Forty? I’m impressed. But will they be allowed to keep them in lock-up until they’re convicted and sent back whence they came?
[NYPOST] Sword-wielding MS-13 thugs who have been terrorizing Long Islanders for years have been rounded up as part of a sweeping Nassau County crackdown of nearly 40 of the notorious gang's street soldiers — on attempted murder, weapons and illicit drug charges.
Included in the massive bust were five college-aged thugs — accused of being part of the deadly MS-13's Hempstead Locos Salvatruchas branch — who were allegedly responsible for a machete and knife attack that wounded six during a soccer game in broad daylight at the town's Kennedy Memorial Park last October.
The attack was so gruesome that one victim needed his gallbladder removed and his diaphragm and liver surgically repaired, authorities said.
The victims ranged in age between 20 and 51.
''We are removing dangerous criminals and gang members from our communities and will continue to fight to keep Nassau County the safest county in America,'' Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman told The Post.
Purported El Salvadorian sect leader Ellias Wilfredo Serrano Bonilla, 21, was brought up on eight counts of attempted murder and a laundry list of weapons, robbery and assault charges over the brazen assault on the pitch.
Bonilla, who calls East Meadow home, is believed to have entered the US illegally sometime prior to 2016, and was previously arrested in Nassau on first-degree assault and gang assault charges in early 2020, according to authorities.
Accomplices in the attack, Edras Daniel Velasquez Giron, 19, Jeffrey Bladimir Valladares Archaga, 20, Pedro Martinez Velasquez, 18, and Kelvin Martinez, 19, are all facing charges related to the harrowing incident.
Giron and Archaga, who are both from Honduras, also crossed the US border illegally during Joe Biden's term in the White House, according to Nassau officials.
Last December, Bonilla, Velasquez and Martinez, along with two others — 24-year-old Kennet Contreras and 18-year-old Edwin Patzan Piri — used machetes and white pipes to allegedly attack a pair of people parked outside a Uniondale laundromat.
''MS-13 has a long and violent history in New York, particularly on Long Island, where its members have terrorized communities for decades,'' Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly, a Republican, said in announcing the charges on Monday.
Short sentences for both parents — not for attempted murder, darn it. Hopefully they’ll be stripped of citizenship or Green Card status, whatever they have, and sent back to Iraq when they’ve served their time.
[NYPOST] A Moslem teenager who was nearly strangled by her Iraqi parents in an apparent ''honor killing'' plot blasted them as monsters as they were sentenced in Washington on Monday over the horrific, caught-on-camera ordeal.
The teen, only identified as Fatima, lashed out at her parents — Ihsan and Zahraa Ali — in an Evergreen State court after they were previously accused of trying to kill their daughter, then 17, outside Timberline High School last October, KING 5 reported.
''You think I'm a disgusting human being, well, I think you're a disgusting monster,'' the teen told her father as she delivered an emotional victim impact statement ahead of the sentencing.
''How can you call yourself a father? You tried to kill me, my dad tried to kill me with his own hands, do you have no love for me?
''My mom saw me almost pass away right in front of her own eyes and didn't help me at all, didn't see if I was OK — didn't even try to be there for me,'' Fatima added as she addressed her mother.
The girl's parents were both acquitted of attempted murder charges earlier this month over the savage Oct. 18, 2024, attack.
Instead, her father was found guilty of assault and unlawful imprisonment, while her mom was only found guilty of violating a court order.
The judge imposed the maximum sentences for the charges they ended up being convicted of: 20 months for the father and just under one year for the mother.
During the trial, prosecutors said the girl had run away from home on the day of the attack because she had been abused and feared her parents were going to take her to their native Iraq.
The daughter told cops that her ''father had recently been threatening her with honor killing for refusing an arranged marriage with an older man in another county,'' court papers stated.
After she sought help from her school, the girl's enraged parents showed up and attacked her.
