Iran has publicly revealed for the first time that it has an active legal case involving former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing inside Iran in 2007 under suspicious circumstances.
In a filing to the United Nations, Iran wrote: “According to the last statement of Tehran’s Justice Department, Mr. Robert Alan Levinson has an ongoing case in the Public Prosecution and Revolutionary Court of Tehran.”
&#8220;Mr. Levinson was last seen alive about eight years ago, in a hostage video pleading for help and in photographs wearing a Guantánamo-style jumpsuit,&#8221; The Associated Press <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/09/world/middleeast/iran-robert-levinson.html">reported</a>. &#8220;The images did not disclose who was holding him, though the video has a Pashtun wedding song popular in Afghanistan playing in the background.&#8221;
It was not clear how long the case had been open or the events that started it.
The news came after the Trump administration announced on Monday — which was the anniversary of when Iranian terrorists stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the Iranian regime took over 50 U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days — that it was offering a $20 million reward for information leading to Levinson&#8217;s safe recovery.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo <a href="https://www.state.gov/on-the-40th-anniversary-of-the-u-s-embassy-takeover-in-tehran/">said</a> in a statement:
<blockquote>The Trump Administration has made clear that the regime in Iran must release all missing and wrongfully detained Americans, including Robert Levinson, Xiyue Wang, Siamak Namazi, and others.  We will not rest until they are reunited with their families.
Additionally, today the U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice Program is advertising a new reward of up to $20 million for information leading to the safe location, recovery, and return of Robert Levinson, who was taken hostage in Iran with the involvement of the Iranian regime.  Mr. Levinson is the longest-held hostage in U.S. history.</blockquote>
The $20 million reward offered by the Trump administration is in addition to a $5 million reward being offered by the FBI.
Iran&#8217;s filing at the U.N. came in response to a 2016 complaint that the Levinson family filed with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Involuntary Disappearances.
The family was told at the time not to expect a response from Iran.
Iran&#8217;s response to the family comes as the Islamic regime is being crushed by U.S. sanctions over its nuclear program, which Iran has illegally restarted in defiance of an agreement they signed.
&#8220;Mr. Levinson disappeared from Kish Island, off the coast of Iran, on March 9, 2007. For years, United States officials would only say that Mr. Levinson, a meticulous F.B.I. investigator credited with busting Russian and Italian mobsters, was working for a private firm on his trip,&#8221; The AP added. &#8220;In December 2013, The A.P. revealed that Levinson had in fact been on a mission for C.I.A. analysts who had no authority to run spy operations. Mr. Levinson’s family had received a $2.5 million annuity from the C.I.A. in order to stop a lawsuit revealing details of his work, while the agency forced out three veteran analysts and disciplined seven others.&#8221;
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/08/ray-light-mysterious-case-an-american-missing-iran/">reported</a> that after the U.S. government &#8220;showed little evidence of working to free Levinson&#8221; under former President Barack Obama, the Levinson family believes that President Donald Trump has made the case a top priority
“We’re encouraged. This administration is engaged and completely committed to bringing my dad home,” the family told The Post. “They’ve taken it as a personal mission. I think they care passionately about bringing my dad and other Americans home.”

Robert Levinson

Iran Acknowledges That FBI Agent Gone Missing Since 2007 Involved In Ongoing Court Case

Iran

United Nations

<div class="el__leafmedia el__leafmedia--sourced-paragraph">
Thirty-six environmentalists were four weeks into their &#8220;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/chile-climate-voyage-canceled-scli-intl/index.html?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_term=link&amp;utm_content=2019-10-31T20%3A30%3A12&amp;utm_source=twCNN">grueling voyage</a>&#8221; by sailboat to Chile for a United Nations climate change summit, COP25, when they leaned the event had been canceled.
The activists, known as the Sail to the COP group, took a cue from young climate change figurehead Greta Thunberg and opted for a sailboat ride over a plane ride. According to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/chile-climate-voyage-canceled-scli-intl/index.html?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_term=link&amp;utm_content=2019-10-31T20%3A30%3A12&amp;utm_source=twCNN">CNN</a>, Thunberg expressed her approval of Sail to the COP via Twitter at the end of October.
The activists, who left from Amsterdam, were halfway to Chile when they found out the devastating news.
&#8220;After a long assessment process, the Chilean Government has made the painful decision of not to host the Climate Summit COP25,&#8221; the COP25 Twitter account posted Wednesday.
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After a long assessment process, the Chilean Government has made the painful decision of not to host the Climate Summit COP25. <a href="https://t.co/bH0f1nOv0R">pic.twitter.com/bH0f1nOv0R</a>
&mdash; COP25 (@COP25CL) <a href="https://twitter.com/COP25CL/status/1189621397032783872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
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As noted by CNN, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera pulled out as host of the summit &#8220;amid protests that have left at least 20 people dead and led to the resignation of eight cabinet ministers.&#8221;
&#8220;The Sail to the Group participants prove to be a strong and reliant group after four intense weeks of sailing,&#8221; the climate change activists posted in a <a href="https://twitter.com/sailtothecop/status/1189868224093073410">statement</a> on Thursday. &#8220;After the initial shock and sadness the news brought, everyone came together determined to continue what we started: putting the climate impact of aviation on the international agenda.&#8221;
Sail to the COP is now headed for Belém, Brazil, instead.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
📢UPDATE: We are continuing our journey to Belém, Brasil today, while our thoughts are with <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chile?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chile</a>! 🌊🌊From there we can still make it to a <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/COP25?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#COP25</a> held in Costa Rica or Bonn, most likely options at the moment. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateAction?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ClimateAction</a> is unstoppable! 🌏 <a href="https://t.co/DP7u9TYYYh">pic.twitter.com/DP7u9TYYYh</a>
&mdash; Sail to the COP (@sailtothecop) <a href="https://twitter.com/sailtothecop/status/1189868224093073410?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<div class="zn-body__paragraph speakable">Before the cancellation, the group boasted online of its journey — on what appears to be a very small sailboat for 36 adults.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph speakable">&#8220;We are doing the first ever [Global Climathon] on the Atlantic Ocean! Spread out over three days (instead of 24 hours) due to sailing tasks, we will finish tonight with a big pitching event in the ship’s saloon,&#8221; one tweet said. </div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
We are doing the first ever <a href="https://twitter.com/GlobalClimathon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GlobalClimathon</a> on the Atlantic Ocean! Spread out over three days (instead of 24 hours) due to sailing tasks, we will finish tonight with a big pitching event in the ship’s saloon 🌊🍸🏆<a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateKIC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ClimateKIC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateCrisis?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ClimateCrisis</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateEmergency?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ClimateEmergency</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/flyless?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#flyless</a> <a href="https://t.co/n4LxIT4Fk5">pic.twitter.com/n4LxIT4Fk5</a>
&mdash; Sail to the COP (@sailtothecop) <a href="https://twitter.com/sailtothecop/status/1188079258851258369?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Thunberg, leading the charge for climate change extremism focused primarily on the West, gave a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-trolls-greta-thunberg-over-mass-extinction-ryan-saavedra">radical speech</a> at the UN in September, where she warned of &#8220;mass extinction.&#8221;
&#8220;My message is that we’ll be watching you,&#8221; warned the 16-year-old. &#8220;This is all wrong, I shouldn’t be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope, how dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.&#8221;
Thunberg continued: &#8220;How dare you pretend that this can be sold with just business as usual and some technical solutions with today’s emissions levels that remaining CO2 budgets will be entirely gone within less than 8 and a half years. There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you and if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now, is where we draw the line the world is waking up and change is coming whether you like it or not.&#8221;
</div>
</div>

Greta Thunberg

OUCH: Activists Four Weeks Into Boat Ride To U.N. Climate Summit Learn It&#8217;s Cancelled

Climate Change

Global Warming

China’s influence was on full display Tuesday as 23 member nations of the United Nations signed on to a statement from the United Kingdom condemning the communist country’s human rights abuses – only to have 54 other nations praise China’s human rights.
The stunning turnout occurred after U.K. Ambassador Karen Pierce introduced a statement that condemned China for “detention; efforts to restrict cultural and religious practices; mass surveillance disproportionately targeting ethnic Uighurs; and other human rights violations and abuses.&#8221;
“We call on the Chinese government to uphold its national laws and international obligations and commitments to respect human rights, including freedom of religion or belief, in Xinjiang and across China,” the statement continued.
Radio Free Asia <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/uyghur-un-statement-house-passes-bill-10302019173527.html">reported</a> that the U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan and others backed the statement.
But after Pierce’s statement gained support, 54 other member nations gave their support to a statement from Belarus Ambassador Valentin Rybakov that praised China’s record on human rights.
“Now safety and security have returned to Xinjiang and fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded,” Rybakov said, as <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-xinjiang-united-nations-human-rights-uk-religious-freedom-a9177191.html">reported</a> by The Intercept.
“We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights.”
The 54 nations that signed off on Rybakov’s statement included Egypt, Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Pakistan.
As RFA reported, many of the countries that supported China “have been on the receiving end of human rights criticism, including Russia, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
A few months ago, a similar situation took place at the U.N. when 22 countries on the U.N. Human Rights Council wrote a letter condemning China’s human rights abuses. At the time, ambassadors from 37 other nations wrote a follow-up letter in support of China. As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-prisoner-in-one-of-chinas-re-education-camps-speaks-out-torture-and-rape-were-common">reported</a>, China has given enough money to countries in the Middle East that even they signed onto the letter praising China, even though the communist nation’s human rights abuses largely involve Muslim minority groups.
China has more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim-minorities imprisoned in internment camps. China for years denied the camps existed, but have recently admitted they existed but claimed they were educational facilities where families could learn new skills. The camps are marketed as ways to cut down on Islamic terrorism in the country. Those who have survived the camps have said inmates are routinely sexually abused, tortured, and even experimented on.
Anyone who even dares speak out about the camps inevitably gets detained. Himit Qri, police chief of Ucha township in Kuchar County, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/police-chief-in-china-expresses-concern-over-re-education-camp-gets-detained">was detained</a> after he criticized the camps at an event. He also suggested “many people died” at one of the camps. A later report suggested at least <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-man-held-in-one-of-chinas-internment-camps-was-beaten-to-death-by-a-drunk-police-officer">150 people had been killed</a> at just one of the four detention centers in Kuchar County in past six months.
The situation at the U.N. highlights the international body’s problems. Israel, the only Democratic nation in the Middle East, has more statements of condemnation than Russia, China, or North Korea.

