Iran Admits: Regime Working With Soros Organization

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif says government working 'closely' with George Soros' Open Society Foundations

Gary Willig, Arutz Sheva

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif said Sunday that the Iranian government has worked closely with billionaire George Soros' Open Society Foundations (OSF) organization.

Zarif made the remarks in response to questions raised in the Iranian parliament. According to Zarif, the activity began before he entered his current position, and he boasted that he had succeeded in "keeping the activity organized."

OSF has funded a number of far-left organizations in Israel which seek to change the policy of Israel's government.

According to NGO Monitor, among the top beneficiaries of OSF funding is Human Rights Watch, which has been criticized for targeting, and falsely libeling, the state of Israel. Another is J Street, which describes itself as “pro-Israel” but has been termed anti-Israelby others for, among other things, welcoming proponents of a boycott on Israel at its national conference and honoring IDF soldiers who refused orders.

Another recipient of OSF funding is the Institute for Middle East Understanding, which, NGO-Monitor reports, is headed by staff who have accused Israel of war crimes and have termed Israel an “apartheid state.

The extreme-left Israeli group B’Tselem also receives OSF funds. B’Tselem is notorious for publishing one-sided reports, and for inflating Arab civilian casualty figures. For example, the group included hundreds of Hamas policemen in Gaza as “non-combatants,” and counted Sheikh Ahmed Yassin – then the leader of Hamas – as not a definite combatant.

B’Tselem has listed OSF as a source of support, but OSF has not listed B’Tselem as a recipient, indicating that the grant may have come through an overseas entity.

A leaked OSF document said that OSF’s strategy with respect to Israel is to "focus on raising the cost of the occupation and ending it on the one hand, and on human rights advocacy and protection on the other."

Colombia Charges 13 ex-Chiquita Executives of Financing Death Squads

Squads accused of killing more than 4000 people

By Ray Downs

Former Chiquita executives face new charges of funding terrorism in Colombia after the company admitted to the same crime in 2007 when it settled with the U.S. Justice Department. File Photo by Aaron Kehoe/UPI | License Photo

(UPI) -- Colombia's Attorney General's Office on Friday charged 13 former Chiquita executives for financing paramilitary death squads that are accused of killing more than 4,000 people.

Between 1997 and 2004, the executives of the Florida-based corporation paid $1.7 million to the United Self-Defenders of Colombia, or AUC in its Spanish initials, prosecutors said. The company already admitted to making the payments in 2007 in U.S. court when it settled with the Justice Department for funding terrorism and paid a $25 million fine.

Chiquita has said that it was "forced" to pay off the AUC.

"To be clear, there is no allegation that Chiquita itself committed any of the crimes perpetrated by the Colombian terrorist groups," the company said in a statement at the time. "The only allegation is that Chiquita should be held responsible for these crimes by virtue of the money that it was forced to pay."

Does forced to pay mean they were held at gunpoint, or that it was the cost of doing business in an extremely corrupt country? If it was the latter, then the cost was too high. Decency would demand that you just cut and run. No business is worth financing assassination squads.

Friday's announcement opens the case in Colombia, where the killings took place, and is the result of Prosecutor General Humberto Martinez's efforts to investigate and prosecute corporate funding of paramilitary squads, in what has become known as "para-economics," according to Colombia Reports.

Of the 13 former executives charged, three are American: Dorn Robert Wenninger, John Paul Olivo and Charles Dennis Keiser.

All of the former executives are accused of financing death squads that are accused of killing 4,335 people, disappeared 1,306 people and forced the displacement of 1,675 others.

They are accused of crimes against humanity and "aggravated conspiracy to commit a crime."

It seems the current government is trying to clean up the horrendous mess of corruption in Colombia. God help them; they need it.

Saudi Arabia ‘Deports 40,000 Pakistani Workers over Terror Fears’

Thousands of foreign national workers allegedly expelled from country over visa violations and security concerns, as protests over unpaid wages continue 

Bethan McKernan Beirut 
The Independent

In this file photo Pakistani labourers gather outside the overseas employment consultant office in Rawalpindi on February 23, 2012 to apply for jobs with a construction company in Saudi Arabia (AFP/Getty Images )

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has expelled almost 40,000 Pakistani migrant workers in the last four months, local media has reported. 

Over 39,000 people have been deported since October 2016 over visa violations and security concerns, the Saudi Gazette reported, citing unnamed interior ministry officials. As well as crimes including drug trafficking, forgery and theft, an unknown number of those removed from the country were suspected to have links to Isis and other extremist groups, the paper said.  

The alleged mass deportations come after a year of strikes and other unrest in the kingdom due to unpaid wages following the oil market’s decline and subsequent blow to the Saudi economy. 