Multiple students frantically tried to intervene as the teen's father was caught on camera putting the girl into a headlock until she passed out.
During the sentencing, Judge Christine Schaller said Fatima would likely have died if it weren't for the bystanders.
''Your behavior was reprehensible and nothing defends what you did,'' the judge told the father.
''You were not going to let her go, you were not going to let her breathe because nobody else was going to control the situation — you were going to maintain control.''
[FoxNews] At least three destroyers and 4,000 troops deployed over several months with spy planes and submarine support
The U.S. military has sent destroyers and thousands of Marines toward Venezuela as President Donald Trump doubles down on deadly drug cartels, according to reports.
At least three Aegis guided-missile destroyers — USS Gravely and USS Jason Dunham among them — are part of the mission, two U.S. officials anonymously told the Associated Press Tuesday.
Another official told Reuters the deployment, which could arrive soon, involves around 4,000 Marines and soldiers "over the course of several months," backed by spy planes, warships and a submarine so that international waters and skies are covered.
Tuesday's massive operation marks a dramatic escalation in Trump's push to block fentanyl and drug pipelines fueling America’s overdose crisis.
NOW: At least 71 people were killed in Afghanistan’s Herat province after a bus transporting deported migrants collided with a truck and a motorcycle, sparking a massive fire. pic.twitter.com/Rbyv97IdnC
[Garowe] The US-trained Danab Special Forces inflicted heavy losses on the al-Shabaab ... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... gunnies in Lower Shabelle as the operation against al-Shabaab gathers momentum on several frontlines, leaving hundreds of fighters dead within a short span.
According to Somalia’s Ministry of Defence, with the help of international partners, the Danab Special Forces killed over 100 fighters in Awdheegle following intensive festivities, Monday, further showcasing the resilience in liberating strategic towns.
The ministry revealed that some of those killed were senior al-Shabaab commanders following precision Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s, which destroyed tunnels and bunkers as the Danab Special Forces made ground offensives to recover the territory.
The state media reports that Somalia’s elite Forces launched the offensive late on Sunday, but fighting continued until Monday when the strategic town of Awdheegle was liberated from the fighters who had been in charge for months.
This followed a string of government gains in nearby Sabiid, Caanoole, and Bariire. In Barire, the national army, with the help of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces attached to the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), managed to recover the town, killing over 100 gunnies as well.
Since July, Somali security forces — with support from the AU troops — have stepped up offensives against the al-Qaeda-linked Death Eater group in Lower Shabelle, a region long regarded as an al-Shabaab stronghold.
There is a deliberate effort to degrade Alshabaab gunnies in southern and central Somalia, with the government making massive investments that have yielded results. The government of Somalia has however been accused of slowing down the efforts.
The country is under pressure to contain the group in the coming days before the exit of both the AUSSOM and the US Africa Command soldiers who have been helping the country to counter the group, as well as ISIS gunnies in northern Somalia.
[IsraelTimes] Alisher Tursunov, widely known as Mubashshir Ahmad and boasting a million followers online, pleads not guilty after endorsing Qatar-based fatwa; could face 5-8 years in prison
A prominent independent Moslem Uzbek holy man went on trial on Tuesday in Tashkent on charges of promoting extremism and inciting hatred against Israel, in one of the highest-profile cases regarding religious practices in recent years.
Alisher Tursunov, widely known as Mubashshir Ahmad, faces charges of inciting religious hatred, distribution of materials that threaten public order and illegal distribution of materials with religious content. In total, the charges carry a penalty of five to eight years in prison.
Tursunov, 51, ran a popular religious media project, Azon.uz, which had some 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube before he shut it down in 2023 under threat of legal punishment. He subsequently moved to The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... , where he was arrested and extradited to Uzbekistan in May.
The charges stem from both his work on the Azon.uz project as well as posts the holy man made on social media, according to his lawyer. He has pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." to the charges, local media reported.
