Islam - MENA > Terrorist's Family gets pension doubled; 30 IS explosives neutralized in Tehran, 28 Arrested; Brunei joins power-play for Islamophobia laws

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PA doubles ‘pay-for-slay’ stipend to killer of Ari Fuld

JNS, September 18, 2023

The Palestinian Authority has doubled the terror “salary” it pays every month to Khalil Jabarin, the murderer of Israeli-American father of four Ari Fuld, according to the Fuld family’s attorney.

Ari Fuld

Jabarin is serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison for the fatal stabbing of Fuld, 45, and attempting to murder three other people at the Gush Etzion shopping area on Sept. 16, 2018….

Since the attack, Jabarin’s family has received a monthly stipend as part of the P.A.’s practice of rewarding those who kill and wound Israelis. The amount will increase the longer Jabarin remains in jail, Ramallah confirmed in 2018.

“Yesterday, the Palestinian Authority doubled the monthly salary it pays the terrorist murderer of Ari Fuld, [of blessed memory], from $522 to $1,044,” Israeli attorney Maurice Hirsch announced on Monday, noting that the P.A. has already paid Jabarin $25,726.

“The P.A.’s pay for slay policy incentivizes terror & rewards terrorists,” Hirsch wrote on X (formerly Twitter), asking: “Why are the U.S. & E.U. helping the P.A. to reward terrorists & Jew-murderers?”…

Iran: 30 explosives neutralized in Tehran,

28 Islamic State jihadists arrested 

SEP 27, 2023 11:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

In a Jerusalem Post article from 2016, former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid pointed out: “Twelve million Muslims have been killed by other Muslims since 1948…..The number of people killed during the Arab-Israeli conflict is 0.3 percent of this.” Despite strenuous efforts to unite the ummah, sectarianism continues to plague the Muslim world.

Genesis 16:12 - "He will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”

Sunnis are marginalized in Shia Iran. They make up 10% of the population, and “officials in Tehran are concerned about ISIS’ ability to recruit among Iranian Sunnis” and expand its regional interests.

So the Iranian regime regards the Islamic State — which has been “actively plotting against Iran for years” — as a destabilizing threat, just as Israel and other states see the Islamic Republic of Iran itself.

Iran foils terror plot, defuses 30 bombs in Tehran, arrests 28 terrorists

WIONews, September 24, 2023:

Authorities in Iran released a statement claiming that they had neutralised 30 explosives that were meant to go off simultaneously in Tehran and also detained 28 terrorists that had connections with the terror group Islamic State and were involved in the terror plot, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday (September 24), citing the intelligence ministry.

“Some of the members are of Islamic State (IS) and the perpetrators have a history of being affiliated with Takfiri groups in Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Kurdistan region of Iraq,” Iran’s intelligence ministry added in a statement.

The militant group has claimed several attacks that have taken place in Iran in the past, including the deadly twin bombings, that targeted Iran’s parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the year 2017.

Last year, in October, the Islamic State took responsibility for a mass shooting incident that took place at a Shiite Muslim shrine in Iran’s central city of Shiraz, leaving 13 people dead and 30 wounded.

According to the judiciary’s Mizan Online news website, the two men involved in the attack, identified as Mohammad Ramez Rashidi and Naeem Hashem Qatali, were hanged in public…..

At the UN, Brunei demands increased action against ‘Islamophobia’

SEP 27, 2023 1:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

I’ve often noted that “Islamophobia” is seldom, if ever, defined, and usually refers either to attacks against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, or to criticism of jihad violence and Sharia oppression, which is always necessary. Brunei’s Minister of Foreign Affairs here makes it clear that he means the latter only. He wants the UN to act to stifle and even criminalize criticism of Islam. This is a step toward compelling free nations to adopt Sharia blasphemy laws.

Brunei’s message to the United Nations: We want increased action against Islamophobia

The Star, September 25, 2023:

UNITED NATIONS (Borneo Bulletin/ANN): Brunei has joined calls for increased action against religious hatred, especially Islamophobia and anti-Islam sentiments, said Minister of Foreign Affairs II Dato Seri Setia Awang Erywan Mohd Yusof at the General Debate of the 78th Session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.

“Justifying religious hatred, even under the pretext of freedom of expression, is unacceptable,” said the minister after stating that the Sultanate joins the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the UN Alliance of Civilizations and UN member states that have called for increase action against religious hatred.

And yet, it is Islam that hates every other religion and even half of Islam. Hate to the degree the murder and massacres are not only acceptable, but expected.

