#Iraqi Court

[dailyworldecho]

[totallyhussein-blog]

ISIS member charged in German court

A high-ranking Islamic State (IS) member has been charged in Germany with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including aiding in the genocide of the Yazidi community, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

As the Media Line reports, the suspect, identified as Ossama A., is a Syrian national accused of significant involvement in IS operations in Syria.

Prosecutors allege that Ossama A. joined IS in 2014 in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor region and led a local unit that confiscated 13 properties. These buildings were reportedly used as housing for fighters, office spaces, and storage facilities.

Two properties served as prisons where captured Yazidi women were held, sexually abused, and exploited by IS members, the prosecutor-general’s office stated.

The charges against Ossama A. include aiding and abetting genocide, reflecting IS’s broader campaign to destroy the Yazidi religious community.

The UN has recognized these atrocities as genocide, with IS killing over 3,000 Yazidis, enslaving 7,000 women and girls, and displacing much of the 550,000-strong community in northern Iraq.

Ossama A., arrested in Germany in April 2024, remains in pre-trial custody. His indictment underscores Germany’s leadership in prosecuting war crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

[sayruq]

On a misty November morning 21 years ago, I was desperately trying to remain camouflaged. Concealed in the foliage of an orange grove in Israel’s rural Galilee, I hurriedly took photos of a drab concrete building not marked on any map. Even the original road sign identifying the site as Facility 1391 had been removed after a local Haaretz newspaper investigation revealed it housed a secret prison. I was the first foreign journalist to track down Facility 1391, most of it hidden within a heavily fortified complex built in the 1930s to suppress resistance to British rule in Palestine. For decades, Israel had secretly held mostly Arab foreign nationals captive at the site, unknown to the Israeli courts, the Red Cross and human rights groups. Many were Lebanese citizens kidnapped during Israel’s 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. But there were also Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians and Iranians. This site would soon be known as a “black site”, a term popularised by Washington's invasion of Iraq that year. Drawing on techniques refined by Israel at Facility 1391, the US would, in the coming months and years, torture Iraqis and others at Abu Ghraib and Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo. No one knew how many captives were held in Israel’s Facility 1391, how long they had been there or if there were more such prisons. However, the first testimonies from inmates revealed horrifying conditions. For most of the time, they were kept in a state of sensory deprivation, made to wear blacked-out goggles, except for when being tortured. In one case that later came to court, a Lebanese captive had been sodomised with a baton by “Major George”, the facility’s torturer-in-chief. Major George would go on to become head of Israeli police relations with the Palestinian population of Jerusalem.

If you're going to do one thing today, read this article. Then read the CNN article on Sde Teiman

[reality-detective]

More on JD Vance 👇

There's a connection here and I haven't found it as of yet. 👇

Something else to think about 👇

More dots are being connected 👇

Sidney Austin Law Firm - Specialties:

Artificial Intelligence, Accountants and Professional Liability, Agribusiness and Food, Antitrust and Competition, Aviation and Airlines, Banking and Financial Services, Capital Markets, Commercial Litigation and Disputes, Consumer Class Actions, Corporate Governance, Crisis Management, Entertainment Sports and Media, Environmental Social and Governance, Food Drug and Medical Device, Government Strategies, Healthcare, Hospitals, `National Security, Rails, Real Estate, Supreme Court, Taxes, Telecom and Internet Connection, Transportation

What do they have in common? All things the cabal controls!

Yale Graduate and Wife of JD Vance, Usha Chilukuri?? A marriage made in Freemason Cabal Heaven. She worked in the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. She also worked as Law Clerk for both the Supreme Court and DING DING DING worked for Chief Justice Epstein Island regular customer, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh. Her voting History shows she has not VOTED in Hamilton County since 2022 and voted Democrat when she lived in Connecticut......I smell a Deep State fake Republican! 👇

Connected to the CIA 👇

CIA Pride👇

Q has even mentioned a JD Vance connection in a post 👇

Feel free to go down some rabbit holes because I am just about done with what appears to be another deep state clown 🤡 👇

Has a deal been made? Was he infiltrating the swamp? Is he going to be exposing more turds floating in the punchbowl? Do you think it is odd to see all these accomplishments at the age of 39?

Trump put ass clowns like this in the spotlight for a reason in the past... Is he doing it again? Trump keeps his friends close but he keeps his enemies closer. Remember we're at war, a mop-up situation... You Decide 🤔

[askarsjustsoswedish]

GENERATION KILL - MILITARY TERMINOLOGY AND SLANG USED IN THE MINISERIES (Part 2, N-Z)

N.J.P. (Non-Judicial Punishment):  next to a court martial, the most severe form of punishment to which a Marine can be subjected.  It usually involves a loss of rank and pay grade.

Navy Hospitalman, Doc Bryan:  the medic, though medics in the Marine Corps are technically part of the Navy’s hospital corps and are never referred to as “medics” but as Corpsmen.

Negligent Discharge:  accidental firing of a weapon;  aka N.D.

Nine-lines:  a procedure for directing air strikes on ground targets.

No salute zone:  forward areas where officers are not to be acknowledged with salutes, in order to conceal rank from potential enemy observers.

