Texas AG Paxton accuses NGO of 'criminal conduct,' including 'facilitating the unlawful entry of illegal aliens': Report
MAY 08, 2024
Up to 12,000 people — including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg — converged in Malmo’s historic Stortorget square near the city’s town hall before marching toward the Eurovision venue, where singers from more than 50 countries are battling.
The protesters waved Palestinian flags; wore keffiyeh scarves; deployed green, black and red smoke bombs to match the flag’s colors; and repeated the chants, “From river to sea, Palestine will be free” and “Israel is a terror state” as police officers watched from rooftops, the streets and even helicopters.
Thousands Killed, Half Million Remain Displaced
(Nairobi, May 9, 2024) – Attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias in El Geneina, the capital city of Sudan’s West Darfur state, from April to November 2023, killed at least thousands of people and left hundreds of thousands as refugees, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The crimes against humanity and widespread war crimes were committed in the context of an ethnic cleansing campaign against the ethnic Massalit and other non-Arab populations in and around El Geneina.
Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan
The 218-page report, “‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan,” documents that the Rapid Support Forces, an independent military force in armed conflict with the Sudan military, and their allied mainly Arab militias, including the Third-Front Tamazuj, an armed group, targeted the predominantly Massalit neighborhoods of El Geneina in relentless waves of attacks from April to June. Abuses escalated again in early November. The attackers committed other serious abuses such as torture, rape, and looting. More than half a million refugees from West Darfur have fled to Chad since April 2023. As of late October 2023, 75 percent were from El Geneina.
“As the UN Security Council and governments wake up to the looming disaster in El Fasher, the large-scale atrocities committed in El Geneina should be seen as a reminder of the atrocities that could come in the absence of concerted action,” said Tirana Hassan, executive director at Human Rights Watch. “Governments, the African Union, and the United Nations need to act now to protect civilians.”
Targeting the Massalit people and other non-Arab communities by committing serious violations against them with the apparent objective of at least having them permanently leave the region constitutes ethnic cleansing. The particular context in which the widespread killings took place also raises the possibility that the RSF and their allies have the intent to destroy in whole or in part the Massalit in at least West Darfur, which would indicate that genocide has been and/or is being committed there.
Between June 2023 and April 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 220 people in Chad, Uganda, Kenya, and South Sudan, as well as remotely. Researchers also reviewed and analyzed over 120 photos and videos of the events, satellite imagery, and documents shared by humanitarian organizations to corroborate accounts of grave abuses.
The violence in El Geneina began nine days after fighting broke out in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Sudan’s military, and the RSF. On the morning of April 24, the RSF clashed with a Sudanese military convoy travelling through El Geneina. Then the RSF and its allied groups attacked majority Massalit neighborhoods, clashing with predominantly Massalit armed groups defending their communities. Over the following weeks – and even after Massalit armed groups lost control of their neighborhoods – the RSF and allied militias systematically targeted unarmed civilians.
The violence culminated in a large-scale massacre on June 15, when the RSF and its allies opened fire on a kilometers-long convoy of civilians desperately trying to flee, escorted by Massalit fighters. The RSF and militias pursued, rounded up, and shot men, women, and children who ran through the streets or tried to swim across the fast-flowing Kajja river. Many drowned. Older people and injured people were not spared.
A 17-year-old boy described the killing of 12 children and 5 adults from several families: “Two RSF forces … grabb[ed] the children from their parents and, as the parents started screaming, two other RSF forces shot the parents, killing them. Then they piled up the children and shot them. They threw their bodies into the river and their belongings in after them.”
That day and in subsequent days, the attacks continued on tens of thousands of civilians who tried to cross into Chad, leaving the countryside strewn with bodies. Videos published at the time show crowds of civilians running for their lives on the road linking El Geneina to Chad.
Human Rights Watch also documented the killing of Arab residents and the looting of Arab neighborhoods by Massalit forces, and Sudanese Armed Forces’ use of explosive weapons in populated areas in ways that caused unnecessary harm to civilians and civilian objects.
The RSF and allied militias escalated their abuses again in November, targeting Massalit people who had found refuge in the El Geneina suburb of Ardamata, rounding up Massalit men and boys and, according to the UN, killing at least 1,000 people.
During the course of these abuses, women and girls were raped and subjected to other forms of sexual violence, and detainees were tortured and otherwise ill-treated. The attackers methodically destroyed critical civilian infrastructure, targeting neighborhoods and sites, including schools, in primarily Massalit displaced communities. They looted on a grand scale; and burned, shelled, and razed neighborhoods to the ground, after emptying them of residents.
