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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 8 months ago

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By: Adam Zivo

Published: Jun 6, 2024

At a trendy cafe in the bohemian Florentin district of Tel Aviv, Niv Nissim, a 30-year-old gay Israeli, described the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas as “maybe the worst moment for everyone who lives in Israel.” He spoke of an acquaintance who perished at the Nova Festival massacre. “He went to dance and he was murdered. Most of the people that got murdered and kidnapped are people with the same values that I have — peace advocates,” Nissim said.

He was shocked to see international queer activists glorify Hamas in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre. “They don’t know what Hamas is. They think Hamas is like a group of superheroes — and that’s the thing. It’s a terror organization. Same as al-Qaida,” Nissim said. “For gay people around the world to be pro-Hamas right now is crazy. And it’s wrong.”

After Hamas massacred more than 1,100 Israeli civilians, LGBTQ activists across the western world mobilized. On city streets and university campuses, they called for the destruction of Israel and carried “Queers for Palestine” banners alongside rainbow Palestinian flags. Claiming that queer and Palestinian advocacy are inextricably linked, they minimized the brutality of Hamas, who they portrayed as freedom fighters.

What are we going to do now? What can we do? How could we fight for human rights (in Gaza) after what happened?

-- Niv Nissim, talking about October 7

Their behaviour ignited a global debate about western queer activism. Commentators noted that not only does Hamas murder gay people, Israel is the only country in the Middle East that supports queer rights. Was it not delusional for activists to side with Hamas?

And what exactly did people mean when they shouted, “Queers for Palestine”? For some, the slogan represented a principled commitment to the human rights of the Palestinian people, without supporting Hamas. But for others, it meant the dismantling of the Israeli state, which implies the ethnic cleansing of millions of Jews, and the glorification Hamas’s war crimes.

Throughout this debate, the everyday lives of LGBTQ Israelis and Palestinians — their fears, trauma and triumphs — were largely ignored. In May, I visited Tel Aviv through a trip spon.sored by the non-profit Exigent Foundation, a Jewish group that focuses on public education. Arriving a few days early, I independently spoke with queer people in the city to find out what their lives were really like, what they thought of the war and how they felt about western activists’ views on the conflict.

I interviewed four gay Israeli men, each with distinct experiences and perspectives. They were by no means a comprehensive cross-section of Israel’s LGBTQ community, but they opened a window into their world. Amid tight timelines, I was unable to secure interviews with gay Palestinians, who can be notoriously difficult to track down because they fear revealing themselves, so as an imperfect substitute, I asked my Israeli interviewees to share their insights on them.

These are their stories.

Actors and meteors

Niv Nissim is an actor who gained moderate fame after starring in “Sublet,” a 2020 Israeli film about a gay travel writer who rents an apartment from a film student. Unsparing in its depiction of gay hookup culture, the widely acclaimed film could not possibly have been made anywhere else in the Middle East.

Nissim said he has not personally experienced homophobia in Israel. “I’m not scared of walking hand-in-hand with my partner,” he said, before clarifying this was likely because he lives in Tel Aviv, which exists within its own cosmopolitan bubble. Homosexuals from across the country, indeed the entire world, flock to the city, with official statistics suggesting that roughly a quarter of the local population identifies as LGBTQ.

[ Niv Nissim, a 30-year-old actor and a gay Persian-Israeli living in Tel Aviv in May 2024. He says he empathizes with Palestinians notes they are a “big part” of the city’s underground queer scene. ]

Gay life is different in Israel’s smaller towns, as well as in Jerusalem, which is known for being religious and conservative. In those places, being openly gay could sometimes be “frightening,” he said, because of the possibility that religious Arabs or Orthodox Jews might beat you. Still, he said he felt extremely lucky to be Israeli considering the lethal homophobia elsewhere in the Middle East. His own family had fled from Iran, where being gay is legally punishable by death.

Palestinians are “a big part” of Tel Aviv’s gay community, Nissim said. One of his close friends is a Palestinian fashion designer who organizes parties in the city’s underground voguing scene (voguing is a flamboyant style of dance closely associated with queer culture). “It’s not even a weird thing. We don’t look at them as different or something,” he said.

Many gay Palestinian men, facing violence back home, escape into Israel to live in relative safety. Organizations across the country help them find shelter and get back on their feet (the same services are also provided to queer people fleeing Orthodox Jewish families). “If you are a gay person who needs help, no matter where you come from, you’ll get help,” said Nissim.

He said he was unaware of any serious anti-Palestinian racism in Tel Aviv’s queer scene. “(It is) really weird if someone will be racist here in the gay community.” Nissim is a Persian-Israeli, and while the relationship between the Ashkenazis (European-descent Jews) and Mizrahis (Middle Eastern-descent Jews) may have been fraught decades ago, everyone is now quite “blended.”

For gay people around the world to be pro-Hamas right now is crazy. And it’s wrong.

-- Niv Nissim, 30, Actor

Like many artists, Nissim and his friends are politically progressive and empathize with the Palestinians. “It’s not a real life. They don’t have real rights. They can’t go anywhere. Kind of open-air prisoners,” he said. For much of his life, he advocated for Palestinian self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution. “We wanted to say, enough with the oppression. Enough with the war — both sides — let’s not advocate war. Let’s advocate peace.”

Under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Nissim said artistic productions that criticized the government or featured positive Israeli-Arab relationships — “impossible love stories,” he described them — faced increasing censorship. Over time, he and other Israelis came to see Netanyahu and his allies as corrupt and autocratic. “It was starting to look like a very Third World country.”

In a bid to stay in power, Netanyahu formed a coalition government with several ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties in November 2022. Two months later, the new government announced its intention to impose controversial reforms that would curtail the independence and influence of the country’s judiciary.

While Israelis rebelled against Netanyahu’s reforms in nationwide protests, many within the LGBTQ community worried their rights would be rolled back. Nissim said it is rare to find gay supporters of the present government; it’s like “shooting yourself in the leg,” he said.

Neither same-sex nor interfaith couples can marry within Israel, as only religious marriages can be conducted in the country. However, Israel fully recognizes international civil marriages, including same-sex marriages, so queer Israelis simply tie the knot abroad. Some of these marriages occur over Zoom, through a legal loophole that allows officiants in Utah to provide virtual ceremonies to couples anywhere in the world — these marriages are quick, cheap and valid under U.S. law. Fearing Netanyahu’s coalition partners might restrict same-sex marriage rights, Nissim and his boyfriend decided to get a “Utah marriage” last year, just in case.

Then Oct. 7 happened, and the political tumult of the preceding months was, briefly, vaporized. In recent weeks, large protests against Netanyahu’s coalition government have resumed, especially in Tel Aviv.

Like the rest of Israeli society, a chasm now exists within Tel Aviv’s gay community — one side calls for a ceasefire and the other supports Netanyahu’s plans to fully eradicate Hamas, whatever the cost. Nissim supports the first camp, though he could see both sides.

His heart was filled with uncertainty. He said he used to chant, “Free Palestine,” but now felt he no longer had the right to do so while there were still hostages in Gaza. “What are we going to do now? What can we do? How could we fight for human rights after what happened? How can we do it?” he asked.

He understood the hate by both Palestinians and Israelis. “What happened was the worst thing — for me, for them, for everyone. Killing and raping and burning and taking people. And not only people, like good people, who fight for peace. It’s the worst thing … When gay people wanted our rights to be given to us, we didn’t burn buildings or kidnap people. We didn’t kill people. We shouted and we went to the streets. We protested for our rights and for peace,” he said.

Nissim has learned to adapt to the heightened tensions of war. When Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in April, he and his boyfriend simply sat outside and watched the Iron Dome shoot them down. They looked like meteors or shooting stars. “It’s surreal, but this is our life here. You have to develop some kind of rough skin. And just somehow be cool.”

A soldier finds his home

Michael Tubur, a 31-year-old gay soldier with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sits at a sunlit park, recounting his experiences evacuating wounded soldiers from Gaza last October and November. “It’s very difficult to do surgery on the field. Our job was just to give them the first aid, just to stop the bleeding and stuff, and take them outside very fast,” he said, smiling often.