O Dark Hundred:  until darkness falls.  Note: “O dark 30” typically means half an hour before dawn, or any ridiculously early hour of the morning.

Oakley sunglasses:  surfer sunglasses worn by just about all Marines in Iraq.  Iraqis believe Oakleys give Marines X-ray powers to see through women’s clothing and are a constant source of tension.

One M.E.F. (First Marine Expeditionary Force):  the overall Marine invasion force in the Middle East, which comprises the First Division (ground troops) under command of Gen. Mattis, the Air Wing and a logistics battalion.  The entire One M.E.F. is under the command of General James Conway.

Oscar Mike:  “On the Move” from the phonetic alphabet.

Overwatch:  a position that offers protective fire for a given area.

“Paint me”:  to paint something is to shine one’s gunsight laser designator on a target in preparation for shooting it.

PAS-13 Thermal:  a night vision device, about the size of an old video camera, that can see heat signatures.  Note:  A single device is usually referred to in the plural, e.g. ,“Pass me the thermals” refers to one device.

Pec-fours, Pec-thirteens:  night and infrared vision scopes.

POG (Person Other than Grunt):  a pejorative term for anyone who is in the rear echelon and therefore not in a recon or infantry unit.  This is one of the most insulting terms in the Marine Corps, almost the equivalent of the “N” word.  Note:  POG is pronounced with a long “o.”

Police:  to clean up or correct, as in “Police your tent,” or clean it up.  (1-16)

Psy-Ops:   Psychological-Operations units, which in Iraq relied on leaflets, radio and loudspeaker broadcasts to encourage enemy forces to surrender.

Pyro and Smoke protocol:  codes involving use of smoke grenades and flares.

R.C.T. (Regimental Combat Team):  a super-regiment of about 7,000 Marines; the First Division consisted of three RCTs – RCT 1, RCT 5 and RCT 7 – plus First Recon, which operated on its own.

R.C.T. One (Regimental Combat Team One):  a motorized, armored infantry regiment of about 7,000 Marines.

R.O.E. (The Rules of Engagement):  the all important, ever-changing and always ambiguous rules governing when a Marine may fire his weapon.

R.T.O. (Radio Transceiver Operator):  radioman, the most important guy on the team and usually the calmest and smartest next to the team leader.  (1-23)

Rack:  nautical for sleeping area.

Ranger Graves:  sleeping holes dug by marines to protect from shrapnel and gunshots.

Raptor:  radio call-sign for First Recon’s Charlie company.

Recon Mission:  a reconnaissance mission performed specifically by Recon Marines who are the Marine Corps special forces; there are only a few hundred Recon Marines in the entire Corps.

Red-Con One:  a loaded weapon with a round in its chamber, but with the safety on.

Revetment:  crude fortifications made from earth or concrete or sandbags.

Ripped Fuel:  brand name of a popular over-the-counter stimulant, banned by the military but widely used.

RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade):   anti-tank rocket first developed by the Germans as the “panzerfaust,” then adopted by Soviets and as common to Iraqi forces and insurgents as Skittles candies are to Marines.  Not very accurate, but devastating when fired in mass by five- or ten-man RPG teams.  RPGs were famously used to bring down U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters in Somalia.

S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure):  S.O.P. is sometimes informally used as a synonym for common sense.

Saffwon Hill:  a low hill on the Iraq side of the border with Kuwait, believed to be the locale of a dug-in Iraqi division.

Sapi plates:  12-inch square ceramic plates worn in front and back of one’s flak vest, rated to stop the enemy’s preferred 7.62 round.

Schwack:  to kill; origin believed to be a popular video game.

Screwby:  either “That sucks,” or “That’s really cool,” from Cpl. Stafford’s personal hip-hop lexicon.

Senior NCOs:  anyone from staff-sergeant to Sergeant Major.  Corporals and Sergeants are also NCOs, but they are never referred to junior NCOs, simply as NCOs.  (1-18)

Sergeant Major:  the highest possible rank a non-commissioned officer can earn in the Marine Corps; invariably a ball-buster who speaks in a semi-illiterate southern sounding accent no matter where he is from.  This battalion has just one Sergeant Major.

Shamal:  hellacious wind and dust storms endemic to Iraq.

Sit-Rep:  situation report:; often used as a more confusing way to say “situation.”

Skittles:  chewy fruit-flavored children’s candy, which is a dietary staple in U.S. military.

Slackman:  team machine gunner, armed with a SAW.

Snatch:  a specific Marine term for abducting an enemy combatant in order to gather intelligence.

Soft Cover:  same as a boonie cap.  Note:  the word “hat” does not exist in the Marine Corps; anything you place on your head is a cover.

Sparrow:  a small reaction force held in reserve while another unit attacks; an “eagle” is a large reaction force.

Spread load his excitement:  to calm down;  from the tradition of foot patrols spreading a heavy load equally among all troops.

T-55:  Soviet-era tank ubiquitous in Iraq; older and much less feared than the newer, but less-common T-72 Soviet tanks also in Iraq.

TAD-two, TAD-three:  Tactical Air Direct radio bands for communicating directly with pilots in attack aircraft.

Task Force Tarawa:  a four thousand-strong Marine unit outside of the First Division Command Structure.  This American unit was initially put under the command of the British at Basra, then moved north to Nasariyah.

