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HOMELAND SECURITY

Is Facebook Violating U.S. Counterterrorism Laws? by Ruthie Blum

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12294/facebook-terrorism

Nearly a year has passed since the establishment of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, announced by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube, but groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas — among the 64 organizations currently designated by the State Department as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) — still have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and YouTube videos.

The more important question, then, is whether Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are providing “material support or resources” — in the form of a “tangible or intangible” property or service — to FTOs and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The Counter Extremism Project appears to think that the answer is yes.

“[G]iven the volume of content uploaded to Facebook by the platform’s estimated 2.2. billion active users on a daily basis, the one percent of terrorist content that is not removed is a significant amount that needs to be addressed.” — Counter Extremism Project Executive Director David Ibsen.

During his Congressional hearings in April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interrogated by members of the House and Senate. Because it was evident from their questions that many of the lawmakers were actually clueless about how Facebook works, much time was wasted on Zuckerberg’s having to explain the basics of its tools and business model. A select few – among them Senator Ted Cruz — challenged Zuckerberg about the political slant of his platform, which has led to discrimination against conservative groups and individuals.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that:

“…Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place. And this is actually a concern that I have and that I try to root out in the company is making sure that we don’t have any bias in the work that we do, and I think it is a fair concern that people would at least wonder about.”

When asked about what Facebook is doing to prevent terrorists from using the platform to recruit and coordinate, Zuckerberg said that 200 of his (25,000) employees monitor such content and activity in 30 languages.

The question that Zuckerberg should have been asked is why organizations and individuals that are designated by the State Department as terrorists are able to open pages on his platform in the first place, let alone continue to maintain those pages, or block their content temporarily, before allowing it to be re-posted. It would have been a particularly relevant query, given the launch in July 2017 of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, announced by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube. The stated goal of the Forum was to:

“help us continue to make our hosted consumer services hostile to terrorists and violent extremists.

US Muslim Brotherhood Op Targets Ivanka Trump on FB: ‘Our Vengeance Is Forever’ Following call for President Trump’s execution, Nidal Sakr expands threat to Trump family. May 29, 2018 Joe Kaufman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270282/us-muslim-brotherhood-op-targets-ivanka-trump-fb-joe-kaufman

Nidal Mohamed Sakr, Muslim Brotherhood operative and Chairman of the March for Justice, is very upset about the United States moving its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Many of his posts onto social media discuss the event in a negative light. However, one post in particular, which repeatedly makes mention of Ivanka Trump, contains an extremely violent message targeting Jews with death. What should not be lost in this is the fact that Ivanka, her husband and their children are all Jewish, and with the fact that Sakr has recently called for her father President Donald Trump’s execution, the post needs to be viewed as a threat.

Sakr’s life has revolved around the Brotherhood, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun. According to him, his mother was part of the “first generation of Ikhwan,” carrying weapons and ammunition for the group. Around 1970, Sakr joined a Brotherhood terrorist cell in Jordan that was conducting paramilitary operations against Israel. He was recruited into the cell by Abdullah Azzam, the future mentor of Osama bin Laden and co-founder of al-Qaeda. Sakr has said that he personally knew bin Laden, stating, “Osama bin Laden, himself, was a student of Abdullah Azzam at King Abdul Aziz University. I know him personally. I know his brothers. I know his family.”

In January 2011, when the Arab Spring erupted in Egypt against then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Sakr and his wife, Sara Bokker, did not have to travel far to seek involvement. Since at least 2007, the two were located in Cairo – home to the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters – Sakr serving on the International Islamic Council for Dawah and Relief and Bokker employed at the Brotherhood-related Jana Dan International School. During the revolution, Sakr organized rallies for the Brotherhood and advised Brotherhood leadership.

