#US money and support are critical to Israel's survival | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

creepingsharia · 5 years ago

Text

Investigation Exposes Terror Ties Behind Islamic Charity's Humanitarian Facade

Image from Zakat Foundation YouTube video.

by Abha Shankar and Martha Lee

A prominent American Islamist charity is publicizing its role in the nationwide coronavirus emergency response effort.

"Zakat Foundation of America stepped up its nationwide coronavirus emergency response ... delivering thousands of direly needed medical-grade gloves to two far South Side Safety-Net hospitals in Chicago," said the Illinois-based Islamist charity in a March 27 press release.

"We're all in as a frontline charitable provider helping people survive COVID-19, on every level — financially, medically, nutritionally, mentally and spiritually," executive director Halil Demir said in the release. (Demir also spells his first name "Khalil.")

Since its 2001 founding, the Zakat Foundation claims to "have empowered millions of people to recover from disasters and escape poverty by taking control of their own lives." A timeline on the charity's website showcases its humanitarian accomplishments over the years, from providing aid to Iraq war victims to establishing a university for refugees in Turkey.

But behind the Zakat Foundation's outward humanitarian façade lie longstanding terror ties that include support for Hamas- and al-Qaida-tied charities, a joint investigation by the Investigative Project of Terrorism and the Middle East Forum finds.

The misuse of Islamist charitable organizations to support terror is not new. American Islamist charities have been known to use humanitarian assistance as a cover to solicit funds for terrorist groups.

"While some terrorist supporters create sham charities as a cover to raise and move funds, other terrorist groups and their supporters use charities to provide funds or otherwise dispense critical social or humanitarian services to vulnerable populations in an effort to radicalize communities and build local support," says the Treasury Department's 2015 National Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment.

Soon after the 9/11 attacks, several American Islamist charities were either designated terrorist financiers by Treasury or raided by federal authorities on suspicion of funding terror. A prime example is the prosecution of the Texas charity Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) and its senior leaders in what is described as the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history. In 2008, a jury convicted HLF and five former leaders for illegally routing more than $12 million to Hamas.

One of Demir's previous employers also attracted scrutiny from the federal government.

Before founding Zakat Foundation in 2001, Demir worked for the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF). A business card identified him as "Public Relations Officer," and an IRS tax filing from 2000 states that, "The books are in care of Halil I. Demir."

The Treasury Department designated BIF and related entities as terror financiers in 2002. The Illinois-based BIF and its director, Enaam Arnaout, were charged the same year with misusing charitable contributions to support al-Qaida and other terrorist groups overseas. Later, Arnaout confessed to using his charity to support Mujahideen fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya.

Arnaout served "as an administrator" for Osama bin Laden, a United Nations Security Council report said, "at times disbursing funds on his behalf." He admitted that BIF solicited money for humanitarian needs, "including refugees and orphans," concealing the fact that it "was being used to support fighters" in Chechnya with uniforms, boots, tents and other supplies.

In addition to serving BIF, Demir also has worked with the terror-tied Turkish Humanitarian Relief Organization (IHH). A 2010 news release on the Turkish charity's relief efforts in earthquake-hit Haiti describes Demir as an "IHH aid coordinator." The same year, IHH also referred to the Zakat Foundation as a "partner institution."

IHH has helped fund the Hamas military wing, which used the money to buy weapons and build training facilities, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Relations said. IHH has been designated a terrorist organization by Israel, Germany and the Netherlands. IHH was a key player in the 2010 Free Gaza Movement flotilla that sought to break a blockade on Gaza. Ten people were killed when one of the boats refused to turn back and passengers attacked Israeli commandos as they tried to board.

Reports from that time allege that IHH distributed aid to the Salafist group Ahrar al Sham, which fought alongside ISIS and the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. Turkish authorities additionally found evidence that IHH not only recruits militants for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, but also provides terrorist groups access to arms and medical treatment.

According to a 2009 IHH report, "The US-based Zakat Foundation and Helping Hand, with which the IHH co-organizes social projects in different regions, sent $80,000 and $30,000 respectively to Gaza through the IHH."

Helping Hand is the overseas charitable arm of the Islamic Circle of North America, which has been described as "openly affiliated" with the Sunni revivalist movement Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). The charity has partnered with people closely tied to the U.S.-designated Kashmiri terrorist organization, Hizbul Mujahideen and its leader Syed Salahuddin. Zakat Foundation also partners with the Al-Khidmat Foundation, JI Pakistan's charitable arm.

Despite these documented connections, often promoted by the charities involved, Demir denies his and his organization's terror ties. He blames terror financing crackdowns targeting American Muslim charities after the 9/11 attacks on "Islamophobia."

"The Islamophobia was so strong, emotions ran so high against the Muslim community that whenever we tried to do good work, some people and organizations tried to portray us as bad guys," Demir says in an advertisement for his book, 9 Myths About Muslim Charities: Stories from the Zakat Foundation of America.

Demir made similar accusations in a January interview with the Daily Southtown. "This is propaganda, Islamophobia of white supremacists and hate groups that spread poison against the Muslim community and charities that do great work," he said.

Demir's book bashes national and international agencies for demanding transparency and oversight of Muslim charities. For instance, he calls the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) global terror finance watchdog "the most powerful and pernicious entity in the world," and asserts that "FATF's recommendations, and counterterrorism financing in general, constitute a complex ineffective sham."

The book also criticizes a 1996 CIA "Report on NGOs with Terror Links": "This two-decade-old CIA-write-up's simple-minded, unvetted, erroneous presumption of a 'regular correlation between Muslim humanitarian organizations and terrorist activity' – which shows nothing more than chauvinism—still underpins global policy of transgressing the civil rights of American Muslim charities."

Terrorists are known to use "charities to provide funds or otherwise dispense critical social or humanitarian services to vulnerable populations in an effort to radicalize communities and build local support," the 2015 National Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment said.

Hamas' dramatic 2006 election victory was fueled in part by its social welfare networks that received funding from American Islamist charities. In fact, the Holy Land Foundation was part of a network called the "Palestine Committee" that the Muslim Brotherhood created to advance Hamas's agenda politically and financially in the United States.

The Zakat Foundation has also generously supported the Islamic Charitable Society (ICS) in Hebron. In 2003, Zakat Foundation "worked in coordination with the Islamic Charitable Society in Hebron to supply $10,000" worth of school supplies to Palestinian children. This is not the first time that the ICS has received funding from U.S.-based charities. HLF gave ICS more than $1.6 million between 1991 and 2001. In 2002, German intelligence services described ICS as "the most important HAMAS association in the West Bank" and concluded that its leadership included "numerous" Hamas members.

The Zakat Foundation's work with ICS and association with Hamas continues. It announced in 2017 that it had "taken on costs for 200 students" of the ICS's Al Rahma School. Dina Karmi, an Arabic teacher at Al Rahma, is the widow of Nashaat al-Karmi, Hamas's southern West Bank armed wing leader. Israeli anti-terror police shot and killed him in 2010 in a raid connected with the murder of four Israelis.

In 2018, Israel's Shin Bet arrested Dina Karmi for "serving as the 'operational arm'" of a ring that "operated in coordination with both Hamas headquarters abroad and in the Gaza Strip."

A year earlier, ICS officials expressed their "deepest of thanks to Zakat Foundation" for its support, and "especially" its executive director Khalil Demir.

Zakat Foundation lists a U.S.-based Islamist charity called Baitulmaal as a partner. The Israeli government in 2006 accused Baitulmaal co-founder Sheikh Hasan Hajmohammad of funding a Hamas charity.

However, instead of calling for more intensive oversight of an Islamist charity with established terror ties, U.S. government officials continue to engage with the Zakat Foundation. In 2017, the charity co-sponsored an Iftar dinner with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's office. Last year, Halil Demir was invited to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's 100th Day Recognition.

Today, as the nation ramps up its fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the Chicago mayor's office "now keeps contact with Zakat Foundation and has welcomed its creative capacity and stalwart efforts, as do an ensemble of social service agencies, not only in Chicago, but in key metro areas across the nation."

For decades, Islamist charities have hidden their terror funding and support under a charitable guise, sometimes winning acclaim and support from federal government officials and others for their efforts. The terror-tied Zakat Foundation's response to the coronavirus pandemic, is the kind of thing that might provide a public benefit, but it also serves as a building block toward legitimacy, opening doors at City Hall and elsewhere.

It also helps the organization further obscure its work with charities tied to Hamas and al-Qaida.

