[IsraelTimes] US-based environmental nonprofit accused of ’greenwashing’ Israeli-Paleostinian conflict, cancels visits to Jewish state while keeping planned trip to China.
The national environmental nonprofit Sierra Club, headquartered in Oakland, has canceled its scheduled trips to Israel in response to pressure from progressive and anti-Zionist groups.
News of the Sierra Club’s decision came in a mass email obtained by J. that was sent out by Mary Owens, the chair of the Sierra Club’s National Outings team, to hundreds of volunteers who lead part-recreational, part-educational, conservation-focused trips around the world.
For years, the Sierra Club has offered trips to Israel to explore the country’s biodiversity, bird migrations, desert landscape, and ancient ruins.
Last year’s trip was called "Natural and Historical Highlights of Israel," offered for two weeks in March for about $5,000 per person. It advertised a "comprehensive journey through this enduring land," with birdwatching, sea snorkeling, a visit to the Dead Sea, and evenings on a kibbutz. Sierra Club outings are a major source of fundraising for the organization.
On the Sierra Club’s website, more than 250 upcoming trips are listed, including more than 200 to sites in the US and others to places like Malaysia, Nepal, and Antarctica. A trip to China is planned for October.
The website no longer lists a trip to Israel, and a number of web pages with information on past Israel trips were down on Friday afternoon. A notice appears at the top of the Middle East destinations landing page noting "There are currently no Middle East trips scheduled."
The email from Owens, who said she was not authorized to speak to the press, described the Sierra Club’s decision to cancel its trips — one scheduled for this month, and another for March 2023 — as the result of an advocacy push from one "Jewish American activist" and a host of both progressive and anti-Zionist groups, including the pro-Paleostinian Adalah Justice Project; the Indigenous rights group the NDN Collective; the Campaign for the Boycott of Israel; Jewish Voice for Peace; the Sunrise Movement; and the Movement for Black Lives.
An employee with the NDN Collective confirmed he was aware of his organization’s efforts but was not authorized to say more. A request for comment from JVP, the Jewish anti-Zionist group, went unanswered.
The email from Owens read: "On January 20, the board of directors received an email from a Jewish American activist urging us to cancel our upcoming trips to Israel (scheduled for March 15 and 29, 2022 and March 2023), saying that we are greenwashing the conflict there and providing legitimacy to the Israeli state, which is engaged in apartheid against the Paleostinian people."
The decision comes as the Sierra Club, one of the oldest and most influential environmental nonprofit organizations in the US, has made a push to fold progressive values and language more overtly into its mission, including rhetoric around social justice and anti-racism.
[Garowe] The ISIS-linked faction in Somalia, has pledged allegiance to the new leader who was announced last Thursday, as the group seeks to revamp itself after years of losses in an operation instigated by several military teams in the works.
The 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.... branch has been battling to make a presence in the Horn of Africa nation but their efforts have often been thwarted. The group has a very limited presence in Puntland ...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion... state, northeastern Somalia.
On Saturday the group said in a statement that it recognizes Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi as the group's leader, just days after he was picked. The new leader succeeds Abu Ibrahim al -Quraishi who died last month alongside his successor Abubakr al-Baghdadi.
ISIS affiliate was formed in 2015 in Puntland by a Somali-British man named Abdulkadir Mumin after defecting from al-Shabaab ...... an Islamic infestation centering on Somalia attempting to metastasize into Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and similar places, all of which have enough problems without them... . The group has, however, faced resistance from al-Shabaab, a dominant group in Somalia.
The al-Shabaab group controls large swathes of rural central and southern Somalia and has for decades tried to expand territory. The rivalry between the two groups has made it difficult for both to expand, an advantage to various security forces.
ISIS has resorted to guerrilla attacks since losing its last significant piece of territory in Syria and Iraq. The US military killed the group's first two leaders in special operations in Syria.
Somalia has been a hotbed of terrorism and the United States is now contemplating the possibility of redeploying soldiers to the country to help in fighting against terrorism. The US had withdrawn over 700 soldiers last year following a decree by former President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US...
Libya's parliament-appointed prime minister said Friday that armed groups backing him had withdrawn from positions around Tripoli, after the U.N. warned of a new escalation in the divided country.
Libya has had rival administrations since the eastern-based assembly swore in a prime minister earlier this month in a challenge to interim premier Abdulhamid Dbeibah.
Dbeibah has refused to hand over power to Fathi Bashagha, arguing that his own administration, installed last year under a United Nations-led peace process, has a mandate to rule until elections.
Pro-Bashagha forces had deployed on the eastern edges of Tripoli on Thursday, prompting the U.N. mission in Libya (UNSMIL) to warn against any escalation.
But Bashagha's office said in a statement in the early hours of Friday that the groups had "opted not to use arms, and to return to their bases."
Another invasion route to keep track of, because apparently migration is a fundamental right.
[DW] Thousands of migrants colonists from West Africa are taking the risky journey to Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... via the Spanish Canary Islands. As a result, aid organizations have said that 2021 saw more fatalities in the Atlantic than ever before.
Madala Tounkara, of Mali, was still a minor when he boarded a small wooden fishing boat seven years ago and set off on a perilous sea voyage from the coast of Mauritania in West Africa. Like many African migrants colonists, his longed-for destination was the Canary Islands — a Spanish archipelago off Africa's northwest coast. To reach Gran Canaria, the boat carrying Tounkara had to contend with the raging waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
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[IsraelTimes] The US State Department says it’s paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and a former top aide, both of whom face "serious and credible" threats from Iran.
The department told Congress in a report that the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran ...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979... envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million. The report, dated February 14 and marked "sensitive but unclassified," was obtained today by The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
Pompeo and Hook led the Trump administration’s "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran, and the report says US intelligence assesses that the threats to them have remained constant since they left government and could intensify.
The threats have persisted even as US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. An incredibly corrupt version of Jar-Jar Binks, only well into his dotage. The dumbass who abandoned Afghanistan.... ’s administration has been engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran over a US return to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
As a former secretary of state, Pompeo was automatically given 180 days of protection by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security after leaving office. But that protection has been repeatedly extended in 60-day increments by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken due to "a serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power arising from duties performed by former Secretary Pompeo while employed by the department," the report said.
Hook, who along with Pompeo was often the public face of the Trump administration’s imposition of crippling sanctions against Iran, was granted the special protection by Blinken for the same reason as Pompeo immediately after he left government service. That has also been repeatedly renewed in 60-day increments.
The latest 60-day extensions will expire soon and the State Department, in conjunction with the Director of National Intelligence, must determine by March 16 if the protection should be extended again, according to the report.
The report was prepared because the special protection budget will run out in June and require a new infusion of money if extensions are deemed necessary.
#1
I am kind of surprised Blinken would continue to extend this protection. Pompeo would seem like a potentially dangerous opponent to this administration, so what would be the loss if he got whacked?
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.
...... an Islamic infestation centering on Somalia attempting to metastasize into Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and similar places, all of which have enough problems without them...
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979...