Team Leader:  the sergeant in command of each combat team.  Fick’s platoon is divided into three teams, but spread across four Humvees (not counting Fick’s command vehicle, the fifth Humvee).  Since Fick’s platoon is a special forces unit trained in coastal raids, they have no experience with Humvees.  Technically each team has a specialty, with team one being the dive (or SCUBA) team, team two being the boat team and team three the para-jump team.  But here, ironically, they are all in a desert.

The Three:  the battalion’s intelligence unit.

T-rats:  T-rations; pre-manufactured military food heated and served in mess halls of forward units.

Triple-A:  Anti-Aircraft Artillery; towed or self-propelled guns designed to shoot down aircraft but often used by Iraqis against American forces on the ground.

Two o’clock:  direction of enemy forces.  Orientation of the lead vehicle puts 12 o’clock at the center of the hood and six o’clock at the rear.

Two-Oh-Three:  an M-203 grenade launcher, which is a single shot self-propelled weapon mounted beneath the barrel of a standard Marine rifle.  The M-203 fires the same 40mm round as the M-19.

Unfucking:  a verb peculiar to the Marine Corps meaning to get out of a fucked-up situation.

U-two:  a reference to venerable U2 spy planes.

Victors:  vehicles.  The military uses the phonetic alphabet as a shorthand code:  the phonetic alphabet replaces letters with words, i.e., Alpha, Bravo Charlie, Delta, Echo.  These phonetic word for each letter of the alphabet can be used to replace any word starting with the corresponding letter.  Hence, vehicle becomes “victor,” terrorist becomes “tango” and white trash becomes “whiskey tango,” as in, “He grew up in a whiskey tango trailer park in the Ozarks.”

Whiskey Tango:  white trash, from the phonetic alphabet version.

Zil truck:  Russian-made truck popular in Iraq.

[bumblee-stumblee]

By Alex MacDonald

Published date: 6 August 2024 12:27 BST

Last update: 1 day 8 hours ago

Women and children's rights campaigners in Iraq have pushed back at proposals that could enshrine sectarianism in family relationships, hand more power in family matters to clerics and open the door for marriage to be legalised for children as young as nine years old.

The amendments to Law No. 188 of the Personal Status Law of 1959 have been heavily promoted by the Coordination Framework, a coalition of conservative Shia Islamist parties that form the largest bloc in parliament.

The first reading took place on Sunday, following a failed attempt on 24 July that was shelved after some parties objected.

It is only the latest attempt to bring forward amendments to the law, with previous ones being shelved after political outcry.

According to the draft bill, when concluding a marriage contract, a Muslim couple are required to choose either the Sunni or Shia sect to represent in "all matters of personal status".

"When a dispute occurs between the spouses regarding the doctrine according to whose provisions the marriage contract was concluded, the contract is deemed to have been concluded in accordance with the husband’s doctrine unless evidence exists to the contrary," reads the draft, which was circulated by a number of Iraqi politicians on social media.

It would also allow figures from "the offices of the Shiite and Sunni endowments" to finalise marriages rather than the courts.

The draft requires Shia and Sunni endowments to submit a "code of legal rulings" to the parliament six months after ratifying the amendments, stipulating the Shia code would be based on "Jaafari jurisprudence".

Although the question of child marriage is not directly addressed in the amendments, previous versions of the bill have been more explicit and legal experts have warned that it could be allowed based on Jaafari jurisprudence.

Many Iraqi marriages are unregistered and conducted by religious figures, making them illegal under the current Iraqi Personal Status Law.

The proposed amendments could see those marriages - 22 percent of which, according to the UN, involve girls under 14 - legitimised by the state.

The 1959 law was passed under the government of Abdul-Karim Qasim, a leftist nationalist who brought in a number of progressive reforms, including increased rights for women.

Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, however, rightwing political parties in the country have attempted to roll back these rights.

Previous versions of the bill have included rules preventing Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims, the legalisation of marital rape, and banning women from leaving the house without their husband's permission.

The latest version is considerably less explicit, but campaigners fear its passage will allow religious authorities to introduced the rules through their establishment of the Personal Status code.

"These proposed changes to the Personal Status law would have a profoundly negative impact on the rights and wellbeing of women and children in Iraq," said Tamara Amir, CEO of the Iraqi Women's Rights Platform.

She told MEE that unlike previous attempts at passing the reforms, she believed that the current government - led by Coordination Framework member Mohammed Shia al-Sudani - would manage to get it passed, despite Iraqi society being "divided" on the issue.

"They would further entrench gender inequality and put vulnerable individuals at greater risk," she said.

"We urge policymakers to reject these proposals and instead focus on strengthening protections for women and children."

--

From March 2014

May 2014

"The law is based on the principles of the Jaafari school of Shiite religious jurisprudence. It prohibits Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims and lowers the marriage age to 9 for girls and 15 for boys."

--from the above NPR article

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Under the new law, which was agreed yesterday, religious authorities have been given the power to decide on family affairs, including marriage, divorce and the care of children. It abolishes a previous ban on the marriage of children under the age of 18 in place since the 1950s.

“We have reached the end of women’s rights and the end of children’s rights in Iraq,” said the lawyer Mohammed Juma, one of the most prominent opponents of the law.