In a post on his Telegram channel in April, Tursunov spoke out in favor of a religious ruling issued by the International Union of Moslem Scholars, a Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... -based group, advocating for jihad against Israel over "the bloodshed in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... "I would ask our government to listen to these calls," Tursunov said. "We are all Moslems, including leaders on top, and we should follow the fatwa issued to Moslems."
The fatwa "instructs Moslem governments to support Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... ’militarily, economically, and politically’ and to besiege Israel by ’land, air, and sea,'" according to a report by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Uzbekistan, a landlocked, majority Moslem country in Central Asia, home to some 38 million people, has had diplomatic relations with Israel since soon after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Islam Karimov, who ruled Uzbekistan as president from 1991 until his death in 2016, was widely accused, including by the US government and international human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... organizations, of cracking down on Moslems under the pretext of fighting religious fundamentalism and terrorism.
Karimov’s successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, initially relaxed strict religious restrictions, but in recent years has instituted curbs on religious freedom, according to Human Rights Watch.
[IsrelTimes] ‘You are killing children,’ woman tells Charlotte Korchak on train tracks outside death camp with group of US teens; she retorts: ‘I will never be ashamed to wear this flag’
An American educator was recently accosted for holding an Israeli flag outside Auschwitz-Birkenau during a visit to Poland, with a clip showing her heatedly responding to a question as to whether she was ashamed of Israel’s conduct in the war in GazooCharlotte Korchak, founder of the US-based Jerusalem Education Institute, said she was "shocked" by the encounter, which came at the end of her first-ever visit to the Nazi concentration camp alongside a group of high school students from Miami.
"As we were leaving, I’m standing on the train tracks leading into Auschwitz, holding an Israeli flag, taking a picture, and a girl had the audacity to come up to me and ask me if I was ashamed for holding the Israeli flag," she said in an Instagram video after the incident.
"You are killing children," the unidentified woman told her in the clip, arguing that many Paleostinians have died since the Gaza war was sparked by the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.
"You’re not doing this in front of a bunch of Jews outside Auschwitz. Walk away," Korchak answered, adding that talking about the Paleostinian deaths was like talking about the German corpse count in World War II.
After the woman said her Gazook friends had been "forced to leave their homes because of you," Korchak retorted that her friends had been murdered too, in the Nova music festival on October 7 and in suicide kabooms while she lived in Israel during the Second Intifada in the 2000s.
Auschwitz Birkenau Poland - a woman attempts to shame a group of Jewish teenagers holding an Israeli flag at the former concentration camp, paying homage to the 1 million Jews murdered there.
“How about, instead of attacking me, you understand that hate doesn’t help us?” she said. “I will never be ashamed to wear this flag, and I will never be ashamed of being a Jew.”
Korchak dismissed the woman’s claim that her remarks weren’t directed against Jews.
“Why did you come here? To learn what? To learn history, to learn why this country exists?” she answered, noting that Israel was founded so that the Holocaust wouldn’t repeat itself.
At the end of the encounter, as Korchak told her that she was an “embarrassment,” the woman turned around and left and the teenage boys sang “Am Yisrael Chai” (The Nation of Israel lives).
To be fair, they sang very aggressively. That’s what drove the hater away, I think. What a vile specimen of humanity.
In the video after the incident, Korchak lamented that “even the people visiting Auschwitz have not learned the lesson” from the death camp, referring to the accoster as “an antisemite who is convinced she’s just an anti-Zionist.”
The Nazi regime systematically killed six million Jews during the Holocaust, a million of them at Auschwitz, as it tried to wipe out the Jewish people.
[IsraelTimes] A Jewish family, some of them from Israel, said an Uber driver in Vienna assaulted a member of their group and called them "murderers" and "child killers" before forcing them out the vehicle last week.
A Monday post on Facebook by the antisemitism reporting center of the Jewish Religious Community (IKG), the body that formally represents Austria’s Jews, described the incident, the latest in a number of attacks on Israelis in Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... over the summer vacation.
