#Government Sponsored Terrorism

[briantheoutlier]

Government Condoned Terrorist Attack?

 For those of you who are unaware MEE is a London based organization that concentrates on the Middle East. Enemies say that it is a propaganda tool. Supporters say that it is honest hard-hitting news. I say, MEE’s conclusions are usually tilted toward the Arab side but the tilt is not more pronounced than say the BBC or DW. It just leans in a different direction.  I also say that after 8 months…

[nando161mando]

The western 'enlightened humanitarianism' is such a fraud.

[papasmoke]

September 20, 2024

October 1, 2024

You'll probably need a vpn to visit this page, the text of it reads:

In its sitting on Monday, the Knesset Plenum voted to approve in first reading the Bill for Cutting Off the State of Israel's Relations with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and Declaring it a Terrorist Organization, 2024, sponsored by MK Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beitenu) and a group of MKs. In the vote, 50 Members of Knesset supported the bill, versus 10 who opposed it, and the bill will be returned to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for deliberation.

It is proposed to declare the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as a terrorist organization. It is further proposed that the State of Israel sever its relations with UNRWA, both directly and indirectly.

MK Malinovsky, the bill's sponsor: "We have to perform a surgical [cut] here and end the event. We are on the UN's blacklist in any case. All the excessive morality ended on October 7. UNRWA is a terrorist organization, and not only in Jerusalem. It is afifth-column within the State of Israel. And not just municipal property tax benefits-everything should be revoked from them. The fact that this hasn't happened until now, for seven months--is a disgrace. What is happening today is a badge of honor for the Knesset and for the Members of Knesset. The fact that we succeeded in joining hands, coalition and opposition--that is a very important statement for the Government. We did a wonderful job together with all the partners to these bills."

The explanatory notes to the bill state: "In the months after the outbreak of the Swords of Iron war, investigative reports were revealed regarding the involvement of the workers of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip in the murderous terrorist offensive that began on October 7, 2023, such as participation in acts of murder and massacre, kidnapping Israeli citizens to the Gaza Strip and providing vehicles and equipment for the purpose of the offensive. Reports were also published regarding the membership of these workers in the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations,

"The above attests to the close relationship that exists between UNRWA and terrorist activity for all intents and purposes, in a manner that is no different from the activity of organizations that have been declared as terrorist organizations by law. Therefore, it is proposed to declare that UNRWA is a terrorist organization as defined in the Counter-Terrorism Law, 2016."

October 7, 2024

October 8, 2024

In that same spirit, we are following with deep concern the Israeli legislative proposal that could alter UNRWA’s legal status, hindering its ability to communicate with Israeli officials, and removing privileges and immunities afforded to UN organizations and personnel around the globe. This legislative proposal reflects the significant distrust between Israel and UNRWA.

Israel has alleged – and the UN, in some cases, has confirmed – that a small percentage of UNRWA employees have ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups. Israel has also conveyed concerns about Hamas misusing UNRWA facilities and the United States shares these concerns.

At the same time, we know that UN personnel, including from UNRWA, are vital to the humanitarian response in Gaza and face tremendous danger while performing their work.

And so, Israel needs to provide UNRWA additional information regarding these allegations, and UNRWA needs to have in place a process to address these concerns seriously and urgently, and make faster progress on the much-needed reforms outlined in the Colonna report.

Simply put: It is in no one’s interest for the neutrality of UNRWA’s personnel to remain in doubt.

October 9, 2024

October 14, 2024

The bare minimum required from the US to curtail further Israeli atrocities would be the cessation or curtailing of munitions, logistical support, diplomatic cover, and US military presence in defense of Israel. None of these actions are on the table according to Biden, Harris, or Trump. Israel is creating a legal framework to justify the systemic targeting of UNRWA aid workers and facilities, a practice which the US has made it clear it will defend through inaction, if not active participation. It will issue hollow condemnations and statements of concern, urge Israel to investigate, then move on, pretending like nothing happened.

[komsomolka]

how is the uyghur genocide just propaganda? i am asking in good faith, i have never heard that perspective but there appears to be lots of evidence of their internment and abuse

"a lot of evidence" from the christofaschist victims of communism foundation member called adrian zenz who doesn't speak any of chinese languages? because that's the dude who started it all. also we are witnessing the real genocide right now with thousands of palestinian refuges and footage. if 'uyghur genocide' was actually happening (they claimed what? 2 millions in the camps?) then there would be a similar picture. but nothing, lol. people freely visited xinjiang and it was chill here, none of the uyghurs here agreed they were 'genocided' apparently when asked (can you imagine the same with palestinians or any other actively persecuted group). xinjiang is a prospering economically region and it's population count is stably rising up. but that's exactly what imperialists hate so they demonized china's anti terrorist efforts in the region (CIA funded NED openly admitted sponsoring one of those terrorist groups called ETIM btw) which included mandatory centres for vulnerable to indoctrination, mostly jobless people. they were given classes of awareness against terrorism, mandarin classes, profession qualifications classes. but western propaganda lies turned those into some concentration camps so they could sanction china and sabotage xinjiang economy. you should examine your willingness to buy into sinophobic lies it's fucking 2024.