It took two weeks for Tubur’s unit to enter the Gaza Strip, as the IDF had to ensure that the surrounding Israeli land had been cleared of Hamas fighters. By that point, Gaza had been heavily bombed. The destruction was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

One of the first things the IDF did was take everyone’s phones away. Hamas had used fake social media accounts featuring stolen photos of beautiful women, to install spyware on Israeli soldiers’ devices, allowing them to eavesdrop and track their locations. For three weeks, Tubur was completely cut off from the world. The situation was tense and uncertain, and he felt afraid.

“At the beginning, we thought that we are going to see an actual army. And we discovered it’s not going to be like that. They went into the tunnels. You don’t know where they’re going to come out from,” he said.

Hamas fighters would ambush soldiers with rocket launchers or guns and then melt away. After these attacks, it was imperative for the Israelis to confirm whether they were being lured into a trap. On several occasions, Hamas purposely used smaller assaults to attract medics and then followed up with larger, lethal bombardments. Tubur’s unit would wait on standby, keys in the ignition, ready to race in once they knew the situation was reasonably safe.

Suddenly you saw gay warriors and commanders, like major commanders, people who were in the intelligence, in the Air Force, in everything. Then you saw gay guys who were killed.

-- Michael Tubur, 31, Soldier

“You just act. You don’t have time to think. Someone else’s life is on the line,” he said. “There were days that nothing happened — and you’re just sitting and doing nothing. And days when everything went from zero to 100, and I was just dying to go back inside the sleeping bag and close my eyes.”

He maintained the IDF did its best to minimize civilian casualties amid a “very, very complicated situation.”

At the beginning of the war, Israeli soldiers would automatically attack unknown individuals within a 400-metre radius around them, he said, but the response to anyone further away was scrutinized and debated. To protect civilians, that radius was later reduced to 50 metres. That meant Hamas fighters could freely roam nearby so long as they were unarmed and pretended to be non-combatants. These fighters would then access weapons caches hidden throughout Gaza, launch lone-wolf ambushes, and then abandon their weapons and pretend once again to be regular Palestinians.

“So, then the mission became much harder. And the progress was very, very slow — because now you need to move house by house, building by building, and make sure there is no weapons there,” said Tubur. Sometimes the IDF would miss caches or tunnels, which allowed Hamas to attack from behind.

While critics, including the International Court of Justice, claimed that Israel is committing “genocide,” Tubur found this accusation perplexing. If that was true, he said, the IDF could have simply been ordered to “just bomb everything,” rather than commit to a complicated ground operation at the cost of Israeli lives.

“I’m very sad that people got killed — children and mothers. But it’s a war and war is complicated. Everyone wants to do the best and try to make as less casualties as they can.”

Tubur, who has Arab friends, believed that Israelis and Palestinians could peacefully coexist. But this would require Palestinian imams to embrace more moderate interpretations of Islam, he said.

[ Michael Tubur, a 31-year-old gay soldier with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), shown in Tel Aviv in May 2024. He hopes the Israel-Hamas war at least helps conservative families broaden their perceptions of the LGBTQ community and be more accepting of their gay sons. ]

In some ways, he was grateful for the war and how it helped show traditional Israelis that gay men deserve equal rights as they are “equal in death.” Many traditionalists believed that queer people simply party in Tel Aviv, parade naked on the streets and disregard everyone else’s troubles, Tubur said. “Then suddenly you saw gay warriors and commanders, like major commanders, people who were in the intelligence, in the Air Force, in everything. Then you saw gay guys who were killed.”

Shattering stereotypes is important for Tubur. He came from a religious family that had never seen a gay person until he came out of the closet. They thought all LGBTQ people were drag queens or transgender, which made it hard for him to accept himself. He struggled to reconcile his homosexuality with his masculine persona and some of the traditional values he cherished, such as starting a family.

When he finally came out at age 26, his parents assumed he was a “special gay,” because he didn’t fit the stereotype. Over time, they met his gay friends, including some in the military, and realized they were just people.

Tubur hoped the war would help other conservative families broaden their perceptions of what it meant to be LGBTQ, and make it easier for them to accept their gay sons. “There was a story about someone (who) was in the closet and got killed. And his boyfriend posted a letter where he said, ‘I cannot tell you your name. But I miss you so much. And I cannot share it with anyone because you’re in the closet.’ When I read it, I was crying, because how can someone bear this kind of pain by himself?”

Military service is mandatory for almost all Israelis, which makes the IDF a microcosm of wider society: progressives and conservatives serve side by side. During the quieter days in Gaza, Tubur and his comrades spent hours talking and learning about their lives. “You are a unit, and you need to sit next to each other, be with each other. You don’t have any other option,” he said.

He recalled a fellow soldier, an Orthodox Jew, who told him that being gay was unnatural. Rather than take offence, Tubur talked things out with him. They did not agree on many issues, Tubur said, but they developed an understanding.

“He still doesn’t accept the way I live, but now he knows how it is. He knows what it means. He knows how it feels. I think that, in the long term, this thing’s done very good. Because when the war will be over, people will go to their houses, people will go to other places, but they are a different person — you understand?

“This time, he won’t be so against the gays. He will think a little bit before he will shout,” Tubur said.

The filmmaker and gay Palestinians

Yariv Mozer, a documentary filmmaker in his 40s, met me at the Haaliya Community Country, a new recreational building that acts as a de facto hub for Tel Aviv’s LGBTQ community. Rainbow flags hung above the pool and the gym was packed with gay men. As we entered, a trans woman who helped manage the place welcomed us warmly.

Ten years ago, Mozer directed a documentary, “The Invisible Men,” which followed the lives of three gay Palestinians who had fled to Israel and then found asylum in the west. Through this film and other projects, he is keenly aware of the challenges gay Palestinian men face.

[ Yariv Mozer, a documentary filmmaker in his 40s, at the Haaliya Community Country in Tel Aviv, in May 2024. He is in favour of a two-state solution that has nothing to do with Hamas. “Hamas is a brutal, extreme, fundamentalist religious group, which believes in the power of violence to achieve their goals.” ]

Not only is Palestinian culture deeply religious and conservative, Mozer explained, but communities are also organized into sprawling tribes where a family’s reputation is paramount. “You can be gay, so long as no one knows about it. But if someone will catch you or see you, or you will be exposed as being gay, this can harm the honour of the family. So you hear a lot about honour killings and punishments.”

These murders are tolerated by local authorities and occur in parallel to state-backed violence against sexual minorities. One of the characters in Mozer’s film was tied up by his father after his family learned of his homosexuality. The man escaped with his life, but not before his father sliced his face with a knife, leaving him with a permanent scar.

Mozer said both Israeli and Palestinian security forces prey upon the vulnerability of gay Palestinians and blackmail them into acting as intelligence assets. “A lot of men are very much afraid of being openly gay or being suspected as gays, because they will know that they can be exploited by both sides.” Mozer recalled the story of one of his interviewees who the Palestinian Authority had suspected was a gay collaborator. They interrogated him for hours, beat him and held his head in a toilet.

Caught between violent relatives and predatory security forces, many gay Palestinians from the West Bank flee to Israel for safety (those in Gaza, where the borders are sealed, escape to Egypt). But even in Israeli cities, they cannot breathe easily. In 2022, a 22-year-old gay Palestinian man, Ahmad Abu Marhia, was kidnapped into the West Bank and beheaded — he was waiting to emigrate to Canada at the time of his murder.

The Israeli government has historically refused to grant asylum to queer Palestinians, out of fear that could lead to a flood of false claimants, said Mozer. In recognition of the genuine dangers this population faces, the government instead issues temporary residency permits on humanitarian grounds, which must be renewed several times a year.

Approximately 90 Palestinians hold such permits but, until 2022, they were not allowed to legally work, which forced many of them to survive in the underground economy, particularly the sex trade. Those who cannot secure these permits often choose to simply live undocumented, as illegal migrants.