“Our pursuit for peace will only be worthwhile if we address the root causes of such acts, especially those promoting discord, intolerance and hatred,” said the minister, referring to “deliberate actions, like the burning of the Holy Quran, the very centre of Islamic faith”, adding that such actions, “provokes disharmony, erodes trust, underminds [sic] efforts towards sustainable peace and threatens unity”….

Which one of Islams 600+ wars in the past 1400 years was about peace? Which one of the genocides being practiced in Africa are about peace? All of them, of course. Because once all Christians, Hindus, and wrong-headed Muslims are dead and gone, there will be peace. Except, there has never be peace in Islam, not in 1400+ years, not even in devoutly Islamic countries! 

This is another play by Islam to subject the world to Sharia blasphemy laws which will open the flood-gates for Islam globally.

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Islam - Europe > Far-Left Wing-nut pushing for cultural suicide in Germany; Trial starts for migrant murderer of 2 French police

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Far-Left German Minister Wants to Grant Migrants Right to Vote

After Only Six Months

SEP 27, 2023 10:00 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD

This mad proposal, which if carried out would more quickly transform Germany into a country dominated by a large Muslim voting bloc, can be found here: 

Asylum seekers should have right to vote after only 6-month stay on German soil,

says far-left interior minister

by John Cody, Remix News, September 19, 2023:

With Germany’s left-wing government sinking in the polls over a spiraling migration crisis and an economy in free fall, the left is starting to run low on voters. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser may have the solution to the problem: Give asylum seekers the right to vote in local state elections after just six months in Germany. The program, if implemented, would translate into millions of new voters overnight.

“We want to work hard at the federal level and in the Bundesrat to ensure that all people who live in Hessian municipalities for more than six months are given the right to vote in local elections,” describes the election program from her Social Democrats (SPD) in the state of Hesse where Faeser is currently up for election….

Migrants from EU countries share a common civilizational heritage with the Germans; it is not unreasonable to allow them to vote. They inhabit the same moral and intellectual universe. But the other migrants from outside the EU are overwhelmingly Muslim, and do not share that heritage; worse still, they regard the indigenous Germans as Infidels, and therefore “the most vile of created beings.”

Bild newspaper asked the SPD to clarify what the massive expansion of voting rights would actually mean. An SPD spokesman responded that the party’s statement should have specifically defined the new voters as those “who have a permanent residence permit.” However, this would still apply to a range of asylum seekers from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea.

Faeser's proposal would have the effect of speeding up the Islamification of Germany. Muslim voters would soon abandon the far-left parties because of there stance on LGBTQ rights and run their own candidates who would be socially very conservative. Elected Muslims would soon turn Germany up-side-down until granddaughters would be required to wear burqas, be invisible in public, and abandon all thoughts of higher education.

Giving the vote to Muslim economic migrants who have been in the country for only six months — instead of limiting that right to citizens (and to become a citizen, a migrant has to have lived legally in Germany for eight years, or seven years if he has successfully passed an integration course) — would instantly give an estimated four million migrants the right to vote, and vote they will, en masse, for the far-left parties that made their voting after six months possible.

Faeser is known for her hardline left-wing political positions, persecution of conservatives, and calls for mass censorship; she was also previously revealed to have written for Antifa magazine shortly before becoming interior minister….

The far-left Faeser has a worrisome record as a persecutor of conservatives and as an Antifa supporter; she is not at all bothered with the tsunami of Muslim economic migrants who are draining the German treasury and making Germany a far more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous place to live. Instead, she wants to admit ever more such migrants, and allow them to vote, they will cast their ballots by the millions for the far-left parties that have given them that vote, and the left will be assured of staying in power, aided by an ever increasing number of Muslim migrants who, if Faeser’s latest proposal becomes law, will after only six months in Germany be exercising the right to vote.

Faeser’s proposal would give the vote to people, almost all of them Muslim economic migrants, who are years away from becoming citizens, who are not integrated into German society, and likely never truly will be, precisely because they are Muslims and despise Infidels who are “the most vile of created beings.” They may pretend to be asylum-seekers, but in truth they are economic migrants, determined to take advantage of all the benefits that Germany’s generous welfare system can provide — free or subsidized housing, free medical care, free education (including vocational training), unemployment benefits, family allowances, and more. That is their only reason for being in Germany. And once they get the vote, they will vote in leftist politicians who are pushing for Germany to welcome still more Muslim immigrants who will allow in still more Muslim economic immigrants, and also increase the benefits provided to them. Already Germany is spending 36 billion euros a year on these migrants, and this sum has required large cuts in government support for German retirees When these economic migrants are able to vote after only six months, they will cast their ballots for leftist politicians who will expand the benefits provided, and that colossal sum now spent on the migrants will inexorably become larger still.