#Legal #Finance #Fraud #Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #News #Politics #Media #Travel #Immigration

13 notes · View notes

d2kvirus · 4 years ago

Text

Dickheads of the Month: September 2020

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of September 2020 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Remember how proven liar Boris Johnson said he had a world-beating oven-ready Britait deal, which was also the basis of his election slogan campaign of “Get Britait done” and the lack of support for the deal is the reason he sacked 21 of his own MPs? Just asking, because he tore the whole thing up and said it was unworkable - which also led to Brandon Lewis saying in Parliament, so it is now forever enshrined in the Hansard, that De Pfeffel merely broke international law “in a very specific and limited way” - you know, sort of like how the Manson Family broke the law in a very specific and limited way

The bold vision of a new BBC shared by Tim Davie was revealed when he threatened comedy shows with the axe if they kept making jokes about Britait, the Tory Party or Donald Trump on his first day on the job, because as we all know the best form of comedy comes from punching down rather than up, which is why Little Britain definitely hasn’t aged appallingly

Master of decorum Donald Trump couldn’t even wait a few short hours after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death before he started rallying the foot soldiers about cramming somebody more fitting with what he wanted into the Supreme Court

Mayor of Amity Island governor of Florida Ron DeSantis continued his bid to be recognised for having the worst response to the Covid pandemic in the congress of having the worst possible response to the Covid pandemic by deciding that, actually, the state of Florida needs to lessen its Covid restrictions at a time when cases of Covid have begun to rise alarmingly in the state

It’s no surprise that proven liar Boris Johnson lied in Parliament by referring to Serco’s failing test & trace app as “NHS Test & Trace” - however the biggest issue is that the BBC had been using the exact same phrase for at least two weeks before that

Nobody was surprised to hear smirking cretin Priti Patel personally using the term “activist lawyers” that the Home Office (headed by P. Patel) had previously used to dehumanise and demean people upholding those pesky immigration laws that the Tory Party really don’t like getting in the way

Tax dodging orange goblin Donald Trump was asked a simple question: Do you think that white supremacists are a problem? We are still waiting for an answer to that question...

Okay, so now the Conservative Party are cracking down on people breaking lockdown, with threats of a £10,000 fine - rather than circling the wagons around them and throwing out one cock and bull excuse after another like they did when Dominic Cummings broke lockdown to nip off to Durham after testing positive for Covid on what just so happened to be his wife’s birthday

You know that Matt Hancock is good at his job when, having been sent out in front of the cameras to defend The Tory Party appointing ex-Australian PM and all-around arsehole Tony Abbott as a trade advisor in spite his history of misogynistic, homophobic and “Let’s kill the elderly so we can survive Covid” comments the best he could do was say he was a good negotiator...which promptly led to all manner of comments about Harold Shipman being a good GP and Fred West laying one hell of a patio

According to Jacob Rees Mogg the public having a legitimate complaint about it being damn near impossible to have a Covid test is nothing more than “endless carping” and not, say, legitimate criticism of a woefully underprepared government trying to coast by on the bare minimum who have the gall to try and blame the public for their long list of catestrophic fuckups

It was no surprise to hear proven liar Boris Johnson hand-wringing about “the freedom of the press” after Extinction Rebellion finally realised that being annoying idiots is far more likely to gain support if you’re being annoying idiots with a purpose - just as it was no surprise to hear that proven liar Boris Johnson had no opinion whatsoever of Tim Davie telling BBC newsreaders to fall in line with the corporation (read: Tory) line or they’d be sacked

Once again there was a chance for Keir Starmer to show that his talk of being “true Opposition” is more than a soundbite and, once again, he wimped out on it when ordering Labour MPs to abstain from voting on the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill for fear of being accused of being “anti-British” by voting for a bill created to stop prosecution of British troops for using torture instead of voting against it - and then sacking Nadia Whittome, Beth Winter, and Olivia Blake from their junior ministerial positions when they were three of the 18 Labour MPs who voted against it

It clearly never occurred to Marsha Blackburn when she was browbeating people about the Constitution of the US never being rewritten that the Constitution of the US has been rewritten several times already. There’s a reason they’re called “Amendments” and not “Footnotes” you know...

Smirking cretin Priti Patel proudly stated that, if she saw her neighbours, she’d gladly call the police due to them breaking the law. This was around 14 hours after she’d voted to break international law in the Commons, or a few short years after she broke ministerial code by nipping over to Israel to have undisclosed meetings with israeli officials, which begs the question about whether her neighbours are just as willing, doesn’t it?

Judging by Alan Sugar tweeting out conspiracy theories about Covid being created in a Wuhan lab, I think it's safe to say that no Apprentice game show host is capable of not acting like a complete arse on Twitter. Luckily for the UK, Sugar isn’t Prime Minister - he’s merely a member of the House of Lords...

It’s been a while since WWE acted like totalitarian dicks to the wrestlers employed independently contracted to them but they managed to find one by telling every single one of their employees independent contractors that they could no longer use Twitch or Cameo as it was decided this was being “detrimental” to the company...you know, the bunch of carnies who sign billion dollar deals with our journalist-murdering, woman-oppressing, Yemeni-slaughtering, 9/11-planning “allies” Saudi Arabia, don’t have any for of healthcare for their employees independent contractors, continued a pay per view even though one of their employees independent contractors died due to a stunt going wrong that was linked to the company cheaping out on a safety harness, and apparently not knowing that the term “independent contractor” doesn’t mean the company can sign them to five year deals but sack them at any point - and then prevent them from working anywhere else for 90 days

We had confirmation of Alison Pearson possessing a terrifying combination of pig ignorance and outright sociopathy when she began a Telegraph article with the following: “My son has Covid-19. Good.”

Sour grapes from Lisa Nandy over people forgetting she was in the Labour leadership race judging by how she apparently didn’t listen to a party pledge to tax corporations and instead spout off a bunch of nonsensical gibberish that sounded uncannily like Britain First rhetoric under the belief that sounding like Britain First is guaranteed to win back working class Northern voters

Litigious TERF JK Rowling revealed her latest book is about a man who murders people while dressed as a woman, which definitely hasn’t drawn any form of comment whatsoever...

You would like to believe that reports of Limestone Games not only effectively stealing the game Aeon Must Die! from the actual dev team who were forced out of the company by a culture of abuse and harassment by a shady cabal who took over the studio would have eld to the game’s release being postponed, especially after it emerged that assets used in the game’s trailer were infringing on various copyrights - but instead Focus Home Entertainment responded by twiddling their thumbs and doing nothing

I’m sure there’s no connection between Alan Sugar demanding people go back to work as if the number of Covid cases has been rising to an alarming degree and how Alan Sugar is bemoaning that his commercial property portfolio is not making him “enough” money due to people staying at home. None whatsoever...

The fact that those moron parents in California started a wildfire after setting off fireworks for their baby’s gender reveal party that led to over 20,000 people having to evacuate their homes is dickheaded enough - but the fact that it’s not the first case of this happening, as a similar incident happened in Arizona back in 2018, makes them look even more dickheaded

If you want to say you put Britain before anything else, like Andrea Jenkyns did in her latest Twitter tsunami of childishness and spite, it doesn't look good when you say you're pro-Trump before pre-De Pfeffel as it defeats your own argument almost as fast as being Andrea Jenkyns - or, you know, failing to spell the word “British” correctly when accusing people of being anti-British

It would have been wise if West Ham announced that manager David Moyes and two players had tested positive for Covid before their match with Hull - not after the match had kicked off, leading to Moyes legging it out of the stadium

Whatever it is in the mind of DeAnna Lorraine that snapped and had her babbling insane nonsense that The Masked Singer is part of a covert plot to have people wearing masks probably can’t be repaired, and appears to have also caused her to accuse anyone who thinks she does sound insane of being acolytes of George Soros

Professional victim Laurence Fox somehow believed that posting a chat log of a conversation between himself and Rebecca Front and then howling about being “cancelled” - and then a few hours later had to very publicly backtrack, no doubt because his agent had several dozen words with him

I have no idea why David Cameron convinced himself that showing himself helping out in the Chipping Norton food bank was a good idea, considering he’s the reason why food banks exist in the first place

How nice of Manchester Metropolitan University to tell the students who were confined to accomodation so unable to go out and buy food, who were paying £9000 tuition fees for face-to-face tutoring that was done via Zoom that makes such good value of the hundreds of pounds of rent they have to pay per month when they could have had those same lectures from home, that they’re not allowed to protest about this situation and had to take any signs posted on their windows critical of the government down immediately

In normal circumstances Mason Greenwood and Phil Foden sneaking girls into the England team hotel would look pretty stupid, especially in Foden’s case considering the odds of his live-in girlfriend not finding out about this are practically nil, but during a global pandemic it looked so incredibly boneheaded it’s lucky they play for the Manchester clubs otherwise the front pages would be calling them ignorant traitors or some such bullshit

Nothing sums up Premier League referees quite like them clearly not understanding the current definition of the handball rule, but rather than actually look it up they make it up as they go alone leading to more penalties being awarded for handball in the first four rounds of Premier League fixtures than in entire seasons - not helped by Premier League referees also operating VAR, where they seem to have a policy of “If you ignore my cock up, I’ll ignore yours”

And finally, inventing yet another terror atrocity, is Donald Trump and his batshit insane proclamations about cans of soup being a much bigger threat to American lives than, say, and AR-15. But then again, it’s not like his support base has a habit of throwing cans of soup at crowds of people