[eretzyisrael]

by POTKIN AZARMEHR

‘Pro-Palestine’ protests have become a near-weekly occurrence across Britain. Since Hamas’s 7 October massacre, regular marches have been drawing in a growing number of young people, marked by passionate advocacy and fervent slogans. Yet despite their zeal, many of these protesters lack a fundamental understanding of the conflict they are so vociferously decrying.

In the past six months, I have attended many of these marches. Having engaged with numerous protesters, I have noticed a startling disconnect between their strong opinions on the Gaza conflict and their shaky grasp of basic facts about it. Among the most perplexing are the LGBT and feminist groups (the ‘Queers for Palestine’ types) who flirt with justifying Hamas’s atrocities. This is a bewildering alliance, given that Hamas’s Islamist ideology is clearly antithetical to the rights and values these groups claim to champion. Its reactionary agenda is profoundly hostile to women’s rights and LGBT individuals.

Protesters seem eager to make excuses for Hamas, but are conspicuously uninformed about exactly what or who this terrorist group represents. On 18 May, during a protest at Piccadilly Circus in London, I spoke to demonstrators who firmly believed that Hamas represents all Palestinians. When I questioned a well-educated participant about the last Palestinian election, she was unaware that none had occurred since 2006, when Hamas gained power in Gaza.

It wasn’t just young people who were uninformed. An older woman with an American accent, seemingly a veteran protester, admitted she knew that Hamas was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, but had no deeper knowledge of its ideology or history. Others, such as members of revolutionary socialist groups, displayed similar gaps in understanding, unaware of critical events like the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

That revolution gave birth to the Islamic Republic of Iran, a theocratic regime that brutally oppresses its own citizens. It also sponsors Islamist groups like Hamas. I left Iran for the UK not long after that regime began and have spent years resisting its religious extremism and ruthless political intolerance. Protesters were not only unaware of these facts about the Iranian regime, but also ill-informed about the struggle against it, such as the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests against the government that began in 2022.

One particularly telling conversation involved a man advocating for a ‘Global Intifada’ to replace capitalism with socialism. When asked about successful socialist models, he was unfamiliar with the Israeli kibbutzim, one of history’s few successful egalitarian experiments. His ignorance of these communal settlements in Israel, built by socialist Jewish immigrants, was all too typical.

Perhaps the most telling moment was captured by commentator Konstantin Kisin earlier this year, when he encountered a young man holding a ‘Socialist Intifada’ placard. The protester admitted he had no idea what this meant and that he had taken the sign simply because it was handed to him.

Reflecting on past movements, such as the American anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement of the 1980s, one can’t help but note a stark contrast. Protesters then were generally well-informed about their causes. Today’s pro-Palestine protests, however, seem to be driven more by unthinking fervour than by an understanding of the issues at hand.

Throughout all these protests, I am yet to encounter a single participant who condemns Hamas or carries a placard denouncing its terrorism. This not only undermines the protesters’ cause, but also risks aligning them with groups whose values fundamentally oppose the very rights and freedoms they claim to support. It appears that today’s young protesters are high on ideology, but woefully thin on facts.

Potkin Azarmehr is an Iranian activist and journalist who left Iran for the UK after the revolution of 1979.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[TimesOfIsrael is Israeli Private Media]

The Knesset early Thursday voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The resolution was co-sponsored by parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition together with right-wing parties from the opposition and even received support from Benny Gantz’s centrist National Unity party.

Lawmakers from Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s center-left Yesh Atid party left the plenum to avoid backing the measure, even though he has spoken in favor of a two-state solution. The only ones to oppose the resolution were lawmakers from the Labor, Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al parties.

The initiative was passed just days before Netanyahu’s visit to the US to address a joint session of Congress and meet with President Joe Biden at the White House.[...]

Already in February, the Knesset passed a resolution sponsored by Netanyahu rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, but that motion specifically addressed the unilateral establishment of such a state amid reports that countries abroad were considering recognizing a Palestinian state absent a peace agreement with Israel.

This resolution — passed 68-9 — altogether rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state, even as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel.[...]

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said in response to the vote that there is “no peace or security for anyone without the establishment of a Palestinian state” with East Jerusalem as its capital, noting that numerous UN member countries have already recognized it.[...]

He further accused the Israeli government of “pushing the entire region into the abyss” with Washington’s support and labeled Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza as “terrorism” for the civilian deaths it has caused.