“The German passport is thus turned into a piece of junk. But above all: Faeser and the SPD want to attract people who have no connection to Germany at all as new groups of voters. This is not surprising, because the locals who are ridiculed as ‘non-migrants’ [i.e., the indigenous Germans] are running away from (Chanceller Olaf) Scholz’s SPD.”

Yes, how amusing to describe the indigenous Germans as “non-migrants”– as if they, the indigenous people of the country, are the interlopers. And these Germans, formerly supporters of the centrist-left SPD, are now leaving it in droves for the AfD, the party best known for its anti-Muslim migrant policy. Just now the AfD has become the strongest political force in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, making it the fourth eastern German state — after Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony — in which the far-right party leads in the polls.

There is now a race on in Germany. Will the left manage to reduce the time migrants need to remain in Germany in order to vote from eight years — which is the time now required for someone living in Germany to become a citizen, and hence a voter — to six months, in which case another few million migrants will be able to vote for the parties furthest to the left, and they will continue to do so, from here on out, to make sure that Germany remains wide open to Muslim migrants and increases the government benefits to be supplied to them? And should that happen, that is how Germany will come undone.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Trial opens in France over 2016 jihadist murder of police couple

A French court opened a trial on Monday against the suspected accomplice of the man who in 2016 killed a police couple at their home outside Paris in front of their child in a crime that shocked the country. 

Issued on: 25/09/2023 - 11:43; 3 min

France24

French police officers Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jessica Schneider, who were killed at their home in Magnanville, near Paris, on June 13, 2023. © Sylvain Thomas, AFP

By:FRANCE 24Follow|FRANCE 24

It wasn’t the deadliest attack in Europe linked to the Islamic State (IS) group, but it was among the most disturbing: One evening in 2016, an assailant killed two police officers in their family home, in front of their 3-year-old son.

On Monday, a trial opens in a French counterterrorism court over the attack in the Paris suburb of Magnanville.

The attacker, Larossi Abballa, was shot to death by police. According to court documents, he told police negotiators that he was responding to an IS leader’s call to "kill miscreants at home with their families."

A childhood friend of Abballa’s, Mohamed Aberouz, is going on trial for complicity in terrorism-related murder, complicity to kidnapping and terrorist conspiracy. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

The killings came amid a wave of attacks in France linked to the IS group and had a lasting effect on police officers around France. Some moved, changed services or resigned to protect their loved ones after the Magnanville killings.

According to court documents, Abballa broke into the home of police officers Jessica Schneider and Jean-Baptiste Salvaing before they returned from work. When Schneider came home, Abballa slit her throat in the living room, with the child present.

The father texted her from the office to say, “I’m leaving,” the documents say. There was no response. He was stabbed upon arriving home.

Neighbours called police, and the attacker said he was holding the couple’s 3-year-old hostage, according to the documents. He told a negotiator from a special police unit that he acted because the French government was preventing the faithful from joining the caliphate, and stressed that he had not targeted civilians but representatives of the French state.

Police stormed the home and killed Abballa, and rescued the child. The boy has been raised by family members since.

After more than five years of investigation and multiple arrests, only Aberouz is facing trial. Charges were initially brought against two others but later dropped.

Prosecutors argue that Aberouz was the one who singled out Salvaing and Schneider to Abballa as targets for the attack, visiting the house with the killer to identify them to him in photos stored on their computer.

Aberouz, now 30, was arrested a year after the events, when his DNA was found on the victims’ computer.

Aberouz initially disputed connections to the IS group, before acknowledging that the group corresponded to his convictions but saying he deplored its extremist methods, according to the court documents.

The defendant was already sentenced to prison in another terrorism case, for his role in a failed gas canister attack near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

In the Magnanville attack, Aberouz maintains that he never went to the police couple's home or helped in preparing the attack. He said the DNA found in the victims’ home could have been the result of his shaking hands with Abballa or riding in his car in the days before the attack.

Aberouz’s lawyer Vincent Brengarth said he would plead for acquittal. “My client is determined to prove his innocence,” he told AP. “There is no message in which he talks about an attack.”

Police are hoping that the trial sheds light on the preparations for the attack.

A verdict is expected on October 10.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP)

Germany bans another Nazi group

By Doug Cunningham

The German government on Wednesday announced a ban against the Artgemeinschaft Nazi group, raiding dozens of apartments associated with its members. Photo by Friedemann Vogel/EPA-EFE

Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Germany Wednesday banned the group Artgemeinschaft in a continued crackdown on Nazi organizations.