After the July 2013 coup against the government of newly elected Egyptian President and Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Morsi, by then-head of Egypt’s military and current Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Brotherhood leaders and members were hunted down. On Twitter, Sakr commented that he “Was Fired At by Sisi n RABAA [Square in Cairo] for 12 Hours NON STOP…”

Palestinians: Americans Now Legitimate Targets by Bassam Tawil

Ultimately, it is all about money. The Palestinian Authority is desperate for US financial aid; without it the Palestinian leadership would not be able to survive. So the Palestinians are hoping to extort protection money from the Americans. It is like saying, “You see what will happen to you if you stop funding me? It could always get worse for you. I suggest that you restore my accountability-free funding, and perhaps I will see to it that you do not get hurt.”

The Americans should call the Palestinian bluff and send a warning to the Palestinian leadership that there will be consequences for their rhetoric and actions if they do not cease the incitement and brainwashing. The US should use the money as leverage to demand this from the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority needs your money and you have the right to demand something good in return for it. There is no reason why any American should be funding the same Palestinian propaganda machine that is inciting not only against Israel, but also against the US and its citizens.

There is a new development in Palestinian hatred of the Trump administration: the Palestinian leaders’ verbal attacks on the US are now being translated into acts of violence against US delegations visiting Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

The Palestinian campaign against the US began in December 2017, when President Donald Trump made his announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and escalated after he announced that the US embassy in Tel Aviv would be moved to Jerusalem.

The anti-US rhetoric has come from Palestinians representing all walks of life — from the most senior, including President Mahmoud Abbas, to ordinary citizens in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and from secular groups such as the ruling Fatah faction to extremist Islamist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

If there is anything that unites the vast majority of Palestinians, it is their hatred of the Trump administration’s representatives and policies.

Club-K is Not For Dancing by Linda Goudsmit

Club-K is not for dancing. Club-K is the Russian container complex of missile weapons hidden in standard 20 foot and 40 foot sea containers. These weaponized containers are virtually indistinguishable from sea containers containing ordinary non-military items.

Housed inside each Club-K container are four missiles which can carry biological, chemical, conventional, Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), or nuclear warheads. The extreme danger of the Club-K system is its ability to evade detection among the millions of shipping containers carried on ships, trains, and trucks all over the world, including inside the United States. The mobile Club-K missile systems are exposed when the Universal Launch Module (erector) tilts up to the vertical position.

Novator Design Bureau designed the missile system and is now part of Russia’s state-owned Almaz-Antey conglomerate. This means that the Russian government has a stealth mobile missile system that can be transported by ship to the United States and then moved anywhere around the country on trains or trucks. What does that have to do with national security and port security in particular? EVERYTHING – this is how it works.

Vertical integration is when a company controls the supply chain from manufacturing to end sales. In a political variation on vertical integration Barack Obama transformed America’s national security into a supply chain nuclear menace. America has many enemies and Obama embraced them all. Obama began by welcoming the mendacious Muslim Brotherhood (MB) into the United States and placing its operatives in every government agency including Homeland Security where Obama authorized the censoring of any mention of Islam and the ideology that motivates jihad terrorism.

Push Back against the Jihadists in Disguise By Eileen F. Toplansky

It has long been the absolute intention of the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadist terror groups to infiltrate and completely alter the United States via American schools, the armed forces, the entertainment industry, and the government – and, of course, through U.S. borders.

So when the likes of Sheila Jackson Lee, Luis Correa, and Eleanor Holmes Norton are co-sponsoring H. Res 869, a bill to recognize American Muslims’ history and contributions to America, it is time to highlight how these Democrats are doing the bidding of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR is partially funded by the Saudi Wahhabi establishment and has numerous ties to extremist Islamic organizations.

H. Res. 869 states:

[M]any African slaves brought to the Americas, including the American colonies, later known as the United States of America, were Muslim, and made innumerable contributions to the founding of our Nation[.]

Notice how history is glossed over concerning the extent of Arab involvement in slavery.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency:

Over 28 million Africans have been enslaved in the Muslim world during the past 14 centuries. While much has been written concerning the Transatlantic slave trade, surprisingly little attention has been given to the Islamic slave trade across the Sahara, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

While the European involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day. A comparison of the Muslim slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts.