UN boy

23 U.N. Member States Condemn China’s Human Rights Abuses; Twice As Many Praise The Communist Country

China

human rights

Human Rights Council

Last week, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, who frequently opines on issues pertaining to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44424/hammer-stark-choice-facing-jewish-democrats-josh-hammer">Jewish politics</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43388/hammer-anti-semites-ilhan-omar-and-rashida-tlaib-josh-hammer">anti-Semitism</a>, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50850/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">Israel</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9hH2jloilc">joined</a> &#8220;Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler&#8221; on One America News Network to discuss the revelation that 2020 Democratic Party presidential <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination">statistical frontrunner</a> Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is now <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/elizabeth-warren-could-pull-military-aid-israel-settlements-1466680">threatening</a> to withhold U.S. military aid to Israel if Israel does not make the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">&#8220;two-state solution&#8221;</a> land concessions that a President Warren might envision. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-elizabeth-warren-says-shes-open-to-cutting-off-aid-to-israel">reported</a> last week, Warren said that &#8220;everything&#8221; — meaning aid — would potentially be &#8220;on the table.&#8221;
Hammer began his segment with Wheeler by explaining how clearly Warren telegraphed her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schachtel-elizabeth-warren-completes-her-total-jordan-schachtel">hard turn</a> against Israel — including her hiring of ex-<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-israel-bashing-group-ifnotnows-recent-josh-hammer">IfNotNow</a> co-founder Max Berger as a high-ranking <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ifnotnow-co-founder-max-berger-brings-progressive-fight-to-warren-camp/">campaign staffer</a>:
<blockquote>Elizabeth Warren is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination in a year in which the Democratic Party has just gone crazy. &#8230; [Warren] hired someone named Max Berger as one of her progressive campaign outreach chairs. Max Berger is a co-founder of a despicable, far-left, self-hating, Jew-hating group, IfNotNow. IfNotNow is so radically left that they <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hellenized-jews-ifnotnow-protesters-disrupt-josh-hammer">protest Shabbat services</a> — for Jews observing Sabbath. They&#8217;ve been known to say Kaddish, the traditional Jewish mourners prayer, for Hamas jihadists who have been fired at or had been killed by IDF rocket fire.
She surrounds herself, much like Bernie Sanders, with Israel-hating, I would say Jew-hating, anti-Semites. And this is honestly very sad, but it&#8217;s hardly unexpected. As soon as I saw that she hired Max Berger this summer, I thought, okay, we&#8217;re gonna get to exactly where we now see that she&#8217;s gotten. Well, the only positive thing — the only silver lining here — is that we at least are seeing her true colors before it&#8217;s too late</blockquote>
Wheeler continued by additionally pointing out that Warren&#8217;s narrative is factually misleading, to boot, because it is simply dishonest to objectively view the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and conclude that Israel is the barrier to peace. Hammer agreed:
<blockquote>My friend David Brog, who used to be the executive director of Christians United for Israel and now runs a group called Maccabee Task Force, he did a really wonderful <a href="https://www.prageru.com/video/why-isnt-there-a-palestinian-state/">video for PragerU</a> &#8230; where he really nicely goes back to the history to the beginning of the 20th century and he systemically shows, over and over again, that it is the Palestinian-Arabs who are the obstacles for peace. They have turned down Israeli offers for peace as far back as the United Nations&#8217; original two-state partition in November 1948, where the Jews accepted a tiny sliver of land — barely enough to sustain a civilization — and the Arabs said no and then tried to kill the Jews the very next day. The same thing happened in 2000 at Camp David, it happened in 2008 when Ehud Olmert [offered two states, much like Ehud Barak in 2000].
And then also, in 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu, as a sign of goodwill to Barack Obama, did exactly what Liz Warren wants Israel&#8217;s to do: A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/world/middleeast/06mideast.html">10-month freeze</a> on so-called &#8220;settlements.&#8221; The so-called &#8220;settlements&#8221; are actually <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYZBjoeeehg">legally fine</a> — the Left is wrong, but we can talk about that perhaps another day — but he actually froze so-called &#8220;settlements&#8221; for 10 months and you know what? Mahmoud Abbas, currently in the 15th year of his four-year term &#8230; he did not even come to the negotiating table after a 10-month full-on &#8220;settlement&#8221; freeze from Netanyahu. So the Palestinians, over and over again, Liz, show who they really are. &#8230; They have no interest in peace. All they want are dead Jews.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<iframe title="Elizabeth Warren Threatens To Withhold Aid To Israel" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qyMOT_2sZ4Q?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 10.22.19

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: Elizabeth Warren Is An Israel-Hater

2020 Election

Benjamin Netanyahu

Democratic Party

Elizabeth Warren

Foreign Policy

Israel

Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Leftism

Middle East

Palestinians

As former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani finds himself <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/465168-giuliani-associates-who-aided-ukraine-investigation-arrested-on">squarely engulfed</a> in the Ukraine scandal and impeachment inquiry surrounding President Donald Trump, one piece of the puzzle simply does not seem to fit.
If anything is a given about contemporary Republican Party foreign policy, it is a hawkish stance on Iran. That unified front is led by a president who pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal and continues to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/world/middleeast/trump-sanctions-iran.html">impose new sanctions against Tehran</a>. Giuliani, too, talks tough towards the Iranians — most recently <a href="https://en.radiofarda.com/a/giuliani-says-i-am-for-regime-change-in-iran/30182912.html">backing regime change and declaring “down with the tyrants in Iran”</a> when he spoke at a rally outside U.N. headquarters in September.
Yet Giuliani was on the cusp of making a paid appearance at the Armenian-hosted conference of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), a gathering held October 1st–2nd amid the <a href="https://en.mehrnews.com/news/150676/Iran-to-join-Eurasian-Economic-Union-EAEU-from-October">formalization of Iran’s future membership</a> in that Russian-led trade alliance that consists of five former Soviet republics. Although Giuliani <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html?outputType=amp">ultimately cancelled his 2019 EAEU appearance</a>, he <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-headlines-conference-promoting-russia-organized-2018-10">attended the same conference last year</a> and is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/democratic-senators-renew-questions-about-rudy-giuliani-s-apparent-work-n1058686">coming under rising scrutiny</a> for his <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine?utm_content=bufferf7573&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=buffer">mysterious overseas travel — including to Armenia</a>.
Created to counter the influence of the European Union, the EAEU’s anti-Western approach is particularly apparent through its embrace of Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. After the Moscow-based EAEU <a href="https://eurasianet.org/armenia-hopes-to-benefit-from-new-iran-eurasian-union-free-trade-deal">reached a free trade deal with the Iranians last year</a>, EAEU member Armenia this past April signed a <a href="http://www.iran-daily.com/News/251511.html">memorandum of understanding on customs cooperation</a> with Iran in which the two countries agreed to exchange information on the value of goods and vehicles transported through their shared border. In other words, commerce between Tehran and Yerevan flows without restrictions.
On a broader strategic level, both the free trade and customs deals were envisioned as pillars of a bridge linking Iran, the EAEU, and the EU. The final pillar will be cemented on October 27th, when Iran formally joins the EAEU and gains the ability to have its goods “exported to [Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia] with almost zero tariffs,” according to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Simultaneously, Iran is prepared to increase the natural gas its supplies to Armenia, Rouhani <a href="https://en.radiofarda.com/amp/iranian-president-again-offers-closer-ties-to-armenia/30193900.html?__twitter_impression=true">said at the EAEU conference</a>.
It should come as no surprise that the rapid growth of EAEU-Iran ties is spearheaded by Armenia, the only EAEU member which shares a border with Iran. Armenia is also the only EAEU state which maintains a “Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement” with the EU, meaning that the warm economic ties between Tehran and Yerevan could have a domino effect throughout Europe.
Further, Armenia has a long and ongoing history of offering Iran an escape route from international sanctions. Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-sanctions-armenia/exclusive-iran-looks-to-armenia-to-skirt-bank-sanctions-idUSBRE87K05420120821">has reported</a> that Armenian banks help the Iranian regime “obfuscate payments to and from foreign clients and deceive Western intelligence agencies trying to prevent it from expanding its nuclear and missile programs.” In August, the U.S. <a href="https://mirrorspectator.com/2019/08/15/us-sanctions-two-armenian-firms/">levied sanctions</a> on two Armenian companies over their business ties with Iran. And upon meeting with Rouhani at the EAEU gathering, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan affirmed that despite U.S. sanctions, Armenia’s “relations with Iran must be beyond geopolitical influences.”
All of which brings us to the recent EAEU conference, where Giuliani was set to participate in a panel led by Sergey Glazyev, a longtime adviser to Russian President Vladimiar Putin who has been subjected to U.S. sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Giuliani had been the only American scheduled to speak at the gathering.
How did this former Republican presidential candidate make his way onto an anti-Western conference’s agenda this year, while actually attending the same summit last year? <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine?utm_content=bufferf7573&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=buffer">According to ProPublica</a>, Giuliani’s 2018 EAEU appearance was funded by Ara Abramyan, chair of the Union of Russian Armenians and president of the World Armenian Congress.
Abramyan also sits on the advisory board of TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, which has been organizing trips to Russia and Ukraine since 2004 for the ex-mayor’s Giuliani Partners, and has been described by The New York Times as “a company that provides image consulting to Russian oligarchs and clients with deep Kremlin ties.”
Before he cancelled his 2019 EAEU appearance, Giuliani had quipped in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html?outputType=amp">comments to The Washington Post</a> that he would “try to not knowingly talk to a Russian until this is all over.” Yet it is no laughing matter. By opening the door to free trade, the EAEU has set in motion a slippery slope that may lead Iranian businesses directly to the EU. It is a nightmare scenario in which anti-West meets West, and shockingly, one of its enablers is a high-profile Republican who is presumably aligned with his peers when it comes to cracking down on Iranian aggression.
That is why despite his eventual pullout from the EAEU conference, the question remains: Why would Giuliani even consider attending?
&nbsp;
<a href="http://jessebogner.com/">Jesse Bogner</a> is an author and journalist. His memoir and social critique, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Egotist-Memoir-Jesse-Bogner-ebook/dp/B0174UNI66/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1452620828&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=the+egotist">The Egotist</a>, has been translated into five languages. His work has been featured in The Daily Caller, MSN, and The Huffington Post.