The interior ministry announced that police conducted raids on 26 apartments, 39 members of the group and the organization's premises in 12 German states.

"With the 'Artgemeinschaft' we are banning a cult-like, deeply racist and anti-Semitic association," said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser in a statement. "This is another hard blow against right-wing extremism and against the intellectual arsonists who continue to spread Nazi ideologies to this day. This right-wing extremist group has tried to raise new enemies of the constitution through disgusting indoctrination of children and young people."

"A cult-like, deeply racist and anti-Semitic association". It sounds like she is describing Islam there. But, of course, the far-left, wing-nut, Faeser, only sees enemies on the right, like she is blind in her left eye.

According to the German government, Artgemeinschaft is networked with many right-wing extremist and new-right groups and conveys an ideology largely based on National Socialism.

"Above all, through the manipulative, indoctrinating upbringing of their children and the distribution of corresponding literature, the 'Artgemeinschaft' acted differently, but no less dangerously, than the neo-Nazi 'Hammerskins', which we banned last week," Faeser said.

"The manipulative, indoctrinating upbringing of their children".  Now that sounds like left-wing LGBTQ agenda taught in schools. It also sounds like Islam.

Artgemeinschaft is allegedly part of the "species community" with a goal of preserving and promoting one's own "species." The government said it equates with National Socialist racist views.

The ban on the group includes all its sub-organizations, referred to as "societies," "guilds," "circles of friends," and the "Familienwerk eV."

Last week the Hammerskin neo-Nazi group was banned as more than 700 police officers raided the homes of 28 members of that group in 10 federal German states.

According to Germany's intelligence agency, about 38,800 people are active in the nation's extreme right-wing political movement.

More than a third of them are considered "potentially violent."

Between the two raids more than a thousand police officers would have been used. 67 members were arrested although charges and sentences for those convicted are not likely to be severe as there don't seem to be any significant events tied to the raids. They seem to be arresting the Nazi groups for potential violence. With about 13,000 "potentially violent" extreme right-wingers, it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of police to arrest them all when they are collecting 30 or 40 at a time.

Faeser, however, cannot see that there is much more danger in the 7 million Muslims with a migrant background in Germany. What percentage of them are potentially violent? Consider all the German girls and young women who have been raped or gang-raped, or sexually abused, consider all the criminal gangs creating havoc in Germany's cities. Consider the potential for terrorism especially when Muslims are so easily triggered into hysteria. Consider the multiple wives of many Muslims, some of whom are, or were, child brides. Consider the potential for honour killings. Wouldn't a thousand police officers be better used to protect Germany's girls from the countless Muslim men who think they have a right to rape German girls.

Why is someone who is so clueless Federal Interior Minister of Germany?

Islam - Asia > Christian couple detained, tortured by Faisalabad police; Pakistanis waiting for Hindus to embrace Islam

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Christian human rights activists ‘briefly detained, tortured’

by police in Faisalabad

by Imran Gabol, Dawn, September 23, 2023:

Two human rights activists visiting Faisalabad from Karachi were allegedly briefly detained and tortured by police, it emerged on Saturday, following which police accused the duo of misbehaviour in its rebuttal.

The incident was raised by lawyer and rights activist Jibran Nasir on Friday in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter.

In a post about what he dubbed “extremely alarming and condemnable action by Punjab police”, Nasir said two prominent human rights activists from Karachi, Pastor Ghazala Shafique and Luke Victor, were visiting Faisalabad to help Reverend Father Eleazar Sidhu.

Christian priest Sidhu was shot at and injured on September 3, according to the first information report (FIR) of the incident available with Dawn.com. The FIR stated that Sidhu — who served at Myong-Sang Naserth church in Jaranwala tehsil — was returning home from the church in the evening when an unidentified bearded man shot and injured him.

The FIR also mentioned that he was leading prayers in the church on August 28 when someone wrote objectionable religious slogans against him on the outer wall of the church, which were whitewashed by police on his complaint.

A few days prior to the alleged incident, when he went to drop his son off at school, a few bearded people threatened him, saying, “As our written slogans have been deleted from the wall of the church, soon you will also be deleted,” the FIR said.

According to Nasir’s posts on social media, Sidhu was arrested, “unlawfully kept captive by local police and subjected [to] torture, being forced to state that the deadly attack on him after the Jaranwala incident was self-inflicted”.

He alleged that Sidhu was forced into giving a statement that he “shot himself so real culprits could remain safe”….

