Day: April 3, 2021
SEC targets video platform Odysee
SEC LAWSUIT SEES LBRY/ODYSEE BITCOIN CRYPTOCURRENCY AS A "SECURITY"? WHAT?
Iran rejects third U.S. offer to launch negotiations for new nuke deal in exchange for lifting of some sanctions
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
The mullahs know that if they stand firm, Biden’s handlers will come groveling with an ever-increasing number of concessions. They know they’re in command now.
“Iran rejects US offer to open nuclear talks amid offer to lift sanctions,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, March 30, 2021 (thanks to the Geller Report):
Iran rejected a third US offer on Tuesday to launch negotiations over a new nuclear deal in exchange for the lifting of some American sanctions.
The US offer was leaked to the Politico website late on Monday, but was rejected in a matter of hours.
Iran said that it will not stop its 20% uranium enrichment before the US lifts all sanctions, Iranian state TV quoted an unnamed official. The official’s comment came as a reaction to the US media report that Washington would offer a new proposal involving reducing 20% enrichment to jump-start talks.
“A senior Iranian official tells Press TV that Tehran will stop its 20% uranium enrichment only if the US lifts ALL its sanctions on Iran first,” state-run Press TV said on its website.
“The official said Tehran will further reduce its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal if the US does not lift all sanctions, warning that Washington is rapidly running out of time,” it added.
The Iranian rejection of new talks was the third time the Islamic Republic had turned down a US offer to open talks about a new nuclear deal and the continuation of international sanctions against the regime.
The Biden administration has been seeking to engage Iran in talks about both sides resuming compliance with the deal, under which economic sanctions on Tehran were removed in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program to make it harder to develop a nuclear weapon.
At the same time, Washington has wanted to ensure that Iran fully returns to the limits in a way that could give it leverage to negotiate new concessions that were not part of the 2015 nuclear deal from Iran.
Some of the issues emphasized by US President Joe Biden’s administration – extending nuclear limits beyond 2030, limits on ballistic missile testing and limits on Iran’s aggressive behavior in the Middle East – reflect Israeli positions, though there is doubt in Jerusalem about how committed the president is to achieving these concessions….
Man who rammed car into Capitol barricade and charged officers with a knife was follower of Nation of Islam
NOAH GREEN WAS A BLACK MUSLIM
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
The Nation of Islam is Louis Farrakhan’s group. They don’t follow orthodox Sunni or Shi’ite Islam, but a strange syncretistic new religion based in part on Islam and in part on bizarre and paranoid racial hate fantasies. They share orthodox Islam’s antisemitism, which may indicate that they hold to other tenets of Islam as well, and are sympathetic to the global jihad.
So was this a jihad attack? There is no way to tell at this point, and authorities may never tell us, but there is no doubt that vehicular jihad is a common jihadi tactic, and often involves the attacker charging out of the car with a knife. Does the fact that Noah Green was a Black Muslim who followed a common jihadist modus operandi mean this was a jihad attack? No, but the possibility should be investigated. Will it be? Almost certainly not.
“Noah Green: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know,” by Jessica McBride, Heavy, April 2, 2021:
Noah Green was named as the knife-wielding, now-deceased suspect who tried to ram a car into a U.S. Capitol barricade, exiting with a knife, and killing a Capitol police officer and injuring another.
The suspect was first named by MSBNC’s Pete Williams and other NBC journalists, who said he was 25 years old and from Indiana. Authorities have not yet confirmed the name.
“BREAKING / NBC News: Multiple senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation say Noah Green, 25 year old male, from Indiana is the person who attacked the Capitol today,” wrote NBC journalist Tom Winter.
The Capitol police chief Yogananda Pittman said in a news conference, “It is with heavy heart that I come here this afternoon to shed some light on the incident that occurred at the U.S. Capitol.” The suspect entered the “north barricade” of the Capitol.
“The suspect rammed his car into two of our officers and then hit the north barricade barrier… the suspect exited the vehicle with a knife in hand. Our officers then engaged that suspect. He did not respond to verbal commands. The suspect did start lunging toward U.S. capitol police officers at which time U.S Capitol police officers fired upon the suspect. The suspect has been pronounced deceased.
Two officers were taken to the hospital. “It is with a very heavy heart that I announce that one of our officers has succumbed to his injured.” His name was not released.
“This has been an extremely difficult time for U.S. capitol police after the events of Jan. 6, said Pittman.
Chief Robert Contee of Washington Metropolitan Police said the homicide unit is taking over the investigation in connection with the “shooting death that occurred as well as the officer’s death.” He said there was not an “ongoing threat.”
He said it doesn’t appear the suspect was known to the Capitol police. He said it doesn’t appear to be terrorism-related but police will continue to investigate.
