Day: October 23, 2022
Iran begins refining 100,000 barrels per day of crude oil in Venezuela
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
In yet another strengthening of the red-green axis (that is, Marxism and Islam), Iran has begun processing nearly 100,000 barrels per day of its crude oil in socialist Venezuela as the two countries increasingly tighten relations. It’s happening fast: Last April, the two countries “announced a 20-year cooperation plan in the fields of oil, refining, petrochemicals, defense, tourism and culture, and agriculture,” with no information about the nature of “defense” cooperation. In May, Iran signed a $116 million contract with Venezuela to repair and expand its oil refinery. In June, “Maduro paid a visit to Tehran and signed a 20-year partnership agreement on cooperation with Iran in various fields.” Then in August, Venezuela provided Iran with 1,000,000 hectares of farmland for “cultivation.” One hectare is the size of two and a half football fields.
Last year, reports emerged that Venezuela was hosting Palestinian jihadists, including Hizballah and Fatah cells involved in money laundering, drug dealing, and jihad activity. In 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned an antiterrorism conference in Colombia about the Iranian proxy Hizballah’s presence in Venezuela, and an exiled former mayor, Antonio Ledezma, stated that Hizballah would participate in overseeing Venezuelan regional elections. Ledezma called Venezuela “a den for terrorist groups.” Venezuela also offered in February 2021 to supply natural gas to Mexico. By befriending Mexico, Iran and Hizballah will have a clear path to infiltrate the U.S., especially given the wide-open Southern border, which is thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats.
“Iran starts refining its crude oil in Venezuela: Oil minister,” Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide, October 18, 2022:
A first oil refinery processing Iranian crude oil outside of the country has started operations, according to a statement by the Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji who says the project in Venezuela will be replicated in other parts of the world.
Owji said on Sunday that Iran had started processing some 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude produced in Iranian oilfields in Venezuela’s El Palito refinery.
He said the project had come to fruition thanks to efforts by the Iranian Oil Ministry’s fuel department the NIORDC.
“This was an old dream that came true … this effort saw its starting point in Venezuela and plans are in place to replicate the project in other regions,” the minister was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
El Palito is located in central Venezuela. The NIORDC signed a $116 million contract with Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA in May to repair and expand the refinery….
Uproar Continues in France Over Muslim Charged with Torture, Rape, Murder of 12-Year-old French Girl
Lola Daviet: France reeling after young girl, 12, found dead in box
BY HUGH FITZGERALD
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
In France, there is a continuing uproar over the torture, rape, and murder of 12-year-old Lola Daviet by an Algerian woman. “The suspect had boasted about selling body parts,” one investigator told Le Parisien. “Evidence suggests that the girl was taken into the basement of the flat, where she was tortured, and raped, before being strangled and having her throat cut.” The woman had then stuffed her body in a suitcase and dragged it to the street.
The murderer, who had arrived in France on a student visa, had stayed on after her visa expired and been ordered to leave the country. But she did not do so, and what has enraged the country is the failure of the French state to enforce its own expulsion order. Fewer than 6% of those living in France illegally in 2021 were expelled. The rest simply continue to live illegally, in France, some of them for many years, without the overworked police taking action.
More on the story of Lola Daviet, and the wave of Muslim crime that has spread across France, can be found here: “France is now more dangerous than Mexico,” by Gavin Mortimer, Spectator, October 20, 2022:
France is in shock after the brutal killing of a 12-year-old girl in Paris last Friday. The details of how young Lola met her death are too gruesome to describe, but the news that a 24-year-old woman has been charged with the crime has deepened the disbelief. The fact that the woman is an Algerian national, living in France illegally after her student visa expired, has caused an uproar.…
For years the ruling class in France has rejected any link between immigration and crime, but slowly the omerta is cracking. Last week a book was published by Didier Lallement, until July the chief of police in Paris. Entitled The Necessary Order, the book is a damning indictment of the lawlessness endemic in the capital, where ‘one out of every two crimes are committed by a foreigner, often in an irregular situation’. This statistic was referenced by Le Pen in her question to Elisabeth Borne.