The organization said the family, a Jewish couple with two children aged 10 and 13, and a 75-year-old woman, ordered an Uber to take them to a restaurant to celebrate a birthday.
When the driver realized that some of the passengers were Israeli, he called them "murderers" and said that he did not want to have "child killers" in his vehicle, according to the post.
The organization said the driver pulled over and forced the family out, and continued insulting them as well as physically assaulting the father.
The organization said that the family had filed a police report.
According to the Ynet news site, Uber said it had immediately suspended the driver and launched an internal investigation.
[IsraelTimes] Ship carrying 1,200 tons of food supplies approaches Ashdod port; UN charges Israel still not letting enough aid in to avert famine; GHF trials new system to reserve aid packages
At least 25 Paleostinians were reported to have been killed in Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s across the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip on Tuesday morning, according to unnamed medical sources cited by Paleostinian media as Israel’s Gaza City offensive loomed and aid groups stepped up efforts to get food to Gazooks.
The tolls cited by Paleostinian media were not verified, and there was no comment from Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... authorities in the Strip. The Israel Defense Forces did not comment on the reports, but said it was looking into the cases.
In one instance, a dronezap overnight in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah was said to have hit a tent housing displaced people, killing five. Among the dead were a 1-year-old, two children ages 12 and 13, and two adults.
A separate strike in Deir al-Balah early Tuesday morning killed five people, according to Paleostinian media.
Another eight people were said to have been killed in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
SHIP LOADED WITH AID APPROACHES ASHDOD PORT Meanwhile,
...back at the desert island, Irene was indignant at the thought of doing such a thing without benefit of clergy... the international community was keeping up its push on Tuesday to flood the Strip with as much humanitarian aid as possible, as a ship loaded with 1,200 tons of food supplies bound for Gaza approached the port of Ashdod in southern Israel.
Oversupply drives down the monetary value of the Hamas cache, and makes donor countries and UN-linked NGOs feel good about wasting their money while keeping them mostly out from underfoot of the IDF, which can get on with clearing out the bad guys and their weapons.
The Panamanian-flagged vessel was loaded with 52 containers carrying food aid such as pasta, rice, baby food and canned goods.
Israeli customs officials had screened the aid at the Cypriot port of Limassol, from where the ship departed on Monday.
Some 700 tons of aid was provided by Cyprus, purchased with money donated by the United Arab Emirates to the so-called Amalthea Fund, set up last year for donors to help with seaborne aid.
The rest came from Italia, the Maltese government, a Catholic religious order in Malta, and the Kuwaiti nongovernmental organization Al Salam Association.
"The situation is beyond dire," Cyprus Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
Cyprus was the staging area last year for 22,000 tons of aid delivered by ship directly to Gaza through a pier operated by the international charity World Central Kitchen and a US military-run docking facility known as the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system.
By late July 2024, aid groups pulled out of the project, ending a mission plagued by repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other emergency supplies could get to those in need.
Shipborne deliveries can bring much larger quantities of aid into Gaza than the air drops that several nations have carried out since Israel allowed them to resume on July 27 under immense international pressure.
MOST OF THE AID TO THE TERRITORY ARRIVES VIA TRUCKS.
The Cypriot Foreign Ministry said Tuesday’s mission was led by the United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... but was a coordinated effort — once offloaded in Ashdod, UN employees would arrange for the aid to be trucked to storage areas and food stations operated by the World Central Kitchen. The charity, run by celebrity chef José Andrés, is widely trusted in the battered territory.
Weren’t some of their people outed as Hamasniks at one point?
"The contribution of everyone involved is crucial and their commitment incredible," Kombos said.
On Monday, some 370 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings, COGAT said.
According to COGAT, about 350 trucks’ worth of aid were also collected by the United Nations and other international organizations from the Gaza side of the crossings on Monday to be distributed.