Official Saudi statistics say that 243,000 Pakistanis were deported between 2012 - 2015. Mass deportations of migrant workers - which Human Rights Watch and other rights organisations say often involve illegal beatings and detainment in poor conditions - are fairly common. 

2010 census figures show that 8.5 million of Saudi Arabia's 27 million strong population, or around 30 per cent, are foreign nationals. 

According to a 2014 European University Institute report, there are approximately 900,000 people of Pakistani nationality currently employed in Saudi Arabia’s vast construction industry and other low-paid service jobs. 

In Mecca in January, dozens of expatriate workers, mostly from poor Asian and Middle Eastern countries, were beaten and jailed over public protests against unpaid salaries that turned violent.

While the Philippines and India have also seen hundreds of thousands of citizens returned home after lay-offs in Saudi Arabia, the deportation of Pakistani workers has been mainly driven by security concerns, the New Arab reported.

Several prominent Saudi politicians, including Abdullah Al-Sadoun, chair of the security committee of the country’s Shura Council, have called for tougher screening processes for Pakistani nationals before they are allowed entry into the country.

“Pakistan itself is plagued with terrorism due to its close proximity with Afghanistan. The Taliban extremist movement was itself born in Pakistan,” he said.

No, Pakistan is plagued with terrorism due to its poverty, corruption and intense Islamism.

Approximately 80 Pakistani nationals are currently in prison in Saudi Arabia charged with terror or security related offences. 

In 2016, 35-year-old Abdullah Gulzar Khan, a Pakistani citizen who had lived and worked in Saudi Arabia legally for the previous 12 years, blew himself up in a suicide attack near the US consulate in Jeddah. No other injuries were reported in the incident. 

Two Pakistani nationals as well as one Sudanese and one Syrian were also arrested for allegedly planning a terror attack on a football match between the kingdom and the United Arab Emirates in Jeddah’s Al-Jawhara Stadium last year.

Report: Saudi School Bus Bombing in Yemen Not Justified

Were USA, Britain and France complicit in this slaughter of children?

By Sommer Brokaw

Yemenis inspected a destroyed bus at the site of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike on Aug. 10, a day after the strike hit the bus, which was carrying children at Dhahyan market in the northern province of Saada, Yemen. A coalition investigative team has since admitted the attack was not justified. Photo by Stringer/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- A Saudi-led coalition investigative team said Saturday a coalition airstrike that hit a school bus in Yemen killing dozens of children last month was not justified.

The Aug. 9 Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Dhahyan market in the northern province of Saada, Yemen, killed at least 50 people, mostly children, and injured 77, the ministry said, CNN reported.

Mansour al-Mansour, official spokesman of the Arab Coalition's Joint Incident Assessment Team, said at press conference Saturday that video from the plane that conducted the strike was analyzed for the report.

Saudi Arabia's official news agency initially reported that the strike was a legitimate military action in retaliation to a Houthi ballistic missile attack and Mansour maintained Saturday it was still a legitimate military target because it had Houthi leaders and led to the killing of a number of Houthi leaders. However, he also admitted that "the raid on Dhahyan does not comply with the coalition's rules of engagement," because the bombing was not justified at the time, since the target was not a threat to the coalition forces.

So, the target was not a threat at that moment so it did not comply with the coalition's rules of engagement. The fact that several dozen children were on the bus did not de-legitimize the attack, but only that they were not deemed to be an immediate threat. Perhaps if the bus had been going in the other direction it would have qualified as a justifiable target. In other words, the dozens of children massacred in this horrific act were of no consequence whatsoever. Sounds like Islam, doesn't it? It also sounds like we can expect many more dozens of children to be blown to bits thanks to mindless, military men.

Mansour also called on the coalition to hold those responsible for mistakes in Dhahyan raid responsible.

In response, the Saudi and United Arab Emirates coalition agreed Saturday with the report and pledged to "hold the ones who committed mistakes accountable."

Like that's going to happen. Someone is going to pay, but it certainly won't be those who are really responsible.

The attack led to widespread condemnation.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the airstrike and offered condolences for the families of the victims. He called on all parties involved in the Yemen civil war to respect international humanitarian law and called for an independent investigation.

Following the bus attack, some Congress members called on the U.S. military to clarify its role in the war and investigate whether support for the air raid could render American military personnel "liable under the war crimes act."

The Saudi coalition, which has had U.S., French and British logistical and intelligence support, has carried out strikes in Yemen to reinstate the internationally recognized presidency of Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whom rebels drove into exile three years ago.

So, Congress is worried that the US could be held liable for war crimes. They are not, apparently, concerned about actually committing war crimes, only that they might be held liable. Is there no-one who has a guilty conscience about the massacre of dozens of children? Incredible! Is the massacre of dozens of children now considered acceptable collateral damage?

