost and looking for somewhere to belong. Missing fathers and a general sense of alienation are a common theme. America no longer provides a sense of identity and even institutions like the U.S. Army don’t offer any real purpose. Falling through the spreading cracks of an imploding culture, they join gangs, movements and Islam.

What too few Americans understood after the September 11 attacks was that this was a culture war. Foreign Muslim terrorists could kill us by the thousands and perhaps even one day the hundreds of thousands, but even at expanding immigration rates it would take generations for them to demographically conquer us. Unlike Europe, America has a more robust birth rate, in part because of migration from south of the border. We would have to conquer ourselves.

The Bush administration responded to 9/11 with an ambitious effort to democratize the Muslim world, unaware and uncaring of the Muslim world’s parallel effort to Islamize America. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, like the failure of the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS, collapsed the project to democratize the Muslim world. But the Islamization of America is succeeding.

What does Islam offer that we don’t? Patriarchy for fatherless boys, the illusion of belonging to a global Islamic Ummah, the promise of a system of moral order with the creation of the Caliphate, and the escape from a culture that no longer stands for much except comic book movies and politics.

Pop culture and politics have become the religions of a declining nation. In the midst of the culture war, many Americans from both sides have developed hostility and contempt for their own country. Others retreat to imaginary pop culture universes to debate the ins and outs of their devotion to Marvel, Star Wars or Taylor Swift with the intensity once reserved for theology.

Americans are becoming less patriotic and religious and the falloff is most pronounced among the young. It is no coincidence that Islamic recruitment of American teens is booming in areas where traditional organized religion is declining. Is it surprising that Maine, the third least religious state where barely a quarter described themselves as Christians, produced two Islamic terror converts? A decade ago, only 34% of people in the state believed religion was very important. But just because people abandon traditional churches, doesn’t mean that teenagers and twenty-somethings will give up on religion. They will find people who really believe.

And the Jihad really believes.

We are not just losing the military and demographic wars, but the even more important cultural war. America’s political and cultural establishment embraced Islam. And this is the result.

All the episodes of ‘24’ envisioning complicated plots of mass murder were off the mark. What happened instead was that the plotters got on planes, landed and moved here. They set up mosques and schools, they became reporters, executives and members of congress. Like their leftist allies, they fought the war from the inside and we did not so much lose as surrender.

A generation of young men, born after 9/11 and the end of the War on Terror, were urged to learn about Islam, the way they’re encouraged to learn about sex changes. Some castrated themselves and pretended to be women, others joined ISIS instead.

When life looks senseless and meaningless, each day filled with mechanical routines and hollow entertainments, the human soul needs to reach for something that promises more.

America is not becoming irreligious, it is losing its religions and finding new gods. Some of those gods tell their followers to kill the infidels, attack the 9/11 memorial and kill until America is Islamic.

As we take off our shoes at the airport, a new generation is losing its soul.

The post While we were watching airports, Islamic terrorists won our children – opinion appeared first on World Israel News.

A Jewish man on a train was subject to “threatening gestures” and “disturbing verbal abuse” by a fellow passenger.

By Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner

Another Jewish Londoner has been attacked on while riding the city’s public transportation, a local neighborhood watchdog reported on Wednesday.

According to Shomrim Stamford Hill, which has continuously reported on a widespread epidemic of antisemitic harassment and violence in London that began in 2021, a male wearing dark clothing approached a Jewish community member on the Piccadilly Line of the Underground and made “threatening gestures” while spewing “disturbing verbal abuse.” The group is calling on any witnesses of the incident to come forward.

“The distressing encounter has left the victim deeply affected, and is an alarming reminder of the need for vigilance and solidarity in our community,” the group said.

Jewish residents have also faced persistent harassment at a communal garden in the Stamford Hill neighborhood, with a group of people believed to be from a nearby apartment shouting “Free Palestine” and “Hitler” at them, the group also reported on Wednesday. Shomrim said “this isn’t an isolated incident” and said Jewish residents are “deeply concerned.”

Orthodox Jews in the Stamford Hill section of London have been victims of an onslaught of antisemitic harassment and violence since last year, and there already have been 211 antisemitic hate crimes in London so far in 2023, according to data reported by Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). Members of the city’s Orthodox Jewish community, one of the largest in Europe, were victims in a substantial portion of the 3,280 antisemitic hate crimes that MPS has recorded since 2018. 853 were tallied in 2021 alone.

In December 2022, the British Parliament released a report detailing recommendations to combat antisemitism amid rising antisemitism throughout the UK and a new spate of attacks against London’s Jewish community. Yet the attacks have persisted since then with alarming regularity.

In another incident on the public transport reported on Wednesday, a black males wearing a green hoodie and oval-lensed sunglasses verbally abused two Jewish women on a bus headed towards Stamford Hill. Elsewhere in the neighborhood, an unidentified male smeared grime from his hands on a “visibly Jewish” child and said “This is what you deserve.”

On June 8, a Jewish grandfather was assaulted by a cyclist while taking a walk with his wife and grandchild. He received medical attention at a local hospital. Earlier this month, a “racist gang” of youths kicked open the door of a Jewish family’s home, the second time they have done so since April.

The post Another antisemitic attack in London crime wave against Jews continues appeared first on World Israel News.