"The contents of hundreds of trucks are still awaiting collection on the Gaza side of the crossings," COGAT said.
Another 180 pallets of aid — about 6-9 trucks’ worth — were airdropped by Jordan, the UAE, Germany, Belgium, Italia, La Belle France, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Indonesia in Gaza on Monday, according to the IDF. Each pallet has about one ton of food.
Similar amounts of aid deliveries have been reported daily for approximately the past week.
GHF TRIES TO CREATE ORDER OUT OF CHAOS
In addition to the supplies being trucked into Gaza from Israel, the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation announced on Sunday that it was launching a new system to enable families to reserve a box of aid in advance, as it tries to reduce the scenes of utter chaos at its aid distribution sites.
To date, aid has been distributed on a first-come-first serve basis, benefiting younger, healthier men who are able to weather the long, dangerous trek through IDF lines to reach GHF distribution sites. GHF has tried to alleviate the inequity by establishing women’s-only distribution times, but more vulnerable populations continued to be neglected.
Under the new system, GHF’s local Paleostinian staff will invite beneficiaries to participate. Those who opt in will have their photo taken and receive an ID card with a unique number on it. Beneficiaries will also have the option of creating an online profile where they can input information such as household size. Participants will then have their designated box of food set aside for them, eliminating the need to partake in the daily rush for aid.
The system will also enable GHF to directly communicate with participants regarding distribution times and other relevant updates, it said.
GHF stressed that all data would be securely stored and never shared, in an attempt to alleviate the concerns of Gaza’s civilians that their information would be shared with Israeli authorities, with whom the aid organization closely coordinates.
The new initiative is voluntary and will operate in parallel to the existing first-come-first-served system, GHF said.
The aid group said it had launched a pilot of the initiative on Sunday with 350 participants at one of its Rafah distribution centers and that it was planning to scale it up in the coming weeks.
Experts have long argued that a registration process for GHF aid recipients was essential, as the free-for-all, chaotic scenes at distribution sites have seen boxes snatched within minutes, with no way to determine who was benefiting from the aid.
"It has always been our plan to offer a way for families to reserve aid in advance and guarantee access, just as other aid organizations do," said GHF executive director John Acree of the new plan.
"Until now, however, conditions on the ground have made implementation of such a program impossible. But with more aid flowing into Gaza and GHF’s deliveries helping stabilize food availability, conditions are improving."
Still, GHF is only able to serve a small fraction of Gaza’s population of roughly two million, as it is currently operating three sites in the entire Strip. Israeli and US officials have indicated that they plan to scale up GHF’s operations, but aid from other international organizations amounts to the bulk of assistance feeding Gazooks.
On top of food supplies, COGAT said on Sunday that it would renew the supply of tents and shelter equipment to Gaza, ahead of plans by the military to evacuate the civilian population of Gaza City.
The IDF is currently carrying out an operation in the Zeitoun neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, where the Hamas-run civil defense agency said residents had little to no access to food and water amid the heavy bombardment.
The front man for the civil defense, Mahmud Bassal, said conditions in Zeitoun were rapidly deteriorating, and that the majority of the roughly 50,000 people there were lacking "the basic necessities of life."
Israel strongly denies limiting aid supplies and accuses Hamas of exploiting deliveries to boost its military capabilities.
Ghassan Hani Al-Salut, a Hamas commander involved in holding Israeli hostages freed last February, was eliminated in an airstrike in Deir al-Balah. @Philipp27960841pic.twitter.com/GjCSV3p2gC
A Hamas terrorist who took part in the kidnapping of former hostage Yarden Bibas during the October 7, 2023, onslaught was killed in an Israeli airstrike earlier this month, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet announced Tuesday.
The strike on August 10 in Gaza killed Jihad Kamal Salem Najjar, who the military and Shin Bet said invaded Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and abducted Yarden Bibas.
“A small part of my closure happened today,” Bibas reacted in a statement, thanking the security forces. “Thanks to you, he will be unable to hurt anyone else.”