Congressional Hearing: Iranian Sleeper Cells Threaten U.S. So many hearings, so little action. Michael Cutler

It has been said that the first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge the existence of the problem. It has also been said that where there is a will, there is a way.

The nexus between immigration and terrorism is well established, however, the currently fashionable denial of that nexus by globalists from both parties has prevented the application of remedies to address the vulnerabilities in the immigration system that terror sleeper cells are known to exploit — particularly the lack of resources for the interior enforcement of our immigration laws.

On April 17, 2018 the House Committee on Homeland Security, Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee, chaired by Congressman Peter King of New York, conducted a hearing on the topic, “State Sponsors Of Terrorism: An Examination Of Iran’s Global Terrorism Network.”

The Subcommittee’s website posted this paragraph in announcing the hearing:

Iran, a State Sponsor of Terrorism, continues to invest in proxy terrorist and militant organizations that threaten the Homeland and US interests and engage in activities that impede US counterterrorism goals. This hearing will examine trends in Iran’s external operations and capabilities and consider the near-term and long-term security implications of Iranian support for Shia militants and terrorist groups operating in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Latin America.

The prepared testimony of one of the witnesses, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, included this excerpt:

In recent years, Hezbollah’s Latin American networks have also increasingly cooperated with violent drug cartels and criminal syndicates, often with the assistance of local corrupt political elites. Cooperation includes laundering of drug money; arranging multi-ton shipments of cocaine to the United States and Europe; and directly distributing and selling illicit substances to distant markets. Proceeds from these activities finance Hezbollah’s arms procurement; its terror activities overseas; its hold on Lebanon’s political system; and its efforts, both in Lebanon and overseas, to keep Shi’a communities loyal to its cause and complicit in its endeavors.

Kansas City Antifa Group Promises to ‘Fight Harder’ After Agitators Arrested in Clash with ‘the Pigs’ By Debra Heine

Five antifa radicals were arrested in Kansas City on May Day after they clashed with police in an incident the entire local media except for one blogger seems to have missed. The Red Guards Kansas City wrote about their May Day activities in posts on their blog and Facebook page.
Red Guards Kansas City
on Monday

“This day also further proved the cowardice and desperation of the pigs, who are increasingly frustrated and aggressive in the face of a rising power from the people. The dogs of the state will grow more violent and less bound by rules as our resistance to them strengthens, but these are the dying gasps of a system that is losing its grip and that knows it will soon be cast into the abyss. And so, though we know the danger to us will likely grow, we are not afraid of what is to come. For us and for all working people, what is coming is victory and power that will be worth our sacrifices and temporary suffering. The pain and humiliation of our comrades beaten and imprisoned only strengthens their resolve and fuels their rage.”

The Red Guards is a Maoist group that has chapters throughout the United States, including Los Angeles, where members on May Day burned an effigy of President Trump and called for “revolutionary violence” against “the capitalist state.” The group identifies as “antifascist” and aims to duplicate in the United States the anarchy and terror Chairman Mao’s Red Guards inflicted on China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

Donning masks, the Red Guards of Kansas City marched in the middle of the street without a permit, burned an American flag, waved communist flags, and carried a large banner honoring five murderous 20th-century communists. CONTINUE AT SITE

Texas teen charged with plotting IS-inspired shooting at mall Mark Hosenball, Lisa Lambert

A 17-year-old boy in Plano, Texas, has been arrested and charged with plotting a mass shooting inspired by the Islamic State at a shopping mall, law enforcement agencies said on Wednesday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and police said high-school student Matin Azizi-Yarand had planned the attack for mid-May and had sought to recruit others for the shooting. Authorities also said he had drafted a “Message to America” justifying his planned attack.

The FBI and local authorities in Collin County, Texas, said that at the time of his arrest, Azizi-Yarand had sent “more than $1,400 to others” to buy weapons and tactical gear.