The United Nations' human rights agency said in a report Tuesday that parties to the civil war in Yemen may have committed war crimes over the three years. At least 6,660 civilians have been killed and more than 10,500 injured in the conflict, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Yemen, also reeling from a multi-year cholera epidemic that's killed more than 2,300, has the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world, humanitarian agency Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere said.

"Since [2015], 22.2 million people are now in need of humanitarian assistance, among which 11.3 million are in acute need of immediate assistance to save or sustain life, mostly women and children," the group said.

In June alone, the coalition carried out 258 air raids on Yemen, nearly one-third of which targeted non-military sites.

Isn't it always women and children who pay for the insanity of men?

Dhahyan, Yemen

Brazilian Court: Lula Barred from Presidential Election

Corruption is Everywhere - Court says - Not in Presidential Elections

By Sommer Brokaw

Supporters marched to the Supreme Court of Justice to rally in favor of the registration of the candidacy of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for Brazil's president on Aug. 15. Since then, Brazil's top electoral court has ruled that Lula cannot run for re-election. File Photo by Joedson Alves/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- A month before Brazilians go to the polls to vote in a presidential election, Brazil's top electoral court has ruled a popular former president jailed for corruption conviction, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, cannot run.

Capping a hearing that stretched overnight, Supreme Electoral Tribunal judges ruled 6-1 that Lula, 72, who registered weeks ago and ascended to first in polling, was not eligible to run in October.

The candidate, who served two terms as Brazil's president from 2003-2011, widely known as Lula, is a founding member of Brazil's only socialist political party, Partidos dos Trabahlhadores, the Worker's Party, but he has been in jail after receiving a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering earlier this year. Lula was arrested in April after Brazil's Supreme Court rejected his plea to stay out of jail while appealing the corruption case in a bid to recapture the presidency.

The ruling this week defies a request from the United Nations Human Rights Committee in August for Brazilian authorities "not to prevent him from standing for election in the 2018 presidential elections, until his appeals before the courts have been completed in fair judicial proceedings."

"I never wanted this and if it depended on me I would have avoided that destiny brought us here," said Judge Luís Barroso, who gave the majority opinion. His colleague Edson Fachin, who has jailed other politicians in a sprawling graft investigation, disagreed and said the United Nations decision should prevail.

The majority of the court agreed with Barroso that the U.N. recommendation could not supersede a "clean slate" law that bars candidates who have been convicted of serious crimes.

The decision could work to the advantage of extreme right-wing candidate Jair Bolsanaro, who is running second in the polls to Lula.

Lula's party vowed to continue to fight for his candidacy.

"This is a week that will shame the judiciary forever," the party said in a statement to The Guardian, arguing that the clean slate law only banned candidates after all appeals processes were exhausted. "Lula has a number of appeals outstanding at higher courts."

'A Crisis Moment': Tracing the Origins of Venezuela's Spiraling Economy and its Human Toll

Here's how the country with the world's largest oil reserves

ended up in the midst of a refugee crisis

CBC News

A little girl lies on the ground at a camp in Cucuta, Colombia, near the border with Venezuela. Many of the Venezuelan children whose families have fled their home land are suffering from malnutrition or parasites. (Fernando Vergara/Associated Press)

Since 2014, the UN's International Organization for Migration estimates that 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled their country, desperate to escape economic and political turmoil, hunger and violence.

Here's a look at how the crisis has unfolded:

A Venezuelan migrant breastfeeds her baby at a centre on Peru's border with Ecuador on August 24, 2018. (Douglas Juarez/Reuters)

Venezuela was once one of the richest countries in Latin America, taking in thousands of refugees in the latter half of the 20th century. But there was economic inequality. The country was run by the wealthy, and the poor suffered.

Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998 on a pledge to change that. At the time, Venezuela's greatest commodity, oil, was selling for about $10 US a barrel. By the time he died in 2013, it was $100 US. The government provided better housing, healthcare, and education for the working classes — but it also fixed prices for some food products and other goods and set-up a complex system of currency controls. 

Chavez's socialism left the government in deep debt. And in 2014, the price of oil started to drop, eventually going as low as $26 US a barrel. Today, it hovers around $70 US, but the uptick in oil prices hasn't been enough to save the country from further economic turmoil.

Then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, attends a ceremony for his re-election in 2012, with the man he would name as his vice president and eventual successor, Nicolas Maduro. (Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press)

Chavez's hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, has been accused of mismanaging the oil sector. Oil production has fallen and the country has been unable to pay its debts. The economy has gone into free fall, leaving the government unable to pay for imports like food and medicine. 

Hospitals are overcrowded and short on supplies.

American sanctions contribute to these woes, but socialism is the main contributing factor, and possibly corruption and incompetence, as well.