The Iraqi journalist Saja Hashim said: “The fact that clerics have the upper hand in deciding the fate of women is terrifying. I fear everything that will come in my life as a woman.”

Activists said they feared the law would now also be applied retroactively to cases filed in courts before it was enacted, affecting rights to alimony and custody.

Raya Faiq, spokesperson for the feminist group Coalition 188, said: “We received an audio recording of a woman crying her eyes out because of the passage of this law, with her husband threatening to take her daughter away unless she gives up her rights to financial support.”

Child marriage has been a longstanding issue in Iraq, where 28% of girls were married before they turned 18, a 2023 UN survey found.

While marriage is presented to some underage girls as a chance to escape poverty, many of the marriages end in failure, bringing lifelong consequences for young women, including social shame and a lack of opportunities because of unfinished schooling.

Instead of tightening laws against underage marriage and helping girls from poorer backgrounds to complete their education, the new law allows the marriage of minors according to the religious sect under which the marriage contract is concluded.

For Shia Muslims, which make up the majority in Iraq, the lowest age of marriage for girls will be nine years old, while for Sunnis, the official age will be 15.

Sajjad Salem, an independent MP, said: “The Iraqi state has never witnessed a decline and profanity that harmed Iraq’s wealth and reputation as we are witnessing today.”

Alia Nassif, a member of the parliament’s legal committee, said in a post online that the vote took place without the minimum number of MPs required to pass a law being present and that she and other opponents of the law would be going to the Iraqi federal court to challenge the decision.

As vaguely suggested by this article, this move may also impact rights around divorce

[aqlstar]

Disclaimer: I obviously don’t think anyone should do war crimes or join ISIS.

I also think this is a bad look for Sweden:

Sweden won’t prosecute anyone for leaving Sweden to fight with ISIS prior to 2020.

They just have ex-ISIS members vibing around.

[girlactionfigure]

🔪 TERROR REPORTS - Latest Updates from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

🔪TERROR - STABBING - (conflicting reports - Pardes Hana or Haifa) - Karkur intersection.. 3 people stabbed, 2 seriously wounded.  No other details at this time.

🔪TERROR - THWARTED - TEL AVIV AZRIELI.. Shin Bet thwarted a deadly attack on the Azrieli Towers & Mall in Tel Aviv that was planned by 5 residents of Taiba who established a terrorist infrastructure identified with ISIS.  The plan was to carry out an attack on the towers & shopping mall using a vehicle bomb.  Arrested.

🔪A CIVILIAN HAS DIED.. murdered in the Hadera terror stabbing, passed away from his wounds.  Raphael Mordechai Fischhoff , 35, of Hadera.  May his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem, and may G-d avenge his blood!

▪️HERO CIVILIAN WHO SURVIVED.. Hero of Israel Neria Siboni, the most seriously injured from the bus station shooting attack in Be’er Sheva this week, says: "I heard the terrorist's shots, I shouted ‘Shema Israel’ and ran towards him with bare hands. I knew I was taking him one on one."  The terrorist shot him with a bullet that punctured his lung, but he did not stop until he saw that the terrorist was eliminated. Only after checking that his wife was okay did he allow himself to collapse.

▪️RESCUED IN JUDEA-SAMARIA.. Lt. Col. Hisham Abraham, revealed that since the 7th October, the unit worked to rescue over 200 Israelis, including soldiers, who had entered “Palestinian” Area A and were in danger of their lives.

🔹US factors: Washington proposed to Israel that the US impose new economic sanctions on Iran instead of attacking and damaging economic targets.

▪️ON THE TEL AVIV PRAYER COURT DECISION.. the Rosh Yehudi organization cancels Yom Kippur prayer in the public space of Gan Meir in Tel Aviv, despite the Supreme Court's ruling. Although the court ruled in our favor, due to fear of provocations - Rosh Yehudi will hold Yom Kippur prayers in the synagogue at Bar Kochba 54, and not in Gan Meir.  In times of war, when our soldiers risk themselves in heroic battles, and when the whole nation prays for the return of our hostages in peace, the way to victory and the defeat of the enemy as well as the return of our hostages, is by adding holiness, unity and inner peace. Unfortunately, we heard plans to destroy this legal prayer as well.  We choose a responsible step.

💩ON “URGENT URGENT URGENT” LAUNCH ALERTS.. there is apparently an enemy propaganda campaign, unclear if for internal Arab consumption or to pressure Israel, of reports of missile launches and drone launches, regularly.  Here’s the latest:

.. Suicide Drones launched at Israel from Iraq!  Inbound!  Several hours until arrival.

.. Arab Report: Missiles to be launched from Iraq!

Hints of fake-ness:  Iraqi Shia-Iranian militias have suicide drones and cruise missiles, but in very limited quantity.  They regularly fire at Israel, but so far have never fired more than 3 at a time - and due to the terrain and countries in between, normally fire at either the Golan or Eilat.  Because of this they are minor threat, almost always detected and intercepted by the IDF prior to reaching Israel.  (They did get 1 through which killed 2 soldiers and wounded 20 in the Golan.)

These messages should be ignored by the public unless Home Front Command puts out an alert.