Rudy Giuliani

BOGNER: The Curious Case Of Rudy Giuliani, Iran, and Armenia

Armenians

Donald Trump

Europe

Impeachment

Ukraine

Vladimir Putin

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used his United Nations General Assembly speech last week to blast Israel as the cause of “injustice” in the Middle East and vow that his country “will continue to stand by the oppressed people of Palestine as she has always done.” But a new report by Israel’s Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center, as well as new sanctions announced by the U.S. Treasury Department, make it clear that Erdogan is in no position to cast aspersions.
“Turkey turns a blind eye to Hamas’ covert operational and financial activity being carried out from its territory (which has recently been demonstrated in the American sanctions) and regularly denies its existence,” the Meir Amit center <a href="https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2019/09/E_212_19.pdf#page=14">reported</a>.
“[T]he latest American designations clearly demonstrate that Turkey continues to be used as a hub for Hamas’ operational and financial activity, even after the departure of Saleh al-Arouri,” the Meir Amit report <a href="https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2019/09/E_212_19.pdf#page=14">said</a>. <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/810.pdf">Arouri</a>, a founder of the Hamas military wing and a member of the Hamas political bureau, lived in Turkey until last year.
During his time in Turkey, he helped plot Hamas terror attacks. He <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/4532/hamas-official-admits-his-group-murdered-three">claimed credit</a> on behalf of Hamas for the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli yeshiva students. Later that year, the Shin Bet “uncovered an extensive Hamas military network which operated in Judea and Samaria. Its operatives had planted IEDs in Samaria. They [were] handled by Hamas’ headquarters in Turkey,” the Meir Amit report <a href="https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2019/09/E_212_19.pdf#page=13">said</a>. “Hamas’ military operatives who were trained abroad (in various countries, including Turkey) participated in this activity.”
For his part, Erdogan <a href="https://english.palinfo.com/news/2016/11/22/Erdogan-Hamas-elected-national-liberation-movement">considers</a> Hamas a “liberation movement” and denies that it is a terrorist group.
While it supports the Palestinian-Arab cause, Turkey denies autonomy to more than 15 million Kurds and even <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/in-turkey-repression-of-the-kurdish-language-is-back-with-no-end-in-sight/">represses</a> the use of the Kurdish language. It has bombed Kurdish civilians. It occupies much of northwestern Syria and has <a href="https://israelunwired.com/silence-from-the-west-as-turkey-conducts-ethnic-cleansing-against-kurds-and-christians-in-afrin-syria/">engaged</a> in ethnic cleansing <a href="https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/0784919f-57d4-43f5-b970-f7d7bea78994">against</a> the Kurds there. Turkish warplanes bombed a hospital in Afrin during its invasion of the Kurdish enclave last year, independent <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/03/19/did-turkey-bomb-afrin-hospital/">analysis</a> by Bellingcat, a citizen journalism organization that focuses on war crimes and criminal activities, showed.
Earlier this month, <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm772">the U.S. Treasury Department</a> announced sanctions on Hamas leaders and ISIS facilitators living in Turkey.
Those include Zaher Jabarin, who heads Hamas’ finance office from Turkey and manages tens of millions of dollars in Hamas money. Jabarin’s transfers of U.S. dollars “finance HAMAS’ terrorist activity,” the Treasury statement said. Like Arouri, Jabarin was one of the founders of the Hamas military wing in Judea and Samaria. Jabarin was in charge of a Hamas squad that abducted and murdered Israeli border policeman Nissim Toledano in 1992, the Meir Amit report <a href="https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2019/09/E_212_19.pdf#page=14">said</a>.
“Jabarin has served as the primary point of contact between Hamas and the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp –Quds Force] IRGC-QF. Since 2017, his relations with them were enhanced based on Hamas operatives’ efforts to increase funding from Iran,” the <a href="https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/new-designations-recently-published-us-department-state-department-treasury-reveals-turkeys-central-role-hub-hamas-handles-financial-matters-includin/">report</a> said.
Treasury also targeted the Turkey-based Redin Exchange as “a key part of the infrastructure used to transfer money” to Hamas. Redin transferred $10 million to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, in March.
Redin also facilitated a $2 million transfer last year from the IRGC-QF and Hezbollah to Hamas. Its deputy CEO, Ismail Tash, was the primary contact in numerous Iran-Hamas money transfers, the Meir Amit report found.
Erdogan’s inner circle has encouraged bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians by providing assistance to the al-Qassam Brigades. Israel’s Shin Bet <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/7349/shin-bet-investigation-exposes-depth-of-turkey">arrested</a> two suspects last year linked to the <a href="http://www.sadat.com.tr/about-us/news/141-how-is-the-palestine-question-solved.html">Turkish private military company SADAT</a>, which run by <a href="https://www.cnnturk.com/turkiye/erdogana-basdanisman-atanan-adnan-tanriverdi-kimdir-sadat-nedir">top Erdogan military adviser</a> retired Brig. Gen. Adnan Tanriverdi. It accused them of helping Hamas’ military buildup by providing money and weapons to the terrorists. SADAT’s website calls for the use of military force against Israel. Meir Amit <a href="https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2019/09/E_212_19.pdf#page=14">reported</a> that Jabarin had recruited the men under instructions from Arouri.
“The liaison of Palestine with the globe should not be left at the mercy of Israel. This requires open support by Islamic countries. Every effort should be made, including use of force,” SADAT <a href="http://www.sadat.com.tr/about-us/news/141-how-is-the-palestine-question-solved.html">says</a> on its website.
Erdogan presented Turkey as a terrorism fighter, saying Turkey killed ISIS fighters in areas of Syria it occupies. He glossed over Turkey’s clandestine support for ISIS in Syria.
“Turkey has been the country most influenced by the [ISIS] threat; this terrorist organization has harassed our borders and targeted our cities very near the borders with suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Turkish citizens,” Erdogan <a href="https://youtu.be/Bve1yt0SEb4?t=498">said</a>. “Turkey is the first country that has delivered the heaviest blow to the [ISIS] presence in Syria.”
Internal documents and whistleblowers tell a different story — one of a country that plays both sides when it comes to ISIS. Leaked emails from Erdogan’s son-in-law and current Turkish finance minister, Berat Albayrak, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4006568/WikiLeaks-reveals-57-000-emails-son-law-President-Erdogan-proving-connection-ISIS-operation-smuggling-oil-Turkey.html">showed</a> his connection to an ISIS oil smuggling operations.
The Treasury Department <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm772">sanctions</a> also targeted several Turkish companies that “materially assisted &#8230; or provided financial, material, or technological support” to ISIS.
Turkey’s intelligence agency, the MIT, conspired to bus ISIS jihadists across Turkish territory, leaked Turkish <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/7809/report-wiretaps-show-turkish-intel-supported-isis">wiretaps show</a>. At least 15,000 ISIS fighters entered Syria that way, Abdullah Bozkurt, former editor of Turkey’s Today’s Zaman newspaper, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (where we both work) in February.
Turkish police were told not to arrest ISIS fighters traveling to Syria, said former Turkish National Police official Ahmet Yayla.
Turkey provided ISIS with drones and munitions, an ISIS fighter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=88&amp;v=q9ZTmYyN6eY">detained</a> by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who was interviewed by the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism said. He and a <a href="https://anfenglishmobile.com/features/isis-prisoner-from-palestine-we-were-treated-in-istanbul-37895">Palestinian-Arab ISIS fighter</a> held by the SDF said that Turkish hospitals provided medical assistance to wounded ISIS terrorists.
“Like me, thousands of ISIS members have been treated in Turkey. Everyone knows that Turkey is the mother of all jihadist groups,” <a href="https://anfenglishmobile.com/features/isis-prisoner-from-palestine-we-were-treated-in-istanbul-37895">said</a> former ISIS fighter Islam Ahmed Muhammed Balusha. “This applies to the jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and even from Palestine to Afghanistan. Turkey has supported the ISIS massively.”
Erdogan’s party, the AKP, allegedly used ISIS to attack political opponents.
EU INTCEN, the European Union’s intelligence arm, <a href="https://ahvalnews.com/terrorism/ahval-reveals-top-secret-eu-report-akp-commissioned-isis-ankara-massacre">reportedly</a> suggested the AKP ordered an October 2015 ISIS <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/10/turkey-suicide-bomb-killed-in-ankara">suicide bombing</a> at a peace rally in Ankara that killed 109 people.
Erdogan’s pretense of being the savior of the region’s problems belies the fact his government has become a major terrorism supporter and is guilty of everything he criticizes Israel of doing.
&nbsp;
John Rossomando is a senior analyst at the <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org">Investigative Project on Terrorism</a> and Steven Emerson is its executive director.

Erdogan at U.N.

ROSSOMANDO &#038; EMERSON: While Erdogan Slammed Israel At U.N., Turkish Support For Terror Was Revealed

Hamas

Radical Islamic Terror

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Terrorism

Turkey

Actor Jason Momoa delivered a speech at the United Nations on Friday in which he described humanity as &#8220;a disease that is infecting our planet&#8221; and took a thinly veiled shot at President Donald Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.
Momoa, whose blockbuster DC Universe film &#8220;Aquaman&#8221; brought in <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=dcfilm0617.htm">$335 million</a> domestically and over $1 billion internationally last year, delivered the speech on behalf of &#8220;all island nations.&#8221;
&#8220;Aloha. Your excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,&#8221; Momoa told those gathered at the United Nations on Friday. &#8220;Today I stand before you as a singular representative of all island nations. I&#8217;m honored to represent those who continue to fight as stewards of this planet.&#8221;
&#8220;As a native Hawaiian born to a mother from Iowa, I have seen how one place can be oblivious to another,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;The issues facing an island can feel far-removed from a place that is land-locked in the middle of our country. However, with a foothold in two worlds, I quickly began to see how a problem for one can become a problem for all.&#8221;
&#8220;As a human family, through innovation and creativity, we have elevated ourselves and perceivably stand as the most powerful beings on earth, yet our ego, our fear, and our relentless drive for profits have made us the only species willing to force disharmony with the natural balance of our world,&#8221; he stated.
&#8220;We are the living consequence of forgotten traditions. We suffer a collective amnesia of a truth that was once understood — the truth that to cause irreversible damage to the earth, is to bring the same unto ourselves,&#8221; he asserted.
&#8220;We the island nations  and all coastal communities are the front lines in this environmental crisis,” the actor continued. “The oceans are in a state of emergency. Entire marine ecosystems are vanishing with the warming of the seas. And as the waste of the world empties into our waters, we face the devastating crisis of plastic pollution.&#8221;
&#8220;We are a disease that is infecting our planet,&#8221; Momoa declared.
&#8220;From the atmosphere to the abyssal zone, we are polluted. It is a known fact that the great garbage patch floating in the Pacific is larger than the country of France. Even at the depths of the Mariana Trench we are discovering nano plastics. And shockingly, there are more particles of plastic in the ocean than there are stars in the Milky Way. It is shameful.&#8221;
Then, like fellow celebrity activist Greta Thunberg earlier in the week, Momoa got to climate change.
&#8220;Yet, the greatest threat to small island developing states is that entire islands are drowning into the sea due to the enormous volume of emissions generated by the first world countries,&#8221; he claimed, adding: &#8220;Island nations contribute the least to this disaster but are made to suffer the weight of its consequences.&#8221;
&#8220;Our governments and corporate entities have known for decades that immediate change is needed, yet change still has not come,&#8221; he stated. &#8220;And when the front line is gone, we are doomed. There is no undoing.&#8221;
&#8220;If you continue to watch unsympathetic to the issues of island nations, this realization will soon come — that you stood by and witnessed the world cross the critical tipping point, ushering in the death of our planet,&#8221; he warned, echoing Thunberg, in telling them, &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/greta-snaps-we-are-beginning-mass-extinction-how-ryan-saavedra">we are watching</a>.&#8221;
Momoa also made a point of condemning the Trump administration for walking away from the Paris Agreement in 2017.
&#8220;Three years ago in Paris, the world stood united and vowed to keep the earth below 1.5 degrees of warming,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We pledged to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and to do what is right. I’m standing here today because I am ashamed that not all of our leaders have honored this agreement.&#8221;
&#8220;Delegates, I ask you now, do we still stand in unity for this cause?&#8221; he charged. &#8220;Do you intend to honor the commitments for a betterment of mankind? Or will you continue to chase short-term profits above our children’s basic human rights to live on this earth? Change cannot come in 2050, or 2030, or even 2025. The change must come today. We can no longer afford the luxury of half-assing it as we willingly force ourselves beyond the threshold of no return.&#8221;
WATCH:
<iframe title="Jason Momoa Addresses United Nations On Climate Crisis (Sept. 27, 2019)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0Bo2UD2wAOs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Momoa&#8217;s speech follows the much-publicized <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/greta-snaps-we-are-beginning-mass-extinction-how-ryan-saavedra">statement</a> delivered by 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg on Monday in which she claimed that we are &#8220;in the beginning of a mass extinction.&#8221;
&#8220;My message is that we’ll be watching you,&#8221; she told world leaders. &#8220;This is all wrong, I shouldn’t be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope, how dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-trolls-greta-greta-swipes-back-james-barrett">Trump Trolls Greta Thunberg; Greta Swipes Back</a>
Partial transcript via <a href="https://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2019/09/27/video-jason-momoa-addresses-united-nations-on-climate-crisis/">Big Island Video News.</a>

Jason Momoa

WATCH: ‘Aquaman’ Jason Momoa Says ‘We Are A Disease Infecting Our Planet,’ Rips Trump At U.N.