The incident came just three months after the January 6 Capitol riots left multiple officers injured, but the suspect’s motive is not yet clear.
CNN reported that Capitol police shot the suspect after he brandished a knife. Williams reported that the suspect is dead.
The latest incident broke out on the afternoon of April 2, 2021, and led to a lockdown of the Capitol as debate continues to swirl in Congress about security measures and fencing at the historic building….
Journalist Jonathan Dienst wrote on Twitter that, according to a senior law enforcement source, preliminary information is that the “suspect jumped out of vehicle with a knife.”…
ISIS Incites Laughter, Claims Pope Trying to Start Crusade
THE "WOKE" POPE FRANCIS STILL MISUNDERSTANDS ISLAM
ISIS Branches Out Into Comedy, Accuses Pope Woke I of Trying to Start New Crusade
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
What’s the absolute last thing in the world that Pope Woke, aka Francis, would want to do? What would cause him to recoil in the most spine-tingling horror imaginable? That’s right: the prospect of following in the footsteps of his long-gone predecessor, Pope Urban II, and calling for a new Crusade. Yet that’s exactly what the Islamic State (ISIS), which is apparently not aware of just how woke and accommodating to their various demands the pope is, has just accused him of wanting to do.
Jihad attacks will follow in Iraq, ISIS declared, warning Iraqi churches that the jihadis “will remove their crosses very soon” as they did “the first time, with Allah’s permission.” This came in an editorial entitled “Messages of the Christian Idolator-Tyrant [Taghut al-Nasara al-Baba] on His Visit to Iraq.” As I explained to Church Militant, taghut refers to idols or idolaters, particularly as rulers; nasara is the Qur’an’s word for Christians; and al-baba is the pope. So taghut al-nasara al-baba is the Christian idolater or idolator-tyrant, the pope.
ISIS claimed that Francis went to Iraq bent on “propagating new crusader ideas towards Muslim countries, especially Iraq, which has been the site of a grinding war for the last two decades between the Muslims and the mushrikeen,” that is, the idolators or polytheists. The pope’s interfaith event in Iraq amounted to “unleashing an invitation to a new religion of unbelief and atheism” adhered to by Christians, Jews and “the idolator-tyrants [taghut] of Muslim countries.”
Decrying the pope’s cherished idea that Christianity and Islam can come to a mutual accord and understanding based on their supposed “common father” Abraham, ISIS continued: “The so-called ‘Abrahamic religions’ — whether true or false — are said to belong to Ibrahim, the prophet of Allah, and based on the claim that the city of Ur, which the Christian idolator-tyrant visited and from where he launched his campaign for this new religion is the birthplace of Ibrahim, the prophet of Allah.”
The idea of “Abrahamic religions,” according to ISIS, is “Satanic,” basing this idea upon the Qur’an: “Abraham was not a Jew, nor was he a Christian, but he was a Muslim hanif, and he was not one of the idolaters” (3:67). It may seem strange to Westerners to claim that Abraham was a Muslim in light of the fact that Islam didn’t come to the world until 600 years after Jesus. But in the Islamic scheme of things, Islam was the original religion of all the prophets of the Bible. Their followers corrupted their teachings to create Judaism and Christianity, which are both false religions. That idea is mainstream Islam, not just the province of “extremists.”
The author of this document also refers to the pope profaning Mosul by lifting his cross over it. This is because in Islam, Jesus was not crucified (cf. Qur’an 4:157), and to affirm otherwise is to suggest that Allah is not strong enough to protect his prophets.
The pope would most likely be shocked to find that his very attempts at conciliation and peace are being viewed as provocations, but this is yet another example of his getting involved in affairs that he only dimly understands at best, and creating more problems than he is solving. He almost certainly doesn’t know that the Qur’an says that “the Jews and the Christians will never be satisfied with you until you follow their religion,” (2:120). So even his outreach is viewed as a sinister attempt to seduce Muslims away from Islam, and that this group is likely to strike at Christians to protect themselves against this perceived attack on Islam.
Pope Francis’ peace outreach may consequently end up getting even more Christians killed than would have been if he had left well enough alone and stuck to preaching the Gospel, which it is supposedly his mission to propagate and defend. But that has never seemed to be very high on his priority list.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
China Is Stepping Up Pressure on Western Brands for Speaking Up Against Forced Uyghur Labor & GENOCIDE
BY
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
For years China has sought to draw moral equivalence with the West over human rights, insisting that other countries have no standing to criticize its policies. Now Beijing is making Western companies pay for raising ethical concerns.
As hard as many multinational businesses strive to avoid getting pulled into whimsical twists of foreign policy, the reports that China runs forced-labor camps out of Xinjiang — an area that produces about 20 percent of the world’s cotton — made it much harder for corporations to avoid political involvement. With increased fervor on social media demanding businesses take stances on hot-button political issues, China’s monstrous abuse of Uyghur people didn’t go unnoticed.