▪️The American-Israeli who was arrested in Lebanon by the Lebanese authorities was released to the US.

▪️AIR TRAVEL.. Air Europa updates will return flights to Israel on Oct. 21.

✡️A word of Torah: The Second Temple was destroyed because of causeless hatred. Perhaps the Third will be rebuilt because of causeless love. - Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, zt”l

[beardedmrbean]

A 25 year-old woman and a 26 year-old man were sentenced to life in prison in a German court on Thursday for the murder of the woman’s lookalike in a scheme to faker her death.

According to the court, the Iraqi-German woman, named only as Shahraban K, wanted to go into hiding due to family conflicts and fake her own death. She went onto social media to search for a doppelganger and arranged to meet a 23 year-old woman, whom she then killed with the help of an acquaintance.

The trial lasted 11 months and more than 50 days of hearings were needed. The court ruled the crime to be particularly serious, which makes it unlikely that the sentence will be suspended after 15 years — a common occurence in Germany.

Handing down the sentence on Thursday, the presiding judge in the city of Ingolstadt described the murder as a "disturbing act".

How the ‘doppelganger murder’ occurred

Prosecutors say that the victim was sounded out on social media in August 2022 and told she would receive a free beauty treatment. She was then picked up by Shahraban K and her male acquaintance, Sheqir K, to be brought to the fake appointment.

Once they had picked her up, the pair brought the victim to a wooded area and stabbed her 56 times.

The victim’s body was then placed in Shahraban K's car, where her parents discovered it and thought it was their daughter’s. But after an investigation, the corpse's true identity was discovered.

According to German media reports, Shahraban K originated from a Yazidi community in northern Iraq and may have been motivated to fake her own death after her marriage broke down.

She has also been convicted of attempted incitement to murder. The court found that she had hired a hitman to kill her brother-in-law, although the murder did not end up taking place.

[vague-humanoid]

Anas Altikriti was in London, and busy, on the day in July 2020 when his phone was hacked. He frequently works as a hostage negotiator and, at the time, he was negotiating a deal to free a hostage being held on the Libya–Chad border. Altikriti also had a meeting with former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. But his schedule did not include having his phone infiltrated by Pegasus, the phone hacking software made by Israel’s NSO Group. 

Four years later, Altikriti, an Iraqi-born British citizen and vocal critic of the United Arab Emirates, is filing a report to the Metropolitan Police in London accusing the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group of complicity in the targeted hacking of his phone. On Wednesday, he filed the complaint about NSO and its associates alongside three fellow U.K.-based human rights defenders whose phones were also hacked.

“This case has some real legs,” said Leanna Burnard, a lawyer at the nonprofit Global Legal Action Network, who prepared the complaint. “The U.K. shouldn’t stand for the hacking of human rights defenders on its own soil.”

Assembled with the help of advocates from GLAN on behalf of the victims, the extensively footnoted filing sent to the Metropolitan Police, which was obtained by The Intercept, puts the ball in the police’s court. The police now have discretion over whether to open an investigation and subsequently bring charges.

[eretzyisrael]

by Melanie Phillips

Five days after Britain’s Labour party won an overwhelming parliamentary majority in the general election, we can see the outline of what this is likely to mean for British Jews and their country’s relationship with Israel. That outline is not reassuring.

The new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is said to have purged his party of antisemitism and has persuaded many British Jews that he has made Labour safe again for Jewish voters. On Sunday morning, he told the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas — antisemite, Holocaust denier and fan of Hitler’s wartime ally in the Middle East — that an independent state was the “undeniable right” of the Palestinian people and that “financial support for the Palestinian Authority” was one of his “immediate priorities”. 

He did not tell Abbas that a condition of this financial support was that the PA must stop paying financial rewards to terrorists and their families for murdering Israelis. Nor did he say that a condition of receiving more British taxpayers’ money was that the PA must end its indoctrination of Palestinian Arab children in Nazi-themed demonisation of the Jews, teaching them that their greatest ambition should be to murder Jews and steal all their land. 

Instead, Starmer proceeded to lecture Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin  Netanyahu, that there was a “clear and urgent” need for a ceasefire in Gaza as well as an immediate increase in the volume of humanitarian aid reaching civilians. As for the war being waged by Hezbollah in Lebanon against northern Israel, Starmer warned Netanyahu:

It was crucial all parties acted with caution.

What kind of “caution” does Starmer suggest is appropriate in the face of a threat of genocide by Hezbollah and its patron, Iran? Or to put it another way, with Hezbollah primed to unleash its armoury of 150,000 rockets and other missiles that can reach all of Israel, and with Iran itself along with Iraqi, Syrian and Houthi militias not to mention the terrorist armies of the “West Bank” all primed to attack Israel if it launches all-out war against Hezbollah, does Starmer really believe that Israel actually needs to be told to act “with caution”? 

Can he really not grasp that, given the daily onslaught over the past nine months from dozens of rockets, drones and guided missiles that have destroyed Israeli border towns, left swathes of northern Israel burning, made more than 60,000 Israelis refugees in their own country and kept other residents in the north trapped in their safe rooms (two Israelis were killed today by a Hezbollah rocket strike that hit their car) that if the Israelis abandon that “caution” it’s because they have no other choice?   