#dickheads of the month

4 notes · View notes

alexsmitposts · 5 years ago

Photo

Lies Which the West Manufactures and then Consumes After my work in the Middle East had finished, at least for the time being, I was waiting for my flight to Santiago de Chile. In Paris. I could count on a few ‘free’ days, processing what I had heard and witnessed in Beirut. Day after day, for long hours, I sat in a lounge, typing and typing; reflecting and typing. As I was working, above me, France 24 television news channel was on, beaming from a flat screen. The people around me were coming and going: West African elites on their wild shopping sprees, shouting unceremoniously into their mobile phones. Koreans and Japanese doing Paris. Rude German and North American beefy types, discussing business, laughing vulgarly, disregarding ‘lower beings’, in fact everyone in their immediate radius. No matter what was happening in my hotel, France 24 was on, and on, and on. Yes, precisely; for 24 hours, recycling for days and nights the same stories, once in a while updating news, with a slightly arrogant air of superiority. Here, France was judging the world; teaching Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, about themselves. In front of my eyes, above me, on that screen, the world was changing. For many months I had been covering the nightmarish riots of the treasonous violent ninjas in Hong Kong. I was all over the Middle East, particularly Lebanon, and now I was on my way to my second home, Latin America, where socialism has kept winning elections, but was getting beaten, even terrorized, by the corrupt and crooked Western empire. All that France 24 kept showing, I have been habitually witnessing with my own eyes. And more, much more, from many different angles. I have filmed it, written about it, and analyzed it. In many countries, all over the world, people have been sharing their stories with me. I have seen barricades, photographed and filmed injured bodies, as well as tremendous revolutionary enthusiasm and excitement. I have also witnessed betrayals, treasons, cowardice. But in the lounge, in front of the television set, everything appeared pretty groovy, very classy, and comforting. The blood looked like a well-mixed color, the barricades like a stage of the latest Broadway musical. People were dying beautifully, their shouts muted, theatrical. The elegant anchor in a designer dress was beaming benevolently, whenever people on the screen dared to show some powerful emotions, or were grimacing in pain. She was in charge, and she was above all of this. In Paris, London and New York, powerful emotions, political commitments and grand ideological gestures, were made outdated, already a long time ago. During just the few days that I spent in Paris, many things have changed, on all the continents. The Hong Kong rioters were evolving; beginning to set on fire their compatriots simply because they dared to pledge their allegiance to Beijing. Women were unceremoniously beaten, with metal bars, until their faces were covered in blood. In Lebanon, the big clenched fists of the pro-Western regime-change Otpor were suddenly at the center of the anti-government demonstrations. The economy of the country was collapsing. But the Lebanese ‘elites’ were burning money, all around me, all around Paris and all around the world. Poor Lebanese Misérables, as well as the impoverished middle class, were demanding social justice. But the rich of Lebanon were mocking them, showing. They had it all figured out: they have robbed their own country, then left it behind, and now were having a great ball here, in the “City of Lights”. But to criticize them in the West has been taboo; forbidden. Political correctness, the mighty Western weapon used to uphold the status quo, has made them untouchable. Because they are Lebanese; from the Middle East. A good arrangement, isn’t it? They are robbing their fellow Middle Easterners, on behalf of their foreign masters in Paris and Washington, but in Paris or London, it is taboo to expose their ‘culture’ of debauchery. In Iraq, the anti-Shi’a and therefore anti-Iranian sentiments have been dispersed, powerfully and clearly, from abroad. The second big episode of the so-called Arab Spring. Chileans have been fighting and dying, trying to depose a neo-liberal system, forced down their throats ever since 1973 by the Los Chicago Boys. The Bolivian socialist government, successful, democratic and racially inclusive, has been overthrown, by Washington and Bolivian treasonous cadres. People have been dying there, too, on the streets of El Alto, La Paz, and Cochabamba. Israel was at it again, in Gaza. Full force. Damascus was bombed. I went to film the Algerians, Lebanese and Bolivians; people who were pushing for their agendas at the Place de la Republique. I anticipated the horrors that were waiting for me, soon; in Chile, Bolivia and Hong Kong. I was writing, feverishly. While the television set was humming. People were entering and leaving the lounge, meeting and separating, laughing, shouting, crying and making up. Nothing to do with the world. The outbursts of indecent laugher erupted periodically, even as the bombs were exploding on the screen, even as the people were charging against the police and the military. *** Then, one day, I realized that nobody really gives a damn. Like that; so simple. You witness what happens, all over the world; you document it. You are risking your life. You are getting engaged. You get injured. Sometimes you come close, extremely close, to death. You do not watch TV. Never, or almost never. You appear on the television, yes; you supply stories and images. But you never watch the results; what emotions your work, your words and images, truly evoke. Or do they evoke any emotions at all? You only work for the anti-imperialist media outlets, never for the mainstream. But for whomever you work for, you have no clue what the facial expressions your reports from the war zones are arousing. Or what emotions any war zone reports stir. And then, you are in Paris, and you have some time to watch your readers, and suddenly you understand. You get it: why so few are writing to you, support your struggle, or even fight for the countries being destroyed, decimated by the empire. When you look around, observing people who are sitting in a hotel lounge, you clearly realize: they feel nothing. They want to see nothing. They understand nothing. France 24 is on, but it is not a news channel, which it was intended to be, many years ago. It is entertainment stuff, which is supposed to produce sophisticated background noise. And it does. Precisely that. Same as the BBC, CNN, Fox and Deutsche Welle. *** As the legitimately elected socialist President of Bolivia was being forced into exile, tears in his eyes, I got hold of the remote control, and switched channel to some bizarre and primitive cartoon network. Nothing changed. The expressions on the faces of some twenty people around me did not change. If a nuclear bomb would have exploded on the screen, somewhere in the Sub-Continent, no one would pay any attention. Some people were taking selfies. While I was describing the collapse of the Western culture on my MacBook. All of us were busy, in our own way. Kashmir, West Papua, Iraq, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Palestine, Bolivia and Chile were on fire. So, what? Ten meters away from me, an American businessman was shouting into his phone: “Are you going to invite me back to Paris in December? Yes? We have to discuss details. How much am I getting per day?” Coups, uprisings, riots, all over the world. And that plastic, professional smile of the lady, the news announcer, in her blue and white retro designer dress; so confident, so French, and so endlessly fake. *** Lately, I keep wondering whether the inhabitants of Europe and North America have any moral right to control the world. My conclusion is: definitely not! They do not know, and they do not want to know. Those who have power are obliged to know. In Paris, Berlin, London, New York, individuals are too busy admiring themselves, or ‘suffering’ from their little, selfish problems. They are too busy taking selfies, or being preoccupied with their sexual orientation. And of course, with their ‘business’. That is why I prefer to write for Russian and Chinese outlets, to address people who are scared like myself, anxious about the future of the world. The editors of this magazine, in faraway Moscow, are; they are anxious and passionate at the same time. I know they are. I, and my reports, are not some ‘business’ for them. People whose cities are smashed, ruined, are not some sort of entertainment in the editorial room of NEO. In many Western countries, people have lost their ability to feel, to get engaged, and to fight for a better world. Because of this loss, they should be forced to give up their power over the world. Our world is damaged, scarred, but is tremendously beautiful and precious. It is not a business, to work for its improvement and survival. Only great dreamers, poets and thinkers can be trusted, fighting for it, steering it forward. Are there many poets and dreamers amongst my readers? Or do they look, do they behave, as those guests in the hotel lounge in Paris, in front of the screen beaming France 24?

1 note · View note

theculturedmarxist · 6 years ago

Text

Deceptive Deceptors and the Deceitful Deceptions with which they Deceive

I wouldn’t say I’m surprised that an article about Marxism from Mises is trash, but it certainly grates on me.

Marx and Marxism deserve criticism, both from within by Communists themselves, and from without. It’s imperative for the success of the Communist project that it isn’t subject to decay or crumble atop a shoddy foundation of poor theory and ideas left unscrutinized. Everything done in order to progress towards Communism should be tested and retested both on the drawing board and in the practice.

The failure in the linked article is that David Gordon doesn’t take Marx either on his terms or really even in von Mises terms, but instead fabricates a position Marx didn’t hold and then uses it to dispute an argument that he didn’t make.

Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” is a favorite among reactionary charlatans, particular because of the language Marx uses in it. For example, the old chestnut:

“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.”

Hack-fraud David Gordon apparently ignores the content of the rest of the essay and builds his rickety argument on a few stones scattered throughout the text. The essay itself is a response to Bruno Bauer’s “The Jewish Question.” The subject matter is the political emancipation of Jewish populations within the then occurring European states, particularly Germany.

Marx constructs throughout a rhetorical argument regarding whether or not Bauer’s thesis supports itself. In it, he refers frequently to the Jew and Judaism. Bauer asserts that the only route toward emancipation for the Jews is to give up Judaism, and further for all of humanity to give up religion. To get rid of the contradictions created by religion (Christian v Jew, etc), one must get rid of religion, specifically by banishing it be the machinery of the state. Marx responds regarding the relationship between Religion and The State. From there he discusses the difference between political emancipation and human emancipation.

The establishment of the political state and the dissolution of civil society into independent individuals – whose relation with one another epend on law, just as the relations of men in the system of estates and guilds depended on privilege – is accomplished by one and the same act. Man as a member of civil society, unpolitical man, inevitably appears, however, as the natural man. The “rights of man” appears as “natural rights,” because conscious activity is concentrated on the political act. Egoistic man is the passive result of the dissolved society, a result that is simply found in existence, an object of immediate certainty, therefore a natural object. The political revolution resolves civil life into its component parts, without revolutionizing these components themselves or subjecting them to criticism. It regards civil society, the world of needs, labor, private interests, civil law, as the basis of its existence, as a precondition not requiring further substantiation and therefore as its natural basis. Finally, man as a member of civil society is held to be man in the proper sense, homme as distinct from citoyen, because he is man in his sensuous, individual, immediate existence, whereas political man is only abstract, artificial man, man as an allegorical, juridical person. The real man is recognized only in the shape of the egoistic individual, the true man is recognized only in the shape of the abstract citizen.