Hollywood

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles talks about President Trump’s speech to the United Nations warning about the dangers of globalism. Video and partial transcript below: 
President Trump went to the UN yesterday, and he tackled this issue head on. Because what the Left wants you to believe is that there is a scientific consensus — as though science were made by consensus — that the world is going to end in 10 years. Nobody thinks that. No scientist, not one actual scientist thinks that the human race will be extinct in 10 years, even though that&#8217;s what politicians are selling us, even though that&#8217;s what half of young voters apparently believe. 
Totally unscientific, but what the Left wants you to think is that climate change is [just a] scientific issue. Look, it&#8217;s just the science, no politics involved. And hey, coincidentally, because of that science you need to give us higher taxes, redistribution of wealth, reparations for slavery — for some reason that&#8217;s in a lot of the Green-New-Deal-like proposals, not sure why, but it is. You need to give us open borders, you need to give us greater international control of government, you need to surrender some of your sovereignty, you need to surrender some of your power when it comes to negotiating trade deals, you need to do all of this because of the science. So what does any of that have to do with science? They say no, no, you just have to, that&#8217;s the natural progression. And so the UN is a great place to do this, this is why the UN has led the way talking about global warming. It just coincidentally — the global warming alarmism — achieves all of the UN&#8217;s goals for a very long time.
<iframe title="The Price of Lies | The Michael Knowles Show Ep. 420" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WsKbc2-pzsg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
So President Trump goes to the UN and he&#8217;s not fooled by this false distinction without a difference. He goes at it head on, and he says, using one term, “globalist,” he sums it all up, and he makes clear the future does not belong to the globalist areas. 
<blockquote>TRUMP: The truth is plain to see: If you want freedom, take pride in your country. If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty; and if you want peace, love your nation. Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots, the future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors, and honor the differences that make each country special and unique. </blockquote>
Absolutely beautiful, spot on. You know there is a defeater for this whole climate change argument to begin with. What we&#8217;re told by the global climate change movement is we&#8217;ve got to stop Trump; Trump is destroying the world. That&#8217;s what some people have said, even on television, Trump is destroying the world. Yet, they blame Trump for pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, they said &#8230; that&#8217;s going to ruin the whole world. A year or two after Trump pulled out of that global climate accord, they looked at the numbers; turned out, the United States not only didn&#8217;t put more carbon into the air, it didn&#8217;t pollute more than they had previously. The U.S. actually led the world in reducing their carbon emissions even as they pulled out of the global climate accord. Actually, a number of nations, including Western European nations who signed on to the global climate accord, not only didn&#8217;t follow what they agreed to, they actually increased their polluting.
So what Trump is saying, a system of free and sovereign nations with self-government is the best way to have a good peaceful future. I mean, that applies apparently, quite literally, to the climate change issue. Because what is the opposite of a free and sovereign nation? You&#8217;ve got China: Leftism taken to its logical extreme, an actual communist country, leading the world by many multiples in their pollution. We could all stop polluting tomorrow. We could all just sit and stop breathing and hold our breath, [and] it wouldn&#8217;t do anything because China has such a disproportionate effect. 
That&#8217;s not what it&#8217;s about. It&#8217;s not about the environment. [It’s about] the globalism, it is the Leftism, it is — use whatever term you want to use. Trump sees that, and for people who say Trump is a dolt, he doesn&#8217;t know anything about politics, he doesn&#8217;t really know about his opponents to know what he&#8217;s doing. That is a sophisticated conclusion to reach, not a lot of people understand that relationship — that climate change hysteria is socialism [through] the backdoor. Not a lot of people have put their finger on it, [but Trump] has. He gets it. He&#8217;s speaking very bluntly, and he&#8217;s speaking about protecting the country. It&#8217;s a beautiful thing. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Michael Knowles Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show">Watch “The Michael Knowles Show” on-demand!</a>

Trump at UN

KNOWLES: Trump Just Proved Again He Understands Why The Left Pushes Climate Hysteria

On Monday, climate change activist Greta Thunberg gave a much-publicized speech in front of the United Nations in which she chastised world leaders for supposedly bringing us to &#8220;the beginning of a mass extinction.&#8221;
While Thunberg&#8217;s alarmist speech was widely praised by the Left, it was met with widespread backlash from the Right. Many critics blasted the use of children as &#8220;<a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/23/tucker-carlson-greta-thunberg-leftists-power/">human shields</a>&#8221; in political debates and condemned the climate fear-mongering that has so clearly terrified the 16-year-old — who has been formally <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/greta-thunberg-is-the-climate-heroine-we-need">diagnosed</a> with Asperger&#8217;s syndrome coupled with high-functioning autism and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) — as a form of &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/52151/walsh-greta-thunberg-child-abuse-victim-matt-walsh">child abuse</a>.&#8221;
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/52153/trump-trolls-greta-thunberg-over-mass-extinction-ryan-saavedra">The Daily Wire</a> reported, among those on the Right who responded to Thunberg was President Trump, who issued a trolling tweet referencing the young activist Monday night.
&#8220;She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!&#8221; Trump wrote in a tweet dripping with sarcasm and linking to a video of her speech.
In apparent reponse, Thunberg changed her status on Twitter. &#8220;A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future,&#8221; it now reads (screenshot from New York Times&#8217; reporter Astead Herndon below).
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">getting in social media fights with the youths is a dangerous game. the whole internet is their home court advantage <a href="https://t.co/R0qVDJXhqO">https://t.co/R0qVDJXhqO</a>
— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) <a href="https://twitter.com/AsteadWesley/status/1176521476545138689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
In front of the United Nations Monday, Thunberg warned world leaders &#8220;we&#8217;ll be watching you&#8221; and condemned them for supposedly forcing her to appear in front of them instead of being &#8220;back in school on the other side of the ocean.&#8221;
&#8220;You all come to us young people for hope,&#8221; she said. &#8220;How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I&#8217;m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!&#8221;
Claiming that the science has been &#8220;crystal-clear&#8221; for over 30 years, Thunberg charged, &#8220;How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you&#8217;re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.&#8221;
&#8220;You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil — and that I refuse to believe,&#8221; she said.
She then declared that cutting carbon emissions in half by 10 years is &#8220;simply not acceptable&#8221; to her generation.
&#8220;The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting of irreversible chain reactions beyond human control,&#8221; she said. &#8220;50% may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So, a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us, we who have to live with the consequences.&#8221;
&#8220;How dare you pretend that this can be sold with just business as usual and some technical solutions with today&#8217;s emissions levels that remaining CO2 budgets will be entirely gone within less than eight and a half years,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.&#8221;
&#8220;You are failing us, but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal,&#8221; she concluded. &#8220;The eyes of all future generations are upon you, and if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now, is where we draw the line the world is waking up and change is coming whether you like it or not.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/52150/backlash-critics-lambast-melodramatic-greta-ryan-saavedra">BACKLASH: Critics Lambast Melodramatic Greta Thunberg Speech As ‘Child Abuse’</a>

Trump Trolls Greta Thunberg; Greta Swipes Back

World leaders and activists will gather this week in New York City for the United Nations Climate Action Summit. President Trump will not be attending &#8212; for good reason.
The modern climate movement has proved itself not only dishonest, but also increasingly ineffective where it supposedly matters: Reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Exhibit A is the fact that the United States leads the world in emission reductions, while active signatories to the Paris Agreement &#8212; the historical agreement that we are told represents the pinnacle of global climate action &#8212; have not produced meaningful emission reductions, and in some instances continue to significantly increase their emissions.
Missing from the globalist fanfare and hashtag diplomacy at the U.N. Summit is an honest conversation. Getting away from fuzzy projections, which the climate conversation tends to stubbornly revolve around, observed science suggests that ongoing climate change is much more <a href="https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-reality/">benign and manageable</a> than alarmists would suggest. Improving our understanding of climate change is important, as are affiliated policy discussions, but most of the conversations to date have produced little more than driving an entire generation into an unhealthy state of perpetual anxiety.
The truth is that we know how to reduce emissions. In the United States, there are a range of emission control technologies, as well as efficiency improvements that are making every form of energy extraction, refinement, transport, and end use more environmentally friendly. The shining example is hydraulic fracturing, which is the main driver behind U.S. emission reductions.
Even more promising, we know how to expand the use of these technologies through an economic system that enables their large-scale adoption. This system, called <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andy-puzder-what-trump-haters-dont-get-about-the-incredible-power-of-american-capitalism">capitalism</a>, has a history of producing efficient solutions to serious issues while creating jobs and economic prosperity.
We also know how to deal with natural disasters. While there has been no recorded change in the number or intensity of these events (per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment), there has been a measurable change in human survivability rates. According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-good-newsabout-natural-disasters-of-all-things-1533331596">recent work</a> by a leading environmental professor, in half a century, the average number of annual natural disaster-related fatalities has declined by more than 80%. The damage affiliated with these events as a portion of GDP has also decreased.
After 50 years of doomsday predictions that <a href="https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions">have yet to actually pan out</a>, some of the environmentalist movement&#8217;s own leaders are starting to question whether the extreme rhetoric is actually worth it. The leader of the one of the world&#8217;s foremost weather science organizations &#8212; the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) &#8212; issued a recent rebuke to climate extremism. During a September 6th <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/chief-of-world-meteorological-organization-castigates-climate-alarmists_3073666.html">speech</a>, the WMO secretary general said: &#8220;It is not going to be the end of the world. The world is just becoming more challenging.&#8221;
The secretary general&#8217;s statements reflect a growing number of climate scientists working at U.S. agencies, international organizations, and universities who quietly hate the hyperbolic rhetoric. They rightfully fear that the work of activists is not only misrepresenting their scientific work, but is also undermining it.
Meanwhile, President Trump will continue to advance his environmental agenda by focusing on tangible issues with practical solutions. His efforts are why our air is <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-07/documents/epa_accomplishments_fact_sheet_july_2019_s.pdf">74% cleaner today</a>, our drinking water is the cleanest in the world, and U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will continue to decline much faster than will any other country&#8217;s emissions. The reality is that all the goals the climate activists purportedly want to achieve are already happening without turning the United States into a socialist country or sending billions of dollars overseas.
There are a multitude of ways someone who truly cares about the environment can make a difference. For starters, we can urge Congress to work with the president to continue our record-breaking environmental successes. Additionally, there are a number of <a href="https://republicans-energycommerce.house.gov/news/blog/7-for-7/">bipartisan bills</a> aimed at making incremental changes that would actually be effective at reducing emissions without putting millions of people out of work or subjecting even more to poverty.
The U.N. summit won&#8217;t change the climate or improve the environment. But in the meantime, Americans are rolling up their sleeves and getting to work &#8212; and proving we can lead on environmental protection without having to sacrifice our freedoms, personal responsibility, or economic growth.