Starmer shows absolutely zero understanding that this crisis isn’t about Hamas, Hezbollah or the Palestinian Arabs. They are proxies and pawns in an Iranian war of extermination against Israel, the essential precursor to the destruction and conquest of America, Britain and the west. 

So little does he understand this that the new Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is now poring over the government’s legal advice on whether to stop UK arms sales to Israel.

Once upon a time, Lammy was sympathetic to Israel. Now he is a foe. He has repeated what he said before the election, that Labour supports the request by the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant — and that if these Israelis came to the UK after such warrants were issued, Britain would arrest them.

This despite the fact that the claims upon which Khan relied were lies, distortions and blood libels drawn from Hamas-sympathising and Israel-bashing organisations, and were all demonstrably untrue.

[r--c]

Arid Uka / Frankfurt Airport Shooting.

PERPETRATOR:

The 2011 Frankfurt Airport shooting occurred on 2 March 2011 at Frankfurt Airport in Germany. The shooter, Arid Uka, was arrested and charged with killing two United States Airmen and seriously wounding two others. He was convicted of murder and attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison on 10 February 2012.

According to the court judge at Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt, this was the first terrorist attack in Germany in which the perpetrator had an Islamist motive.

Arid Uka, the 21-year-old perpetrator, was a Kosovo-born ethnic Albanian Muslim who had lived in Germany since he was one year old; his family having lived in there for four decades. His grandfather was a Kosovo Albanian imam, while his parents and two brothers led secular lives. He had been working at the airport post office. He had not shown any jihadist inclinations before the attacks, but radicalized rapidly beginning in late summer 2010.

In the months before the attack, he underwent a late-adolescent crisis. Uka left school before his university-entrance diploma, but did not tell his family. Instead, he told them that he had finished the diploma successfully. His family members, former friends, and one of his employers described him as introverted, polite, and not aggressive. Months before the shooting, Uka broke ties to all his friends and retreated. During this time, he was extensively surfing the web visiting websites with Salafi jihadist content. He started wearing typically Islamic clothing, and began to study Arabic.

Uka decided to join the fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, but failed to do so since he failed to establish the right contacts. Through the internet, Uka established contact with Sheikh Abdellatif, a Moroccan preacher and jihadism supporter affiliated with the Da'wa group, who preached in two mosques in Frankfurt. The Salafi mosque of these two is considered as a meeting-point for radical Islamists. Several well-known Islamists have been seen there. An early example of Salafist lone wolf terrorism in Europe, Uka's sole contacts with extremists was online, he never had direct personal contact and was never involved in physical network.

According to German authorities, Uka confessed to the killings when interrogated after the shooting. Uka's lawyer said that the motivation for the shooting was a video on YouTube, which showed US soldiers raping Iraqi Muslim women. Uka was convinced that the video was genuine, but it was in fact a clip taken from Redacted, an American film based on the Mahmudiyah massacre. On the internet, Uka posted on several Islamist forums, later claiming that through the content and the discussions in these forums, he came to believe that his fellow Muslims were in global war with the United States. Uka was also influenced by jihadist Anasheed, including Anasheed made by Abou Maleeq, who would later join the Islamic State.

SHOOTING:

Uka targeted a United States Air Force bus parked outside the terminal building that was supposed to transport 15 U.S. airmen to Ramstein Air Base. He reportedly walked up to a waiting airman, asked him for a cigarette, and wanted to know whether the airmen were bound for Afghanistan. When the airman said yes, according to German prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum, Uka waited for the airman to turn away and then shot him in the back of the head, killing him. Shouting "Allahu Akbar!" the attacker then entered the bus, shooting and killing the driver, fired three shots at two other airmen, wounding them. When he pointed his pistol at the head of another airman and pulled the trigger, the weapon jammed. Uka fled, but was pursued by the civilian airport employee Lamar Joseph Conner and Staff Sergeant Trevor Donald Brewer and shortly afterwards overpowered by two German police officers. He was subsequently arrested.

The two victims killed in the shooting were Senior Airman Nicholas Alden, 25, of South Carolina and Airman First Class Zachary Cuddeback, 21, of Virginia. Staff Sgt. Kristoffer Schneider was shot in the right temple and lost his sight in one eye. The right side of his face had to be rebuilt with titanium, and he suffers head pain and seizures. Part of his skull also had to be removed after an infection. Schneider was medically retired in 2012. Edgar Veguilla was hit in the jaw and arm and suffered nerve damage.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

#20yrsago The Grey Video https://random.waxy.org/video/grey_video.mov

#20yrsago Canada’s DMCA: why is it a bad idea? https://web.archive.org/web/20050428093632/http://www.digital-copyright.ca/files/The_Truth__Final__clean__Nov_16_04_DAF.html

#20yrsago Internet Archive pages are admissable into evidence https://web.archive.org/web/20041120050733/https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/packets/vol_2_no_3/002728.shtml/

#15yrsago Demonstrating TSA futility by stabbing dead pigs with pens https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17325460/

#15yrsago Chumby One: handsome successor to the cutest computer ever https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2009/chumby-one

#15yrsago EFF analyzes the legal creepiness of ACTA, the secret copyright treaty https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/stopping-acta-juggernaut