Those “foreigners” who commit half the crimes in Paris, consist almost entirely of maghrébins, North African Muslims, coming mainly from Algeria and Morocco.
Paris, or at least some of its suburbs, have long had a reputation for disorder, what the French describe as the ‘lost territories of the Republic.. So too has Marseille, where this year 28 people have been shot dead in drug-related killings, usually by men wielding assault rifles. Fifty-five percent of people arrested in Marseille are foreign, according to one government minister.
Those “lost territories of the Republic” are the no-go neighborhoods where an overwhelmingly Muslim population rejects the authority of the state, lives according to its own Islam-based code, and makes life dangerous for the French who still live in, or visit, these neighborhoods. The representatives of the French state now enter these no-go neighborhoods under police protection; the police themselves appear only in force.
In recent years, however, the crime and violence has spread to other towns and cities. Last month a global study ranked France as more dangerous than Mexico in terms of visitor safety, and one city was singled out for its chaos – Nantes. In 2004 Time Magazine described Nantes as the ‘most liveable [sic] city in France’ but it’s now considered more violent than Bogota in Colombia.…
In 2016 there were 283 cases of reported rape, assault and harassment in Nantes while in 2021 there were 562, the period when its Socialist mayor took pride in welcoming migrants into the city. Increasingly, women in Nantes are scared to go out after dark and perhaps they’re wise, given the response of mayor Johanna Rolland to last month’s rape. The police, she said, ‘will never be able to prevent a street rape, however terrible…because it is not their job’.
If it is not at present the job of the police “to prevent a street rape,” then it should be made part of their job. Put more state money into expanding the numbers of police, providing them with weapons so they are not outgunned by the criminals, and encouraging a much more aggressive policy of preemptive policing, by making lightening raids into no-go neighborhoods to disrupt criminal networks, especially those that control the drug trade, by seizing both drug hideouts and factories, and malefactors. Pay for more prosecutors and judges, to ensure that sentences are swift.
According to official figures released this month, 41 per cent of people arrested this year in Nantes are foreign. This is a statistic that not even the Socialist city council can duck. One of the deputy mayors, Pascal Bolo, admitted recently: ‘I am not saying that immigration equals delinquency, but too many of these young people are behind the attacks.’
These “foreign” people, these “young people” who are “behind the attacks,” are North Africans. Everyone in Nantes knows it, but it still cannot be said aloud. To specify that would make one vulnerable to charges of “Islamophobia” and, even more idiotically, “racism.” But many more people, following the examples of Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, are now willing to publicly identify the criminals as Muslims.
Violent crime and sexual assaults are also rising fast in Paris, up 30 per cent this year. There are some arrondissements where life is still rosy, but these districts tend to be where the political, cultural and media elite congregate. Elsewhere, life in the capital can be wretched, usually in the working-class districts like those where Lola lived.
The political and media elites of France live in the high-rent areas of Paris — and other cities — sheltered from the wave of Muslim crime that the rest of the population must endure. It has taken those cosseted elites a long time to recognize the problem, but now it has become impossible to avoid talking about it.
Didier Lallement’s prognosis is bleak. Unless France’s uncontrolled immigration is brought under control, he fears the Republic will before long experience a confrontation that will be ‘intense and destructive’.
More than just an “intense and destructive” confrontation, Lallemant has predicted, just like Pierre Bonchand, the former director of the French Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), a “civil war” in France, pitting Muslims against the indigenous French.
A new immigration bill will be tabled in January, one which the Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, promises will address the crisis. But his tough-talking was undermined last month by his president, who said that the best solution to the migrant crisis is to send them to the countryside to repopulate the ageing [sic] villages and towns.
Marine Le Pen retorted that the only place they should be sent is ‘back home.’