Mandy Gunasekara is the founder of the Energy 45 Fund and a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation&#8217;s Life: Powered project. She previously served as principal deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency, and as counsel to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

gettyimages-601799857

GUNASEKARA: Leftists Do Not Have The Right Solutions For The Environment

Environmentalism

Progressivism

Climate alarmists <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjLhgB2eXXM">took to the streets</a> today in Washington, D.C. today with the goal of &#8220;shutting down&#8221; the city. They didn&#8217;t quite succeed in bringing about a total shutdown, but they did manage to block traffic and make life miserable for morning commuters. It remains unclear how the environment is supposed to be helped by forcing cars to sit idly for hours. In fairness, though, the protestors did more than cause traffic jams. They also <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1176128190131126273?s=20">threw trash</a> and <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/climate-change-protests-disrupt-d-c-morning-commute.amp?cmpid=prn_newsstand">set dumpsters on fire</a>. And if none of those measures managed to solve global warming, surely <a href="https://twitter.com/werkforpeace/status/1176132483445919749?s=20">this guy</a> in suspenders and mini-shorts got the job done by twerking.
The perplexing scene in the nation&#8217;s capital was just the latest climate change demonstration. Last week, many people across the country participated in a &#8220;climate strike.&#8221; You may wonder how a person could go on strike against the climate — at first blush, it seems a bit like boycotting gravity or trying to change the speed of light with a Change.org petition. But it turns out that the &#8220;climate strike&#8221; was really a strike against productivity. Students left their classrooms and employed adults (what few the environmentalists can count among their ranks) left their jobs for the day. They marched and shouted things and warned about the impending apocalypse. Then they went back to their air-conditioned homes and watched TV like the rest of us.
Meanwhile, the young climate warrior Greta Thunberg was invited — for whatever reason — to speak before the U.N. She tearfully scolded the assembled diplomats today and screamed about a &#8220;mass extinction,&#8221; which, she insists, is already beginning. &#8220;You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,&#8221; she cried, sounding vaguely reminiscent of Dashboard Confessional lyrics from 2002.
For their part, a group of young environmental activists in Australia have just <a href="https://twitter.com/newscomauHQ/status/1175998223821017088?s=20">announced</a> they will not be having kids until the climate stops changing. These kinds of climate-inspired abstinence <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/19/no-future-no-children-pledge-teens-refuse-have-kids-until-climate-change-action/2372010001/">pledges</a> are becoming increasingly common. And it is just one of the myriad ways that environmental activism has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51556/hammer-bernies-pagan-support-child-sacrifice-josh-hammer">come to closely resemble</a> the one thing that many of these people probably hate the most: Religion.
It is often said that religion is &#8220;<a href="https://www.newsweek.com/christianity-dying-religion-millennials-europe-859272">dying</a>&#8221; in the West, but that is not exactly the case. Theistic faith may be waning, yet we still remain a deeply religious people. We have simply traded in our Scriptures, doctrines, and prophets for different, albeit secular, versions. Indeed, it is quite striking to consider the many ways that climate alarmism has taken on the features of a religious cult.
Environmentalism, like religion, has core beliefs that now have the force of a creed. The Earth is warming significantly and dangerously due to human activity. Any dissenting point of view — however moderate the dissent may be — is punished as heresy. Environmentalism, like religion, has scriptural authorities. Rather than the Bible, it refers back to ancient scriptures like &#8220;An Inconvenient Truth&#8221; — or to more recent epistles like the &#8220;Green New Deal.&#8221; Environmentalism, like religion, has prophets and priestesses in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Al Gore, and the like. Environmentalism, like religion, even has its newly appointed child savior in Greta Thunberg.
Of course, environmentalism, like religion, also has moral codes and precepts. Thou shalt not drive gas-guzzling vehicles. And it focuses especially, like many religions, on dietary restrictions. Thou shalt not eat meat or use plastic straws. Environmentalists, like most religious people, believe strongly in these commandments — yet they seem more interested in preaching them than following them. Not to worry, though, because environmentalism also has a system for <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/specials/climate-confessions-share-solutions-climate-change-n1054791">confession and repentance</a>, in case you have fallen short in your walk with Gaia. And environmentalism has a system of tithing — to the state, rather than the church. Thus, environmentalism, like religion, can be unfortunately easy for snake oil salesmen to exploit for personal financial gain. The televangelists of environmentalism are just as likely to fly around in private planes as the televangelists of the Christian faith.
Most importantly, environmentalism, like any self-respecting religion, has a vivid apocalyptic vision. Christians look to the Second Coming and often imagine that they detect signs of its imminent arrival. In a very similar way, environmentalists see every heat wave or hurricane as a harbinger of Armageddon. Repent for the end is nigh, proclaim the environmentalists. Christians, Jews, and Muslims may tend to agree, though for different theological reasons.
As a religious person myself, I certainly do not see anything wrong, per se, with being a member of a religion. But at least Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have the integrity to admit that they are religions. Environmentalism wishes to retain its secular credibility while demanding the sort of devotion that systems of faith require. It cannot have it both ways.

A stone eye engulfed in flames

WALSH: It’s Official: Environmentalism Is A Religious Cult

Religion

Far-left climate extremist Greta Thunberg had a meltdown while speaking at the United Nations on Monday about climate change, claiming that the state of the world is on the verge of collapse.
The Washington Examiner noted that Thunberg &#8220;has stage-parents, literally. Her mother sang opera internationally until the teenager convinced her to quit due to greenhouse gas emissions from flying, and her father and grandfather both gained fame through acting and directing.&#8221;
Thunberg repeatedly condemned adults by dramatically saying, &#8220;how dare you!&#8221; as she warned of a future that she suggested may not even exist due to climate change.
&#8220;My message is that we&#8217;ll be watching you. This is all wrong, I shouldn&#8217;t be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean,&#8221; Thunberg began. &#8220;Yet, you all come to us young people for hope, how dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I&#8217;m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.&#8221;
Thunberg&#8217;s speech, which was widely criticized online as bordering on child abuse, also included statements that could be perceived as threatening, including the statement: &#8220;If you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this.&#8221;
WATCH:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">This speech by far-left activist Greta Thunberg is absolute madness <a href="https://t.co/RFyIPZlajQ">pic.twitter.com/RFyIPZlajQ</a>
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1176149492698992641?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Transcript of Thunberg&#8217;s speech:
<blockquote>My message is that we&#8217;ll be watching you. This is all wrong, I shouldn&#8217;t be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope, how dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I&#8217;m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.
For more than 30 years the science has been crystal-clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you&#8217;re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe.
The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting of irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. 50% may be acceptable to you but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice, they also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So, a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us, we who have to live with the consequences.
How dare you pretend that this can be sold with just business as usual and some technical solutions with today&#8217;s emissions levels that remaining CO2 budgets will be entirely gone within less than 8 and a half years. There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you and if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now, is where we draw the line the world is waking up and change is coming whether you like it or not.</blockquote>

greta_thunberg

GRETA SNAPS: ‘We Are In The Beginning Of A Mass Extinction,’ ‘How Dare You!’

&#8220;The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.&#8221; – Zvi Rex, Israeli psychiatrist
Last month, Jason Greenblatt, who is the Trump administration&#8217;s special representative for international negotiations and, along with Jared Kushner, a co-leader of the administration&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49232/fleisher-end-100-year-arab-israeli-war-yishai-fleisher">yet-to-be-unveiled comprehensive proposal</a> for Israeli-Palestinian peace, <a href="https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-at-a-un-security-council-open-debate-on-the-middle-east-9/">addressed</a> the United Nations Security Council. In a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/greenblatt-peace-plan-wont-be-based-on-fictions-of-international-consensus/">paradigm-shifting</a> speech, Greenblatt assailed the longstanding consensus of much of the morally relativistic &#8220;international community&#8221; — for which the anti-Semitic dullards of Turtle Bay serve as quintessential proxies — in no uncertain terms. Whereas the <a href="https://unwatch.org/un-general-assembly-shames-21-resolutions-israel-six-rest-world/">institutionally anti-Israel</a> U.N. Security Council has long tried its best to unilaterally impose a &#8220;two-state solution&#8221; from the outside in — based on a fundamental misunderstanding of international law with respect to <a href="https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/israel-zionism/2019/07/the-many-incoherences-and-hypocrisies-of-international-law-on-jerusalem/">eastern Jerusalem</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/11948/breaking-down-israeli-occupation-myth-elliott-hamilton">Judea and Samaria</a> — Greenblatt rebutted that &#8220;if there is to be such a solution, only the parties themselves, through direct negotiations, can work this out.&#8221;
Later in the speech, Greenblatt reiterated, &#8220;Both Israel and the Palestinians have asserted a claim to certain land. This is an unresolved dispute and it will only be through direct negotiations between the parties that we have a chance of resolving that dispute and achieving a comprehensive peace.&#8221;
Greenblatt&#8217;s speech is well worth watching in full:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cyWt1_irJNI" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
Common sense, right? Alas, perhaps not to anti-Israel, sycophantically pro-Palestinian Europeans on the U.N. Security Council.
As Reuters <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN1UI1ZQ">highlighted</a>, Germany, France, and Russia did not exactly respond favorably to Greenblatt&#8217;s address. That would be the same Germany that refuses to recognize all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and is <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2019/03/08/caroline-glick-germanys-love-affair-with-iran-about-more-than-greed/">leading the European effort to undermine</a> President Trump&#8217;s decision to exit the catastrophic Iran nuclear deal, the same France whose insane immigration policies have led to crisis levels of Islamist-inspired anti-Semitism, and the same Russia that de facto allies itself with the genocidal Jew-hating mullahs in Tehran to prop up a murderous madman tyrant in Damascus.
&#8220;For us, international law is not menu a la carte,&#8221; <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN1UI1ZQ">said</a> Germany&#8217;s U.N. ambassador, Christoph Heusgen. &#8220;Security Council resolutions are international law, they merely need to be complied with,&#8221; oh-so-helpfully <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN1UI1ZQ">added</a> Russia&#8217; U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia.
Greenblatt <a href="http://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Greenblatt-hits-back-at-Germany-UN-resolutions-are-not-way-to-make-peace-598135">pushed back</a> this week against the European backlash, publishing a <a href="http://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article198179335/UN-Debatte-Mit-Verlaub-Herr-Botschafter-Heusgen.html?wtrid=onsite.onsitesearch">German newspaper op-ed</a> that firmly but diplomatically rebuked Heusgen. &#8220;With respect, Ambassador [Heusgen] &#8230; we clearly stated that a solution cannot be forced upon the parties, and the only way ahead is direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians,&#8221; Greenblatt wrote. &#8220;Our point was that collectively, U.N. Security Council resolutions passed with the intent of providing a framework for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have failed to create progress.&#8221; Greenblatt also excoriated the Europeans&#8217; insistence on the U.N. as a focal point of the peace process, coupled with their own failure to recognize the U.N.&#8217;s institutional anti-Israel bias, as &#8220;disingenuous.&#8221;
At the risk of stating the obvious: Good for Greenblatt and good for the Trump administration.
Hamas, a <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/44732/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">genocidal Islamist jihadist outfit</a> set not merely on eliminating Israel but also set on killing every Jew in the world, currently controls the Gaza Strip. So-called &#8220;moderate&#8221; Fatah, which directly subsidizes murderous (and <a href="http://twitter.com/MicheleChabin1/status/1159797725199831040">celebrated</a>!) jihad against Israeli Jews, is currently led by <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/how-holocaust-denial-shaped-mahmoud-abbas-worldview/">Holocaust-denying</a> kleptocratic chieftain Mahmoud Abbas. Much as Ezra Klein&#8217;s Vox would imagine it to be otherwise, there is <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/17/voxs-motto-should-be-explaining-the-news-incorrectly-repeatedly/">no bridge</a> connecting Gaza with Judea and Samaria. There is approximately zero appetite whatsoever among either the Palestinian-Arab leadership or the Palestinian-Arab populace to forfeit the so-called &#8220;right of return&#8221; — a <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/43792/pro-palestinian-frauds-unrwa-called-out-lying-josh-hammer">legally risible</a> claim that would demographically destroy Zionism itself. There is approximately zero appetite whatsoever right now among either the Palestinian-Arab leadership or the Palestinian-Arab populace to recognize Israel as a Jewish and secure state within any cognizable boundaries at all.
In short, those, like the Europeans and the global pro-Palestinian/pro-&#8220;international community&#8221; Left, who insist that Israeli-Palestinian peace can be imposed from the outside in, are simply not living in the real world. There are endless unresolved issues that can truly, only be finalized via direct negotiations between the two sides. The only reasonable conclusion is that such quixotic insistence on an outside-in imposition is hardly motivated by genuine concern for the establishment of a durable, lasting peace — the facts and reality on the ground make such calls, in the present, fanatical to the point of lunacy. On the contrary, such calls for an &#8220;international community&#8221;-imposed solution are ultimately reflective of Europeans&#8217; loathing for Israel. Perhaps there is something fundamentally sinister here, too. Zvi Rex, the above-quoted Israeli psychiatrist, was likely onto something.
In any event, good for Jason Greenblatt and the Trump administration. The jury may still be out on the administration&#8217;s yet-to-be-unveiled comprehensive peace proposal, but the jury is very much in on the administration&#8217;s continued efforts to stand up for Israel and rebuke bullying Israel-haters at the U.N. The Trump administration is in the right — and the Europeans are in the wrong.