With such a precarious existence, many of these queer Palestinians eventually seek asylum in the West. But in February, the Tel Aviv Court for Administrative Affairs ruled that Palestinians fleeing persecution based on sexual orientation or gender expression are now eligible for full asylum. The wider implications of this decision, including on third-country asylum claims, remains unclear.

While filming his documentary, Mozer found that gay Palestinians were “very much isolated, with a very small group of people that they could trust.” He said they were often afraid of meeting or dating Israelis because of issues with racism. He speculated that Nissim’s contradictory experience might be a generational difference.

Hamas represents humanity in the most darkest times of our history. That is Hamas. No freedom for women. No equal rights for LGBTQ.

-- Yariv Mozer, documentary filmmaker

Mozer is empathetic to the Palestinians, but has a scathing hatred of Hamas. “I’m in favour of a two-state solution. That has nothing to do with Hamas. Hamas is a brutal, extreme, fundamentalist religious group, which believes in the power of violence to achieve their goals.”

Seeing Western queer activists romanticize Hamas in the aftermath of Oct. 7 felt like a betrayal to him. “I see it and I’m amazed. How stupid are you? You are building them to become a legitimate part of this world … It’s shocking,” he said.

“You’re almost unable to be openly gay in Ramallah. So, you want to be openly gay in Gaza? No way. That’s the most extreme religious society in this area of the world.”

The activists are not helping the Palestinian cause, he said, and in fact, are making the situation worse through their embrace of extreme and polarizing rhetoric. “Wake up to understand that you don’t share values with those people. Hamas represents humanity in the most darkest times of our history. That is Hamas. No freedom for women. No equal rights for LGBTQ. All the things that we value as democratic countries — freedom of speech, freedom of art, music, dance. All of this doesn’t exist there.”

Mozer is now working on a documentary that follows 15 survivors of the Nova Festival massacre, one of whom is gay. Upon reviewing the footage shot by Hamas’s fighters, he noticed that some of the terrorists repeatedly jeered “omo, omo, omo” — homosexual — at captured male Israelis who had piercings or earrings. “It’s a small moment that explains so much about Hamas and the way they treat gay men,” he said.

Mozer did not have kind words to say about Netanyahu, either. He called his far-right coalition “one of the most negative things that happened to our country. It’s a mixture of all the evil and bad things that this country could bring together in one government.”

[ The pool at the Haaliya Community Country in Tel Aviv, Israel, a new recreational building that acts as a hub for Tel Aviv’s LGBTQ community. ]

Mozer came out of the closet in the 2000s, when the Israeli LGBTQ community was bursting into the mainstream. He is grateful for the generations before him who, through persistent legal activism, set the stage for LGBTQ acceptance in the late 1980s and 1990s. “A lot of gay men had to sue the country for their own equal rights,” he said.

While he has seen LGBTQ rights steadily improve, he believed influential ministers in the Netanyahu government wanted to undo some of that progress. “They wanted to make a big legal revolution in Israel and change a lot of things and take them backwards. They didn’t succeed because there were a lot of protests,” he said.

Mozer said that most of Israel’s queer community falls within the political centre-left, like himself. While the country’s conservatives want to erode LGBTQ rights, the far left is anti-Zionist and does not support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. “I see myself as Zionist. My grandparents came here from the Holocaust. I truly believe that this is the right place for Jews to live independently, but not at the expense of the Palestinian people.”

Amid war, debates about social policy have temporarily taken a back seat for many Israelis. “Now, the main goal of all of us is to bring (the hostages) back home, stop the war, go into ceasefire. It’s this goal that is above everything,” said Mozer.

A drag legend gives up

Tal Kallai, one of Israel’s most famous drag queens, who performs under the name “Talula Bonet,” talks on a patio beside the Tel Aviv Municipal LGBT Community Centre, The conversation is repeatedly interrupted by gay men who greet and hug him.

Kallai was born and raised in Jerusalem, where, despite its conservative reputation, had a vibrant gay scene in the early 2000s. He wanted to be an actor as a teenager, but found that theatre roles for women were much more interesting than those for men. At age 16, he saw his first drag show at a gay bar and fell in love with the art form.

[ Tal Kallai is one of Israel’s most well-known drag queens, Talula Bonet. He is surprised that there are Western queer activists who support Hamas: “You are supporting a movement that the first thing it will do is kill you because you’re queer — you’re so stupid.” ]

At first, drag was just a hobby for him — one he continued to develop after moving to Tel Aviv to study at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio. Then he was scouted by a local producer to do professional performances in the city, so he and three other drag queens from Jerusalem created a troupe called the Holy Wigs.

In the beginning, the Holy Wigs saw themselves as more intelligent and cultured than their competitors in Tel Aviv. “We weren’t doing like folk songs and stuff. We were doing musicals and theatre. We were very snobbish. We thought all the drag in Israel is so low-level,” said Kallai. Their ambition was encouraged by “drag mothers” (industry mentors), who taught them how to produce more theatrical performances.

As a professionally trained actor, Kallai wanted to move drag from the bars into the theatres. So that’s what the Holy Wigs did. Soon fans brought their parents and heterosexual friends, who were more comfortable seeing drag in a “respectable” cultural setting. Things snowballed from there.

With their popularity skyrocketing, the Holy Wigs hired a director and costume designer and went on tour. “We did all the history of Israel in drag, and it was very funny,” said Kallai. There were over 100 costume changes during the show, which they performed more than 350 times around Israel, predominantly in larger venues and theatres.

Throughout, Kallai continued his regular drag performances in Tel Aviv’s gay bars, including a weekly open stage event for new drag artists. He hosted this event for 11 years, helping countless performers establish themselves. “Now there is a very big drag culture in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and in Israel,” said Kallai. “It’s 50 shades of drag.”

He recalled that during the early 2000s, gay Palestinians in Jerusalem had “their own community and their own parties — because they were very under the radar and not legally there.” The scene was “very big,” but hidden, with the use of “secret places with secret codes.”

There were even two Palestinian drag queens in the city during that period. One was an Israeli-Arab, married with six children. “He snuck around them and did the shows without his wife knowing,” said Kallai. The other queen was an illegal migrant from Gaza who eventually received asylum in Sweden. Kallai was glad that the Gazan queen found a safe home, even if she had stolen one of his wigs. “If this is the price I had to pay for her freedom, I’m happy,” he said.

I’m not trying to run from reality. I’m trying to deal with the reality and this trauma that we all had here.

-- Tal Kallai, aka Talula Bonet

Drag culture may be popular in Israel, but there has always been opposition to it. Kallai recalled seeing “lots of bad responses” when he performed at Jerusalem’s first Pride parade in 2002. The following years were not much better for Jerusalem Pride. In 2005, an ultra-Orthodox Israeli, Yishai Schlissel, stabbed three participants with a kitchen knife. Kallai said that another protester attempted to stab one of his friends, either the year before or after. “He passed me with the knife and went to her, but the police arrested him.”

Today, at Pride events, domestic opposition has been replaced with international scorn from anti-Israeli activists. As an ambassador of Israeli culture, Kallai has performed all over the world, sometimes with the spon.sorship of the Israeli government. In the early 2010s, a man spit on Kallai’s face at Berlin Pride after learning he was Israeli. Around that same time, at London Pride, pro-Palestinian protesters amassed in the audience of one of his shows, shouting and waving flags. He said that many famous drag queens are afraid to perform in Israel because of the potential backlash. For the ones who do come, “you can’t see any of it on their social media.”

For many years it was “very trendy” to be anti-Israeli within the LGBTQ community, but he was surprised when, after Oct. 7, Western queer activists supported Hamas. “You are supporting a movement that the first thing it will do is kill you because you’re queer — you’re so stupid.”

He used to spend considerable time on social media explaining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to anyone who would listen. He even made a viral Instagram video, where he and another drag queen, in full costume, deconstructed the contradictions of “Queers for Palestine” social influencers. But it was like “talking with deaf persons,” he said.