#15yrsago Maricopa deputy steals defender’s paperwork during a court case http://www.heatcity.org/2009/11/judge-orders-officer-to-apologize-or-face-jail-for-taking-attorneys-file.html

#15yrsago SFPD cops from imaginary anti-dance-party squad steal laptops https://web.archive.org/web/20091120193839/https://www.sfweekly.com/2009-11-18/music/s-f-cops-may-have-gone-too-far-in-seizing-dj-gear-at-underground-parties/

#10yrsago Director Lexi Alexander explains why she sides with pirates https://torrentfreak.com/why-hollywood-director-lexi-alexander-sides-with-pirates-141118/

#10yrsago Bumfights creator accused of stealing remains of dead children from Thai hospital museum https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/443837/body-parts-in-dhl-packages-stolen-from-siriraj-museum-hospital-says

#10yrsago New sf story: “Huxleyed into the Full Orwell” https://www.vice.com/en/article/huxleyed-into-the-full-cory-orwell-cory-doctorow/

#10yrsago Whatsapp integrates Moxie Marlinspike’s Textsecure end-to-end crypto https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/

#5yrsago Podcast: Jeannette Ng Was Right, John W. Campbell Was a Fascist https://ia803108.us.archive.org/19/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_315/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_315_-_Jeannette_Ng_Was_Right_John_W_Campbell_Was_a_Fascist.mp3

#5yrsago Coop’s tribute to Randotti Skulls, from the golden age of Haunted Mansion merchandise https://memex.craphound.com/2019/11/18/coops-tribute-to-randotti-skulls-from-the-golden-age-of-haunted-mansion-merchandise/

#5yrsago Beyond antitrust: the anti-monopoly movement and what it stands for https://onezero.medium.com/the-utah-statement-reviving-antimonopoly-traditions-for-the-era-of-big-tech-e6be198012d7

#5yrsago Massive leak of Chinese government documents reveal the “no mercy” plan for Muslims in Xinjiang https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html

#5yrsago 900 pages of leaked Iranian spy cables reveal how America’s failures after invasions allowed Iran to seize control of Iraqi politics https://theintercept.com/2019/11/18/iran-iraq-spy-cables/

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #TechBros #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava [SPANISH] The U.S. Congress will allocate more than $1 billion to Christian and Kurdish militias [UPDATES]

In the U.S. Congress, a bill has been passed to help economically the armed Sunni, Kurdish and Christian self-defense groups fighting the Islamic State and jihad. This rule will allocate a budget of $1 billion for military aid to the Iraqi army, peshmerga militias in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, and also to local militias organized in ethnic-religious bases. The information has been highlighted by Clarion Project, an NGO that has as its mission the social struggle and awareness-raising against Islamic extremistism…

RELATED UPDATE: KBDH: Let's raise the slogan Jin jîyan Azadî, let's stop the executions in Iran!

RELATED UPDATE: Female figures: Women Revolution became inspiring Model in Middle East, the World

RELATED UPDATE: Apê Nemir, one of the symbols of the Kobanê resistance, passes away

RELATED UPDATE: Kalkan: AP0 proposed the democratic nation as a solution for the Middle East

RELATED UPDATE: Thousands of women protest against death sentence of Warisheh Moradi

RELATED UPDATE: TJK-E: Let's fill the streets with the slogan 'Jin Jiyan Azadi'

RELATED UPDATE: World March of Women condemns death sentence of Kurdish activist in Iran

RELATED UPDATE: Kurdish activist sentenced to 18 months in prison in Iran

FURTHER READING:

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

deAdder

* * * *

Former Republican representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming joined Vice President Kamala Harris on a stage hung with red, white, and blue bunting and signs that said “Country Over Party.” As Cheney took the stage, the crowd chanted, “Thank you, Liz!” The two were on the campaign trail today in Ripon, Wisconsin, the town that claims to be the birthplace of the Republican Party. It was in that then-tiny town in 1852 that Alvan E. Bovay, who had recently emigrated from New York, called for a new political party to stand against slavery.

The idea of a new party took off in 1854 when it became clear the Kansas-Nebraska Act permitting the westward expansion of human enslavement would become law. When they met in February of that year, people in Ripon were early participants in the movement of people across the North to defend democracy. Rather than standing against slavery alone, those organizing in 1854 stood against an entire political system, opposing the small group of elite enslavers who had taken over the U.S. government in order to establish an oligarchy and were quite clear they rejected the self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal. Instead, they intended to rule over the nation’s majority, whose labor produced the capital that southern leaders believed only elites should control.

In the face of this existential threat to the country, party divisions crumbled.

Pundits have described today’s event as a component of Harris’s ongoing outreach to Republicans, and in part, it is. That outreach, begun under President Joe Biden and continuing even more aggressively under Harris, is bearing fruit as in an open letter today, two dozen Republican former officials and lawmakers in Wisconsin endorsed Harris and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz. “We have plenty of policy disagreements with Vice President Harris,” the Republicans wrote. “But what we do agree upon is more important. We agree that we cannot afford another four years of the broken promises, election denialism, and chaos of Donald Trump’s leadership.”

Lately, there have been indications of what returning Trump to office might mean.