After this, part two begins where he critiques Bauer’s conclusions on Jews. This is where lies the often quoted but seldom read lines referencing the Jews; or rather, this is the part that David Gordon skipped to in order to write his tabloid bullshit.

Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew.

Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.

What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.

Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.

There you have it, proof positive that Marxism is antisemitic! Pack it in guys, Communism’s finished.

In actuality, this passage is just part of a larger rhetorical argument. It would be much too long to c/p, but in essence, Bauer is considering the emancipation of The Jew—not the Elders of Zion Nazi bogeyman The Jew, but rather the abstract of the idealized ‘Jew,’ the same sort of idealized prescription of ‘the Christian.’ Marx wants to move beyond the religious ideal to the concrete situation of ‘the everyday Jew.’Here, he isn’t espousing the antisemitic vitriol of the ‘money hungry Jew’ stereotype and so on, but instead ‘the Jew’ as has been shaped by society, and how their religion has evolved with Jewish society as its circumstances also changed. Shut out from the machinery of state and secluded from the rest of society (except when this or that tyrant needed a convenient scapegoat to punish) they have no choice but to engage in hucksterism in order to survive. The conforming of Judaism to the material circumstances of the Jews is not due to some sort of inherent greed of Jewish people, but rather their circumstances incentivize the accumulation of money before other considerations, and the social mores that evolved along side that.

What this means is, it isn’t Judaism per se that is itself self interested, egotistical, hucksterism. Judaism has taken on these aspects as a response to the needs of the Jewish people, just as Judaism evolved with the Hebrews’ changing circumstances through their long history.

The contradiction that exists between the practical political power of the Jew and his political rights is the contradiction between politics and the power of money in general. Although theoretically the former is superior to the latter, in actual fact politics has become the serf of financial power.

Judaism has held its own alongside Christianity, not only as religious criticism of Christianity, not only as the embodiment of doubt in the religious derivation of Christianity, but equally because the practical Jewish spirit, Judaism, has maintained itself and even attained its highest development in Christian society. The Jew, who exists as a distinct member of civil society, is only a particular manifestation of the Judaism of civil society.

Judaism continues to exist not in spite of history, but owing to history.

The Jew is perpetually created by civil society from its own entrails.

What, in itself, was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism.

The monotheism of the Jew, therefore, is in reality the polytheism of the many needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine law. Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and as such appears in pure form as soon as civil society has fully given birth to the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money.

Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.

The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.

The view of nature attained under the domination of private property and money is a real contempt for, and practical debasement of, nature; in the Jewish religion, nature exists, it is true, but it exists only in imagination.

There’s a lot going on in this essay. The rest of it culminates in Marx concluding that there is no emancipation for Christian or Jew without the conditions which necessitate and make Christianity and Judaism possible. Without the societal and personal circumstances which enable Judaism, it can’t persist. If it can’t persist, there will be no more Jews. There won’t be a need to be Jewish, because Judaism no longer responds to the circumstances of the world around it. It is the same conclusion reached for the dissolution of the proletariat: how can the worker be emancipated? By establishing the conditions where owner and worker become impossible.

But does the brainlet Gordon engage with any of this? Does he examine and undermine its assumptions, use its own logic against it, or illustrate holes in its reasoning?

How are we to evaluate Marx’s argument? It suffers from two main problems. First, Marx fails to establish a connection between selfish, egoistic behavior and the Jewish religion. Why is egoistic behavior distinctively Jewish? It is no doubt true that Judaism looks favorably on a person’s pursuit of his own interests. In the famous saying of Rabbi Hillel in the first chapter of the Ethics of our Fathers, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

Marx connects Judaism to Capitalism on account of their similar needs, that Capitalism takes on a ‘Jewish character’ because it mimics the same logic of self interest that the Jews had to develop to survive in hostile countries. Being the ones that have the disposable capital to facilitate Capitalism, the Jews exert outsized influence not because of some shadowy cabal of child murdering kikes, but because of their unique position in society, and the way that society has changed in order to make money and its accumulation more important than it had ever been for society as a whole than any other time in history.

A more deep-seated failing besets Marx’s account of Judaism and capitalism. Marx characterizes both capitalism and Judaism as based on self-interest, practical need, selling, and money. Surely it would be difficult to find throughout recorded history many large-scale and complex societies in which these features did not play a prominent role. Contrary to Marx, neither self-interest nor the pursuit of money is distinctively either capitalist or Jewish.

Dumb-dumb is again arguing against propositions that Marx never made, as explained above. It’s pretty easy to win when your adversaries are made of straw.

In seeking to exorcise self-interest as a feature of the human condition Marx is beguiled by a fantasy in which human beings abandon all antagonisms. Murray Rothbard has aptly noted the influence of this fantasy: “To Marx, any differences between men, and, therefore, any specialization in the division of labor, is a ‘contradiction,’ and the communist goal is to replace that contradiction with harmony among all. This means that to the Marxist any individual differences, any diversity among men, are contradictions to be stamped out and replaced by the uniformity of the anthill.”6

I’m sure Murray appreciated Gordon taking time out from his article to blow him. The only one here beguiled by fantasy is David Gordon. Marx proposes and imagines no such thing. Apparently Rothbard hasn’t read or understood a word of Marx either, which explains a lot.

I haven’t read the second part of this... dreck, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was as ridiculous as the first. This is how the right BTFOs Communism le epig style xD, by making up a bunch of shit that Marx never said, and then lying about how their fantasies disprove Communism.

#murray rothbard #david gordon #idiot #brainlet #economics #judaism #jews #european history #german history #philosophy #politics #political philosophy

5 notes · View notes

adollarformythoughts · 6 years ago

Text

Ocasio-Cortez: A New Victimology

Unless you have been under a rock for the past month, you have been hearing the name Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from every angle. She seemingly came out of nowhere and flew at us from the left. She has more press coverage than any other Democrat running for Congress. So, who is Ocasio-Cortez?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 28-year-old self-proclaimed democratic socialist from the Bronx, New York who beat out the #4 Democrat in the congressional running. Ocasio-Cortez was employed as a bartender in New York when she won the ballot. She is a graduate of Boston University with a Bachelors in Economics and International Relations. Ocasio-Cortez assisted in the campaigns for Barack Obama and later for Bernie Sanders. This still doesn’t answer how a 28-year-old woman with so little government and life experience ended up winning the Democratic primary.

Brand New Congress (BNC) is a political group which was formed from the remnants of Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2016. Their goal is to stage and support Democratic candidates of their choosing to help reform the current Congressional seats outside of the DNC. Bernie’s old friends were accepting applications from people who wanted to run for the upcoming elections. Ocasio-Cortez’s brother submitted an application on her behalf. Ocasio-Cortez was chosen to be the candidate for BNG. They took her under their wing and taught her how to use social media for her campaign, taught her how to handle interviews, and of course assisted in raising funds. Unfortunately, one of the major shortcomings of the Democratic party is their inability to answer straightforward questions and have an educated debate

Ocasio-Cortez is being called the “darling” of the Democratic Party. I think she is far from her comfort zone and I don’t think that she will be successful in politics until she has more time and experience under her belt. Here is why:

Every time Ocasio-Cortez is criticized she claims it is because she is a woman. She is crying wolf every other week and essentially hurting woman more than she is representing them. If women, like Ocasio-Cortez, keep claiming the defense of sexism it will hold no sway in a situation when the actions really were sexist. The overuse of gender-oriented hate crimes dulling the importance of the issue and causing those who are true victims to be questioned for their accusations. Ocasio-Cortez is making a horrible name for women across America with her victimization and self-centered propaganda.

When Ocasio-Cortez enters an open line of questioning, she cannot answer the questions. Ocasio-Cortez has a degree in International Relations, but she doesn’t know the answers to basic questions about Israel and Palestine. She also has a degree in economics, but she cannot explain the basic idea of capitalism and why it has been successful. Just because you passed your classes Cum Laude doesn’t mean that you are prepared to use your education in the real world. That is why people in government typically have to work their way up a ladder. I’m sure the world behind a bar didn’t require her to think on economics much.

Ocasio-Cortez cannot seem to keep her facts straight. As an example, in an on-air interview, she claims that the military was given a $700 billion increase in the last budget. The Military’s entire budget is $700 billion. They didn’t receive an additional $700 billion dollars. Also, Ocasio-Cortez claims that unemployment is low because people are working 2 jobs. The highest rate of people working multiple jobs in history was in 2001 at 6.5% and we were at a rate of less than 5% in June of 2018. She claims that people are working 60-80 hours a week, but the masses actually average between 34 and 35 hours per week from 2006-2018. The Washington Post, a known leftist media outlet, even posted an entire article proving Ocasio-Cortez’s facts were incorrect.

Ocasio-Cortez slanders people for calling her out. Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative in the media industry publicly asked Ocasio-Cortez to have an intellectual discussion with him on his Sunday special. Ben Shapiro invited her and offered money to her campaign or the charity of her choice to pay for her time. Her response was to liken Shapiro’s invitation to catcalling and accuse him of being “a man with bad intentions.” Catcalling is defined as a whistle, shout, or comment to someone in a sexual nature. For those who don’t know who Ben Shapiro is, let introduce you. Ben Shapiro started at college when he was 16, he is a practicing Orthodox Jew, wears a Kippah when seen in public, and was a virgin until he married his wife 10 years ago at the ripe age of 22. I don’t even think Ben Shapiro knows how to catcall.