Another senior PA official, Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a top aide to Abbas, wrote on X that the Knesset’s decision confirms Israel’s “racism,” “disregard for international law,” and “policy of perpetuating the occupation forever.”

Al-Sheikh urged countries that are hesitant to recognize a Palestinian state to do so “immediately” in order to protect the two-state solution and called on Arab states to “respond appropriately” to the resolution passed in the Knesset.

18 Jul 24

[mossadspypigeon]

As a late comer to some of the nonsense, can you explain or point to something explaining what watermelons have to do with Palestine? Asking google "what the fuck do watermelons have to do with Palestine" was not a productive search. Where did that come from?

hello anon! yes indeed i can. this is gonna be a long post, so buckle in lmao.

so the main and simplified reason the watermelon is used (and i'll get into some more complex stuff and context because both are important to understand with this) is because red/black/green represent the PLO flag, which is known as the "palestinian flag."

now, i don't know if you know who the PLO are, so:

(this notice to include secondary sources is so faulty btw. this is based on primary sources written BY the plo, which removes bias of interpretation)

i recommend reading this wiki page at least and clicking on the sources for more information. it isn't as bad as some wikipedia pages and it can provide a good introduction.

now, the PLO is an internationally recognized terrorist org. it split into numerous factions, including yasser arafat's "fatah." fatah controlled groups like black september, which committed the munich massacre and also murdered the king of jordan.

the PLO itself has committed numerous acts of terror, including the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. terrorists who hijacked this ship shot and tossed a disabled jewish man in a wheelchair named Leon Klinghoffer overboard, etc. so no, they are not a resistance group. this act was sponsored and supported by arafat.

if you want to know more about their bullfuckery, which i recommend, read their charter here.

okay, now moving on to the flag:

you've probably noticed that the red/black/green/white thing is a motif used by several countries. this is because of "pan arabism."

rootsmetals did some good posts on arabization:

the specific colors have meanings, and those meanings are either religious or secular. the religious and secular connect though. let's take a look. i'm going to use arab sources without commentary on any biases:

on the other hand:

so. we know about the flag's history and its meaning. we know what it represents. now, let's go into the whole "watermelon" thing:

the reason it's used depends on who you ask. if you ask the pro palestine crowd, the watermelon is used in place of the "palestine flag" due to "censoring" and "silencing."

this goes back to the propaganda that israel banned the palestinian flag. israel DID NOT ban this flag legally, but it did have it taken down because...guess why? why would israel want the flag of the plo not flown? it's like flying a kkk flag in the usa, that's why.

yes, you have freedom of speech in israel, but it has its limits. those limits are hate and incendiary speech. the plo flag is a symbol of hate based on the charter and acts of the plo itself. also, fatah/the palestinian authority, which currently governs the palestinian section of the west bank/judea samaria and east jerusalem still pays terrorists who murder jews and israelis and are imprisoned. sooooo you can guess why the flag was taken down, but here is some of the propaganda:

the lack of sources in this article lmao.

again, hilarious lack of sources.

if you ask the pro israel crowd, it's an appropriation of a very zionist crop and a symbol of decolonization.

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if i find more sources on this, i will do another post.

but yes, the watermelon emoji is used because "the internet silences palestine," which is hysterical, considering google favors palestinian sources and most major news networks employ either palestinians or palestinian allied supporters.

and of course, tiktok and the rest of social media won't remove antisemitism, but will constantly ban jews and israelis. hence why finding sources on the jewish history of the watermelon is difficult.

anyway. hope this helps. <3 if you're comfy, definitely dm me sometime if you want to discuss things and/or get sources.

@matan4il do you happen to have any sources on the israeli/jewish/zionist history of the watermelon? if you do, it would be so appreciated.

[artbyblastweave]

Something I find interesting about the Lizard League is that these guys are supervillain supervillains, costumed in the classic mold- Salamander with the impossibly-skintight patterned-cloth costume, Iguana with the tight-tights-and-animal-headpiece combo, Komodo with that 70s-style strongman cowl-and-jersey, King Lizard with the Baron Strucker-style double-breasted greatcoat. These guys are unrepentant in their design. And in the comics, where the Sequid arc didn't happen till around issue 40, these guys were part of this established stable of villains who'd show up as fodder for montages and one-off fights where they needed to have a hero beating up someone who's clearly a supervillain, never mind who. That meant that their eventual escalation to nuclear terrorism after 30+ issues of low-rent stuff, and the ensuing clusterfuck, actually parsed as a meaningful escalation from the established status quo. These guys are breaking the rules. Supervillains do stuff like this sometimes, sure, but not this kind of supervillain- these guys are doing MCU-style unmarked-Kevlar terroristic supervillainy when they should be doing lizard-themed gimmick crimes or Super-friends stuff!