On Tuesday, Trump suggested that the U.S. soldiers who sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBI) when Iran attacked an Iraqi base where they were stationed were not truly injured, but simply had “headaches.” Trump’s statement brought back to light a 2021 CBS report by Catherine Herridge and Michael Kaplan that found the injured soldiers had not been recognized with a Purple Heart, awarded to service members wounded or killed in the line of duty, despite qualifying for it. This slight meant they were denied the medical benefits that come with that military decoration.

The soldiers told Herridge and Kaplan that they were pressured to downplay their injuries to avoid undercutting Trump’s attempt to keep the casualty numbers in that incident low. With the story back in the news, Kaplan posted that after the report, the Army awarded the soldiers the Purple Hearts they deserved.

Journalist Magdi Jacobs recalled the argument of Trump’s lawyers before the Supreme Court that Trump could not prod a SEAL team to assassinate a rival because service members would adhere to the rules of their institutions. The Army officers’ bowing to Trump’s political demands proved that argument was wrong and set off “[m]ajor alarm bells,” Jacobs posted, suggesting that the military would not stand firm against Trump in a second term, especially now that the Supreme Court says a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of official duties.

Scott Waldman and Thomas Frank of Politico’s E&E News covering energy and the environment reported today that two former White House officials said that Trump was “flagrantly partisan” when responding to natural disasters. One said that in 2018 Trump refused to approve disaster aid after wildfires to California, perceiving it as a Democratic state. To get disaster money, the aide showed Trump polling results revealing that Orange County, which had been badly damaged in the fires, “had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.”

Defending the Big Lie that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters in 2021 gave a security badge to a man associated with MyPillow owner Mike Lindell to enable him to breach the county’s voting systems in an unsuccessful attempt to find evidence of voter fraud. A jury found Peters guilty of four felonies related to the scheme. Today, District Court Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced Peters to nine years in prison.

But there are other stories these days of what the government can accomplish when it is focused on the good of all Americans.

About 45,000 dock workers in the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike Tuesday when the union could not reach an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group over a new contract. The strike shut down 36 ports from Maine to Texas, affecting about half the country’s shipping just as the areas hammered by Hurricane Helene desperately needed supplies. Dockworkers wanted a pay increase of up to 77% over six years and better benefits, as well as an end to the automation that threatens union jobs.

President Joe Biden reiterated his support for collective bargaining despite the threat to an economic slowdown from the strike. The Wall Street Journal editorial board excoriated Biden and the union, saying: “President Biden wants unions to have extortionary bargaining power, and he’s getting a demonstration of it on election eve. Congratulations.”

But today the International Longshoremen’s Association suspended the strike after USMX agreed to wage increases of 62% over six years. The two sides agreed to extend the current contract until January 15 to address the issues of benefits and automation. Administration officials White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, top White House economic advisor Lael Brainard, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg helped broker the temporary agreement.

The government’s power to make things better is also on display amid the rubble and ruin left behind by Hurricane Helene. Yesterday evening, after taking an aerial tour of western North Carolina to survey the damage and receiving a briefing in Raleigh, President Biden thanked both “the Republican governor of South Carolina and the Democratic governor of North Carolina and all of the elected officials who’ve focused on the task at hand. In a moment like this, we put politics aside. At least we should put it all aside, and we have here. There are no Democrats or Republicans; there are only Americans. And our job is to help as many people as we can as quickly as we can and as thoroughly as we can.”

Biden explained that the federal government had 1,000 first responders in place before the storms hit, and that he had approved emergency declarations as soon as he received the requests from the governors. Yesterday he directed the Defense Department to move 1,000 soldiers to reinforce North Carolina’s National Guard to speed up the delivery of supplies like food, water, and medicine to isolated communities, some of which are accessible now only by pack mule.

He has already deployed 50 Starlink satellites for communication, and more are coming.

Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are offering free temporary housing, as well as delivering food and water. They are helping people apply for the help that they need.

While Trump and MAGA Republicans insist that Biden is botching the response to Helene, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale noted that the response has gotten bipartisan praise. Republican governors Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia both thanked Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.

So today’s bipartisan event in Ripon suggests far more than Democratic outreach to Republicans. It appears to be a commitment to a government that advances the interests of ordinary people, and protects the right of everyone to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government. Republican Abraham Lincoln articulated this worldview for his fledgling party in 1859 as it took a stand against oligarchs. Believing these principles accurately represented the aspirations of the nation’s founders, Lincoln called them “conservative.” People from all parties rallied to the party that promised to defend those principles.

“The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or petty partisanship or self-interest,” Harris said today. “The president of the United States must not look at our country as an instrument for their own ambitions. Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised: the nation that inspired the world to believe in the possibility of a representative government. And so in the face of those who would endanger our magnificent experiment, people of every party must stand together.”

"In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty,” Cheney said. “I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country to join us. I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.

“And I ask you instead to help us elect Kamala Harris for president. I know…that…a president Harris will be able to unite this nation. I know that she will be a president who will defend the rule of law, and I know that she will be a president who can inspire all of our children—and if I might say so, especially our little girls—to do great things. So help us right the ship of our democracy so that history will say of us, when our time of testing came, we did our duty and we prevailed because we loved our country more.”

Letters From An American

Heather Cox Richardson

October 3, 2024