After getting ignorant comments from internationally famous drag queens, he decided to stop caring about what the global drag community thinks. He gave up explaining.

When the theatres reopened after Oct. 7, Kallai debated whether it was appropriate to start performing again. He decided Israelis wanted to be cheered up, so he returned to the stage. But he emphasized that what he does is not “escapism.”

“Many people are using this word, you know, escapism, escapism. Like, I’m drinking beer with my friend — it’s escapism. I’m walking on the beach — escapism. No, I’m not trying to run from reality. I’m trying to deal with the reality and this trauma that we all had here,” he said.

He once advocated for Palestinian rights, but Oct. 7 changed everything. He was struck by how the residents of the kibbutzim around the Gaza Strip were gleefully murdered, even though they were “peace fighters,” who helped sick Palestinians find medical treatment in Israel.

“In the past, I was a person who believed with all his heart that there is a partner for peace. Now, I’m not sure,” Kallai said.

Do you think there's an LGBTQ swimming pool in Gaza?

🤔

#Adam Zivo #Israel #LGBTQ #Queers for Palestine #palestine #pro palestine #pro hamas #hamas supporters #hamas terrorism #islamic terrorism #terrorism supporters #religion is a mental illness

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christinamac1 · 1 month ago

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How Ukraine is Helping the HTS Militants Who Overthrew Assad

Scheerpost, December 29, 2024 , By Stavroula Pabst / Responsible Statecraft As Islamist, al-Qaida-linked group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) overruns Syria amid President Assad’s sudden ouster, evidence suggesting Ukraine has assisted the group’s triumph continues to mount. Namely, the Washington Post reported Tuesday that Ukraine sent 150 first-person-view drones and 20 drone operators to Idlib…

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newsverse · 2 months ago

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Syria latest: Syrians celebrate in the streets as Russian media says Assad has arrived in Moscow

Syrians poured into streets in celebration on Sunday after a stunning rebel advance reached the capital, ending the Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule. Russian state news agencies were reporting that President Bashar Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow and were given asylum. Russia said Assad left the country after negotiations with rebel groups and that he had given instructions to transfer power peacefully.

Joyful crowds gathered in central squares in Damascus, waving the Syrian revolutionary flag. Others ransacked the presidential palace and residence.

Abu Mohammed al-Golani, a former al-Qaida commander who cut ties with the group years ago leads the biggest rebel faction in Syria and is poised to chart the country’s future.

He made his first public appearance since fighters entered the Damascus suburbs Saturday, at the capital’s sprawling Umayyad Mosque, and called himself by his given name, Ahmad al-Sharaa. He said Assad’s fall was “a victory to the Islamic nation. The rapidly developing events have shaken the region. Lebanon said it was closing all its land border crossings with Syria except for one that links Beirut with Damascus. Jordan closed a border crossing with Syria, too. Israel has issued warnings to villages in southern Syria and its forces seized a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

#usa #usa politics #usa news #russia

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bllsbailey · 6 months ago

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Defense Secretary Overrides Plea Agreement With 9/11 Defendants

youtube

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday overrode a plea agreement reached earlier this week for the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two other defendants, reinstating them as death-penalty cases.

The move comes two days after the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announced that the official appointed to oversee the war court, retired Brig. Gen. Susan Escallier, had reached plea deals with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accused accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, in the attacks.

Letters sent to families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the al-Qaida attacks said the plea agreement stipulated the three would serve life sentences at most.

Austin wrote in an order released Friday night that “in light of the significance of the decision,” he had decided that the authority to make a decision on accepting the plea agreements was his. He nullified Escallier’s approval.

Some families of the attack’s victims condemned the deal for cutting off any possibility of full trials and possible death penalties. Republicans were quick to fault the Biden administration for the deal, although the White House said after it was announced it had no knowledge of it.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a member of the Armed Services Committee, earlier Friday had condemned the plea deal on social media as “disgraceful." Cotton said he had introduced legislation that would mandate the 9/11 defendants face trial and the possibility of the death penalty.

Mohammed, whom the U.S. describes as the main plotter of the attack that crashed hijacked passenger planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, and the other two defendants had been expected to formally enter their pleas under the deal as soon as next week.

The U.S. military commission overseeing the cases of five defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks has been stuck in pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody has been among the challenges slowing the cases, and left the prospect of full trials and verdicts still uncertain, in part because of the inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture.

J. Wells Dixon, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented defendants at Guantanamo as well as other detainees there who have been cleared of any wrongdoing, had welcomed the plea bargains as the only feasible way to resolve the long-stalled and legally fraught 9/11 cases.

Dixon accused Austin on Friday of “bowing to political pressure and pushing some victim family members over an emotional cliff" by rescinding the plea deals.

Lawyers for the two sides have been exploring a negotiated resolution to the case for about 1 1/2 years. President Joe Biden blocked an earlier proposed plea bargain in the case last year, when he refused to offer requested presidential guarantees that the men would be spared solitary confinement and provided trauma care for the torture they underwent while in CIA custody.

A fourth Sept. 11 defendant at Guantanamo had been still negotiating on a possible plea agreement.

The military commission last year ruled the fifth defendant mentally unfit to stand trial. A military medical panel cited post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, and linked it to torture and solitary confinement in four years in CIA custody before transfer to Guantanamo.

#Youtube

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gary232 · 10 months ago

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Globalisation is prompting a reformulation of the common Muslim belief that Islam is not only a religion but also a complete way of life, which in Islamic discourse is known as the 'one religion, one culture' paradigm. Instantaneous and worldwide communication links are now allowing Muslims and non-Muslims to experience the reality of different Islamic cultures. Such experiences reveal not only what is common among Muslims but also what is different. For example, gender relations and dress codes for Muslim women are structured in different ways in Muslim countries like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

Similarly, there are vast differences in the religious practices of Abangan or syncretic Javanese Muslims and Wahabi Muslims (followers of the strict practice insisted by Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahab) of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This realisation has provoked an unfavourable reaction among some groups of Islamic intellectuals towards this 'hybridity' (syncretic and heterogenous Islam). It has caused some radical Islamic movements to seek to replace 'hybridity' with the 'authentic' Islamic way of life. In Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, Islamic scholars like Azyumardi Azra have rejected the ideologies of radical Islamic organizations like Front Pembela Islam, Jamaat Muslimen Indonesia and Al Qaida because they see these organizations as advocating 'Arabic Islam'(authentic Islam) and rejecting the accommodative Indonesian Islam (hybrid Islam).

The struggle between 'hybridity' and 'authenticity' represents perhaps the most important challenge of globalization for the Muslim ummah. It is one of the underlying causes of the emergence of Islamic fundamentalist movements. Fundamentalism refers to a strategy used by followers of Islamic 'purists' like Maududi, Syed Qutb, and Ayatollah Khomenei to assert their own construction of religious identity and Islamic social order as the exclusive basis for a re-created political and social order. They feel that Islamic religious identity is at risk and is being eroded by cultural and religious hybridity. They try to fortify their interpretations of religious ways of being through their selective retrieval and particular reading of Islamic doctrines and practices from a sacred past.

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yhwhrulz · 10 months ago

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alnasaronlinequranacademy · 11 months ago

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shape · 1 year ago

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Das Erkaufen von Ruhe bei der Hamas hat das Gegenteil bewirkt. Die von Obama vorangetriebenen Waffenstillstände hatten dies jedoch zum Standardplan gemacht.

Israel finanzierte jedoch nicht die Hamas. Es erlaubte Katar, Geld zu transferieren. So ungeheuerlich das auch war, es war Teil desselben Systems, in dessen Rahmen Israel den Gazastreifen mit Wasser und Strom versorgte. Und das gesamte Abkommen, in dessen Rahmen Israel der Palästinensischen Autonomiebehörde, die nicht besser ist als die Hamas, regelmässig Geld überweist und Dienstleistungen erbringt.