White House adviser on Israel Jason Greenblatt speaks during

HAMMER: The Trump Administration Is Right. The U.N. Can Never Dictate An Israeli-Palestinian Peace Deal.

Germany

Jared Kushner

Trump Administration

U.S. Treasury Department documents obtained by the Middle East Forum through a Freedom of Information Act request shed new light on the terror-finance <a href="https://www.meforum.org/7447/exclusive-obama-administration-knowingly-funded">scandal that first erupted last year</a> concerning the Obama-era United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the international evangelical charity, World Vision.
These new documents reveal that not only was World Vision funding Sudan-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) — which has extensive links to Osama bin Laden — with grants from USAID. World Vision was also funding ISRA with grants from the United Nations (U.N.). The documents also disclose that once World Vision’s relationship with ISRA was exposed by a whistleblower from the Swiss-based intergovernmental organization, <a href="https://www.iom.int/">International Organization for Migration</a> (IOM), World Vision mounted a full-court press to strong-arm the Treasury Department into allowing the relationship to continue unabated. This effort involved high-ranking members of Congress, who advocated for World Vision, as well as threats of lawsuits aimed at the Obama administration’s Treasury Department.
When this scandal initially broke last year, all that was known was that in 2014, World Vision had subcontracted charitable work in the hotly contested Blue Nile region of Sudan to ISRA, which was <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/terrorist-illicit-finance/Pages/protecting-charities_execorder_13224-i.aspx">designated</a> as a terrorist entity in 2004 for giving millions of dollars to Osama bin Laden and raising funds for Palestinian-Arab suicide bombings. Initially, this arrangement appeared to be a one-time event. But it <a href="https://www.meforum.org/7613/lost-in-sudan">soon emerged</a> that World Vision had “prior work experience” with ISRA and had used “other funding streams” to fund projects with the terror-linked charity. Previously, the source of these revenue streams was unknown.
But according to a May 2015 “Case Summary” written by U.S. Treasury officials, World Vision gave ISRA $323,928 for the controversial project paid for by USAID, Irish Aid, and the U.N. — with the U.N. likely paying the lion’s share.
Unfortunately, the U.N.’s relationship with ISRA is not entirely new. ISRA, also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency, previously enjoyed “consultative status” at the U.N. It <a href="https://www.un.org/en/ecosoc/docs/2006/decision 2006-224.pdf">lost this status</a> in 2006 after the United States <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2006/ecosoc6188.doc.htm">highlighted</a> its links to al-Qaeda. Since then, ISRA has repeatedly attempted to <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2017/ecosoc6839.doc.htm">regain</a> consultative status — a request repeatedly deferred because of <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ecosoc6992.doc.htm">unanswered</a> U.S. government questions about ISRA’s shady activities. The U.N. has regularly employed ISRA as a partner over the last decade. In 2013, it <a href="https://www.unocha.org/sites/dms/CAP/2013_Sudan_Workplan.pdf">listed</a> ISRA as a participant in its “Work Plan” for Sudan. And in 2014, the U.N. <a href="https://unamid.unmissions.org/unamid-ddr-launches-youth-projects-west-darfur">partnered</a> with ISRA and the Sudanese government on three projects in West Darfur.
That the U.N, which was aware of its member-states’ concerns that ISRA was a terror financing organization, also specifically partnered with World Vision to fund ISRA, was previously unknown.
Additionally, the aforementioned “Case Summary” document strongly suggests that World Vision was not fully candid with Treasury about its existing relationship with ISRA. According to this document, World Vision disclosed that it began using ISRA as a sub-grantee in 2013. However, as <a href="https://world.wng.org/2018/12/checking_it_twice">previously reported</a>, World Vision Austria’s public 2013 Annual Report explicitly states that at least two projects with ISRA stated well before 2013, one as early as April 2011.
That World Vision began working with ISRA in 2011 should come as no great surprise: This was the year South Sudan was partitioned from Sudan, and the Sudanese government, then headed by radical Islamist Omar Al-Bashir, began requiring international NGOs to work with local partners in hotly contested regions of Sudan. It should also be unsurprising that a genocidal Islamist regime would require partnership with a bin Laden-linked organization like ISRA — a group to which Al-Bashir was particularly close. Before his ouster, in fact, Al-Bashir <a href="https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/55360/islamic-relief-agency-and-world-vision-it-worse">personally</a> attended ISRA’s board meetings.
Why did World Vision choose not to disclose the extent of its relationship with ISRA to Treasury while seeking its license? This misrepresentation could have serious consequences for World Vision — even now, years later. The license granted on May 5, 2015 to World Vision to pay ISRA in spite of the terror designation explicitly stated that if the license was granted “as a result of willful misrepresentation, it may, at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, be declared void from the date of issue, or any other date.”
It is also noteworthy just how much pressure World Vision placed on Treasury to obtain a favorable result. Newly available Treasury documents demonstrate that high-ranking staff for Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), then-ranking member and now chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, continually reached out to Treasury on World Vision’s behalf.
In addition, the new tranche of Treasury documents casts clear, additional doubts on World Vision’s <a href="https://www.wvi.org/pressrelease/world-vision-statement-regarding-our-past-engagement-islamic-relief-agency-sudan">denials</a> that it knew ISRA to be a designated terrorist organization. The documents show that World Vision admitted to Treasury that it was aware of organizations sharing ISRA’s name on the designated terror list — but World Vision also claimed that the Sudanese branch of ISRA was somehow not designated. However, <a href="https://world.wng.org/2013/11/siljander_declares_his_innocence">extensive</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/islamic-relief-agency-admits-illegal-funds-transfer-iraq-n613731">media</a> coverage and <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/js2025.aspx">clear statements</a> on Treasury’s website patently show, all branches of ISRA were tied to its organizational headquarters in Sudan.
Despite multiple statements from Treasury warning World Vision not to work with ISRA, the evangelical charity continued to demand the government permit the partnership and allow World Vision to offer taxpayers’ money to the terror charity. Along with pressure from its friends in Congress, World Vision warned that it was planning legal action. World Vision’s threats and impatience flummoxed Treasury, with one exasperated Treasury official stating that it was “hard to fault us with our response, that’s for sure.”
Ultimately, World Vision got its way. It successfully pressured Treasury to issue a license for a one-time payment to ISRA. But it seems World Vision’s relationship with ISRA did not end with that one-time payment. A World Vision <a href="https://world.wng.org/2018/12/checking_it_twice">job posting</a> in December of 2015, 11 months after World Vision reported to USAID that it had stopped working with ISRA, specifically listed partnership with ISRA as part of the job description. Given that we now know that the U.N. was a source of other World Vision projects with ISRA, this raises an important question: Did World Vision continue to fund ISRA projects, perhaps through European subsidiaries, using U.N. grants or undisclosed private donations? Does it still do so?
Furthermore, questions also need to be asked about the IOM&#8217;s role in this drama. While USAID documents clearly indicate an IOM official alerted USAID — and purportedly World Vision, as well — to ISRA’s status as a U.S.-designated terrorist funding organization, further emails from World Vision to USAID officials indicate that the whistleblowing individual from IOM was no longer in his job only months after he raised the issue, and that new IOM leadership “does not have an issue with (ISRA).” We asked IOM if it fired the whistleblower. It failed to respond.
Nearly a year after this important issue was first made public, we have uncovered many answers to questions that public officials, the international aid community, and existing donors to World Vision have all been asking. However, these answers only generate even more questions. Those committed to supporting responsible aid programs and fighting the scourge of terror finance should not stop asking questions. Only when they are answered can this sort of behavior be brought to full account.
Cliff Smith is Washington Project Director at the <a href="http://meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>. Sam Westrop is the Director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

SMITH &#038; WESTROP: New Evidence Shows U.N. Engulfed In Bin Laden-Linked Charity Scandal

Al Qaeda

Osama bin Laden

Radical Islam

As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42632/iranian-nuclear-chief-again-confirms-iran-josh-hammer">reported</a> back in January, the Iranian nuclear chief confirmed that the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43339/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">terrorist mullocracy that rules Iran</a> flagrantly violated the terms of the harrowing capitulation to fundamentalist jihadist evil known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (i.e., the &#8220;Iran nuclear deal&#8221;). As the Middle East Media Research Institute, which is committed to translating into English otherwise-hidden primary source material from the Arab and Muslim world, <a href="https://www.memri.org/tv/iranian-atomic-energy-chief-ali-akbar-salehi-secret-purchase-nuclear-tubes-jcpoa-destroy-yellowcake-propulsion-arak-reactor/transcript">reported</a> at the time:
<blockquote>
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was interviewed on Channel 4 TV (Iran) on January 22, 2019. He said that the negotiations surrounding the JCPOA had required Iran to destroy the Arak reactor&#8217;s calandria by filling it with cement, but that Iran had secretly acquired replacement tubes ahead of time so that the reactor&#8217;s functionality would not be ultimately affected. He also said that pictures that had circulated that showed the Arak reactor&#8217;s pit filled with cement had been photoshopped. He explained that Iran has no intention to build a nuclear weapon, and that the Arak reactor is nonetheless incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. In addition, Salehi said that the yellowcake production facilities in Ardakan are operational and that Iran has been authorized to produce two additional IR-8 centrifuges. Salehi added that Iran has advanced rapidly in the field of nuclear propulsion.
</blockquote>
Now, a former deputy head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the United Nations&#8217; nuclear watchdog agency, is sounding the alarm by stating that Iran &#8212; even four years after the U.S., under then-President Barack Obama, entered into the purportedly tension-defusing nuclear agreement with Tehran &#8212; has a nuclear breakout time today of only six to eight months. Per <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-could-make-nuclear-weapon-in-6-8-months-says-former-iaea-deputy/">The Times of Israel</a>:
<blockquote>
A former deputy head of the UN&#8217;s atomic watchdog said Wednesday that Iran is capable of producing a nuclear bomb in six to eight months.
In an interview with Israel&#8217;s Army Radio, Olli Heinonen said that Israel and the Gulf states &#8220;have a reason to worry.&#8221;
Heinonen said that despite assertions to the contrary by the current leadership of the UN&#8217;s International Atomic Energy Agency, which he left in 2010, Tehran has not been adhering to the 2015 nuclear deal.
&#8220;Iran is actually weaponizing uranium enrichment without making a weapon,&#8221; he claimed.
</blockquote>
President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, shortly after Israel&#8217;s stunning revelation of a Mossad intelligence operation that revealed the extent of Iran&#8217;s decades-long commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons. Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/30045/iran-lied-netanyahu-reveals-israel-smuggled-100000-ben-shapiro">opined</a>, at the time, on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s revelation of the intelligence:
<blockquote>
According to Netanyahu, Iran had a comprehensive program, Project Amad, to design and develop nuclear weapons, and they have now disassembled the program for later reassembly. The specific goal of Project Amad: designing nuclear weapons; developing nuclear cores; preparing nuclear implosions; preparing nuclear tests; integrating nuclear warheads on missiles. Iran devised a plan after the beginning of the Second Gulf War to further develop its nuclear weapons program in secret &#8212; and to form new organizations to continue the work of Project Amad. Today, Netanyahu said, the work was carried out inside the Iranian Defense Ministry, and many of Amad&#8217;s key personnel continued to work on the project. The Iranians did not declare their program to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran instead denied the existence of a program and specifically denied the Amad plan.
This presentation was undoubtedly carried out with the knowledge of the United States; Netanyahu said that the information had been shared with the United States.
</blockquote>