Pakistan’s prime minister: ‘We are waiting all Hindus

to be persuaded to the enlighten truth of Islam’

SEP 25, 2023 4:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

This man is the prime minister of Pakistan. What chance do the remaining Hindus in that country have of getting equal justice under the law?

Waiting for all Hindus to be persuaded to convert to Islam

 Old tweet of Pakistan’s caretaker PM goes viral

OpIndia, September 24, 2023:

Pakistan, which has a tainted history of persecuting, and discriminating against religious minorities especially the Hindus there, is currently under the rule of caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar. An old post on X (formerly Twitter) of Pakistan’s caretaker PM has now gone viral wherein he said that Muslims are ready to wait for a millennium to see all Hindus get persuaded to convert to Islam.

In a 2020 post (archive), the caretaker prime minister of Pakistan wrote, “We are waiting all Hindus to be persuaded to the enlighten truth of Islam will wait for a millennium no hurry.”

Kakar wrote this in response to an Indian X user who said that Mohammad Ali Jinnah, “Quaid-e-Azam” of Pakistan was a Kafir.

While this coming from a senator who now happens to be the prime minister (caretaker) of a country would have been shocking, since it is the case of Pakistan, such thoughts/desires are not surprising at all. The Pakistani caretaker PM said that he hopes that Hindus are “persuaded” to the truth of Islam.

Although PM Kakar had posted that he along with his co-religionists are ready to wait for Hindus to get drawn to the “truth of Islam”, the pace at which Hindu population has decreased rapidly in Pakistan post-partition, it may not be a long wait before Hindus are wiped out in Pakistan. In the country, girls are regularly being abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and then married off to their abductors….

In India, rather than abduct Hindu girls, although that does happen, Muslim men seduce them until they are ready to marry and then drop the bombshell that they have to convert. It's called Love Jihad, and girls all over India are falling for it.

Corruption is Everywhere > NJ Senator and wife hit with federal corruption charges; Feds + 17 States Sue Amazon

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NJ Sen. Bob Menendez hit with federal corruption charges for

second time; allegedly took bribes — including $150K in gold bars

By Kyle Schnitzer, Priscilla DeGregory and Ben Kochman

Published Sep. 22, 2023, 9:59 a.m. ET

NYPost

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has been hit with federal corruption charges related to a years-long scheme in which he allegedly accepted bribes — including more than $150,000 in gold bars — in exchange for helping the government of Egypt and protecting the interests of three wealthy businessmen.

The Democrat, 69 — and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 56 — were charged with taking hundreds of thousands in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and even exercise machines and an air purifier from 2018 through 2022, according to a Manhattan federal indictment unsealed Friday.

Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams, at a news conference announcing the charges, said Menendez used his “power and influence” – including his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – to benefit the Egyptian regime.

He also allegedly tried to meddle in the criminal prosecution of one of the businessmen by pushing President Biden to nominate Philip R. Sellinger as the US Attorney for New Jersey, because he believed Sellinger could influence the case, according to the indictment.

This is Menendez’ second time facing federal corruption charges. The prior criminal case against Menendez in New Jersey ended with a hung jury in 2017.

The bombshell new indictment alleges Menendez, a New Jersey senator since 2006, stuffed stacks of alleged ill-gotten cash in the pockets of official government jackets emblazoned with his name – and Googled “kilo of gold price.”

The feds raided Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022 and found “the fruits” of his “corrupt bribery agreement” — including the 2019 Mercedes C-Class, at least 13 gold bars and $486,461 in cash, the indictment states.

Piles of cash were found in envelopes in Menendez’s closet.

US District Court

The money was “stuffed in envelopes” and “hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe,” including in the jackets, pictures of which were included in the court papers.

Another $70,000 in cash was found in Nadine’s safe deposit box, the indictment claims.

In exchange, Menendez used his office to help and shield three Garden State businessmen, co-defendants Wael Hana, 40, Jose Uribe, 56, and Fred Daibes, 66, the court papers claim.

Nadine Arslanian and Bob Menendez at the White House.

Getty Images

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announces the indictment of

NJ Senator Robert Menendez and his wife on corruption charges.

Steven Hirsch

Through a “corrupt relationship” with the three men, Menendez and his wife “accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for Senator Menendez using his power and influence to protect and to enrich those businessmen and to benefit the government of Egypt,” Williams told reporters.

Menendez allegedly provided “substantial military aid to Egypt” including by:

Handing over sensitive information from the US government to Egyptian officials through a middleman, Hana, of Edgewater NJ., a longtime friend of Nadine’s who founded a halal food certification company.