Die Osloer Verträge waren im Wesentlichen ein Abkommen, bei dem Israel den Terroristen im Gegenzug für den Frieden Gebiete und Geld zur Verfügung stellte. Dieses Abkommen ist, wie alle folgenden, gescheitert.

Und das werden sie immer.

Dies war die Politik der Clinton-Regierung, die die Osloer Abkommen vorantrieb. Seitdem hat fast jede Regierung Israel dazu gedrängt, im Gegenzug für den Frieden Zugeständnisse zu machen. Der Besuch von Präsident Joe Biden in Israel gipfelte darin, dass Israel gezwungen wurde, erneut Dienstleistungen für das Hamas-Gebiet zu erbringen.

Das ist der Kontext.

Die Hamas ist kein Monster, das Israel erschaffen hat, sondern ein Monster, das aus dem Islam hervorgegangen ist und von muslimischen Ländern aus den gleichen Gründen finanziert wurde wie Al-Qaida und andere islamische Terrororganisationen.

Israel hat ein Problem mit islamischen Terroristen. Wie die meisten Länder wechselt es leider zwischen dem Kampf gegen sie und dem Versuch, sie zu beschwichtigen.

Aber Beschwichtigung funktioniert nie. Es folgt immer ein Krieg. Die einzige Möglichkeit, mit Terroristen umzugehen, besteht darin, sie zu vernichten. Alles andere ist Beschwichtigungspolitik, die zu Kompromissen wie diesen führt, die einen Krieg vermeiden sollen, aber trotzdem einen Krieg auslösen.

Daniel Greenfield ist ein Shillman Journalism Fellow am Freedom Center und ein investigativer Journalist und Autor mit Spezialgebiet radikale Linke und islamistischer Terrorismus. Auf Englisch zuerst erschienen bei Jewish News Syndicate (JNS). Übersetzung Audiatur-Online.

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beardedmrbean · 2 years ago

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NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Tensions are escalating between Niger's new military regime and the West African regional bloc that has ordered the deployment of troops to restore Niger's flailing democracy.

The ECOWAS bloc said on Thursday it had directed a “standby force” to restore constitutional order in Niger after its Sunday deadline to reinstate ousted President Mohamed Bazoum expired.

Hours earlier, two Western officials told The Associated Press that Niger’s junta had told a top U.S. diplomat they would kill Bazoum if neighboring countries attempted any military intervention to restore his rule.

It's unclear when or where the force will deploy and which countries from the 15-member bloc would contribute to it. Conflict experts say it would likely comprise some 5,000 troops led by Nigeria and could be ready within weeks.

After the ECOWAS meeting, neighboring Ivory Coast’s president, Alassane Ouattara, said his country would take part in the military operation, along with Nigeria and Benin.

“Ivory Coast will provide a battalion and has made all the financial arrangements ... We are determined to install Bazoum in his position. Our objective is peace and stability in the sub-region,” Ouattara said on state television.

Niger, an impoverished country of some 25 million people, was seen as one of the last hopes for Western nations to partner with in beating back a jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that's ravaged the region. France and the United States have more than 2,500 military personnel in Niger and together with other European partners had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into propping up its military.

The junta responsible for spearheading the coup, led by Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, has exploited anti-French sentiment among the population to shore up its support.

Nigeriens in the capital, Niamey, on Friday said ECOWAS isn't in touch with the reality on the ground and shouldn't intervene.

“It is our business, not theirs. They don’t even know the reason why the coup happened in Niger," said Achirou Harouna Albassi, a resident. Bazoum was not abiding by the will of the people, he said.

Hundreds of people marched toward the French military base in Niamey on Friday waving Russian flags and screaming “Down with France.” Many were young, including children, all chanting that the French should go.

Also Friday, the African Union expressed strong support for ECOWAS’ decision and called on the junta to “urgently halt the escalation with the regional organization.” It also called for the immediate release of Bazoum. An African Union meeting to discuss the situation in Niger expected on Saturday was postponed.

On Thursday night after the summit, France's foreign ministry said it supported “all conclusions adopted.” U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken said his country appreciated “the determination of ECOWAS to explore all options for the peaceful resolution of the crisis” and would hold the junta accountable for the safety and security of President Bazoum. However, he did not specify whether the U.S. supported the deployment of troops.

The mutinous soldiers that ousted Bazoum more than two weeks ago have entrenched themselves in power, appear closed to dialogue and have refused to release the president. Representatives of the junta told U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland of the threat to Bazoum's life during her visit to the country this week, a Western military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

A U.S. official confirmed that account, also speaking on condition of anonymity, because the official was not authorized to speak to the media.

“The threat to kill Bazoum is grim,” said Alexander Thurston, assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. There have been unwritten rules until now about how overthrown presidents will be treated and violence against Bazoum would evoke some of the worst coups of the past, he said.

Human Rights Watch said Friday that it had spoken to Bazoum, who said that his 20-year-old son was sick with a serious heart condition and has been refused access to a doctor. The president said he hasn't had electricity for nearly 10 days and isn't allowed to see family, friends or bring supplies into the house.

It's unclear if the threat on Bazoum's life would change ECOWAS' decision to intervene military. It might give them pause, or push the parties closer to dialogue, but the situation has entered uncharted territory, analysts say.

“An ECOWAS invasion to restore constitutional order into a country of Niger’s size and population would be unprecedented,” said Nate Allen, an associate professor at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. Niger has a fairly large and well-trained army that, if it actively resisted an invasion, could pose significant problems for ECOWAS. This would be a very large and significant undertaking, he said.

While the region oscillates between mediation and preparing for war, Nigeriens are suffering the impact of harsh economic and travel sanctions imposed by ECOWAS.

Before the coup, more than 4 million Nigeriens were reliant on humanitarian assistance and the situation could become more dire, said Louise Aubin, the U.N. resident coordinator in Niger.

“The situation is alarming. … We’ll see an exponential rise and more people needing more humanitarian assistance," she said, adding that the closure of land and air borders makes it hard to bring aid into the country and it’s unclear how long the current stock will last.

Aid groups are battling restrictions on multiple fronts.

ECOWAS sanctions have banned the movement of goods between Niger and member countries, making it hard to bring in materials. The World Food Program has some 30 trucks stuck at the Benin border unable to cross. Humanitarians are also trying to navigate restrictions within the country as the junta has closed the airspace, making it hard to get clearance to fly the humanitarian planes that transport goods and personnel to hard-hit areas.

Flights are cleared on a case-by-case basis and there’s irregular access to fuel, which disrupts aid operations, Aubin said.

The U.N. has asked ECOWAS to make exceptions to the sanctions and is speaking to Niger’s foreign ministry about doing the same within the country.