For the record, Ocasio-Cortez actually showed up to the office of the candidate she was running against and verbally demanded that he debate her in the name of the people. What was Ben’s response to her Twitter feed? “This sort of catcalling is unacceptable, I have been reliably informed.”

In short, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a victim of her own making and will never have to answer for herself because she will always be victimized. This is exactly why the extremists and their ideas are harming America. If people continue to see themselves as victims, they will never be able to rise above and do better for themselves. Part of me feels bad for Ocasio-Cortez at having been pulled into this race by campaigners of Sanders who, I’m sure, saw her as a naïve young “darling” who they can control like a puppet on strings through her tenure in Congress. The other part of me thinks that maybe, just maybe, Ocasio-Cortez is young enough to learn a little bit about the real world if she steps into Congress in her ruby slippers and realizes that you won’t survive with those snakes by playing the victim.

#adollarformythoughts #ocasiocortez #benshapiro #news #politics #politicalcorrectnes

6 notes · View notes

diamondorloj · 7 years ago

Note

do you know any neutral post that sums up the Israeli–Palestinian conflict because I don't know what to think. I don't want to dislike jews or Israel but it all sounds so bad? Send help

Hi! I super appreciate you asking because I know exactly how hard it is to even find one reliable source.

Of course it all sounds super bad, because Hamas is a well-oiled and functioning propaganda machine with a lot of money and children and parents willing to throw themselves in front of the camera to make Israel bad, and for some reason their pictures are always what get picked up by the media. Plus, there are super loud antisemitic voices everywhere chanting against Israel at every mention. And the BDS is lobbying pretty hard too, so it's very hard to not find a super negative picture.

It's a super tricky conflict. I'm not saying everything went well and Israel is a country with a pristine history. But here's some points to consider that are usually the biggest issues in any ''''controversy'''' around Israel- Jewish people have always lived and practiced Judaism for over 5000 years in Israel. They have been victims of pogroms and hatred and chased in the desert, but they have literally always been there and to say that Israel was a state installed by foreigners for foreigners coming to these lands is a blatant lie.

There are countries with way more questionable borders in existence, yet Israel is the only country to continuously has to defend its very existence.

The United Nations have two organisations for refugees. One is the UNHCR which deals with refugee questions for all over the world, except for one group. And the other is the UNRWA which is an organisation only for the Palestine/Gaza refugees. The differences between these organisations are more than in structure and beaurucracy, they have two different tasks: UNHCR aims to give refugees a home, UNRWA doesn't. When in 1951 the director of UNRWA proposed to give 250.000 refugees a home in different arabic countries, these governments were angry and strictly refused, leading to the director John Blanford to lose his job. Since then, no further attempts have been made.

Furthermore, the UNHCR only defines refugees as people who have actually fled from their homes. Meanwhile, the UNRWA broadens that definition to "people who lost their homes in 1948 and their descendants".

- Israel is the only country that won all their wars for their survival and in self-defense yet had to have the coniditions for peace dictated by the defeated enemies. Even more paradox, this was supported by countries which all defined their borders after winning wars over these territories -- like, look at an old map of Europe and you will see what I mean. Btw Europe, Germany and Poland drew their finite borders in 1990 but I guess Israel is the only ''''artificial'''' state

- One of Hamas' conditions was that no jewish people were allowed to live in Gaza, so for the first time in centuries if not more, there are no Jewish people living in Gaza. Weirdly, it doesn't seem enough because these people are still living somewhere else and not all dead, I guess.

- Hamas literally uses children and families as a shield, regularly raises palestine flags with swastikas and calls protests of throwing rocks, burning tires and attacking soldiers 'peaceful'. It's a terrorist organisation and literally has the destruction of Israel as a defining goal, yet we always expect Israel to work with them. Hamas wants to build a state based on ethnic purity and cleansing of the territory, but somehow everyone thinks it's okay.

- By the way, when the two state solution was on the table, it was refused because they didn't want Israel to even have a bit of Jerusalem, the capital city with which the jewish people has been connected for over 3000 years. Even weirder, this connection is widely known (famously written into the most read world book in the world, the Bible) and yet every country refuses to acknowledge it as the official capital city because they're afraid that terrorists will riot

- Israel is the only country which is continuously attacked by three organisations in the UN which only exist to represent the Palestine agenda and to defame Israel (they're three comitees and I can't remember their exact names even in German, but they're about realising Palestinian rights, researching the Israeli actions in regard to palestinian rights and there's something in the UN-department for politic agendas or somth)

- Every year. Every year, Israel is targeted by more UN-resolutions than all of the other 192 member countries together. No-one can tell me that this number is justifiable in the least, but it is a reality and it paints the picture of Israel in the media.

- Israel is also the only country in the UN that continuously has to defend its existence against other UN-members and that suffers threats from other members all the damn time. And not just any threats, Iran for example continuously threatens to wipe out Israel and supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both of which are terrorist organisations with the goal of destroying Israel. And destroying Israel means killing all their Jewish citizens.

And we continuously forget that Israel is the only liberal democracy in that area, they're currently conducting investigations into Netanyahu and his regime and it's a country with a rich and vivid discourse nature. They just refuse to let their existence be up to debate, and frankly, neither should any of us.

So, does this mean no-one is allowed to criticise Israel? Absolutely not. It is a functioning democracy and like any country, it is not a moral entity and there is a lot of room for debate. But when looking into the arguments, you should keep in mind that there's a lot of antisemitism hidden as 'Israel critic' when it's just the same old shit. There's a test called "the 3 Ds" (in German) that can function as a broad test to see if you're reading legitimate critics or antisemitic shit:

- Demonisation (are they demonising Israel, for example by comparing Israel to the Nazis or the palestine refugee camp with Auschwitz)

- Double standards (are they criticising Israel for a behaviour or an act that they ignore or belittle when it's different state, for example how is it that Israel suffers resolutions for hurting human rights but China, Iran, Kuba and Syria don't)

- Delegitimisation (when they're arguing against Israel to exist; it's also a double standard bc it's refusing to allow Jewish people to have a state in which they can live a safe life)

I realise this won't directly answer your question and I easily get side tracked, but I feel like knowing about these difficulties and critically reading your sources will help you more than just drawing a timeline of events. Because there's a lot of anti-Israel propaganda even on Wikipedia, on seemingly normal internet platforms and even our big Western media liberally use Hamas material while refusing to show the Nazi swastikas blowing on burning kites they shoot over to Israel ground. And it's hard to be neutral about this topic, because it is a democracy which is never flawless against a terrorist organisation which demonstrates great finesse in painting the picture the way they want it. I don't think we should all be neutral about it. I am firmly pro Israel because I need my Jewish friends who are currently worrying about anti-judaic sentiments on the uprise everywhere in Europe to have a safe haven. I am pro Israel because it is a country with huge efforts and contributions to our world and advancing medicines etc every day. It's a LGBTQ friendly country (contrary to Hamas policy in which gay sex means 10 years of prison). It is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and deserves our support more than a terrorist organisation using their children as human shields. Yknow. Maybe that's not actually a topic to be neutral about.

11 notes · View notes

ladystylestores · 5 years ago

Text

Iran and Hezbollah’s Pre-Operational Modus Operandi in the West

Cipher Brief Expert Mitch Silber and Ioan Pop have pulled from court documents and open source reporting to compile a modus operandi of Iran and Hezbollah and their efforts to attack the west.

Mitchell D. Silber, Former Director of Intelligence, NYPD

In January 2020, Mitchell D. Silber was named the executive director of the Community Security Initiative, a new position created as part of UJA and JCRC-NY’s $4 million plan to help secure local Jewish institutions in the New York region. He previously served as Director of Intelligence Analysis at the New York City Police Department where he was the principal advisor to the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence on counterterrorism policy and analysis. He has represented the NYPD at the White House, National Security Council, CIA, FBI, and National Counter Terrorism Center and testified before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Ioan Pop, Former Senior Intelligence Analyst, NYPD

Ioan Pop is an associate managing director in K2 Intelligence’s Financial Crimes Risk and Compliance practice in New York. Prior to joining K2 Intelligence, Ioan worked for 10 years as a senior intelligence analyst in the New York Police Department (NYPD) Intelligence Bureau, where he led various teams of intelligence analysts to support and direct NYPD counterterrorism investigations.

Tensions between the United States and Iran/Hezbollah have been on the rise since 2018 when the U.S. administration withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal. These tensions spiked in January 2020 when U.S. strikes killed Qassem Soleimani the leader of Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force.

There is mounting evidence that in recent years, Iran and Hezbollah have sought to create a sleeper network in the U.S. and Western Europe, which could be activated to launch attacks as part of a retaliatory attack. This paper assesses Iran and Hezbollah pre-operational modus operandi in the West derived from court documents and open source reporting of recent arrest of Hezbollah and Iranian agents in the US and abroad. It sheds lights on the recruitment, training, and placement of these agents and the intricacies of their past operations. While it is impossible to predict when, where or how Iran/Hezbollah might retaliate as retribution for Soleimani’s killing, this article argues that there is growing number of indicators and warning signs for a possible attack in the U.S. or against U.S. interests abroad.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have been increasing since 2018 when the U.S. administration withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and re-imposed comprehensive sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran and its proxies have committed a series of calibrated asymmetric regional escalations designed to pressure the United States and its regional allies.