The best solution to the migrant – read “Muslim migrant” – crisis, is not to spread Muslims all over rural France, where they will simply multiply, and make life hell for the local French of modest means, but to end Muslim immigration, to immediately enforce all expulsion orders for those in the country illegally, and to pass legislation to make sure that, after serving their sentences, “foreign” (Muslim) criminals are immediately sent back to their countries of origin.
It will come to that. But how much longer will the French have to wait for their own government to adopt policies so sensible and so politically incorrect?
Kansas City: Muslim who worked for Defense Department lied about his contacts with ISIS
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
The Defense Department was happy to hire Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi. Doing so proved they weren’t “Islamophobic.” The Defense Department would never dream of hiring an opponent of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. That would be “Islamophobic” in their eyes, and the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) would be all over it, with lavish media coverage. And so this happens, and it will get hardly any media coverage at all.
“Kansas City man who worked for DoD lied about contacts with ISIS recruiters: Authorities,” by Bill Lukitsch, Kansas City Star, October 22, 2022:
A Kansas City area man once employed under contract as a translator in Afghanistan for the U.S. Department of Defense is accused of lying about his contacts with two recruiters aligned with the ISIS group that was responsible for the bombing of Kabul’s airport in August 2021, which killed 13 American service members.
Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi was arrested Sunday in Kansas City as part of an investigation led by the FBI’s local field office. He faces one charge in the U.S. District of Kansas of making false statements in reference to obtaining his security clearance, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.
According to an affidavit filed in the case by an FBI agent, Mohammadi sought that clearance for work as a contract linguist, and answered a question falsely on a federal form in August 2019. On that document, Mohammadi denied ever associating “with anyone involved in activities to further terrorism,” court papers say.
Before then, the FBI and federal prosecutors allege Mohammadi sought to provide support for two people who were actively seeking to recruit and train members of ISIS-K, a division of the terrorist organization centered in Afghanistan’s Khorasan province.
Investigators based their conclusions in part on a review of Mohammadi’s public Facebook posts, social media messages, and statements he allegedly made to a confidential informant in 2021. Mohammadi was also interviewed by the FBI in early October.
Among the evidence referenced in support of the criminal charge were records obtained from Western Union that allegedly show Mohammadi wired $2,000 from a branch in Lenexa to a person in Afghanistan with the aim of having $400 given to an ISIS-K recruiter, identified as Individual #1, in May 2018. Authorities allege Mohammadi also shared Facebook posts around the time concerning that person’s arrest by Afghani national security forces….
Proponents Admit Prop 3 Gives Mich. Minors Rights to ‘Reproductive Freedom’
BY MEGAN FOX
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
It appears that the work we’ve been doing here on PJ Media to bring awareness to the outrageously overbroad constitutional amendment in Michigan called Proposition 3 is working. People all over the country are sitting up in alarm after reading what could happen if Michiganders vote yes on the Planned Parenthood and ACLU-funded ballot initiative that would enshrine not only abortion into the constitution but the right for minors to have control over all reproductive-related medical questions including “sterilization.” The amendment is a clear attack on parental rights.
Today, I was targeted by someone calling himself the leading strategist in Michigan behind the Prop 3 initiative. For a leading strategist, he has very poor production skills. Joe Spaulding is the candidate for the Ottawa County Commissioner who thinks he’s very important and right about everything. Despite me spending several hours asking him directly if Prop 3 would include gender transitioning for minors under “sterilization” and “reproductive rights,” he refused to answer and instead claimed my questions were “trans bullying.”
In the following video, he attacks critics of Prop 3 by making a bizarre argument that people want to force 12-year-olds to have the babies of sex traffickers. He completely ignores the concerns of the critics of the amendment who have raised very serious questions about the overbroad nature of the amendment’s language. Will it erase the age of consent? Are minors included? What does sterilization mean? What laws will be invalidated by the amendment? Spaulding doesn’t want to answer any of those questions. Instead, he claims the political right is just lying and we should believe him instead of our experience with sneaky leftists who consistently push through nightmarish laws no one understands until it’s too late.