Former U.N. Deputy: Iran Could Make Nuclear Bomb In Six To Eight Months

Barack Obama

Nuclear Weapons

Saudi Arabia

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

As The Daily Wire&#8217;s Hank Berrien <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/25965/good-trump-trump-administration-reduces-funding-hank-berrien">reported</a> last year, the Trump administration has cut large amounts of funding to the <a href="http://unwatch.org/whats-wrong-unrwa-must-reformed/">Hamas-tied, scathingly anti-Israel</a> United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). UNRWA has long been systemically biased against Israel (and against Jews) and in favor of the Palestinian-Arab narrative. For example, Harry Khachatrian <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/4195/canadian-pm-trudeau-resume-funding-palestinian-harry-khachatrian">noted</a> in 2016 for The Daily Wire that some examples of UNRWA-initiated anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda measures &#8220;include Nazi-like cartoons <a href="http://jpupdates.com/2015/11/30/u-n-watch-calls-for-action-against-unrwa-anti-semitic-cartoons/">shared on social media</a> by its staff and <a href="http://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/the_role_of_john_ging_unrwa_director_in_gaza_in_political_warfare/">promoti[on of] terrorist-supporting flotillas</a> and violence against Israel. UNRWA has also allowed Hamas &#8212; officially designated as a terrorist organization by both the U.S. and Canada &#8212; to <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/UNRWA-A-Palestinian-anti-Israel-non-territorial-government-374260">use its facilities</a> and has employed its members as staff.&#8221; Berrien also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/11924/trumps-take-un-hilariously-correct-hank-berrien">observed</a> in 2017:
<blockquote>
As PJ Media noted, the United Nations UNRWA&#8217;s funds help to train terrorists for ISIS: &#8220;Kids as young as seven are calling for the killing of Jews and are pledging their allegiance to ISIS in schools run by the UN. The documentary &#8216;<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/06/16/lawmakers-call-for-defunding-un-after-film-shows-palestinian-kids-praising-isis.html">The UNRWA Road to Terror: Palestinian Classroom Incitement</a>,&#8217; shows a clip of a Palestinian child who is a 13-year-old student at one of the schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency chanting &#8216;With Allah&#8217;s help I will fight for ISIS, the Islamic State.'&#8221;
</blockquote>
After President Trump announced the funding cut to UNRWA, Jonathan Greenberg <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/26012/greenberg-trumps-decision-cut-unrwa-funding-first-jonathan-greenberg">argued</a> in a Daily Wire op-ed that such a funding cut represented a necessary first step on the path to Middle East peace:
<blockquote>
UNRWA has not &#8220;relieved&#8221; the refugees&#8217; situation. It has encouraged and exacerbated it. No other program to assist refugees has overseen and, in fact, helped create a 650% increase in the population it serves. Unfortunately, UNRWA has made Palestinian refugee status hereditary. Rather than moving on with their lives, UNRWA has locked generations of Palestinians in permanent victimhood. UNRWA&#8217;s definition of a Palestinian refugee as including descendants is partly a strategy to ensure organizational continuity, but it also serves the Palestinian victimization narrative both within their society and beyond. What it does not do is create any incentive for Palestinians to resettle, move on, or build the kind of institutions necessary for statehood.
</blockquote>
One major issue is how UNRWA determines who is a &#8220;refugee.&#8221; UNRWA&#8217;s very own former general counsel, James Lindsay, confirmed in a 2012 Middle East Quarterly <a href="https://www.meforum.org/3404/reforming-unrwa">essay</a> that UNRWA calculates its &#8220;refugees&#8221; in a very different manner than does the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which exists to support &#8220;refugees&#8221; resulting from every other conflict in the world besides the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
<blockquote>
The UNRWA definition makes no mention of citizenship, and UNRWA makes no effort to de-register persons who were formerly refugees but are now citizens of a state. As such, UNRWA is the only refugee organization in the world that considers citizens of a state to be refugees, and there are many of these oxymoronic &#8220;citizen-refugees&#8221; on UNRWA rolls.
</blockquote>
Therefore, as I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43792/pro-palestinian-frauds-unrwa-called-out-lying-josh-hammer">explained</a> in February: &#8220;[A]ll the millions of descendants of the Palestinian-Arabs displaced by Israel&#8217;s 1948 War of Independence &#8212; a genocidal war launched by the Jewish state&#8217;s Arab neighbors only after those neighbors flatly rejected the incipient United Nation&#8217;s previously proffered two-state partition proposal &#8212; who have since acquired citizenship in a distinct sovereign nation, such as the 1.8 million Jordanians Neuer references, would not be considered &#8216;refugees&#8217; under UNHCR&#8217;s definition but are considered &#8216;refugees&#8217; under UNRWA&#8217;s definition.&#8221;
Most recently, the Trump administration has <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5514252,00.html">signaled its intention</a>, via U.S. Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt speaking at the United Nations this week, to work to effectively dismantle UNRWA once and for all. Ynetnews <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5514252,00.html">reports</a> that Greenblatt said yesterday: &#8220;We need to engage with host governments to start a conversation about planning the transition of UNRWA services to host governments, or to other international or local non-governmental organizations, as appropriate.&#8221; The key phrase would be, &#8220;transition of UNRWA services to host governments,&#8221; which would amount to an end of UNRWA&#8217;s mandate and its effective institutional death.
Alas, as The Jerusalem Post <a href="https://www.jpost.com/General-Assembly/United-Nations-Security-Council-debates-UNRWA-watch-live-590383">reports</a>, UNRWA is now fighting back. UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Krähenbühl offered the following:
<blockquote>
&#8220;I reject the accompanying narrative and the suggestions that the UNRWA model is irredeemably flawed. &#8230; Making a humanitarian organization responsible for the [Israeli-Palestinian] crisis is misguided and unhelpful. It is clear that the responsibility for the protracted nature of refugee [status] &#8230; lies squarely with the parties themselves and the international community, and the lack of will and/or utter inability of the political actors to bring about a solution to this long-standing crisis.&#8221;
</blockquote>
As usual, U.N. bureaucrats operate with blinders firmly on. But conservatives ought to applaud the Trump administration for its sustained anti-UNRWA efforts.

Trump Administration Takes On Controversial Hamas-Tied U.N. Group. The Group Pushes Back.

On Monday, the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon happily tweeted of his &#8220;open and substantive discussion&#8221; with the right-hand man to the head of Hezbollah, one of the world&#8217;s leading terrorist organizations.
Jan Kubis tweeted, &#8220;Grateful for an open and substantive discussion on a broad range of topics with Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem of Hizbullah. On top I received a copy of his book &#8212; a necessary reading.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Grateful for an open and substantive discussion on a broad range of topics with Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem of Hizbullah. On top I received a copy of his book &#8211; a necessary reading.
&#8212; Jan Kubis (@UNJanKubis) <a href="https://twitter.com/UNJanKubis/status/1130484625032265728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
The book Kubis was probably referencing was &#8220;Hizbullah (Hezbollah): The Story from Within,&#8221; a 464-page book published roughly ten years ago. Qassem&#8217;s hatred and genocidal feelings for Israel have been documented before; he <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/hezbollah-slams-hamas-for-accepting-palestinian-state-in-67-lines/">said in 2017</a> that Hezbollah must &#8220;liberate&#8221; all of the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Kubis who was <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/sga1848.doc.htm">appointed to his current position</a> by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, previously served as the Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and also as the Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Before that he served at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia.
The government of Israel was<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-lashes-top-un-official-for-praising-hezbollah-deputy-chief/"> outraged</a> that Kubis would meet with Qassem. Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted, &#8220;We are shocked and disappointed by this meeting with a designated terror organization&#8217;s leader, threatening Israel, Lebanon and the whole region,&#8221;
The United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and parts of the Arab world all regard Hezbollah as a terrorist group. As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46165/idf-general-warns-hezbollah-plans-invasion-sea-josh-hammer">The Daily Wire</a> noted in April, The Times of Israel <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-general-says-hezbollah-still-planning-major-attack-despite-anti-tunnel-op/">reported</a> that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned that Hezbollah was planning an invasion into Israel&#8217;s north, specifically, into the Sea of Galilee:
<blockquote>
The new commander of the IDF&#8217;s Ground Forces said Thursday the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah was still planning to carry out a surprise invasion of northern Israel, despite the recent Israeli operation to uncover and destroy an extensive network of cross-border attack tunnels dug by the Iran-backed militia.
Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick was tapped to lead the military&#8217;s Ground Forces in February, amid increased criticism charging that Israeli troops were not prepared for war. His comments came less than four months after the IDF concluded its anti-tunnel operation along the Lebanese border.
&#8220;Hezbollah still has plans to invade the Galilee,&#8221; he told the Ynet news site in an interview, referring to entering Israeli territory through a cross-border tunnel network. &#8220;Of course we won&#8217;t allow that to happen, we will thwart these plans.&#8221;
</blockquote>
The State Department declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 1997. At a State Department briefing in October 2017, Nick Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, <a href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/10/274726.htm">stated</a>:
<blockquote>
Lebanese Hizballah has repeatedly demonstrated for the world its true character. It is an organization that relies on terrorism as well as other forms of violence and coercion to achieve its goals. And this takes place in spite of the group&#8217;s attempts to portray itself as a legitimate political party. Prior to September 11th, I think everybody knows Hizballah was responsible for the terrorism-related deaths of more U.S. citizens than any other foreign terrorist organization. 
Now, for many Americans, their introduction to the threat posed by this group came after Hizballah&#8217;s attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April of 1983. That horrific attack killed 63 and wounded an additional 120 individuals, and it was followed by an even more deadly attack on our Marine barracks in October of 1983 which killed 241 Americans and wounded an additional 128 Americans. 
So Hizballah&#8217;s penchant for violence has not changed over the last three decades. We&#8217;ve seen time and time again with its international terrorism unit, the External Security Organization, also known as the IJO, the Islamic Jihad Organization, and Unit 910, 9-1-0. But its deployment of operatives to nearly every corner of the globe continues to engage in terrorism-related activity.
</blockquote>