These acts were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against the Massalit and other non-Arab civilian populations of Massalit-majority neighborhoods, and as such also constitute the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, persecution, and forcible transfer of the civilian population, Human Rights Watch said.
The possibility that genocide has been and/or is being committed in Darfur requires urgent action from all governments and international institutions to protect civilians. They should ensure investigation as to whether the facts demonstrate a specific intent on the part of the RSF leadership and its allies to destroy in whole or in part the Massalit and other non-Arab ethnic communities in West Darfur, that is, to commit genocide. If so, they should act to prevent its further perpetration, and to ensure those responsible for its planning and conduct are brought to justice.
The global community should support the investigations of the International Criminal Court (ICC), while states party to the court should ensure it has the financial resources needed in its regular budget to carry out its mandate in Darfur and across its docket.
Human Rights Watch identified the commander of the RSF, Mohammed “Hemedti” Hamdan Dagalo, his brother Abdel Raheem Hamdan Dagalo, and the West Darfur RSF commander Joma’a Barakallah as those with command responsibility over the forces that carried out these crimes. Human Rights Watch also named RSF allies, including a commander of the Tamazuj armed group and two Arab tribal leaders, as bearing responsibility for fighters that committed serious crimes.
The United Nations in coordination with the African Union should urgently deploy a new mission to protect civilians at risk in Sudan. The Security Council should impose targeted sanctions on those responsible for serious crimes in West Darfur, and individuals and companies that have and are violating the arms embargo. It should widen the existing arms embargo on Darfur to cover all of Sudan.
“The global inaction in the face of atrocities of this magnitude is inexcusable,” Hassan said. “Governments should ensure those responsible are held to account, including through targeted sanctions and by stepping up cooperation with the ICC.”
An international jewel thief, wanted by Interpol for theft in South Korea, was reportedly released into the United States last year after arriving at the southern border near San Diego, California. Now, he has been arrested in Nassau County, New York, for allegedly stealing more than $300,000 worth of jewels from Tiffany & Co. and Cartier.
Yaorong Wan, 49 years old, first arrived to the U.S. via the southern border near San Diego in December of last year, according to Long Island News 12. After claiming asylum, Wan was released into the U.S. interior.
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has just admitted that he and other DOJ and FBI minions manipulated documentary evidence underlying the Mar-a-Lago case against Donald Trump. Everybody from Judge Aileen Cannon on down realizes this is bad. Still, I wonder how many people have noticed that Smith has admitted to doing what the J6 defendants are accused and have been convicted of doing: Violating 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). The statutory charges against the J6 defendants are a specious abuse of the law but they perfectly fit Smith’s admitted conduct.
One of the main tools in the DOJ arsenal against anyone near the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is § 1512(c)(2), which the DOJ claims means imprisonment for a person who “corruptly...obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding...” That is what the DOJ claims happened when ordinary Americans (a) exercised their rights of free speech and (b) usually inadvertently, entered onto Capitol land after masked agitators had removed “no trespassing” signage and fencing and after the Capitol police had opened the building’s doors. The penalty is fines and/or imprisonment, with the latter potentially as long as 20 years.
The Supreme Court, though, is hearing Fischer v. United States, which sees one of the DOJ’s victims contesting the DOJ’s assertion about § 1512(c)(2)’s applicability to the J6. The argument is that § 1512(c)(2) manifestly applies to a very narrow fact set; namely, corruptly interfering with evidence in an official investigation. Heck, it’s in the statute’s title: “Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant.” Every section of the statute manifestly deals solely with efforts to destroy or otherwise manipulate evidence in a matter intended to lead to a criminal indictment.
Nevertheless, to imprison ordinary Americans, the DOJ came down hard on subsection (c)(2) of the statute because it contains the phrase “official proceeding.”
(c) Whoever corruptly—
[snip]
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) recently doubled down on his claims that a nongovernmental organization is engaging in "criminal conduct," according to a Wednesday report from the New York Post.
In February, Paxton filed a lawsuit against Annunciation House, an El Paso-based Catholic organization that provides aid to "migrants, immigrants, and refugees," according to its website.
In the run-up to an annual Israeli Independence Day celebration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, university president Sally Kornbluth assured student organizers that an unauthorized anti-Israel encampment—located in the same area where the Jewish students planned to hold their event—would be cleared in time. It wasn't, prompting school officials to walk back their promise and press the Jewish students to reschedule or relocate the event, messages obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.
Read more...Error revealed in music video posted by white rapper best known for…
They protected Old Glory from the filthy liberal mob. We don't deserve…
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.