The January 3, 2020 U.S. strike that killed the IRGC-Quds Force leader, Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, has the potential to be a dramatic step up the escalation ladder by the United States, which catalyzes formidable Iranian retaliation against American interests. From the authors’ experience, as well as based on an assessment of the decade-long surge in Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah preoperational activities in both Western Europe and the United States, there is a high likelihood of a possible future attack on U.S. interests abroad and the possibility of an attack in the homeland. This article presents seven principles that underpin Iran and Hezbollah preoperational planning for a potential terrorist attack, ranging from surveillance, logistical planning, and front operations to disguise operatives to infiltration, recruitment, and target selection.

“They [U.S.] hit him [Soleimani] in a cowardly way, but with God’s grace and through endeavors of freedom-seekers around the world who want vengeance over his blood, we will hit his enemy in a manly fashion,” stated Esmail Qaani, the new leader of the IRGC-Quds Force following the death of his predecessor on January 3, 2020 in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad international airport. Similarly, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for “forceful revenge” to avenge Soleimani’s death and; Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah called on Hezbollah operatives globally to carry out “the appropriate punishment,” stating that this “will be the responsibility and task of all resistance fighters worldwide.”

During the authors’ time at the NYPD Intelligence Division (2005-2015), the threat from Iran and Hezbollah was always near and sometimes at the very top of the threat matrix for New York City based on Iran and Hezbollah’s global reach, sophistication and lethality as well as particular features that made the city a uniquely attractive target. Although the threat fluctuated depending on geopolitical tensions, given the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s IRGC – Quds Force, amid a background of rising tensions between Iran and the United States, the authors assess that the West is at an elevated risk for Iranian and, or Hezbollah retaliation. Therefore, it is important to analyze and assess Iran and Hezbollah’s preoperational modus operandi for committing terrorist attacks in the West.

Based on recent history, the authors assess that it is likely that Soleimani’s killing will trigger an Iranian/Hezbollah retaliatory response (or responses) similar to the reaction to the assassinations of Hezbollah leaders Abbas Musawi (1992) and Imad Mugniyah (2008). Like those, the vengeance will likely be calibrated, sufficient to send a message, but not so extreme as to threaten the survival of the Iranian regime. While widespread COVID-19 transmissions rates in Iran might delay Iranian plans for retaliation, based on past Iranian history, the regime is a patient actor and the IRGC is unlikely to be satisfied with anything less than a meaningful retaliatory response, delayed though it may be.

If the past is prolog, analysts might look at the 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires, which according to Argentine officials, was committed by Iran/Hezbollah partially in response to the Israeli assassination of Secretary General of Hezbollah, Abbas Musawi. Events that occurred in the wake of the February 2008 assassination of Hezbollah operations chief, Imad Mugniyah, by Israel and the United States may also be instructive. Following his death in Damascus, Syria, Hezbollah plotted several attacks to avenge his death in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Cyprus, India, Kuwait and Turkey. However, other than the 2012 suicide bombing attack on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, which killed six Israeli tourists and injured forty-two, all of the Hezbollah plots were thwarted.

Iran is Hezbollah’s closest ally and patron, providing money and weapons to the terrorist group often described as an “Iranian aircraft carrier parked north of Israel.” In addition to their ideological, political and military ties, Iran reportedly funds Hezbollah with an estimated $200-700 million yearly.

Hezbollah and Iran’s intelligence apparatus have a history of joint terrorist attacks globally, most notably, the attacks in 1992 and 1994 in Buenos Aires targeting the local Israeli Embassy and AMIA, a Jewish cultural center respectively. Moreover, their joint mission over the past decade to keep Assad in power in Syria has led to a significant augmentation of their cooperation. This makes it likely that any future external operations would entail joint operational planning and execution.

There is evidence Iran and Hezbollah have sought in recent years to create a sleeper network in the United States and Western Europe, which could be activated to launch attacks.

The failed 2011 Iran-directed plot to target the Saudi Ambassador in Washington illustrated an attack within the United States was not unthinkable. Hezbollah operative, Ali Mohamed Kourani, told the FBI during his 2016-2017 interviews that “in the event that the United States and Iran went to war, the U.S. sleeper cell would expect to be called upon to act.”

U.S. officials have made clear that Iran and Hezbollah continue to be a potential threat to the United States Homeland. In 2012, the then Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper stated that Iranian officials “are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.” The director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Nick Rasmussen, noted in October 2017, “It’s our assessment that Hezbollah is determined to give itself a potential homeland option as a critical component of its terrorism playbook.”

Although decision-makers in Tehran will likely still think very carefully before striking the U.S. homeland to avenge the death of Soleimani, it is important for the analyst/policymaker community to understand Iran and Hezbollah’s efforts to create an infrastructure for potential attacks in the West. In light of this and coupled with the recent history of Iran and Hezbollah terrorist activity outside the U.S., which this article will also outline, following the death of Soleimani, Iran may be less hesitant to authorize a retaliatory strike.

Based on the authors’ analysis of Iran and Hezbollah’s past operations, foiled plots, the recent U.S. arrests of Hezbollah operatives and their personal experience leading Iran and Hezbollah intelligence investigations for NYPD, seven principles underpin the preoperational modus operandi of Iran and Hezbollah:

Intelligence gathering and surveillance activities;

Plausible diplomatic, business, education and other covers to conceal operational activities;

Infiltration of Iranian dissident groups;

Logistical planning for possible future attacks;

Preparing “human target packages” to enable assassinating dissidents and adversaries;

Counter-intelligence tradecraft, and operational security

Recruiting operatives with dual nationalities and Western passports from the Shia diaspora. Each of these are outlined in turn below.

Modus Operandi 1: Intelligence Gathering and Surveillance Activities

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Iran and Hezbollah’s modus operandi for operational planning in the West has been the sustained commitment to undertaking precise intelligence gathering and surveillance activities on targets that could support long term attack planning.

In some cases, Iranians have conducted intelligence gathering activities and in other cases it has been Lebanese expatriates acting on behalf of Hezbollah, who have burrowed into diaspora communities overseas to disguise their efforts.

New York City has witnessed intelligence gathering activities by both Iranians and Hezbollah operatives that demonstrate methodology and possible targets. In the case of Iran, between 2002 and 2010, the NYPD and federal authorities detected at least six events involving Iranian diplomatic personnel that these authors (who were then serving in the police department) struggled to categorize as anything other than hostile reconnaissance of New York City.

One of the most brazen incidents occurred at 2 a.m. on November 16, 2003 when uniformed NYPD officers riding a southbound 7 train observed two males filming the subway train tracks. The men, who initially claimed diplomatic immunity turned out to be guards at the Iranian Mission to the UN who had recently arrived in New York. “Despite two warnings from the State Department about this unacceptable behavior, in May 2004, two more Iranian Mission security guards were observed videotaping infrastructure, public transportation and New York City landmarks. One month later, the guards from the November 2003 subway incident were expelled by the United States for “engaging in activities that were not consistent with their duties” – in other words, spying.”.

Despite this official reprimand, suspicious activities by Iranian diplomatic personnel continued. “In May 2005, tips led the NYPD to six people on a sight-seeing cruise who were taking pictures and movies of city landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge. In September 2008, police interviewed three people taking pictures of railroad tracks. And in September 2010, federal air marshals saw four people taking pictures and videos at a New York heliport.” During interviews by law enforcement, the four individuals disclosed that they were associated with the Iranian government. However, they were ultimately released and never charged.

Iranian intelligence gathering and surveillance activities have extended beyond New York City. In November 2019, two men—Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen and Majid Ghorbani, an Iranian citizen residing in California—pleaded guilty to acting as illegal agents of the government of Iran on charges stemming from monitoring two Jewish facilities in Chicago and as well as American members of an exiled Iranian opposition group, Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MeK), an Iranian dissident group that seeks regime change in Iran.

According to the criminal complaint, both men were accused of “acting on behalf of the Iranian government to gather information that could be used to identify and locate individuals and facilities.” Not only did they conduct physical surveillance on and collect information about Americans involved with MeK, but in July 2017, they also conducted hostile reconnaissance on the University of Chicago Hillel Center and a Rohr Chabad Center. “Doostdar was seen photographing the front and back of the Rohr Chabad Center, as well as the wrought iron fence surrounding the building. Doostdar also turned around to look at the building multiple times as he walked away.”

More recently, aggressive Iranian intelligence collection activities against Jewish targets have been detected in Europe. According to reporting from Israeli newspapers, German security forces raided various locations across Germany pursuing alleged members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Force for spying on Jewish and Israeli locations. Raids were carried out in the German states of Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Berlin, but no arrests were made. Among the IRGC reconnaissance targets were Jewish kindergartens and the Israeli embassy in Berlin, Germany.

Some of these activities were discussed in greater detail by the intelligence agency of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In a report issued during the summer of 2019, it found that “a main focus [of Iran’s regime] is spying on Israeli and pro-Israeli institutions, as well as citizens of the State of Israel living here [Germany] and persons of the Jewish faith.”