Well, no, that's not quite true. It feels true, but honestly there are plenty of examples of campy big-two villains doing flat-out nuclear terrorism pretty early on, actually. Just to pick some examples from X-Men, Magento did it in his first appearance, and the ANAD lineup's first real outing was to stop Count Nefaria from hijacking NORAD. Screwing around with the military's world-ending shit is downright commonplace for supervillains, once you start tallying it up. But between the goofy kid-gloves approach of a lot of early silver-age comics and the sheer volume of Stuff that's happened in the Marvel and DC continuities, the impact of attempted nuclear terrorism inevitably gets sanded down, it just becomes one more data point in the endless ebb and flow- hell, it can result in actual nuclear detonations, and eventually it's going to get sanded over. In the nineties, Vandal Savage actually nuked Montevideo using depreciated USSR stock. Is that salient, these days? This event that would have reshaped geopolitics had it happened in our world? So yeah, supervillains make a run on the nukes all the time- but it doesn't count if you do it in a onesie with your initials stenciled on it.

But Invincible, as a self-contained continuity, actually has the ability to maintain perspective and appropriately weigh a grab at the nuclear arsenal - it's very much not business as usual, it's not part of the typical cops-and-robbers runaround. It's not stealing a priceless diamond, it's not a bank job, it's not even rampaging through the city center with a giant robot. It's a credible attempt to end the world, it's a challenge to government power that they won't let stand, costumes or no. It's the government sponsored super team coming in guns blazing trying their damnedest to kill you from the word go, and its you trying to kill them equally hard because there's really no coming back from this if you lose. And it ends up that treating this situation with a commonsense level of gravity acts as a deconstructive backhand against every similar situation in the comics that ends with the villain shaking their fist and escaping at the last minute.

[k-s-morgan]

This is a belated post where I wanted to briefly address the outcomes of 2023!

While Ukraine mostly faded from the stage of world's news, unfortunately, the situation didn't get better for my people. Every day Russia kills, maims, and ruins everything it can touch. Every day civilians die from its imprecise missiles, random shootings and artillery, and outright executions. I often see that those living in other countries call this Putin's war, but it really isn't. This is the war sponsored by Putin and his regime, true, but first and foremost, this is the war of Russian people. It's hundreds of thousands of Russian people who arm themselves and go kill our defenders and our civilians. It's Russian people who fire from tanks and other deadly weapons to ruin the Ukrainians' homes, to scorch our land, to leave nothing but destruction instead of cities and villages. It's Russian people who build the missiles, load their bombers, and fly for 5+ hours to direct them at our cities, homes, factories, and even empty fields.

This is me during one of the latest massive attack that took place on January 2. At first, at night, 35+ Russian-Iranian drones bombed us. Then Russian people sent about 100 missiles at us, mainly at my city Kyiv.

Our air defense system managed to intercept the majority of them, but while it sounds like interception is an entirely positive thing, it might have terrible consequences. Because the parts of the missiles fall down randomly. They can kill any human or creature walking down the street; they can collapse on top of a residential building. There is no escape, no way to feel safe even with the best air defense systems surrounding the city. Here's one of many disastrous results of this attack.

Dead and injured people and animals. Damaged and lost apartments.

On December 29, another attack killed over 30 people in Kyiv alone. You can see their faces below. They deserve to be seen and remembered.

This is a short story of just two latest attacks that took place just within one week, just in one city. Imagine how many of them me and my people lived through during the entire year? How many more we will have to experience?

Actually, we lived through another one before I finished writing this post. It happened on January 8, and it killed even more civilians.

I know that there are good, sane, compassionate Russians. I have some relatives among them. One of them, my aunt, can't keep herself entirely silent: she's deeply religious, and a few weeks ago, in a church, she risked saying that killing Ukrainians is bad. Another man told her that she's scum and that if she dares to open her mouth again, he will report her to authorities. The headmaster of a school where my aunt teaches was imprisoned for 7 years for refusing to hold a Z-event among students. Living there must be a torture of another kind, where you are surrounded by zombies who openly promote terrorism and bless missiles sent to kill other human beings. The problem is that sane and compassionate Russians are the minority - the vast majority is happy to either kill us or they support those who kill us. Or they simply don't care, trying to claim that everything is complicated when in reality, there is nothing complicated about it at all. Russia is a terrorist state and the world allows its people and its government to keep being monsters.

Seeing the indifference and impotence of seemingly powerful countries makes me increasingly concerned and depressed. At this point, I don't think I'm simply affected by my experiences: the world is rapidly going to hell, with terrorist countries like Russia being allowed to revel in their blood-thirstiness and the other terrorist countries, like North Korea, or potential offenders like China, observing and taking notes. When a criminal sees that no one is punished for a crime, they escalate. More criminals appear. This is what I feel is going to start happening more and more, until half of the planet is plunged into death and destruction. I'll be so very glad to be wrong.