#nunyas news

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ailtrahq · 1 year ago

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This article is featured in Bitcoin Magazine’s “The Withdrawal Issue”. Click here to subscribe now.A PDF pamphlet of this article is available for download. Late last month, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators introduced the Financial Technology Protection Act, which would “create a working group tasked with studying how terrorists or other criminals might use cryptocurrencies and other new financial technologies, and create proposals for Congress and regulatory agencies aimed at countering these uses”. This working group “would be composed of representatives from the U.S. Treasury Department, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of State and the CIA”. Bitcoiners should pay close attention to these developments as the DOJ in particular has attempted to paint bitcoin as the payment of choice for well-known terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaida, signaling that the working group proposed by this bill will likely seek to specifically target bitcoin. Adding to this concern is the fact that a slew of recent mainstream media reports — which cite Treasury and FinCEN officials, DOJ officials and CIA analysts — have claimed specifically that “terrorists are turning to bitcoin, and they’re learning fast”, that bitcoin is the “new frontier in terror financing”, and that “bitcoin is helping terrorists secretly fund their deadly attacks”. Even the prominent military think tank RAND Corporation has argued that “bitcoin and the dark web” are the newest terrorist threat.Many of these same entities, particularly the U.S. Department of Justice, are also currently helping to draft the UN’s new cybercrime treaty, showing that there is currently a very global effort to stomp out “cybercrime” and alleged funding sources for “cybercriminals”. However, much like the words “terror” and “terrorist” after 9/11, the terms “cybercrime” and “cybercriminals” are often vaguely defined by these same authorities.Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the groups looking to allegedly combat cybercrime in the U.S. and beyond, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, are part of an international public-private partnership housed within the World Economic Forum that is seeking to define these terms in unsettling ways. Not only that, but this group and its partner organizations are also seeking policy objectives that — if widely implemented — would treat anonymous cryptocurrency transactions, and specifically Bitcoin transactions involving mixers and related privacy tools, as criminal. They also assert, without evidence, that there is a direct link between an increase in the value of cryptocurrencies, especially of bitcoin, and cybercriminal activity. This public-private partnership — the WEF Partnership Against Cybercrime or WEF-PAC — is run by a former intelligence agent named Tal Goldstein, whose military intelligence career was marked by his efforts to have intelligence agencies essentially fuse with private technology companies in his native Israel. Today, WEF-PAC’s members not only include the FBI, the Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies of Israel and Britain, they also include massive too-big-to-fail banks like Bank of America and Santander as well as massive tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft. Even the nonprofit that manages the SWIFT payment system is a member. In recent reports, WEF-PAC has alleged that there is a connection between the use of cryptocurrencies as well as privacy-enhancing tools such as mixers and the incidence of cybercrime. They go on to argue that, “Cybercriminals abuse encryption, cryptocurrencies, anonymity services and other technologies”, even though their use is hardly exclusive to criminals. Though they refrain from naming any currency specifically, the WEF has stated elsewhere on its website that, “Governments

don’t like the fact that bitcoin users are anonymous, and they have concerns over its use for criminal activity and money laundering”, adding that “their worries aren’t unfounded”. It’s important to point out that WEF-PAC doesn’t see cybercriminals just as those who engage in hacks or financially motivated acts like ransomware attacks. To WEF-PAC “cybercriminals” also include those who use those technologies to “uphold terrorism” and “spread disinformation to destabilize governments and democracies”. From that, it seems that WEF-PAC’s inclusion of “disinformation” as a type of cybercrime betrays an intention to develop policies that, under the guise of “combatting cybercrime”, will also promote increased online censorship.In discussing “solutions”, WEF-PAC calls for the global targeting of “infrastructures and assets” deemed to facilitate cybercrime, including those that enable “cybercriminal… revenue streams”, which — as we will see shortly —– refers to the infrastructure that allows for more private cryptocurrency transactions, and enables “the promotion of illegal sites and the hosting of criminal content”. In another section, the group discusses seizing the websites of “cybercriminals” as an attractive possibility. Given that WEF-PAC and its members, like the FBI, view online “disinformation” as a form of cybercrime, this could potentially see independent media websites and the infrastructure that allows them to operate and finance their work (i.e., video sharing platforms that do not censor, etc.) emerge as targets. Earlier this month, the FBI, in coordination with the National Police of Ukraine, did just this, seizing nine crypto exchanges, the majority of which had bitcoin or btc in the domain name. Their crime? Offering “anonymous cryptocurrency exchange services to website visitors”.WEF-PAC further argues that “in order to reduce the global impact of cybercrime and to systematically restrain cybercriminals, cybercrime must be confronted at its source by raising the cost of conducting cybercrimes, cutting the activities’ profitability and deterring criminals by increasing the direct risk they face”. It then argues, unsurprisingly, that because the cybercrime threat is global in scope, its “solution must also be a globally coordinated effort”. They say that the main way to achieve this involves “harnessing the private sector to work side by side with law enforcement officials”. Shockingly, WEF-PAC calls for this “cooperation” to take place even if it is “not always aligned with existing legislative and operational frameworks”. In other words, they are saying this cooperation should be allowed to take place even if it is illegal.So how exactly do the members of WEF-PAC plan on confronting cybercrime “at its source by raising the cost of conducting cybercrimes, cutting the activities’ profitability and deterring criminals by increasing the direct risk they face”? While they are tight-lipped on the exact measures, another group closely aligned with the WEF, and with considerable overlap with WEF-PAC, has some ideas.The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or FS-ISAC, officially exists to “help ensure the resilience and continuity of the global financial services infrastructure and individual firms against acts that could significantly impact the sector’s ability to provide services critical to the orderly function of the global economy”. In other words, FS-ISAC allows the private financial services industry to decide on and coordinate sector-wide responses regarding how financial services are provided during and after a given crisis, including a cyber attack or sector-wide concern over cybercrime, like past WEF warnings of a coming cyber “pandemic”. Tellingly, FS-ISAC was created in 1999, the same year that the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed.FS-ISAC’s members include the biggest firms on Wall Street — Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley are among its members — and much

of FS-ISAC’s leadership contributes to, works for, or chairs committees and initiatives of the World Economic Forum, including those focused on cybercrime and ransomware. In 2021, FS-ISAC’s Global Intelligence Office released several “predictions for 2021 and beyond”. Most of these predictions express concern about a coming cyber calamity, though one prediction in particular stands out: The “economic drivers towards cybercrime will increase”. FS-ISAC claims that the current economic situation created by COVID-related lockdowns will “make cybercrime an ever more attractive alternative”, immediately afterwards stating that “dramatic increases in cryptocurrency valuation may drive threat actors to conduct campaigns capitalising on this market, including extortion campaigns against financial institutions and their customers”.In other words, FS-ISAC views the increase in the value of cryptocurrency as a direct driver of cybercrime, particularly for ransomware incidents, implying that the value of cryptocurrency must be dealt with if there is to be a reduction in cybercrime and if cybercrime is too be confronted at its source by attacking its “profitability”, as WEF-PAC suggests. However, the data does not fit these assertions as the use of cryptocurrency by cybercriminals is low and getting lower. For instance, one recent study — ironically produced by WEF-PAC member Chainalysis — found that only 0.34% of cryptocurrency transactions in 2020 were tied to criminal activity, down from 2% the year prior. Though the decrease may be due to a jump in cryptocurrency adoption, the overall percentage of crime-linked crypto transactions is incredibly low, a fact obviously known to FS-ISAC and its members. What’s disturbing here is that mainstream media has widely circulated the claim that Bitcoin specifically is, to quote Forbes, “driving the $1.4 billion ransomware industry”. Or NPR, “bitcoin has fueled ransomware attacks”. Or an executive at WEF-PAC member Chainalysis, bitcoin is the “favorite by far” for ransomware attackers. I could give many more examples as there is truly an abundance of reports just like these that blame a jump in well-publicized cybercrime events — specifically ransomware attacks — on bitcoin’s increased popularity and bitcoin’s intrinsic value.Yet, here, if the banks, intelligence agencies, and tech companies that partnered with these initiatives see, not just financial privacy, but the value of bitcoin itself as a threat, it goes without saying that their efforts to stop cybercrime at “its source” would not just involve eradicating financial privacy when it comes to crypto, but devaluing crypto. With such groups openly discussing working outside of “legal frameworks” to accomplish their goals, Bitcoiners must start paying closer attention to these shadowy groups.There is no proof that cryptocurrency, or more specifically bitcoin, is the key driver of cybercrime, as cybercrime significantly predates the existence of both bitcoin and crypto. However, cryptocurrency does present a threat to the plans of FS-ISAC members and their partners to begin producing digital currencies controlled either by approved commercial banks or central banks themselves, digital currencies that are designed to be easily surveilled. Central bank digital currencies in particular are being designed and implemented to erode financial privacy and autonomy. The success of CBDCs and related projects depends on neutering the competition, which is likely why FS-ISAC has called for the economic drivers of cybercrime to be combatted by “a global fin-cyber utility”, which is of course the very same globalist entity that WEF-PAC seeks to create.Not long before FS-ISAC and WEF-PAC made these claims, many members of both groups participated in a 2020 initiative hosted by the Carnegie Endowment, itself a member of WEF-PAC. The president of the Endowment at the time was William Burns, who subsequently became Joe Biden’s pick for CIA director less than a year later.