Ghost writing a letter to other senators urging them to release a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt.

Lobbying then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in April 2020 to increase US engagement in stalled negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Sudan over the building a dam on the Nile River, a key foreign policy issue for Egypt.

The senator also allegedly tried to interfere in criminal probes involving Uribe, a former insurance agent from Union City, NJ., and Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and Menendez fundraiser.

Uribe, who runs a trucking and insurance business, and Hana allegedly agreed to buy Menendez and his wife the Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible, worth $60,000, in April 2019, the indictment claims.

On April 4, 2019, Uribe met with Nadine in a parking lot, handing her $15,000 in cash, which she used toward a down payment on the car. He also made monthly payments on the car from 2019 until June 2022.

Nadine sent a text to her politician husband with a photo of the Mercedes and the message: “Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes” with a heart emoji, the indictment alleges.

Stacks of cash were found in Menendez’s closet with his government outerwear.

US District Court

In exchange, Menendez allegedly tried to get a prosecutor in the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office to offer a favorable outcome in the case against one of Uribe’s associates and in another investigation against one of his employees, court papers say.

The prosecutor found the meetings with Menendez inappropriate and didn’t succumb to pressure, but Uribe’s associate still got a no-jail plea agreement and his employee was never charged, according to the indictment.

Similarly, Menendez allegedly sought to help Daibes – who court papers say bribed the couple with gold bars and cash for a series of favors – in a federal case he faced by recommending Sellinger for the post of New Jersey US Attorney.

Prosecutors allege Daibes in March 2022 gave Nadine two gold bars that were a kilogram each – when at the time gold went for $60,000 per kilogram. And Daibes’ driver’s fingerprints were later discovered on an envelope containing thousands of dollars in cash and recovered from the couple’s home, according to the indictment.

While Sellinger – who was not accused of wrongdoing and who is named only as “official 3” in the indictment – wound up recusing himself from the case, Daibes still received a no-jail plea deal in April 2022, the indictment notes.

Williams pointed out a message on Menendez’s official Senate website, which states, in part, that “he cannot compel an agency to act in someone’s favor … he cannot influence matters involving a private business. It says he cannot get involved in criminal matters, or cases, period.”

“But we allege behind the scenes, Senator Menendez was doing those things for certain people, the people who were bribing him and his wife,” Williams charged.

Menendez met Hana, an Egyptian immigrant, through Nadine — who had been friends with Hana for years prior to her starting to date Menendez in 2018.

The couple went out with Hana and dined on his dime on several occasions — so that prosecutors say the businessman and Nadine could convince Menendez to use his post on the Foreign Relations Committee to help get military aid to Egypt. 

Egypt was at the time one of the top recipients of US aid — despite reservations from some politicians that the funds should be held until the country improved its human rights record.

In May 2018, Menendez, through his wife and Hana, provided an Egyptian official with “sensitive nonpublic” information about the number and nationality of people working in the US Embassy in Cairo, the feds allege. 

That same month, he gave Hana non-public information about US military aid to Egypt, the indictment states.

Menendez and his wife would meet with five Egyptian officials in the US including one that Nadine referred to as “the general.” And the couple, who wed in 2020, took a trip to Egypt in October 2021, meeting with a slew of officials there too, the court papers allege.

After one meeting between Menendez and an Egyptian official, Hana on June 23, 2021, purchased 22 one-ounce gold bars — two of which were later found at the senator’s house, the indictment states.

Hana and his company IS EG Halal in 2019 were given a monopoly by Egypt as the sole company to certify foods as Halal, despite having no prior experience in the field.

The businessman then allegedly paid Nadine, a former marketer for a medical company, with three $10,000 checks for a no-show job at IS EG Halal. She used the money to help bring her mortgage payments up to date after foreclosure was initiated on her Bergen County property, the indictment states.

Williams noted that the investigation was “very much ongoing.”

For more on this article go to NYPost: “We’re not done,”

Personally, I think Nadine is inordinately involved here. Could it be she is an Egyptian plant?

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U.S. government, 17 states sue Amazon for abusing monopoly power

Amazon.com accused by FTC of deceptive practices, favouritism and 'unlawful coercion'

Thomson Reuters · Posted: Sep 26, 2023 10:10 AM PDT | 

The Amazon logo is photographed at the Vivatech trade show in Paris on June 15.

(Michel Euler/The Associated Press)

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com on Tuesday, charging the online retailer with harming consumers through higher prices in the latest U.S. government legal action aimed at breaking Big Tech's dominance of the internet.