DISGUSTING: U.N. Official ‘Grateful’ For Discussion With Top Official Of Terrorist Organization

As The Daily Wire has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46797/israel-faces-massive-barage-rockets-gaza-attack-emily-zanotti">reported</a>, Israel this past weekend faced a relentless barrage of indiscriminately fired jihadist rocket fire from the dastardly terrorist group duo of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46714/hammer-designating-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-josh-hammer">Muslim Brotherhood</a>-affiliated Sunni sharia supremacist death cult Hamas and <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/palestinian-islamic-jihad">Iran-funded</a> Shiite sharia supremacist death cult Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But while Iran catalyzed the conflict by goading Palestinian Islamic Jihad into initially commencing the sustained rocket fire that has thus far killed four Israeli civilians, it is longstanding Israeli government policy to hold Hamas &#8212; the democratically elected governing group for the Gaza Strip &#8212; responsible for all rocket fire from Gaza.
But while the United States, the European Union, and Israel all formally recognize Hamas as the terrorist organization that it so plainly is, the paradigmatically pusillanimous United Nations does no such thing. But, per <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-envoys-tour-rocket-hit-ashkelon/">The Times of Israel</a>, Israel&#8217;s U.N. Ambassador, Danny Danon, is now seeking to alter that:
<blockquote>
&#8220;The time has come for the [U.N.] Security Council to designate Hamas a terror group like al-Qaeda and Daesh,&#8221; Danon told reporters as [his] group viewed a house damaged by shrapnel, saying he would bring the demand to the Security Council.
&#8220;Hamas commits double war crimes &#8212; it hides behind civilians in Gaza, it attacks civilians here in Israel.&#8221; Danon said.
At least a dozen ambassadors joined the trip, including Ivory Coast&#8217;s Kacou Houadja Léon Adom, who currently has a seat on the Security Council.
Andrejs Pildegovics, Latvia&#8217;s ambassador to the U.N., said the envoys were in Ashkelon &#8220;to learn about the damage that terror leaves.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Hamas&#8217; founding organizational charter makes clear its desire to annihilate the Jewish state of Israel and murder every Jew in the world. The genocidal and disgusting <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp">charter states</a>, in relevant part:
<blockquote>
&#8220;Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it&#8221; (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory). &#8230;
Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah&#8217;s victory is realised. &#8230;
Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah&#8217;s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
&#8220;The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.&#8221; (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem). &#8230;
In face of the Jews&#8217; usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instill the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters.
</blockquote>
Clearly, anything other than the U.N. agreeing to designate Hamas a terrorist group amounts to a cowardly and inherently anti-Semitic shirking of responsibility &#8212; par for the course, perhaps, for the deeply <a href="https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/contributors/destroy-the-united-nations-MRHU9AcfJUW0v67EHdQI-Q/">troubled transnational tribunal</a>.
In <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44732/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">multiple</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46830/hammer-israels-election-over-time-now-operation-josh-hammer">op-eds</a> for The Daily Wire, I have argued that the time has come for Israel to commence a comprehensive joint land/air operation to permanently extirpate and destroy Hamas &#8212; and that the time to do so is before the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the prospect of a new anti-Israel Democratic president ascending to the White House.

Israel U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon: U.N. Must Designate Hamas A Terrorist Group

On &#8220;The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special&#8221; this week, the Daily Wire editor-in-chief speaks with former GOP South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley about her tenure as the United Nations ambassador and her impression of the international organization. Video and partial transcript below:
Shapiro: Do you think there is a purpose to the U.N.? Do you think it&#8217;s a useful organization? What should the U.S.&#8217;s involvement in the U.N. be?
Haley: The president actually asked me a year in, and said, &#8220;What do you think of the U.N., should we stay in?&#8221; And I said, &#8220;This is the thing, it&#8217;s wasteful, it&#8217;s bureaucratic, it&#8217;s a lot of talk and not as much action. There&#8217;s resentment. We&#8217;re being taken advantage of. But we would not have gotten those three North Korean sanctions packages and had the international community all on the same page against North Korea without the U.N.&#8221; So, I think the American people are going to decide, I don&#8217;t know that I&#8217;ve decided yet.
We pushed some really big reforms in the first year, we were able to cut $1.3 billion immediately. That was just low-hanging fruit. When people see the big U.N. building, they think ambassadors are in there. That&#8217;s just staff. You have thousands of people that work in that building, and it&#8217;s all because countries want their people in there. The staff has doubled in the last 10 years. That&#8217;s how ridiculous it is. The reforms were happening, we did work with the secretary general. It was starting, but it&#8217;s got a long way to go. And the U.N., more importantly, has to change with the times. They can&#8217;t keep talking about old issues they&#8217;ve always wanted to talk about. They have to take on issues like Venezuela which they didn&#8217;t want to do. They have to take on those issues with Iran and call it out the way it is. In any way for them to continue to be relevant, they have to do what&#8217;s uncomfortable to do, and I don&#8217;t know if they&#8217;re willing to do that.
Shapiro: That&#8217;s been my main criticism of the U.N., you look at the Human Rights Council and it&#8217;s filled with human rights violators. You look at the Women&#8217;s Rights Council, it&#8217;s filled with women&#8217;s rights violators. You look at the U.N. Security Council, and you have countries that have deep antipathy for the United States, trying to dictate policy to the United States while we foot the bill. And I just wonder wouldn&#8217;t we be better off working with the alliances that we&#8217;ve already forged? Working with NATO creating a new league of democracies? Doing something like that.
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Haley: And I think it may come to that, because when you look, yes were we able to move the ball. But it is what you make it. But for all the heat we took, and the resentment, and the part that bothered me &#8212; I always tried to show value to the citizens because they were paying for it. But the part that bothers me is we pay so much money. China doesn&#8217;t pay much because they&#8217;re considered a developing country. They&#8217;re not a developing country. We only have five vetoes, which can stop anything. It&#8217;s the permanent members. It&#8217;s the U.K. France, U.S., China, and Russia, they can stop anything. The Russian veto was one of the hardest parts about my job. They pay less than 6 percent, we pay 22 percent of operating now, it was 28. Now it&#8217;s 25 percent of peacekeeping. That&#8217;s an enormous amount. And they&#8217;re getting that veto for very little. So, it&#8217;s not fair, it&#8217;s not a fair scenario. We made it very clear something was going to have to give. I still think we need to hold them to that standard. If they don&#8217;t make the changes, we should strongly look at the fact of &#8220;are we getting this.&#8221; Now Beijing would love to have it, fine. If Beijing wants to have it let them have it. I don&#8217;t want us to give more than 25 percent. The U.N. shouldn&#8217;t want us to give more than 25 percent. It&#8217;s not healthy for any organization, so it has to change with the times. And right now, it&#8217;s choosing to be archaic and stuck.
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WATCH: Nikki Haley, Ben Shapiro Discuss If U.S. Should Stay In U.N.

Ben Shapiro

Nikki Haley

Republican Party

As The Daily Wire has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46033/finally-amid-border-crisis-lindsey-graham-josh-hammer">reported</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45305/huh-border-patrol-stops-prosecuting-first-time-josh-hammer">extensively</a>, the United States is currently experiencing an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45394/hammer-trump-would-be-right-fully-shut-down-us-josh-hammer">unprecedented</a> migrant influx at our southern border that, in the words of National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd, places our national border and homeland security apparatus in &#8220;<a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/unprecedented-uncharted-largest-border-surge-border-patrol-history/">uncharted waters</a>.&#8221; Here is how U.S. Customs and Border Protection put the border numbers in context, as part of its <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-releases-march-statistics-southwest-border-migration">press release</a> accompanying its monthly report for March:
<blockquote>
In Fiscal Year 2019 to date, the U.S. Border Patrol has seen a more than 370% increase in the number of family units apprehended compared to the same time period in FY2018. Today, 60% of apprehensions along the Southwest border are family units and unaccompanied children, made up predominantly of individuals from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Additionally, through the first six months of FY19, CBP has encountered 104 large groups composed of 100 or more individuals totaling 17,242 apprehensions. In comparison, U.S. Border Patrol encountered 13 large groups in FY2018 and two in FY2017.
</blockquote>
Part of the problem, as I have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45997/whole-world-knows-quotation-perfect-snapshot-our-josh-hammer">noted</a>, is the dissemination of information to other nations &#8212; specifically, Central America&#8217;s &#8220;Northern Triangle&#8221; &#8212; that U.S. asylum law says something other than what it actually says. Our asylum statute, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1158">8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(i)</a>, is operative for those who are persecuted in their native countries for &#8220;race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.&#8221; For instance, ethnic Yazidis persecuted in Islamic State-overrun Iraq should qualify &#8212; but purely economically motivated migrants simply hoping to &#8220;seek a better life,&#8221; in the abstract, should not. The years-long spreading of generally <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45997/whole-world-knows-quotation-perfect-snapshot-our-josh-hammer">false information</a> to would-be migrant communities has had consequences: as Rachel Bovard <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/28/only-congress-can-prevent-the-next-border-surge/">noted</a> at American Greatness in October, &#8220;asylum cases more than octupled from 5,523 in 2009 to 81,864 in 2016&#8221; &#8212; and the trend has only exacerbated under President Trump.
Now, it seems like the goading of the bogus asylum claim-centric migrant influx crisis is getting help from the paradigmatic transnational institution of border and sovereignty erosion itself: The United Nations.
According to the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is actively assisting large &#8220;caravans&#8221; of Central American migrants. The Institute <a href="https://www.irli.org/single-post/2019/04/24/IRLI-Research-UN-is-Aiding-Caravans-Re-Defining-Refugees-and-Seeking-to-Control-US-Immigration-Policy">reports</a>:
<blockquote>
The UNHCR has stated that refugees and asylum-seekers from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have been forced into displacement by a confluence of factors that have led to an escalating situation of chronic violence and insecurity. These factors range from the influence of organized crime such as drug cartels and urban gangs to the limited national capacity&#8212;compounded by corruption, poverty, and exclusion&#8212;of UN member states to provide protection. However, these factors are not recognized by U.S. law as criteria for asylum.
</blockquote>
The key sentence is the last sentence &#8212; corruption, poverty, and exclusion do not count for asylum protection under 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(i). Undeterred, though UNHCR spokesman Charlie Yaxlie <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/people-seeking-asylum-have-legal-right-to-enter-us-territory/4622526.html">says</a>: &#8220;We wish to reiterate and underline that any individuals within that group that are fleeing persecution and violence, they need to be given access to territory and they need to be allowed to exercise their fundamental human rights to seek asylum and have access to refugee status determination procedures.&#8221;
In one word: Ridiculous.
In 2017, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro <a href="https://www.creators.com/read/ben-shapiro/12/17/time-to-defund-the-united-nations">called</a> for the U.S. to fully defund the United Nations. In 2016, I <a href="https://theresurgent.com/2016/12/27/destroy-the-united-nations/">wrote</a> much the same.

Amidst Unprecedented Border Crisis, The United Nations Is Trying To Undermine U.S. Asylum Law

Illegal Immigration

Immigration

Southern Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

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