The Carnegie Endowment’s initiative brought together many members of WEF-PAC and FS-ISAC with an important addition — representatives of central banks, namely the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. Also notably present in this initiative was the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).The report developed by these parties is astounding as it states that the main cause of global financial instability is not irresponsible central bank policies or commercial banks engaging in criminal behavior, but instead “the current fragmentation among stakeholders and initiatives”. They argue that the main solution needed to “stabilize” the global financial system lies in reducing that “fragmentation”. The only way to accomplish that, they say, requires a massive reorganization of all “stakeholders” via increased global coordination and specifically notes that the “disconnect between the finance, the national security and the diplomatic communities is particularly pronounced” and calls for much closer interaction between the three. It goes on to state:“This requires countries not only to better organize themselves domestically but also to strengthen international cooperation to defend against, investigate, prosecute and ideally prevent future attacks. This implies that the financial sector and financial authorities must regularly interact with law enforcement and other national security agencies in unprecedented ways, both domestically and internationally.”Essentially, this initiative has called for fusing commercial banks and financial authorities (i.e., regulators) with national security and law enforcement agencies. This policy could not be more dystopian. Making things even worse is the fact that WEF-PAC, of which the Carnegie Endowment and many of the other organizations behind this policy are members, not only call for this same fusion to take place but also to do so in ways that may be illegal. A merging of commercial banks, their regulators and the intelligence agencies is a complete nightmare scenario, but this is exactly what the World Economic Forum has come to promote as a model for “public-private partnership”. But, perhaps more critically for American citizens, this is a policy developed with the direct participation of the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the country’s most “systemically important” commercial banks. The “establishment” in this country supports these policies and, from what I can see, they have every intention of trying to make them a reality. These American federal agencies, institutions, and commercial banks are playing a major role in developing regulations that will inevitably target bitcoin. They have made it very clear in these policy documents, incubated by groups like the WEF, that they see financial privacy, the popularity of bitcoin and the value of bitcoin as direct threats responsible for what they define as “cybercrime”. Yet, time and time again, the American people have been fleeced and looted by many of these same agencies and many of these same commercial banks. The big banks like HSBC can launder millions of dollars for drug cartels and nothing happens to them; no one goes to jail. The CIA has laundered untold millions through criminal banks like BCCI, a bank which also ran its own sex trafficking operation involving prepubescent kids, and again nothing was done and no one went to jail. FTX can launder aid money supposedly destined for Ukraine and then funnel it back as campaign contributions to the same political party developing crypto regulations, while painting bitcoin as a “national security threat”. Sam Bankman-Fried was the only person arrested and right now, he’s not in prison; he’s sitting in a multimillion-dollar mansion in California about to get 10 of the 13 charges against him dismissed. The current president’s son can launder as much money as he wants after leaving the evidence on a laptop

he abandoned and still the intelligence community comes to his defense, falsely claiming the data on this laptop — now admitted to be his — was a “Russian hoax”. These guys are the real criminals and if you think they care about stopping money laundering and cybercrime in any meaningful way, you have been had.But, soon, if nothing is done to stop these policies that are being drafted behind closed doors, use a Bitcoin mixer and take steps to keep your Bitcoin transactions anonymous, you’ll be accused of acting suspiciously like a “cybercriminal”. Complain about the obvious double standard and you’ll be accused of spreading “disinformation” and become a cybercriminal yourself.What should particularly concern us now is how these agencies, entities, and “public-private partnerships” plan to manufacture consent for their policies. As things stand right now, a lot of the policies dreamt up by these groups that I’ve just described would, I hope, be rejected by the vast majority of Americans. That is, of course, unless the right crisis were to come along and suddenly make most Americans extremely concerned about “cybercrime”.While warnings of a so-called “cyber pandemic” floated around in 2021 as a series of high-profile and highly publicized ransomware attacks took place, we haven’t heard as much since. Yet, with the last global crisis, COVID-19, officially over according to the U.S. government and the WHO, some are raising the alarm that a new global crisis is soon to make a dramatic appearance.Well, given what I’ve been saying, let’s check in with the World Economic Forum and see what they think this next global crisis will be. Well, in January of this year, Jeremy Jurgens, number two at the WEF after Klaus Schwab, asserted that a “catastrophic mutating event will strike the world in 2 years”. What a confident prediction! So what is this “catastrophic mutating event” that will strike the world before 2025, according to Jurgens? If you guessed “a global catastrophic cyber event”, you win.At a presentation at this year’s Davos, Jurgens claimed that “93 percent of cyber leaders, and 86 percent of cyber business leaders, believe that the geopolitical instability makes a catastrophic cyber event” essentially inevitable before 2025. Joining Jurgens in fearmongering over a cyber doomsday was Jurgen Stock, the head of INTERPOL, one of the most influential members of WEF-PAC. I should also add that the UN, which, as I mentioned earlier, is currently making its new cybercrime treaty, has named Interpol as “uniquely positioned to be the implementing partner of a number of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals”, specifically when it comes to “disrupting financial streams” of alleged terrorists, “securing cyberspace”, and “curbing illicit markets”.Jurgens’ and Stock’s comments about a “catastrophic cyber attack” before 2025 spawned hysterical mainstream headlines warning of “cyber apocalypse 2023”. That same month, Newsweek’s print edition featured an ominous hacker on the cover with the words “Hack Attack: How Cybercriminals Outwit All Efforts to Stop Them”. Many of the experts quoted in the Hack Attack article work for companies that are WEF-PAC members, like the intelligence-linked cybersecurity firm Checkpoint.In recent years, there has been much talk about a big doomsday cyber attack and now it seems top people at the WEF and WEF-PAC feel confident enough to put a relatively short timeline on it. How bad will this attack be if and when it materializes? Considering that the head of the Department of Homeland Security has claimed that the “next cyberattack” will kill people, it seems like a cyber 9/11 may be waiting in the wings — to be followed shortly thereafter, of course, by a cyber Patriot Act or something very similar. If bitcoin is blamed for motivating or funding the cybercriminals deemed responsible for such a catastrophe, what will happen to public opinion about bitcoin and what type of legislation might we see rammed through Congress?Given what I’ve described here, the WEF and its allies, including several U.

S. government agencies, need a couple things to come to the forefront of the public mind before they can offer the dystopian “solutions” that they have already on the books. In order to fuse banks, regulators, and the national security state to end “fragmentation” in the global financial system, “global financial instability” must first become a major global concern. With everything that has been taking place since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, it seems we are not that far away from “global financial instability” becoming a top concern for the average person. The other thing they need to happen is for the average person to become incredibly fearful of financial privacy and online privacy, to the point that they will willingly trade their privacy for greater security, or rather what will be sold as greater security. Bitcoin, privacy-minded crypto, and privacy-preserving technologies like encryption must become public enemy number one in order for the offered solution to be accepted by the masses: A completely surveilled internet and completely surveilled financial system.The fight over the control of the cryptocurrency space is part of the larger war being fought over the future of our society, our country, and the world. Will we sleepwalk into a world of CBDCs where intelligence agencies, central banks, and commercial banks have fused into the same Orwellian entity, where holding “terror-linked” bitcoin or using encryption or mixers makes you a “cybercriminal”? Or will we fight the groups and institutions that have looted American wealth for well over a century, and demand a return to the Constitution and the right to privacy, not just financially but in all senses? Those that wish to force us into the former scenario clearly and unequivocally see Bitcoin and privacy-enhancing technology as a direct threat to their power. There has never been a more important time to choose a side. This article is featured in Bitcoin Magazine’s “The Withdrawal Issue”. Click here to subscribe now.A PDF pamphlet of this article is available for download. Source

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dertaglichedan · 2 years ago

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Sabrina de Sousa is a former CIA undercover officer who resigned from her position following the issuance of Italian arrest warrants for her and other U.S. officials. She was convicted by the Italian government of helping with the abduction of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in Italy as part of a CIA "extraordinary rendition" program to snatch terrorism suspects in various countries and transfer them in secret to undergo interrogation in third countries.