The lawsuit, which was joined by 17 state attorneys general, follows a four-year investigation and federal lawsuits filed against Alphabet's Google and Meta Platforms' Facebook.

"The FTC and its state partners say Amazon's actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon," the agency said in a statement.

The FTC said that it was asking the court to issue a permanent injunction, ordering Amazon.com to stop its unlawful conduct.

Amazon said that the FTC lawsuit was wrong-headed and would hurt consumers by leading to higher prices and slower deliveries.

"The practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers, and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon's store," said David Zapolsky, Amazon's general counsel.

The federal complaint follows other actions the FTC has taken against Amazon recently. In June, the agency sued the company, alleging it was using deceptive practices to enrol consumers into Amazon Prime and making it challenging for them to cancel their subscriptions.

In late May, the company agreed to pay a $25-million US civil penalty to settle allegations that it violated a child privacy law and misled parents about data deletion practices on its popular voice assistant Alexa.

Booksellers and authors have also been urging the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate what they've called Amazon's "monopoly power over the market for books and ideas."

Unnecessary fees, pressure to use

The FTC said that Amazon, founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and worth more than $1 trillion US, punished sellers that sought to offer prices that were lower than Amazon's by making it difficult for consumers to find the seller on Amazon's platform.

Other allegations include:

Amazon gave preference to its own products in search results over competitors.

Charging costly monthly and advertising fees to sellers it says have no choice but to rely on Amazon.

Engaging in "unlawful coercion" to pressure sellers to join Amazon's Prime fulfilment service.

FTC chair Lina Khan said that Amazon had used illegal tactics to fend off companies that would have risen to challenge its monopoly.

"Amazon is now exploiting that monopoly power to harm its customers, both the tens of millions of families that shop on Amazon's platform and the hundreds of thousands of sellers that use Amazon to reach them," she said.

Khan, while a law student, wrote about Amazon.com's dominance in online retailing for The Yale Law Journal and was on the staff of the House committee that wrote a report issued in 2020 that advocated reining in four tech giants: Amazon.com, Apple, Google and Facebook.

Many analysts had wondered whether the agency would seek a forced breakup of the retail giant, which is also dominant in cloud computing through Amazon Web Services and has a growing presence in other sectors, like groceries and health care. In a briefing with reporters, Khan dodged questions of whether that will happen.

"At this stage, the focus is more on liability," she said.

Some estimates show Amazon controls about 40 per cent of the e-commerce market. A majority of the sales on its platform are facilitated by independent sellers consisting of small- and medium-sized businesses and individuals. In return for the access it provides to its platform, Amazon rakes in billions through referral fees and other services like advertising, which makes products sold by sellers more visible on the platform.

The vast majority of third-party merchants also use the company's fulfilment service to store inventory and ship items to customers. Amazon has been consistently raising fees for those reliant on the program and more recently imposed, and then abandoned, another fee on some who don't — a move that was blasted by the company's critics.

Amazon critic welcomes suit

Last quarter, Amazon reported $32.3 billion US in revenue from third-party services. According to the anti-monopoly organization Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), the fees cost U.S. sellers 45 per cent of their revenue in the first half of this year — up from 35 per cent in 2020 and 19 per cent in 2014.

The ILSR, long critical of Amazon's power, welcomed the agency's lawsuit.

"No corporation has ever centralized this much power across so many crucial sectors. Left unchecked, Amazon's power to dictate and control threatens the rule of law and our ability to maintain open, democratically governed markets," said Stacy Mitchell, the group's co-executive director.

The need to take action against Big Tech has been one of the few ideas that Democrats and Republicans have agreed on. During the Trump administration, which ended in 2021, the Justice Department and FTC opened probes into Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

But in terms of the current lawsuit, the large majority of states joining were solid Democratic jurisdictions, with no states in the south.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Seattle, where Amazon is based.

With files from CBC News and The Associated Press

Islam - UN > Islam making play to install elements of Sharia over the whole world

..

I don't understand why he wasn't laughed right out of New York.

At UN, Pakistan’s prime minister claims that ‘Islamophobia’ is

‘latent threat that undermines millennia of progress’

SEP 25, 2023 8:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

The term “Islamophobia” is an illegitimate conflation of two distinct phenomena: vigilante attacks against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary. The objective of this conflation is to silence that analysis by falsely claiming that it leads to or causes those attacks.

Pakistan Demands Global ‘Accountability Process to Punish Islamophobic Crimes’ at U.N.

by Frances Martel, Breitbart, September 22, 2023:

Interim Prime Minister of Pakistan Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, representing his country amid an ongoing political crisis following the ouster of popular Prime Minister Imran Khan, used his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday to demand that nations outlaw “Islamophobia” and that the international community enforce blasphemy laws….