This week, China fought back. It stepped up pressure on foreign shoe and clothing brands to reject or deny reports of abuses and forced Uyghur labor in Xinjang. State media called for a boycott of Swedish brand H&M and America’s Nike and others for saying they would no longer use cotton from Xinjiang. China also criticized other brands (Adidas, New Balance, Burberry, Massimo Dutti, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Uniqlo) for expressing concern about reports of forced labor. Under pressure from Beijing and their threatened bottom lines, some retailers have retracted their condemnations, and either quietly deleted them from their websites or actually bowed to Beijing and apologized for the criticism. Some others took a stand.
H&M was among the latter, so Chinese platforms not only scrubbed H&M’s clothing listings, but also the company’s addresses and geolocations (the ability of tech products to locate a store). On Weibo, a Chinese social media site, more than 32 million people used the hashtag “I support Xinjiang cotton.” Millions of comments read “Die, H&M, die” and “Any b—- who still dares to work at this place should also jump off a building.” In a YouTube video published by the China Global Television Network, a network owned by the Communist Party of China, Chinese bystanders across all demographics condemned H&M for its “nonsense” accusations. Dozens of Chinese celebrities openly cut ties with “blacklisted” brands out of national solidarity.
Even though companies have been speaking out against slave labor in China for a while, it is only now that China has aggressively countered the message. The sudden backlash appears to be in retaliation to a recent statement from high-level government officials from around the world. The United States, Canada, the U.K., and the European Union teamed up to condemn China’s human-rights violations toward Xinjiang’s Uyghur minority. And the countries levied sanctions on top Chinese officials, including Wang Junzheng, the secretary of the Party Committee of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), and Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (XPSB). According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the XPCC is a paramilitary organization that “enhances internal control over the region by advancing China’s vision of economic development in [Xinjiang] that emphasizes subordination to central planning and resource extraction.” Treasury also notes that “since at least late 2016, repressive tactics have been used by the XPSB against the Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities in the region, including mass detentions and surveillance.”
Beijing hit back with a money stick. “When the stick of sanctions is brandished on Xinjiang, it will also hit your own head,” a spokesman for the Xinjiang regional government, Xu Guixiang, said at a news conference in Beijing. According to Bloomberg, shares of H&M, Nike Inc., and others plummeted as Chinese government officials endorsed the boycotts and Chinese celebrities dropped contracts with the brands.
The tensions between the United States and China have increasingly intensified over Beijing’s human-rights record and allegations Xi Jinping’s government is committing genocide against the Uyghur people. The State Department formalized its accusations that China has engaged in “genocide and crimes against humanity” on March 30. The document cites Beijing’s “mass detention” of the Uyghurs, as well as evidence of forced sterilization, rape, torture, and forced labor.
Previously, on January 13, 2021, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced a ban on all imports of tomato and cotton products “made by slave labor” in Xinjiang. At his first solo news conference, even though President Joe Biden vowed to be “unrelenting” in calling attention to China’s human-rights abuses, his statement followed a confused and eyebrow-raising assertion about the “different cultural norms” that shaped Beijing’s policies, indicating he really didn’t mean it: “And so the idea I’m not going to speak out against what he [Xi Jinping] is doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in the western mountains of China and Taiwan, trying to end the One China policy by making it forceful — I said — and by the — he said he — he gets it. Culturally, there are different norms that each country and they — their leaders — are expected to follow,” and reminded that China had been victimized by the West in the past.
Beijing officials vehemently deny accusations of human rights abuses and initiated a campaign spearheaded by state-owned media outlets on Western social media platforms, claiming it has not forced Uyghur Muslims to pick cotton and that it has mechanical harvesters.
Among others claims, the Chinese Foreign Ministry tweeted, “Allegations of ‘genocide’ and ‘forced labor’ in Xinjiang are lies of the century. Xinjiang’s Uyghur population more than doubled in the past 40 years. Have you ever seen this kind of genocide?” and it accused the U.S. government of being responsible for native Indians being “expelled” and “slaughtered” 100 years ago.
According to an independent report released on March 8, compiled by more than 50 global experts specializing in international law, genocide, and the China region, the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang have violated every single provision in the UN’s Genocide Convention.
Facebook & Instagram ban any image, video or voice of Trump
DEL BIGTREE INTERVIEWS NAOMI WOLF: ARE VACCINE PASSPORTS THE END OF AMERICA?
Former Clinton advisor, Dr. Naomi Wolf, peels the layers back on the newest hot button issue, vaccine passports, with a dire warning they are a “point of no return.”