While more than twenty investigations related to Iranian espionage in Germany have been conducted, the one arrest and conviction in Germany linked to Iran dates back to 2017, when a Berlin court convicted Pakistani citizen, Haidar Syed-Naqfi, for being paid by the Qods Force to target Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions. German prosecutors argued that Naqfi was told to identify, surveil and conduct reconnaissance on “Israeli and Jewish institutions and Israel advocates in Germany, France and other unnamed Western European countries for possible attacks.”

In recent years, more incidents of preoperational intelligence gathering, and surveillance activities have been detected, conducted by members of Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) also known as Unit 910 than by Iranians. While New York City has figured prominently in these intelligence gathering efforts, Chicago, Washington DC and Boston have also registered as potential targets.

Exhibit a for this concern was an Investigation by the NYPD and the FBI that led to the May 31, 2017 arrests of two naturalized Americans from Lebanon who were recruited and trained by Hezbollah’s unit 910 to conduct intelligence collection missions in the United States. While these two lebanese expatriates, Ali Mohammed Kourani 32, and Samer El Debek, 37, at the time of their arrest, gave the outward appearance of leading ordinary lives in the U.S., in reality, they were conducting intelligence gathering missions for their beirut based handlers. In fact, Kourani went as far to describe himself to the FBI as “an IJO ‘sleeper’ operative working undercover in the United States.” On December 3, 2019, Ali Kourani was sentenced to 40 years in prison for “covert terrorist activities on behalf of Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization.” Samer El Debek’s case is still pending in courts.

In the wake of the arrest of these two IJO operatives, former New York City Police Department Commissioner James P. O’Neill noted, “preoperational surveillance is one of the hallmarks of [Hezbollah] in planning for future attacks.” The surveillance performed in New York City was done “in support of anticipated IJO terrorist attacks.”

The facts of the case, as laid out by the U.S. government, are worth recounting in detail. According to the Department of Justice “[f]rom at least in or about 2009, up to and including in or about September 2015, Kourani conducted surveillance of U.S. military and intelligence outposts in New York City, as well as airports in New York City and another country, in support of anticipated terrorist attacks by Hizballah’s Islamic Jihad Organization.” “Principally responsible for conducting IJO intelligence-gathering and surveillance activities, Kourani received taskings in Lebanon and executed his missions covertly.”

According to the Department of Justice, from Lebanon, Kourani was directed and “conducted physical surveillance of the following targets: FBI offices in Manhattan, New York; a U.S. Army National Guard facility in Manhattan, a U.S. Secret Service facility in Brooklyn, and a U.S. Army armory facility in Manhattan. Kourani used his phone to videotape activity around at least one of these surveillance targets, transferred the video footage to a memory card, and brought the memory card to his Lebanese-based handler and other IJO personnel in Lebanon.

When it came to airports, Kourani’s intelligence collection, surveillance and reconnaissance were not limited to the United States and John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. The scholar Matthew Levitt, whose research has focused on Hezbollah, has written that Kourani was tasked to also focus on Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, visiting Pearson seven times.

According to Levitt, during his debriefings with the FBI, Kourani explained that “he provided Hezbollah with details about security procedures, the uniforms worn by security officers, and whether the officers were armed.” Kourani’s surveillance “focused on exit points, security checkpoints, camera locations, baggage claim procedures, and what questions airport screeners asked passengers.”

Moreover, as Levitt notes, “aside from carrying out surveillance himself, Kourani also plied [Pearson] airport employees for information, some of whom understood they were providing information for Hezbollah while others were unwitting, in one case even smoking a hookah together with an airport employee who would “casually answer Kourani’s questions about the locations of cameras and magnetometers. Kourani said he could ask the man to carry a bag onto an airplane for him, and he would do it. “According to a U.S. Prosecutor’s statement during the trial, Hezbollah was ‘thinking about how to get terrorists, and weapons, and contraband through airports, from Lebanon into Canada, from Lebanon into the United States.’”

Similarly, while prosecutors accused Samer El Debek of surveilling “potential targets in America, including military and law enforcement facilities in New York”, much of his intelligence collection activity occurred in Latin America. In Panama, he allegedly was tasked to locate the U.S. and Israeli embassies, “case and identify security procedures at the Canal and Israeli Embassy” and “to locate places where items such as acetone and battery acid, which are explosive precursors, could be purchased.”

Kourani and El Debek were not the only IJO/Unit 910 members conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance actives in the Americas. More recently, another Lebanese-born, Hezbollah trained IJO/Unit 910 member, Alexei Saab (AKA: “Ali Hassan Saab”) 42, was arrested in September 2019, accused of providing Hezbollah with “intelligence and photographs concerning several locations Saab had surveilled in the New York City area, including the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Grand Central Terminal, the New York Stock Exchange, [NYC FBI Headquarters at] 26 Federal Plaza, and local airports.” Saab had been recruited into Hezbollah as a student in Beirut in 1996, according to the Department of Justice, which is also the source of the allegations against Saab outlined in the paragraphs below.

For his surveillance training, besides classroom and field work in Beirut, Saab was allegedly taught sophisticated tradecraft to “start by recording an unrelated subject before panning the camera to the object of his surveillance” and “took videos from a high altitude and different zoom ranges to show perspective relevant to Hezbollah”. For still photography, “Saab would also often pose people in front of the intended objects of his surveillance, to provide perspective and shield his true purpose from law enforcement.”

As part of his “intelligence collection” efforts, “Saab explained that IJO had trained Saab so that his mindset was that he should always be gathering intelligence and he was on ‘autopilot’ to collect intelligence at any opportunity, including while he was in New York City.” Admitting the purpose of his intelligence collection activities, “Saab understood that the information he provided to the IJO would be used to calculate the size of a bomb needed to target a particular structure and the ideal location in which to place explosive devices to maximize damage,” so “Saab focused on structural weaknesses of the location he surveilled to determine how a future attack could cause the most destruction.” Saab’s information was allegedly prepared for the IJO in a seven-to-ten-page report on New York City.

New York City was allegedly not Saab’s only target. According to court documents, he also admitted that as part of his reconnaissance and intelligence collection, he took photographs in Boston including Quincy Market, Fenway Park and the Prudential Center and in Washington DC including the Capitol Building and the White House. His case is still pending in the courts.

In part two of Iran and Hezbollah’s Pre-Operational Modus Operandi in the West, authors Mitch Silber and Ioan Pop lay out the plausible diplomatic, business, cultural and other covers to conceal operational activity, the infiltration of Iranian dissident groups, logistical planning for potential future attacks, preparing ‘human target packages’, counterintelligence tradecraft, recruitment, and the ongoing threat in the United States.

A fully foot-noted version of this article is available at Taylor & Francis Online.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, analysis and opinion in The Cipher Brief

Source link

قالب وردپرس

from World Wide News https://ift.tt/2ZENgFB

#World Wide News

0 notes

eretzyisrael · 5 years ago

Link

youtube

The only experimental research station focusing on climate change in the Middle East is located in the heart of the Judean Hills in central Israel. Its unique location, surrounded by nature, allows for a rare look at the changes and challenges the future most likely holds for the natural Mediterranean ecosystem.

The experimental research station, which is supported by the Science and Technology Ministry, is located on four hectares of state land and is a part of the Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER). This facility, founded 18 years ago by scientists from Tel Aviv University, is one of the oldest of its kind in the world studying the effects of rainfall changes on natural ecosystems and the landscape. Moreover, it is the only research station investigating these effects in the framework of climate change in the Middle East.

Changes in precipitation are much more difficult to predict for climate models compared to changes in temperature. Many models worldwide disagree as to what future trends in precipitation will be. However, there are some regions, particularly the Mediterranean, where nearly all models agree with a decrease in rainfall.

Many regions in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa predict higher temperatures, drier air, and more severe and frequent droughts. One recent NASA study reveals that the drought that has been affecting the eastern Mediterranean Levant region since 1998 is likely to be the worst drought in the past 900 years.

The perfect storm is coming

“Climate change is a strategic issue for Israel,” says Prof. Marcelo Sternberg, head of the Plant Ecology Lab at the School of Plant Sciences and Food Security at Tel Aviv University and responsible for the experiment. “The confluence of severe climate change impacts, deep environmental crisis and a web of conflicts is reason for serious concern when it comes to the future of the wider Mediterranean region. The perfect storm is approaching; therefore, proposals must reach the rooms where policy decisions are taken.”

Precipitation is characterized by two components: the amount and frequency of the rainfall. Such experiments that include both components like the one led by Sternberg are rare around the world. The findings obtained from this research are not only useful for Israel but the whole region, and even the rest of the world.

Sternberg, who set up the research station several years ago, says, “Research and knowledge give the foundation for decision-making, that is why it’s so essential to support the research of climate change.” The threat of increasing temperatures and decreasing precipitation, with longer gaps between rainfall events, will elevate the risk of forest fires. “Our facility here is all about these issues,” he says.

The vegetation surrounding the research station is native to the region, which creates an excellent environment to study how it reacts to different climate change scenarios with changing rainfall patterns. To test this, field studies are conducted that manipulate either precipitation amount or frequency by using rain-out shelters to simulate a reduction in precipitation as well as changes in rainfall patterns.