He added that he was still waiting for further closure in the form of the return of his friends, twins David and Ariel Cunio, who are still held captive, as well as the other 48 hostages still held by terrorists, of whom 28 have been declared dead.
Bibas was released on February 1 of this year as part of the second ceasefire deal with Hamas.
His wife, Shiri, and their two young sons, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months, were abducted by the Mujahideen Brigades terror group and murdered in captivity. The bodies of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir were returned under the same deal earlier this year. An Israeli autopsy determined that they had been murdered by their Hamas guards weeks after their abduction.
Since his return, Bibas has lobbied Israeli and American leaders to act to return the remaining captives.
He has said he met then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar while in captivity in Gaza, after which he was allowed to remain with his best friend, David Cunio, for two weeks before they were separated.
Palestinian sources claim senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar escaped Gaza via tunnels to Egypt before Israel’s takeover of Rafah. He is reportedly under strict house arrest in Arish, held in secrecy by Egyptian security forces.
[NYPOST] Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... has agreed to a cease-fire proposal calling for the terror group to free more than half of the remaining hostages in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... , including 10 living captives, in exchange for a 60-day truce, Egyptian mediators said.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim confirmed the group's approval of the proposal on Tuesday, which is nearly identical to the one put forward by Washington earlier this year.
The deal would see 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 others released in waves through the 60-day cease-fire, similar to the other exchanges that have taken place throughout the war.
Israeli officials say Hamas continues to hold 50 hostages after 683 days in captivity, only 20 of whom are believed to still be alive. Israeli-Americans Itay Chen, 19, and Omer Neutra, 22, are among the dead.
In exchange for the living hostages, Israel would agree to free 150 Paleostinian prisoners serving life sentences, as well as 50 others who were sentenced to more than 15 years in jail.
Israel would also return the bodies of 10 Paleostinian snuffies for each dead hostage, according to the terms of the deal.
The cease-fire deal also calls for more aid to flow into the Gaza Strip through the involvement of the United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... and International Committee of the Red Thingy.
BREAKING 🔴
Israel’s prime ministers office on Hamas ceasefire response: “Israel insists on the release of all 50 hostages.”
[IsraelTimes] Minor scuffles break out at a Brooklyn protest that sought to open racial divisions in Crown Heights, but the event largely passes without incident.
An bully boy activist group had organized the rally as a "vigil" for Gavin Cato, a Black boy who died after he was hit by a car driven by Jewish driver in 1991. The car accident set off the Crown Heights riots targeting Jews in the area.
The group organizing the protest, Crown Heights Bites Back, said ahead of the rally that "Jewish supremacists" had "murdered" Cato. In the past the group has used explicitly racial language to stir tensions between the neighborhood’s Black and Jewish communities, which largely coexist peacefully.
Crown Heights is the home base of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement and home to a large Caribbean diaspora community.
Tuesday’s rally is held at the site of the accident that killed Cato on the anniversary of his death. Around 20 activists, mostly dressed in black and wearing face masks and sunglasses, form a perimeter on the sidewalk around a table with an image of Cato.
The activists hand out fliers to passersby that say "Zionist white supremacists from Chabad-Lubavitch brutally killed" Cato and injured his cousin.
"We are yet to receive justice for these children," the flyers say.
"They will come for our children, our elders, and abused brothers and sisters. They will try to kill us, exploit us, raise our rents and evict us," they say. "Remember 1991! We cannot liberate ourselves from white supremacy
...the pernicious doctrine that laws were intended to be obeyed, that society works better when people don't pour shreiking from their places of worship every Friday for a weekend of rioting over insults real or imagined; and that cannibalism, beastiality, incest, murder, theft, rape, and similar activities are bad. A Dead White European (which invalidates his opinion) philosopher once opined that societies thrive when a person's word can be relied upon, and that a society which puts individual happiness first will invariably fail. Strangely enough, other successful societies, such as China, Japan, Korea, and those kinds of places could also be lumped with white supremacist societies, since they push the same values... until we rise up to tear it all down."