On a personal note, I lost my most beloved pet pigeon Daikiria in 2023. I love her and miss her so much that I still cry whenever I think of her. In turn, I acquired a red nightmare of a rabbit who eats everything, including my feet, and two more pigeons. Taking care of them brings me joy - I only hope that my effort will actually benefit them.

Here's a pigeon that I named Noveria the day I found her, in a video I made for my vet. Attacked by a cat, bleeding all over, with broken ribs and a missing piece of her wing, with no tail:

Here is she now. She is feeling much better, although unfortunately, she got sick because of her weakened immune system.

My kitties continue to be adorable dorks. Here's me sleeping with my cat Tom after one of the attacks - he's really scared of loud sounds, so he sleeps like a rock afterward, just like me.

My family stays strong, and I hope we will remain to be so.

Writing stories remains a huge source of relief and distraction to me, and your support, love, and care give me strength even when I feel like I'm about to run out of it.

Thank you to those who support me on Patreon and give me a chance to have a safety net shielding me from some of the horrors and insecurities - thanks to you, I can rest sometimes when I would have to work instead; I can afford some more distractions and to write more as a result. Thank you to those who leave comments, kudos, asks; thank you to my friends who never fail to message me with questions about my well-being. I love and I appreciate you tremendously, and despite all my fears and worries, I hope that we will get to see a better future still.

[la-cosmonauta-extraterrestre]

Many Muslims born in the west (both the children of immigrants and converts) want to move to a Muslim country, and many of them do. They want to move because they want their children to learn Quran in school (and not learn LGBTQ+ issues in school), or because they want it to be easier for them to be Muslim in their day-to-day lives (easy access to halal food and jobs that don't expect a lot from the workers during Ramadan), or because they want to fulfill the Islamic requirement to live under Sharia if not actively proselytizing, or they want to get away from Islamophobia in the west, or they are American and just need to get away after realizing how much being American screws one over, or maybe they're just emigrating for work or marriage.

The human rights violations occurring in Muslim countries generally don't occur to them as reasons not to immigrate. They might move to Qatar blissfully unaware that its infrastructure is the product of modern slavery, or move to Saudi Arabia despite being uncomfortable that the state sponsors terrorism, or move to Turkey not caring that their government continues to deny the Armenian genocide, or move to Malaysia and actively consider it a good thing that it's illegal to be gay.

Then those same Muslims assume that Jews who decide to make Aliyah all hate Palestinians and have some colonialist agenda, when in reality most Jews who make Aliyah immigrate because ... they want to send their children to a religious public school, or they want it to be easier to be Jewish in their day-to-day lives (easy access to kosher food and jobs that give shabbat and holidays off), or they want to fulfill the mitzvah of living in the land of Israel, or they want to get away from antisemitism in their country, or they are American and just need to get away after realizing how much being American screws one over, or maybe they're just emigrating for work or marriage. They may or may not be aware of or care about Arabs being tortured in Israeli state prisons, but ultimately every country has human rights violations.

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 16 July 1947, Black revolutionary Assata Shakur was born in Queens, New York City. After graduating from college she briefly joined the Black Panther Party, followed by the urban guerrilla group the Black Liberation Army which was engaging in armed struggle against the government, robbing banks and killing drug dealers and police officers. In 1973 Shakur was wounded in a shootout with police, arrested and later jailed for the alleged killing of a police officer. She escaped from prison in 1979 with the help of three BLA members and was granted asylum in Cuba, where she lives to this day. US government officials continue to press for her extradition, and early in 2021 the Republican administration labelled Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, citing their harbouring of Shakur. Assata Shakur was also the step-aunt and godmother to murdered hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur. She has long been an advocate of direct action as a tool for social change, arguing: "Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them." We have made available numerous books by other former members of the Panthers and the BLA here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/black-panthers https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=662736802566205&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[whencyclopedia]

Wako

Wako (aka wokou and waegu) is a term used to refer to Japanese (but also including Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese) pirates who plagued the seas of East Asia from Korea to Indonesia, especially between the 13th and 17th centuries CE. Besides the disruption to trade, the devastation which befell coastal communities, and the many thousands of innocents who found themselves sold as slaves, the pirates caused significant tensions in diplomatic relations between China, Korea, and Japan throughout this period. Indeed, the pirates seriously damaged the reputation of Japan in the eyes of their East Asian neighbours in the medieval period. It was only after the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1582-1598 CE) had unified central Japan that the government was finally strong enough to effectively deal with the pirate scourge and put an end to their reign of terror.