In an affidavit, investigators said Azizi-Yarand began communicating online with an FBI “confidential human source” last December about his desire to travel abroad or to conduct an attack in the United States.

He compared himself to other recent “lone wolf” attackers, investigators said. “Look at all the other lone wolves// What training did they have yet they simply killed the kuffar?” Azizi-Yarand told the FBI source, using the Arabic word for “disbelievers,” according to the affidavit.

Prosecutors say Azizi-Yarand told the FBI source: “The brothers in Europe the brother in Spain the brother in New York? Had no military training//it’s not about numbers it’s about getting a message across to these taghut countries,” using an Islamic term denoting a focus of worship other than Allah.

Later in the discussion, investigators say, Azizi-Yarand told the FBI source he wanted “to put America in the state that Europe is in which is having to have soldiers deployed in streets.”

Attempted Assassination Of Iranian Dissident In New York If confirmed, this is the first time since 1981 that the Iranian regime has targeted a defector on U.S. soil. Kenneth R. Timmerman

Iranian dissident Mansoor Osanloo, the exiled former head of the bus driver’s union in Tehran, was savagely attacked on Tuesday, May 1, while traveling on a PATH train into New York City, and left for dead.

Multiple assailants sprayed him with a corrosive chemical, then clubbed him in the back of the neck with what appears to have been a tire iron. He lay in a coma for several days and required 17 stitches in his neck.

I spoke with Osanloo on Monday, not long after he awoke from a coma.

“I don’t remember anything,” he said. “But you can see from the pictures that I was sprayed with some kind of a chemical weapon and smashed in the head.This was a terrorist attack.”

Photographs taken at the hospital show a horribly-disfugured Osanloo. The burns to his skin are reminiscent of mustard gas attacks.

Osanloo has been instrumental in planning mass protests across Iran in recent months, and is the most prominent Iranian labor leader, in Iran or in exile. He was traveling to the New York studio of Iran International Television for an interview at the invitation of broadcaster Askar Ramazanzadi.

It remains unclear who funds the new “exile” TV based in London. But it has attracted many former broadcasters from Voice of America, such as Mohammad Manzapour, who were forced to resign from VOA because of alleged ties to the Islamic State of Iran authorities.

Texas Muslim Wanted to Please Allah by Attacking Mall “When I first became Muslim, fighting was a big part of why I came to this religion.” Daniel Greenfield

Matin Azizi-Yarand had two cats and an older sister. He had taken taekwondo and piano lessons.

But while he went through life as a normal high school student, living with his parents in a home in a bland residential development in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, he was also plotting to murder as many non-Muslims as he could at a shopping mall. Unlike the green lawns of nearby houses, the Azizi family had a dead lawn. And there was something just as dead behind the high windows of its Plano home.

“There is a Hindu temple I want to shoot up,” Matin messaged. Then he moved on to plotting an attack at Plano West High School, which he attended and where he was eventually arrested. “School is a perfect place for an attack. Even a blind man could take 10 easily,” he gloated. His ISIS contact had told him that killing ten or a hundred infidels would be easy. “Just fire where you hear screams.”

But finally he settled on the Stonebriar Centre, a shopping mall in nearby Frisco. He collected pictures and scouted the mall. “The security guards don’t even have guns lmao,” he messaged.

Matin worried that the civilians in the mall might have concealed weapons. And he made plans for ambushing the one armed officer in the mall. “I’d actually like to make a cop surrender and drop his gun, then douse him with gasoline and burn him.”

The area has a large Muslim community and Matin didn’t want to harm the Muslim “sisters” who frequented the mall. So he decided to attack during Ramadan, “iftar time//to limit Muslim casualties.”

“No Muslims are going to be at mall when it’s time to be breaking your fast//in sha Allah. (Allah willing)”

His victims might be Hindus, his fellow students, or random shoppers at Stonebridge mall. Matin and his correspondent only worried about accidentally killing non-Muslims. They considered taking hostages to better weed out any Muslims from the Americans whom they would stab, shoot, or burn to death.