The protesters block Jews from approaching the table. The activists shove one Jewish man from the sidewalk until police separate the two sides.
Minor scuffles but no major incidents at Brooklyn protest that sought to dredge up 1991’s Crown Heights riots targeting Jews pic.twitter.com/xsEbKNsIX3
Reactions from passersby are mixed. Some take flyers, saying they are unfamiliar with the accident and the riots.
“When are y’all Jews gonna leave?” one man shouts. “Put that kid’s name on that fucking street sign. I’ll make a part two riot right now.”
Another man calls the protesters a “bunch of hypocrites.”
“Why was there no vigil until now?” he says to the protesters.
Others criticize the activists for hiding their identities with masks and for stirring tensions between the Black and Jewish communities, even though they are mostly white, and point out that none of Carl’s family is there.
“It’s Israel and Gaza fighting. It’s not America fighting. We must try to unite,” a neighborhood resident from Jamaica says on the sidelines.
“They are protesting against the Jews,” she says. “They live in the community, they’re allowed to come.”
Ahead of the protest, Mayor Eric Adams and three Black lawmakers from the area condemned the rally as antisemitic and for its attempt to stoke racial tensions.
Despite the charged atmosphere, the rally remains small and there are no major incidents. Unlike most protests in the city, the activists do not chant or make speeches.
[Rudaw] Two Syrian security forces were killed Tuesday in Tartous province, with state media blaming "unknown button men" and a UK-based monitor citing local sources suggesting the incident stemmed from an "internal dispute."
Citing a security source, the state-run SANA news agency said the personnel came under "direct gunfire" when their patrol "approached a suspicious vehicle parked on the roadside," where "one of the persons inside the car opened fire directly at the security elements."
The source added that the assailants expeditiously departed at a goodly pace and that authorities are working to pursue the vehicle and identify the perpetrators.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based war monitor, on Tuesday said there were "considerable contradictions between the governmental authorities’ statement and narratives by local sources" regarding the incident.
According to the Observatory, "local sources have reported that a vehicle was chasing another one, before the two vehicles crashed near al-Jam’iyah bridge," resulting in a shootout. The monitor added that "the local sources confirmed that the incident followed an internal dispute."
The Observatory stated that it obtained video footage "showing two civilian vehicles involved in the incident, while the bodies appearing in the video were of security members in civilian clothes, which further obscures what actually happened."
On Saturday, a bomb planted inside an old car went kaboom! in Damascus, though no casualties were reported.
[Rudaw] The Iraqi interior ministry has announced the dismantling of "one of the largest Captagon manufacturing factories in the Middle East" in eastern Leb ...home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade.... , as part of a joint intelligence operation with Lebanese authorities.
In a statement released Monday evening, the ministry said that "close security and intelligence cooperation between Iraq’s General Directorate for Narcotics Affairs and Lebanon’s General Directorate of State Security" resulted in "the discovery and dismantling of one of the largest Captagon manufacturing facilities in Lebanon’s Bekaa region," which runs along a significant portion of the Lebanese-Syrian border.
Describing the operation as "the most powerful blow against Captagon networks in the Middle East," the ministry emphasized that the success was made possible by "precise intelligence provided by Iraqi agencies to their Lebanese counterparts." This led to a major operation by the Lebanese army in mid-July 2025, during which "the factory was seized and the production and distribution of large quantities of narcotic drugs were thwarted."
In a formal letter addressed to the Iraqi interior ministry, Lebanon’s Directorate General of State Security praised "the intelligence collaboration" with Iraq as reflecting "the strength of the relationship between our two brotherly countries and highlighting Iraq’s leading role in combating cross-border threats - foremost among them, the drug scourge, which poses a serious danger to Arab societal security."