Piracy on the High Seas

Wako translates as 'dwarf pirates' and although many were from Japan, the term was also indiscriminately applied to any mariners up to no good on the high seas and so could include pirates based on the coasts of Korea, Taiwan, and China, as well as Portuguese adventurers, to name but a few. There is even evidence that some pirates disguised themselves as Japanese to avoid detection as to where they sailed from. The Chinese called these pirates wokou and the Koreans waegu. Pirates had plundered ships across East Asia since at least the 8th century CE but it was the wako of the 13th century CE onwards that reached new depths of robbery, helped by the disruption in legitimate maritime trade which followed the Mongol invasions of Korea between 1231 and 1259 CE.

The most notorious pirate base was Japan's Tsushima Island (which also had legitimate ports) where there were plenty of easily-defended inlets. The island is rocky and mountainous so that residents struggled to provide enough food for themselves while the local feudal lords, the So, gained handsomely from sponsoring the marauders who seized goods on the high seas. Other important pirate bases in Japan were at Iki Island and Matsura.

At their peak in the 14th century CE, hundreds of pirate ships plagued the straits between Korea and southern Japan and made four or five major raids on the southern Korean peninsula each year. Many pirates even made it their business to plunder ships and coastal ports on the western side of the Korean peninsula, right up the northern island of Kanghwa. In the 15th and 16th century CE the coast of China became another target area. Pirates stole anything of value (for example, precious metals, swords, armour, and lacquerware) but especially bulk goods like cloth, grain and rice being shipped as tribute to the Chinese emperor.

Pirates would raid ports and coastal settlements with fleets of up to 400 ships carrying raiding parties of 3,000 men. Although they were only lightly armed - the preferred weapon being swords - they did form disciplined armies and they met little organised opposition. As the wako often seized innocents to be sold as slaves to feudal lords or Portuguese slave-traders, many farming communities withdrew further inland, even if this meant that the best agricultural land was abandoned. The risks to the wako, aside from a vigorous defence by rightful owners, included execution if they were caught by the authorities in China, Korea, or Japan.

Continue reading...

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

By Eli Lake and Danielle Shapiro

Since the October 7 massacre, a small “charity” based in Canada has been ubiquitous on elite college campuses, celebrating the bloodbath at public rallies and seminars. The group is called Samidoun, and it claims to be an NGO advocating on behalf of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.

On Tuesday, the U.S. and Canadian governments put an end to that charade. 

Samidoun is not a charity at all. Rather, it’s a group “that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization,” according to a press release issued Tuesday by the Treasury Department. The government describes it as a “sham.”

For anyone who has followed the history of Palestinian terrorism, PFLP is a name you’re no doubt familiar with. It was founded in 1967 as a Marxist revolutionary group, and was supported during the Cold War by China and the Soviet Union. In 1976, the PFLP teamed up with West Germany’s Baader-Meinhof group to hijack a flight from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Entebbe, Uganda, separating Jewish and non-Jewish passenger hostages. Eventually, Israeli commandos freed the hostages. The episode was turned into the movie 7 Days in Entebbe.

For most of the 1990s and 2000s, PFLP was largely an afterthought for both Israelis and Palestinians (though it did murder an Israeli tourism minister in 2001). That began to change in 2019, when the PFLP killed a 17-year-old girl in the West Bank with a roadside bomb that also injured her father and brother. Since then, the government of Israel has pressed its allies to designate Samidoun as a terrorist front for the PFLP. The designations from Canada and the U.S. on Tuesday are the culmination of that effort. 

One place where that designation will have an effect is elite campuses, where Samidoun has long established itself as a partner—and funder—for anti-Israel student initiatives. Just in the past year, Samidoun has co-sponsored a divestment rally at Princeton, taught an “Abolish Imperialism” lecture at Harvard Law School and, most infamously, led a “Palestinian Resistance 101” teach-in at Columbia University that resulted in the suspension of multiple student organizers who used the event to “promote the use of terror or violence.” 

As far back as 2017, Princeton’s Palestine club shared links from Samidoun’s media page and encouraged students to work with the group on initiatives to free a Palestinian activist who had assaulted an Israeli soldier. In 2022, Princeton’s Palestine club again partnered with Samidoun to lead a “Palestinian Prisoner Letter-Writing Session” on campus. This long and close relationship between Princeton students and faculty and Samidoun has been replicated at top universities across the country.

Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former FBI analyst and deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, told The Free Press that the U.S. and Canadian governments have debated over the last year about designating Samidoun a terrorist group. Their reservation was due to the fact that Western governments do not sanction organizations based just on violent and hateful speech. “They have been saying horrible and nasty things,” Levitt said. “We don’t designate people for saying nasty things.” 