The experimental options for precipitation change are the simulation of a reduction of rainfall by 60% (meaning extreme drought – only 180 mm. of rain per year) or by 33% (350 mm.) The experimental options for precipitation frequency change are regular frequency distribution (nine rain events of 20 mm. each) versus lower frequency but higher amounts (three rain events of 60 mm. each) as expected by increasing extreme events.

An extreme drought scenario experiment with a variation of rainfall frequencies began this year, and the goal is to continue to do that in the long term (at least 15 years). “The greatest challenge in this type of experiment is to obtain data over an extended period to determine a trend and thus reach conclusions based on long-term data,” Sternberg stresses. 34 species per square meter

While in Europe there is an average of three to four different herbaceous plant species per square meter, in this unique experimental field, there is a range of 21 to even 34 plant species per square meter. According to Sternberg, the high spatial heterogeneity makes it difficult to find the effects of drought on the experimental plots. “But if we can effectively establish sampling methods, we can be precise and answer one of the most important questions: How will this ecosystem look in the future subjected to extreme drought?” Sternberg states.

Sternberg’s previous findings indicate that this ecosystem is relatively resistant to small rainfall decrease. However, future climate change scenarios predict a more significant reduction in rainfall, causing winters in Israel to have fewer rainfall events and higher soil water deficit. Therefore, in Sternberg’s new experiment, he hopes to find out how the system will respond to these predicted changes.

The examined vegetation at the station looks stable even under the current precipitation conditions. This is because the plants disperse their seeds not only spatially but also over a specific period of time. For example, in a previous study, when Sternberg controlled seed germination in soil samples, he found that only some of the seeds germinated after one year, while others stayed dormant for a few years. He concluded this was a type of “ecosystem insurance” in case environmental conditions did not favor seedling survival, which shows that drought adaptation is already part of the system.

Between deserts and humid ecosystems

“It is not easy conducting this type of experimental research outside the lab,” Sternberg says. The research station is confronted with several problems, one being the lack of budget. The research funding ends next year, and despite the experiment’s progress, the high maintenance costs (technicians, researchers, students, lab analysis, equipment, etc.) make further operation uncertain. Many of the procedures are done with few to no resources. “All is done ‘in-house’ to save money such as repairing the fences to prevent unauthorized people from trespassing, among other activities,” Sternberg says.

Sternberg notes, “people sometimes cut the fence of the research station to shorten the way to a nearby spring, grabbing sensors from the floor out of curiosity and damaging the experimental system.” The station has regrettably experienced theft. “The solar panels that powered the meteorological research station were stolen, and ironically, the fence to prevent theft was also stolen,” Sternberg adds.

The research station is an issue of national and international interest given its uniqueness and the fact that Israel is located on the transitional zone between deserts and humid ecosystems. “In this country, everything is so condensed that the boundaries between natural and urban areas are disappearing. We are losing many open green areas, and the urbanization rate is increasing at an unprecedented rate,” says Sternberg, while explaining why it’s so important to study the effects of climate change on the natural environment.

What will these hills look like in the future? How will Israel’s natural ecosystem react when precipitation in the region changes? The observations and manipulations in the Judean Hills may very likely hold the answer to those questions and also the necessary means to mitigate the effects of climate change. Support for these types of experiments all over the world is critical for understanding what expects us in the future. “National funding agencies should join forces in an effort to secure the continuity of this unique and essential research,” Sternberg concludes.

#Israel #Science #Environment

9 notes · View notes

thewrosper · 5 years ago

Text

The world came together for a virtual vaccine summit. The U.S. was conspicuously absent.

By William Booth, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Carol Morello LONDON — World leaders came together in a virtual summit Monday to pledge billions of dollars to quickly develop vaccines and drugs to fight the coronavirus. Missing from the roster was the Trump administration, which declined to participate but highlighted from Washington what one official called its “whole-of-America” efforts in the United States and its generosity to global health efforts. The online conference, led by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and a half-dozen countries, was set to raise $8.2 billion from governments, philanthropies and the private sector to fund research and mass-produce drugs, vaccines and testing kits to combat the virus, which has killed more than 250,000 people worldwide. With the money came soaring rhetoric about international solidarity and a good bit of boasting about each country’s efforts and achievements, live and prerecorded, by Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Boris Johnson, Japan’s Shinzo Abe — alongside Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With virus under control, Australia and New Zealand may form a travel ‘bubble’ “The more we pull together and share our expertise, the faster our scientists will succeed,” said Johnson, who was so stricken by the virus that he thought he might never leave the intensive care unit alive last month. “The race to discover the vaccine to defeat this virus is not a competition between countries but the most urgent shared endeavor of our lifetimes.” A senior Trump administration official said Monday the United States “welcomes” the efforts of the conference participants. He did not explain why the United States did not join them. “Many of the organizations and programs this pledging conference seeks to support already receive very significant funding and support from the U.S. government and private sector,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under White House rules for briefing reporters. Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access. Public health officials and researchers expressed surprise. “It’s the first time that I can think of where you have had a major international pledging conference for a global crisis of this kind of importance, and the U.S. is just absent,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who worked on the Ebola response in the Obama administration. Italy loosens Europe’s longest coronavirus lockdown Given that no one knows which vaccines will succeed, he said, it’s crucial to back multiple efforts working in parallel. “Against that kind of uncertainty we should be trying to position ourselves to be supporting — and potentially benefiting from — all of them,” said Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. “And instead we seem to be just focused on trying to win the race, in the hopes we happen to get one of the successful ones.” Conference participants expressed a need for unity. “We can’t just have the wealthiest countries have a vaccine and not share it with the world,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. “Let us in the international community unite to overcome this crisis,” Abe said. Russia and India also did not participate. Chinese premier Li Keqiang was replaced at the last minute by Zhang Ming, Beijing’s ambassador to the European Union. The U.S. official said the United States “is the single largest health and humanitarian donor in world. And the American people have continued that legacy of generosity in the global fight against covid-19.” “And we would welcome additional high-quality, transparent contributions from others,” he said. Asked three more times to explain why the United States did not attend, the official said he already had given an answer. No touching, sharing or borrowing pencils: Israeli students go back to school The U.S. government has provided $775 million in emergency health, humanitarian, economic and development aid for governments, international organizations and charities fighting the pandemic. The official said the United States is in the process of giving about twice that amount in additional funding. There was one major American player at the virtual summit: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which promised to spend $125 million in the fight. “This virus doesn’t care what nationality you are,” Melinda Gates told the gathering. As long as the virus is somewhere, she said, it’s everywhere. The novel coronavirus is a master of disguise: Here's how it works The novel coronavirus uses a number of tools to infect our cells and replicate. What we've learned from SARS and MERS can help fight covid-19. (Video: Brian Monroe/Photo: Brian Monroe/The Washington Post) Scientists are working around-the-clock to find a cure or treatment for the coronavirus. The World Health Organization says eight vaccines have entered human trials and another 94 are in development. But finding an effective vaccine is only part of the challenge. When it’s discovered, infectious disease experts are predicting a scramble for limited doses, because there won’t be enough to vaccinate everyone on Day One. And deploying it could be difficult, particularly in countries that lack robust medical infrastructure. Those that have begun human trials include a research project at Oxford University in England, which hopes to have its vaccine ready in the fall. The university started human trials on April 23. “In normal times,” British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, “reaching this stage would take years.” Russia has a huge fund for times of crisis. But Putin is hesitating on a sweeping rescue plan. Other scientists are sprinting to create antiviral drugs or repurposing existing drugs such as remdesivir, which U.S. infectious diseases chief Anthony S. Fauci said he expected would be the new “standard of care.” Other approaches now in trial include treatments such as convalescent plasma, which involves taking blood plasma from people who have recovered from covid-19 to patients who are fighting the virus, in the hope that the antibody-rich fluid will give the infected a helping hand. Conference participants expressed hope that by working together, the world will find solutions more quickly — and they can then be dispersed to all countries, not only the wealthy, or those that developed vaccines first. Trump halts funding to WHO for a 'review' of its coronavirus response President Trump accused the World Health Organization on April 14 of "covering up the spread of the coronavirus." Many of the leaders stressed their support for the WHO. President Trump announced last month he was cutting off U.S. funding for the WHO because he said it had sided too closely with China, where the coronavirus arose. Trump says Chinese leaders underplayed the threat and hid crucial facts. Public health analysts have shared some of those criticisms but have also criticized Trump for cutting off funding. Sketches from a crisis: How a handful of small businesses are managing to survive Peter Jay Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said the United States has always been the primary funder of new products for global health. The country invested $1.8 billion in neglected diseases in 2018, according to Policy Cures Research, more than two-thirds of the worldwide total. Hotez said the United States shoulders the burden of investing in global health technologies, while countries such as China do not step up. “More than one mechanism for supporting global health technologies — that may not be such as a bad thing,” he said. “If it was all under one umbrella, you risk that some strong-willed opinions would carry the day and you might not fund the best technology.” Hotez is working on a coronavirus vaccine that uses an existing, low-cost technology, previously used for the hepatitis B vaccine, precisely because he is worried about equitable distribution of the vaccine. “I’m not very confident that some of the cutting-edge technologies going into clinical trials, which have never led to a licensed vaccine before, are going to filter down to low- and middle-income countries anytime soon,” Hotez said. “I’m really worried.” Read the full article

0 notes