Related: Michigan Proposition 3 Could Usher in Sex-Change and Abortion Tourism for Minors
He even made a video just for me. I feel very special. Of course, the premise is false. I have never argued against Prop 3 on the basis of religion, although I do think it will threaten religious rights. I have argued against it based on the over-broad and vague language that could be interpreted in many ways that would undermine parental rights and put minors in danger of being taken to Michigan by trans activists for body-destroying surgeries and hormones. The left has already told us they will do this. The question is, do you believe them? Warning: language and bad logic ahead.
While Spaulding doesn’t have many followers on Twitter, another account dedicated to “Vote Yes on Prop 3” with 89,000 followers also attacked me at the same time. During that attack, they admitted that children are included in Prop 3. That was a mistake. They usually don’t say the quiet part out loud. In response to my question about minors including children, Kassandra Seven responded “girls, women, boys, and men,” while claiming it will still protect parental rights. How? If “every individual” has a right to abortion and sterilization, then why would parents be able to overrule a constitutional right? (Spoiler: They wouldn’t.)
Appellate attorney Stephanie Kimbrell told PJ Media, “The plain language of the proposed amendment is so broad with no age limits that even an average lawyer could make the argument that a 15-year-old has a constitutionally protected right to go get sterilized and change her gender at will if she chooses to do so. To ignore that possibility is naive and foolish.”
Nick Rekieta of Rekieta Law agreed that the wording of the amendment is open to wide interpretation. “A plain reading of the statute would suggest that sterilization is sterilization and gender affirmation is different, but it’s ambiguous and that ambiguity leaves an argument,” he told PJ Media. “The paths to get there are present,” he added.
The fact that the operatives on the ground in Michigan took the time to attack me on Twitter tells me a few things. My efforts to alert the public to the dangers of Prop 3 are working. The army of severely underfunded Davids on the ground in Michigan are now picking up stones to fling at the Goliath created by the millions the ACLU and Planned Parenthood poured into Michigan for this amendment, and the giant is getting nervous.
Around the same time a commercial made by Grace Church went viral, the Muslim dads of Dearborn revolted against the pornography in their school libraries. These two events together were more significant than one might think. Within a few days, Grace Church put Arabic subtitles on their Prop 3 commercial, leveraging a critical hole in the armor that Goliath didn’t see. Dearborn’s Muslim voting block just came into play.
[WATCH] Hundreds of Muslims Shut Down School Board Meeting Over LGBTQ+ Book Controversy
Parents of all faiths, creeds, and communities are angry. Leaders of the Vote No on Prop 3 initiative are reaching out to the Dearborn dads and offering their help and support. Dearborn dads are fed up with Democrats in Michigan who brought these indignities to them. Hassan Chami has become a rising star in Dearborn. He’s leading protests against Rashida Tlaib and encouraging the Arab community in Dearborn to vote against “progressives” who are acting against their beliefs.
Michigan has become the battleground for parental rights and it has led to a coalition no one saw coming — Muslims and Christians are uniting against the left. It’s beautiful. In my conversations both on the record and off with the dads in Dearborn, the motivation is strong and deep to change the political direction of Michigan. I’ve never seen people organize so quickly and effectively before. The candidates who pick up the Dearborn community voters are going to get a powerful group of people. I wouldn’t want them organizing against me but I would sure welcome them to my side.
Christen Pollo of Citizens to Support MI Women and Children (send support here) sat down with me for an interview about what Prop 3 could do to the rights of parents in Michigan among other things. And now that parent’s rights organizations know that Dearborn families are worried about the same issues and turning on the Democrats, the unity in Michigan is about to get terrifyingly real for Michigan Democrats. The shift in the air is palpable and the giant is quaking. Take heart. The stones are in the air.