What turned the tide, according to Levitt, was that Israel had accumulated mounds of evidence that Samidoun was, in effect, a fundraising arm for the PFLP. Some of this information has been available for some time. For example, Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy released a report in 2019 that detailed Samidoun’s role in raising money for the PFLP. That report claims that PFLP operatives transferred money from Lebanon to a man named Khaled Barakat when he was living in Europe. On Tuesday, Barakat was also designated as a foreign terrorist financier. His wife, Charlotte Kates, is Samidoun’s “international coordinator.” 

In 2022, the Netherlands barred Kates and Barakat from entering the country where they had planned to land and then drive to a pro-Palestine march in Belgium. More recently, Germany designated Samidoun as a terrorist organization in November 2023. 

Even though PFLP has not captured the headlines of better-known groups like Hamas or Hezbollah, it remains deadly. Although it was not involved in the original planning for October 7, the terrorist group joined the massacre once it was underway. NGO Monitor has published PFLP statements and Telegram posts that show its participation in the 2023 attack, joining after the first wave of Hamas operatives.

[jewishvitya]

You can see how much the Israeli government is committed to preserving "the only democracy in the Middle East."

This is the article from Haaretz.

The Shin Bet is saying this is pointless, will make their work harder, and teachers aren't a threat to anything.

Stood out to me:

In addition to the Shin Bet vetting, the bill includes a provision allowing the withholding of state funds to schools "in which there are or may be expressions of solidarity with acts of terrorism." It also proposes giving the director general of the Education Ministry expanded powers to fire, in an accelerated process, a teacher who "committed an act of solidarity with a terrorist organization" or "published praise, support or encouragement" of an act of terrorism.

For me the context is the way the definition of terrorism is vecoming broader (we saw protests against the government referred to that way).

Oshrat Elmaliah, Education for a Shared Society project coordinator at the Jewish-Arab civil-society organization Sikkuy-Aufoq, said that the purpose of the bill is to "intimidate and silence."

The rest, in case the article is paywalled:

The coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is advancing a bill that would require the Shin Bet security service to vet Israel's teachers, even though the provision was originally removed from the draft legislation. The contentious provision in the bill was removed in the Knesset's Education, Culture and Sports Committee, in part due to opposition from the Shin Bet itself, among others.

Last week, the MK who initiated the bill and one its co-sponsors, MK Amit Halevi of Likud, raised the provision again during the committee's discussion of objections to the bill, to pave the way to submitting the draft law for approval by the full Knesset, even though the provision does not appear in the version that was approved by the committee.

Labor lawmaker Gilad Kariv asked to postpone debate on the bill, arguing that Halevi's reservation concerns a provision that is no longer in the draft law and therefore could not be submitted to a vote.

The Knesset House Committee is expected to decide on the issue Thursday.

The provision Halevi seeks to restore would require the Education Ministry to send the ID numbers of all teachers to the Shin Bet every year, for background checks to determine "suspicion of support or sympathy for terrorism," and perform investigations as needed. Halevi is seeking in effect to restore Shin Bet oversight of teachers, which was abolished in 2005.

The Shin Bet opposes restoring general checks of all teachers. During last year's discussions, the Prime Minister's Office made it clear that the agency, which it oversees, "does not consider teachers a threat, and it therefore does not carry out any analysis of them."

The Shin Bet also argues that having to conduct background checks on so many teachers, without receiving additional funding for this purpose, would divert resources from the agency's core security missions.

A representative of the Finance Ministry who attended a meeting of the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee that discussed the bill last week told the lawmakers that if the background checks were only performed on a few dozen teachers and not to all of them – there are 200,000 teachers in Israel – there would be no budgetary implications.

The ministry also said this in response to a question from Haaretz, ignoring the wording of Halevi's attempt, in which he was proposing to first submit the ID numbers of all teachers in Israel to the Shin Bet. Only after this would an examination be held in cases of hints indicating support or sympathy for terror groups.

During the debate on the law by the previous Knesset, Israel Teachers Union Secretary General Yaffa Ben David strongly objected to the Shin Bet vetting provision. She argued that the law persecutes teachers and labels them as having a greater tendency toward terrorism than people in other professions. "Because of a few bad apples, we'll make a law for all teachers?" she asked rhetorically.

The bill sponsored by Halevi and MK Tzvika Foghel (Otzma Yehudit) bill deals with teachers and school that are suspected of expressing solidarity or support for acts of terrorism.

In addition to the Shin Bet vetting, the bill includes a provision allowing the withholding of state funds to schools "in which there are or may be expressions of solidarity with acts of terrorism." It also proposes giving the director general of the Education Ministry expanded powers to fire, in an accelerated process, a teacher who "committed an act of solidarity with a terrorist organization" or "published praise, support or encouragement" of an act of terrorism.