She was one of 26 people convicted but the only one to spend any time in prison for the operation.

The Italian president commuted her four-year prison sentence but she was to carry out community service for three years, ending 8 November 2020.

De Sousa has always claimed her innocence, saying she was not in Milan on the day of the abduction and had no involvement in the kidnapping.

The views and insights expressed below are hers.

(This is Part II in a two-part series. Part I)

In 2002, Italy bypassed the CIA to provide the Bush/Cheney administration with a badly forged document (Nigergate), demonstrating Iraq’s intent to produce Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

In 2003, this time working jointly with the CIA, an Egyptian cleric was “kidnapped” and transported from Milan, Italy to Egypt, providing the administration with the al-Qaida (AQ) link to Iraq.

The kidnapping or rendition of the cleric, was part of the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program. Since the “Milan rendition” was taking place on a NATO ally’s soil, it had to be authorized by the White House/NSC, and the governments of Italy, Germany (NATO - use of Rammstein Airbase for a stopover en route to Egypt) and Egypt (final detention and interrogation destination).

The ill-conceived rendition had presented the Rome CIA chief with a career enhancing opportunity, while the Italian government used it to further ingratiate themselves with Washington. The Egyptian cleric was already under surveillance by the Italian police. No charges had been filed against him. The investigation was abruptly stopped in order to facilitate the kidnapping of the cleric by a CIA “snatch team.” It provided the Italian government with plausible deniability for their own complicity. They would later loudly protest “violations of Italian sovereignty” to initiate the prosecutions of Americans, myself included.

FULL STORY. LONG BUT VERY INFORMATIVE

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todaynowreport · 2 years ago

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Australian doctor freed after seven years in Qaida captivity

An 88-year-old Australian doctor held captive by al-Qaida-linked extremists in West Africa for over seven years has been freed and has returned to Australia. Ken Elliott was safe and well and was reunited with his wife and their children on Thursday, Australian foreign minister Penny Wong said. Elliott and his wife were kidnapped in Burkina Faso, where they had run a medical clinic for four…

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apsny-news · 2 years ago

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Macron welcomes back to France journalist freed in Mali

Comment on this story Comment PARIS — A French journalist who was held hostage by Islamic extremists for nearly two years in Mali was welcomed home by French President Emmanuel Macron Tuesday, one day after his release. Olivier Dubois was kidnapped in April 2021 in northern Mali, a region wracked by jihadi violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Leaving the plane at the…

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mariacallous · 2 years ago

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In the United States, it is difficult to overstate the degree to which Islam has fallen off both the domestic and foreign policy agenda. In many ways, this is a welcome improvement over the near-constant preoccupation with American Muslims and Muslims abroad as objects of concern during the post-9/11 period. With the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban,” it seemed like it might never end, with each president having their own particular approach to the “problem” of Islam.

This appears to have ended with U.S. President Joe Biden. With the end of the war on terror, the securitization of Muslim identity is largely a thing of the past. American Muslims are increasingly part of the cultural mainstream, accepted and normalized to the extent that they sometimes appear to have been forgotten entirely.

That said, there is a dark side to America’s loss of interest in Islam and Muslims, especially since this indifference is tied to a broader apathy toward the Middle East. The Biden administration’s Middle East policy, as reflected in the recent National Security Strategy, is effectively one of telling regional actors to “keep calm and carry on.” The priority is to prevent the problems of the Middle East from crowding out attention towards more overarching problems, such as the threats posed by Chinese and Russian adventurism. (Whether policies toward particular regions can be siloed in this fashion is another matter).

To be uninterested in the Middle East is, by default, to be uninterested in human rights, political reform, and democratization in the Middle East. A policy of maintaining the status quo with only slight adjustments is inevitably a policy of turning a blind eye to human rights violations in the interest of “stability.” To anger regional partners with talk of their domestic political arrangements would require devoting more attention to assuaging that anger, which would distract U.S. officials from countering China and Russia.

Consider Saudi Arabia. In July 2022, Biden paid a high-profile visit to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an effort to reset a relationship that had been strained by the 2018 killing of the writer and critic Jamal Khashoggi. Since the visit, bin Salman’s crackdown on dissidents has only intensified.

In recent years, the decline of major terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State has certainly relieved pressure on U.S. policymakers. But the Biden administration’s indifference to authoritarian consolidation in the region is an additional critical factor that allows it to display an otherwise welcome disregard for Islam.

Prospects for democracy in the Middle East have long been linked to questions around Islam’s role in public life. Any process of democratization, after all, would entail state authorities ceding control of religious knowledge and production — a domain they have jealously guarded for decades. In religiously conservative societies, something as resonant and powerful as Islam couldn’t be left to the masses, or so Arab autocrats thought. If people could choose their own leaders, religiously-oriented parties — Islamist parties — would have a greater say in politics and government and perhaps win elections outright. The failures of the Arab Spring and the return of repression have relegated such questions to the background. Fierce states are even fiercer today. But as I argue in the latest issue of Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, the “problem” of Islam has merely been postponed; it has not been resolved.

It’s no accident that the two administrations that focused considerable attention on Middle East democracy (or the lack thereof) were also the ones that felt compelled to make Islam-related pronouncements. While the Bush administration ultimately failed to translate its sweeping pro-democracy rhetoric into policy, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice does deserve some credit for grasping the intimate link between “political” problems and “religious” problems in the region. To address the former was to take seriously the latter. For example, she notes that “religion and politics don’t mix easily — but the exclusion of religious people from politics doesn’t work either” and that the Arab world “desperately needs an answer to [this] challenge.”

While President Barack Obama was less enthusiastic about democracy promotion (in part due to a desire to distance himself from the Bush administration’s adventurism), he was compelled to take it more seriously during the Arab uprisings of 2011. And he too understood that to have a policy of promoting political reform and inclusion meant thinking carefully about America’s longstanding “Islamist dilemma.” As one senior aide to Obama described it to me:

Obama started off very much of the view that we need to accept that Islamists will have a role in government. I think he came in very much believing in that and he wanted to be the president who would have an open mind about Islamists.

This “open mind” didn’t necessarily last, but it’s telling that the Obama administration felt it had to think about Islamism in order to think about democracy. The inverse was true for President Donald Trump. His active hostility towards democracy promotion and enthusiasm for Arab dictators translated into a desire to exclude and even punish Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

It would have been hard to avoid this conclusion. To the extent that Arab societies democratized, voters would have more to disagree about when it came to Islam’s place in politics and its relationship to the state. Under the limited electoral competition that Arab autocrats had allowed beginning in the 1980s, “identity politics” around religion gradually eclipsed the traditional left-right politics of class as the primary electoral cleavage. And so emerged what the political scientist Hesham Sallam calls “classless politics.”

Islamist parties were the primary beneficiaries of this shift. But since there was no real risk that they would be allowed to take power, the practical implications of their ideological preferences could remain somewhat theoretical, projected far out into the future. With the democratic openings of the Arab Spring, however, this all changed. Now that Islamist parties had a realistic shot at winning power, the question of how — or whether — to accommodate a more pronounced role for Islam rose to the forefront of Arab politics in a way that it rarely had before. Moreover, constitutions had to be drafted, and constitutions would need to address (or at least choose not to address) the polarizing matter of Islam as a source of state identity and Islamic law as a source of legislation. A political and religious settlement remained elusive in Egypt, paving the way for the establishment of a new military dictatorship under Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Even in Tunisia — until recently the Arab Spring’s lone remaining (relative) success story — Islamist, secular, and leftist political forces appeared to reach such a settlement only to see it collapse. Today, after a slow-motion coup, Tunisia finds itself languishing under one-man, authoritarian rule.

With a new authoritarian normal asserting itself across the region, the ongoing effort to seek a democratic resolution to the question of Islam’s appropriate role in politics and public life is on life support. For now at least, this has given the Biden administration the permission, and perhaps even the freedom, to disregard the democratic dilemmas its predecessors had little choice but to face. Future administrations might not be so lucky. The dilemmas, after all, haven’t gone away.

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