The development seems to fly in the face of concerns raised by Russia in the past about such moves hindering a Middle East peace process.

By World Israel News Staff

In a landmark agreement signed last month, Russia is slated to open a new branch of its embassy in Jerusalem as part of a real estate deal with the municipality.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced the development on Friday, saying that the deal over a disputed plot of land in central Jerusalem, which Russia acquired in 1885, was signed with Jerusalem’s municipality on May 18.

The new property will serve as the consular section of the embassy, housing a complex of buildings providing consular services to the residents of Jerusalem and its surrounding areas as well as housing diplomats.

The development seems to fly in the face of concerns raised by Russia in the past regarding former President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and his subsequent decision to move the U.S. embassy there. At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the move undermined prospects for a Middle East peace process and in February 2019, Russia formally announced it had no intention of moving its own embassy to Jerusalem.

The statement from Russia’s foreign ministry, which was first published by the Israel Hayom daily, stated that the new embassy branch would, however, open “in line with our country’s unchanging course towards a fair Middle East settlement.”

As part of the deal, the city has pledged not to expropriate the land for the benefit of a forthcoming light rail line, instead opting for alternative transportation arteries. The city will also allow Russia to register as the owners of a 100-meter area to be used for the road to the future diplomatic compound. Moreover, the city has agreed to drop any suits or demands from Russia, which has traditionally avoided paying taxes as legally required.

Under the agreement, the land will be accorded a higher status than that of a consulate and the construction of the compound is expected to be completed within five years.

The agreement, signed in the Mayor’s office on Jerusalem Day, is the result of six months of negotiations involving Mayor Moshe Lion, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen (Likud), Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov, Sergei Makarov acting on behalf of Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, and others.

The post Russia to open embassy branch in Jerusalem appeared first on World Israel News.

Bangladesh is likely to become a member of BRICS in August this year. Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said this while briefing reporters about the outcome of the meeting between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and South African President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa

During the trial of Robert Bowers, prosecutors show court evidence of killer’s antisemitic vitriol, including writing “the only good Jew is a dead Jew.”

By Associated Press

A gunman who killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue ranted incessantly on social media about his hatred of Jewish people before the 2018 attack, according to evidence introduced at his federal death penalty trial on Tuesday.

Prosecutors are trying to show Robert Bowers was motivated by extreme hostility toward Jews when he opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue during Sabbath services and committed the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history.

The 50-year-old truck driver is charged with 63 criminal counts, including hate crimes resulting in death and the obstruction of the free exercise of religion resulting in death. Some of the charges carry a potential death sentence.

Prosecutors said they planned to wrap up their case Wednesday afternoon. It wasn’t clear if the defense planned to call any witnesses.

With the trial in its third week, testimony turned toward Bowers’ use of Gab — a social media platform popular with the far right — to advance his antisemitic views.

Bowers’ Gab profile said “Jews are the children of Satan,” and he posted, liked or shared a stream of virulently antisemitic content, according to dozens of examples provided to the jury on Monday and Tuesday. Bowers called Jews “public enemy number one,” according to a post read by an FBI agent, spoke approvingly of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi extermination of Jews, and shared an image that said “the only good Jew is a dead Jew.”

William Braniff, a terrorism expert at the US Department of Homeland Security who reviewed Bowers’ social media activity, told jurors that Bowers used symbols and terms associated with Nazi, antisemitic and white supremacist ideologies.

On the morning of the attack, Bowers posted about HIAS, a Jewish agency that helps refugees resettle in the United States. Dor Hadash, one of the three congregations that shared the Tree of Life building, worked with HIAS.

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” Bowers posted.

Working to spare his life, Bowers’ lawyers have acknowledged he was the shooter but are trying to raise questions about motive. The defense has suggested he did not act out of religious hatred but rather a delusional belief that Jews were enabling genocide by helping immigrants come to the US.

Survivors have previously testified about the terror they felt that day as Bowers barged into the synagogue and shot everyone he could find, while police officers testified about exchanging gunfire with Bowers, who surrendered after being shot three times. Seven people were wounded in the rampage, including five police officers.

Also Tuesday, the judge denied a request from Bowers’ lawyers to hold a hearing and potentially limit victim impact testimony during the anticipated penalty phase of the trial.

The defense had argued the “inherently emotional and potentially overwhelming nature” of testimony from survivors and victims’ relatives could be prejudicial to Bowers and unfairly influence jurors who must decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison.

In a ruling, the judge said a hearing to review the government’s proposed evidence at the sentencing phase was not warranted, but cautioned prosecutors to “stay well clear of any testimony that might cross the line.”

The post Tree of Life synagogue shooter called Jews ‘children of Satan’ appeared first on World Israel News.

…

The post Questioning the Quad’s Rhetoric appeared first on Global Research.

Turbo Gastric Cancer: Diagnosis to Death in 12 Days, Tragic Story of a 49-year-old Army Nurse

By Dr. William Makis, June 15, 2023

“Turbo cancer” is a non-medical term that has arisen to describe very aggressive and rapidly progressive …

The post Selected Articles: Turbo Gastric Cancer: Diagnosis to Death in 12 Days, Tragic Story of a 49-year-old Army Nurse appeared first on Global Research.