REGIONAL THREAT
The production and trafficking of Captagon - a powerful amphetamine - is a decades-old concern across the Middle East, including in Iraq, where consumption and smuggling cases have risen sharply in recent years.
Syria, under the regime of the now-deposed dictator Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... , was widely recognized as a primary source of Captagon production and distribution. The trade became a political and economic tool for the Assad regime, with many analysts pointing to Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother, as a key figure behind the industry.
Numerous factories were established in areas along the Lebanese-Syrian border, especially in the Bekaa region, where rugged terrain, long-standing clan-based networks, and weak state control have turned the region into a smuggling hotbed. The area facilitates the trafficking of goods, fuel, weapons, people, and particularly narcotics like Captagon.
The loosely demarcated and highly porous nature of the border, coupled with deep familial and economic ties between border communities, further enables the illicit drug trade.
Additionally, the presence of powerful non-state actors - most notably the Hezbollah movement - complicates law enforcement efforts. With its own supply routes and logistical infrastructure, Hezbollah has long been accused of facilitating or turning a blind eye to drug smuggling, undermining the efforts of both Lebanese and Syrian state security forces.
Observers believe that the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the weakening of Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon could create conditions for a broader crackdown on the Captagon trade and other illicit cross-border activities.
BAGHDAD’S DRUG WAR
In recent months, Iraqi authorities have stepped up their fight against drug trafficking. The country, once mostly a transit route, has increasingly become a destination for narcotics - prompting alarm among officials and the public.
In early April, Baghdad's interior ministry reported foiling an attempt to smuggle 400,000 Captagon pills across the Euphrates from Syria into Iraqi territory. The narcotics were being smuggled from Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province, according to the statement.
In mid-March, the ministry had announced the seizure of a truck packed with some 1,100 kilograms of Captagon pills coming from Syria towards Iraq through The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... member, but not the most reliable... . That same month, Iraq’s narcotics control directorate reported that Baghdad has seized some 1.75 tons of illicit substances since the beginning of 2025 and made 2,000 arrests in the process.
In 2024, the narcotics directorate revealed in December that a total of six tons and 183 kilograms of illicit drugs were seized that year, with 14,483 suspects arrested. Among these, 144 individuals have been sentenced to death for international drug smuggling, while 454 local dealers were sentenced to life in prison - a term of 20 years.
Major General Saad Maan, head of Iraq's Security Media Cell, told Rudaw in February that drug trafficking is "the most widespread crime" in Iraq, highlighting that the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are working jointly and with regional neighbours to address the issue.
According to Maan, "drugs are almost exclusively imported" into Iraq and that there have been "failed attempt ...Curses! Foiled again!... s" to manufacture crystal methamphetamine and Captagon - the most commonly used types of psychotropic substances - within the country.
Iranian state media says an “unexpected incident” has disrupted the water distribution system, leaving large parts of Khorramabad, a city of 370,000, without drinking water for now.
They have no water electricity, no water but they keep talking about how tough they… pic.twitter.com/raY1jdpe6Y
[Rudaw] Suspected Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) members on Tuesday attacked a checkpoint of the Kurdish-led internal security forces (Asayish) in eastern Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province, a war monitor said, and no casualties were reported.
"Armed ISIS cells riding cycle of violences attacked a checkpoint manned by the Asayish in the town of al-Sahba in the eastern Deir ez-Zor countryside with machine guns," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based war monitor.
The festivities resulted in no casualties.
It was the 157th ISIS attack against Kurdish-led security forces since the beginning of the year, according to the Observatory. The attacks have killed 45 Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) members and 8 ISIS bully boys.
ISIS has intensified its attacks against Kurdish-led forces in north and east Syria, with the turbans seeking to exploit a security vacuum sparked by increased instability following the fall of Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators... ’s regime.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
08/20/2025 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NYPOST] A 
...
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
..always the voice of sweet reason...
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
...home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade....
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