These provisions, which remain in the bill, also caused strong disagreement in the discussions. Opposition lawmakers noted the problem of giving the director general sole power to decide on a dismissal or revoke budgets. Civil society organizations pointed out that current law already permits dismissing teachers convicted or suspected of supporting terrorism, and that the bill proposes expanding this option without the required system of balances. Oshrat Elmaliah, Education for a Shared Society project coordinator at the Jewish-Arab civil-society organization Sikkuy-Aufoq, said that the purpose of the bill is to "intimidate and silence."

"From now on, every female Arab educator in the country will know that if she chooses to express a political opinion or hold a challenging dialogue in the school environment, she will be under the sole judgment of the Education Ministry director general and the minister, and could be accused of supporting terrorism and could lose her job, in the absence of the current protocol," Elmaliah said.

During the discussions on the bill, some of its wording was slightly softened, and many sections were canceled in the version that is now being submitted for discussion by the committee ahead of submitting it to the full Knesset. At last week's meeting, committee legal adviser Nira Lamay Rachlevsky said, "The Israel Bar Association still insists that the wording of the bill that is on the agenda be legally balanced." She said that it was necessary to balance the wording prescribing that budgets may be revoked from schools by establishing an expert consultation mechanism that will consider the seriousness of the acts."

At the discussions on the objections to the bill, Kariv said that it lacked various important components, such as prescribing the maximum allocation that could be revoked and the duration of the withholding. "When the education minister cuts 20 percent of the budget, can a school teach 20 percent less mathematics?" he asked. He slammed the bill's sponsors for "legislating laws so that we will take them to the High Court of Justice."

In March, Halevi objected to the state budget, but during the vote – despite objections by experts – the Education Committee distributed a new version of the bill that included her original sections but then withdraw her implied threat to oppose the budget and voted in favor of it. At the time, the Likud denied that there was deal linking the two things.

At the Education Committee meeting, Foghel insisted that the bill was necessary, adding: "The legal wrangling and the ability of the legal team to defend the bill before the High Court of Justice does not interest me. As far as I'm concerned, proportionality and balance carry no weight when it comes to protecting the State of Israel. It's unacceptable that a teacher or state-supported education institution would act against the state."

Halevi added, "This bill will prevent the continued fostering of an infrastructure that encourages terrorism and fans evil."

In a response to Haaretz, the Shin Bet said that "the security service's position is that this proposed arrangement is not required for security reasons and is disproportionate. Along with addressing the essential issue, a budgetary evaluation was performed and the results were transferred to professionals. Imposing the obligation to examine teachers on the Shin Bet without covering the expenses for doing so will divert resources allocated to the security service for the purpose of performing its core mission, and could harm its main operations, meant to foil terror attacks at this complex period, with the growing threats on all fronts."

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Join the 24 hour global online picket to end the U.S. Blockade on Cuba!

Oct 29-30

Register Here

24-hour Global Online Picket to End the U.S. Blockade on Cuba! + Remove Cuba from the so-called "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list!

24 HOUR GLOBAL ONLINE PICKET: Starting Tuesday October 29, 2024 8:00 pm (ET - Havana time)

Special Celebration & Wrap-up: Starting Wednesday October 30, 2024  7:00 pm (ET - Havana time)

Send video messages in solidarity with Cuba for the 24-hour Global Online Picket action: Telegram / WhatsApp: +1-778-882-5223 Email: info@us-cubanormalization.org

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dcotoDWZRm-1UBsFn3ubfg#/registration

Event will also be live broadcast on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/events/474571148702025

On October 29-30, 2024 Cuba will bring a resolution to the United Nations General Assembly to end the U.S. Blockade on Cuba for the 32nd year!  While the government of the U.S. votes “no” to ending the inhuman and illegal blockade, the people of the United States & the world vote “YES, end the blockade now!”

With 90 days left for the Biden Administration it is time for us to make a renewed push for Biden to remove Cuba from the so-called "State Sponsor's of Terrorism" (SSOT) list and to end to the cruel U.S. blockade. The situation in Cuba is urgent, with a nation-wide blackout this week and an ongoing crisis in Cuba's electrical power grid the impact of over 60 years of brutal U.S. sanctions and blockade on Cuba is clear. This has been coupled with devasting and unexpected floods from Hurricane Oscar in the province of Guantanamo, which have killed 7 people. While the Cuban government and workers are organizing to repair damage, improve safety, and to solve these urgent problems, the U.S. government continues to try to strangle Cuba. 

This week folks will be taking to the streets, signing petitions, mailing postcards, printing an ad in the New York Times, and mobilizing ahead of the UN vote on Cuba's resolution to end the criminal and illegal U.S. blockade. 

We hope you will send a video message for Cuba and join us live for the 24 Hour Global Online Picket to End the U.S. Blockade on Cuba October 29-30, let's reflect the important work being done and raise our united voices around the world for Cuba!

Organized by the U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition https://www.us-cubanormalization.org