WINNING: Request Granted to Depose Fauci and Other Biden Officials in Censorship Lawsuit
BY STACEY LENNOX
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Today, District Court Judge Terry Doughty granted the National Civil Liberties Alliance’s (NCLA’s) requests for depositions in the censorship lawsuit, State of Missouri ex rel. Schmitt, et al. v. Biden, et al. Earlier interrogatories in this lawsuit identified 45 federal officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the CDC, Dr. Fauci’s NIAID, the Office of the Surgeon General, and others who communicated with social media companies about “misinformation” and censorship.
Now, the plaintiffs will have the opportunity to depose a total of eight Biden officials. The following officials will be required to give depositions: NIAID Director and White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci; former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki; FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan; Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; CDC Chief of the Digital Media Branch Carol Crawford; and Acting Coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center Daniel Kimmage. The plaintiffs will need to select one of the individuals from the following pairs to depose: Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty OR former White House Senior COVID-19 Advisory Andrew Slavitt; and CISA Director Jen Easterly OR CISA official Lauren Protentis.
Jenin Younes, Litigation Counsel at NCLA, and the legal team based the deposition requests on the information obtained in the interrogatories. The plaintiffs believe those named have specific individual details by virtue of their position. For example, CDC Chief of the Digital Media Branch Carol Crawford leads the agency’s digital media activities. Interrogatory responses revealed Crawford was holding regular “Be On the Lookout” meetings with staff from the social media companies. In these meetings, attendees reviewed specific social media posts containing “misinformation.”
In the case of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the plaintiffs seek specific underlying information regarding some communications that are already public. Younes cited the email exchange between Fauci and former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins discussing a takedown of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration and NCLA clients Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff. Fauci also did not complete or sign his own interrogatory as is customary.
Judge Doughty noted this breach of custom in his ruling (emphasis added): “Lastly, Plaintiffs argue that Dr. Fauci’s credibility has been in question on matters related to supposed COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ since 2020. Specifically, the Plaintiffs state that Dr. Fauci has made public statements on the efficacy of masks, the percentage of the population needed for herd immunity, NIAID’s funding of ‘gain-of-function’ virus research in Wuhan, the lab-leak theory, and more. Plaintiffs urge that his comments on these important issues are relevant to the matter at hand and are further reasons why Dr. Fauci should be deposed. Plaintiffs assert that they should not be required to simply accept Dr. Fauci’s ‘self-serving blanket denials’ that were issued from someone other than himself at face value. The Court agrees.”
According to Younes, the lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief. None of the plaintiffs are seeking a financial award. “The plaintiffs want the court to declare it is a First Amendment violation for the government to be involved in the social media companies’ viewpoint discrimination.” While the case centers on censorship of information related to COVID-19, such a declaration could have broad-reaching implications for censorship of information on other issues in the public square.
Based on continued disclosures in discovery, it has become clear that the federal censorship enterprise is enormous and far-reaching. The plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint names 67 defendants, spanning at least eleven federal agencies and sub-agencies. The decision orders that the depositions get completed in the next 30 days. The defendants can appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court, which may cause a delay.
Recently, the Fifth Circuit has ruled on some meaningful cases. It is the court that struck down President Biden’s vaccine mandate. In NetChoice v. Paxton, it also stayed an injunction against a Texas law that prohibits social media companies with more than 50 million users from engaging in viewpoint censorship by removing it or hiding it. The law also restricts email providers from preventing email transmission under most circumstances. It makes exceptions for content that is obscene, illegal, or that contains malicious code. And it requires covered platforms to provide detailed reports about their content moderation policies.
“For the first time, Dr. Fauci and seven other federal officials responsible for running an unlawful censorship enterprise will have to answer questions under oath about the nature and extent of their communications with tech companies,” Younes declared. “We look forward to learning more about just how far these government actors went in ensuring that Americans heard only one perspective about Covid-19: the government’s.”