The crisis has lead to a 30 per cent increase in child mortality, according to the most recent official sources. (Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images)

Supermarket shelves are almost bare. Domestic farm production has dropped and the government can't afford to import enough food for its people. 

People shop at a near-empty supermarket in Venezuela's capital, Caracas. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Because of complex currency and price controls, the available food is often sold on the black market at prices average people cannot afford. 

In some cases, spoiled meat is being sold to consumers. But some Venezuelans buy it because it is all they can afford. 

A customer smells a piece of spoiled meat at a market in Maracaibo, Venezuela. It makes some sick, but at bargain prices, it's the only way many people can afford beef. (Fernando Llano/Associated Press)

In an attempt to deal with shortages and other economic problems, the government has continued to print money, causing hyperinflation which destroys purchasing power for many Venezuelans. According to a recent study by the opposition-controlled National Assembly, the annual inflation rate reached 83,000 per cent in July.

The International Monetary Fund says inflation could hit one million per cent by the end of the year.

A kilogram of tomatoes is pictured next to 5,000,000 bolivars, its price and the equivalent of about $1,

at a mini-market this month in Caracas. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Neighbouring countries, Colombia and Brazil, have seen thousands of Venezuelans pour over their borders seeking respite from the conditions at home. According to Colombia's immigration agency, that country alone has received nearly 900,000 asylum seekers in the past 18 months. Between 700 and 800 Venezuelans are arriving in Brazil every day. 

Nurses shout anti-government slogans during an August protest demanding higher wages amid spiralling inflation.

(Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press)

Those with greater resources are escaping to Spain, the United States, and Canada. According to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, there has been a spike in refugee protection claims from Venezuela in the past five years, from 31 applications in 2013 to 1,240 in 2017. There have been 588 applications so far this year.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have crossed into Cucuta, Colombia across the Simon Bolivar International Bridge. Some work in Colombia illegally, while others come daily to buy food and return to Venezuela. (Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images)

Peru, Chile, Argentina, Panama, and Ecuador are also popular destinations for Venezuelan migrants. 

With Ecuador and Peru tightening their entry requirements, officials in Bogota worry that Venezuelans fleeing

the economic and political crisis could become stranded in Colombia. (Schneyder Mendoz/AFP/Getty Images)

Maduro's government blames the problems on an "economic war" waged by business owners, Colombia and the U.S. It blames "hoarding" by speculators for food shortages and has urged the population to rally to the defence of the state.

In mid-August, Maduro announced measures aimed at combating hyperinflation, including a plan to chop five zeros off the country's currency. The government is also raising the monthly minimum wage by more than 3,500 per cent. 

But part of what fuelled the economic crisis in the first place was inflation due to a heavily indebted government printing money ad nauseam. Critics worry the new measures will not be enough to fix the economy and some say the changes could actually exacerbate the economic crisis. 

On foot, by bus, or on the backs of trucks, migrant families slog for days along the Pan-American highway

through Colombia and Ecuador, in this case with the goal of reaching Peru. (Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty Images)

Two Venezuelan men wait to get food and shelter in front of the Migration Center in Cucuta, Colombia.

(Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images)

Amsterdam Attacker Who Stabbed 2 Americans had ‘Terrorist Motive’ – Authorities

Islamic Insanity in downtown Amsterdam

Central station in Amsterdam, FILE PHOTO. © Yves Herman / Reuters

The Afghan man suspected in the Amsterdam Central Railway Station stabbing that injured two Americans on Friday had a “terrorist motive,” local authorities said, citing the suspect's initial statements.

“The victims were not chosen deliberately or with a clear reason,” Amsterdam authorities said, as quoted by AP. “The investigation is still underway, and all scenarios remain open for the investigation team.”

The stabbings took place at Amsterdam’s busy Central Station on Friday afternoon. The two victims were identified as being American, Ambassador Pete Hoekstra said in a statement, adding that the embassy had been in touch with their families.

Both victims have serious but not life-threatening injuries, and are expected to fully recover. "We wish them a speedy recovery and are working closely with the City of Amsterdam to provide assistance to them and their families," Hoekstra said.

The suspected attacker was shot and wounded by police. It is understood that the suspect, who was later identified as an Afghan citizen with a German residency permit, did not know the two Americans.

Multiple data devices have been seized and will be investigated, De Telegraaf reported, citing the local municipality. The suspect will be brought before the examining magistrate on Monday. 

A search has also been carried out at the suspect's home in Germany, at the request of Dutch authorities, according to Dutch news agency Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP).

Amsterdam police spokesman Frans Zuiderhoek earlier told AFP that the investigation was “seriously taking into account that there was a terrorist motive.”

On Friday, witnesses described utter chaos as gunshots rang out in Amsterdam’s busiest train station, as thousands of commuters and tourists were evacuated just after noon. Roughly 250,000 travelers use Central Station every day.