In other words, he wants to begin installing parts of Sharia Law in every country in the world.

Khan, a radical Islamist with fervent support among Pakistani fundamentalists, launched a campaign in 2018 to pressure other countries to adopt similar speech codes as part of a war against alleged “Islamophobia” — intended, in his own words, to “prevent people [from] using freedom of speech as a cover for hurting the religious sentiments of Muslims around the world,” he added, according to Hamari Web News.

Kakar reserved his discussion of the topic on Friday to the end of his speech.

“Our progress, based on [a] rich history of cooperation, understanding, exchange, and synthesis of ideas among civilizations, is imperiled today,” Kakar claimed, citing the threat to that progress as “Islamophobia.”

"A rich history of cooperation?" That is rich. Islam massacred anyone who didn't cooperate with them and are still doing so especially in Africa.

What does he refer to as "Our progress?" Progress toward a global caliphate? How else can you associate the word "progress" with an ideology from the dark ages?

Do you consider it progress to keep women and girls invisible in public, to refuse them higher education? Is it progress to rape and murder girls for allowing a strand of hair to show, to cane people, to cut off their hands, to bury them in sand and then stone them to death, to cut off their heads, to throw them from roofs, to beat them and drag them through the streets behind a car? Is it progress to kidnap Christian or Hindu girls and force them into conversion and marriage? Is it progress to abuse young Yazidi girls and use them as slaves and sex slaves after murdering their families? 

All of these things are happening in Islamic countries today or have happened recently.

Woman Beheaded in Afghanistan for Shopping ‘Without Husband’

Islam - Iran > One Survivor's Story; More Stories of Surviving as a Girl in Iran

“The narratives advocating a clash of civilizations have done considerable harm to humanity’s progress. Such ideas have bred extremism, hatred, and religious intolerance, including Islamophobia,” he continued. “Make no mistake; it is a latent threat that undermines millennia of progress.”

"Extremism, hatred, and religious intolerance". Believe it or not, he is not talking about Islam here although he describes it perfectly especially the Islam of Pakistan. 

Kakar claimed that an “epidemic” of “Islamophobia” had gripped the world in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, jihadist attacks, planned and orchestrated by radical Muslims with ties to Pakistan. Osama bin Laden, the head of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda at the time of the mass murder, was found and killed hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.

Did he think that the massacre of nearly 3000 people in America should not have affected our view of Islam, The Religion of Peace? 

He cited as examples of this Islamophobia the recent burnings of the Quran in Europe, initiated after an Iraqi migrant burned a Quran in Sweden in June. The act, which resulted in no property damage or human casualties, prompted a wave of Islamic rioting in the country. Ongoing attempts to continue burning the Quran in response to violence by Muslim extremists have resulted in European countries considering laws to prevent the burnings in an attempt to stop further violence — a reaction Kakar celebrated.

The wave of Islamic rioting was not confined to Sweden but happened in Muslim countries across Asia. This is part of the character of Muslims I call Islamic Hysteria. It can be triggered with a false accusation or the tearing of a page, and can result in the most horrific deaths. Is this a sample of "progress"?

“Earlier this year, the Human Rights Council adopted an OIC [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] resolution submitted by Pakistan, urging States to outlaw the burning of the Holy Quran and similar provocations,” the prime minister recalled. “We welcome the legislation initiated by Denmark and contemplated by Sweden towards this end.”

“Pakistan and the OIC countries will propose further steps to combat Islamophobia,” he promised, “including the appointment of a Special Envoy, creation of an Islamophobia data center, legal assistance to victims, and an accountability process to punish Islamophobic crimes.”…

In other words - the beginning of the establishment of Sharia Law over the entire world. How is it possible he wasn't laughed right out of the UN? 

The prime minister also only addressed the Quran burnings and violence against Muslims and Christians in neighboring India, which Pakistan has long maintained poor diplomatic relations with. Kakar did not discuss the plight of Christians in his own country, often killed by Muslim mobs after being spuriously accused of blasphemy. In August, a Muslim mob of as many as 10,000 people burned down entire Christian neighborhoods in Jaranwala after unsubstantiated rumors began spreading that a Christian had desecrated the Quran….

With the help of fellow Islamist leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Pakistan successfully pushed for the United Nations to brand March 15 “International Day to Combat Islamophobia” in 2023.

Erdogan is still trying to recreate the Ottoman Empire with himself as Caliph.

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