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Saturday, March 16, 2024

Harris stepdaughter Ella Emhoff publicly raising money for relief group allegedly tied to Oct. 7 terror attack

The stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris is publicly raising cash for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — even as the United States has cut funding to the group over its members’ alleged participation in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel.

Ella Emhoff — whose father is second gentleman Doug Emhoff — is currently posting a link to UNRWA’s English-language fundraising page on her personal Instagram.

“We urge Ms. Emhoff to go on the website of UN Watch and read our reports showing how UNRWA teachers and school principals systematically promote and encourage Jihadi terrorism and the slaughter of Jews,” said Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of the nonprofit United Nations watchdog.

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“I am sure that if Ms. Emhoff understood how UNRWA promotes hatred and murder, she would stop raising money for them, and she would apologize to victims such as Ayelet Samerano, whose 21-year-old son Yonatan was kidnapped on October 7th by an UNRWA social worker.”

UNRWA, the largest employer in Gaza, has long faced international criticism for its close ties to Hamas, which has ruled the enclave since 2006.

President Trump cut US aid to the organization in 2018 — a decision President Biden initially reversed when he took office.

Under Biden’s leadership, at least $730 million found its way to UNRWA’s coffers.

The rapprochement ended, however, in January, when Israel presented evidence that UNRWA employees had been involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that left at least 1,200 dead at a music festival near the Gaza Strip.

As many as 450 UNRWA workers are members of extremist groups in the Gaza Strip, Israel contends.

Hamas tunnels were uncovered under the agency headquarters in Gaza where they also siphoned off the building’s electricity, Israeli officials said.

One released Israeli hostage said they were held prisoner in the home of an UNRWA teacher, according to the Jerusalem Post.

House Republicans are gearing up for a formal investigation.

“The United States is extremely troubled by the allegations that 12 UNRWA employees may have been involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel,” State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said at the time.

“The Department of State has temporarily paused additional funding for UNRWA while we review these allegations and the steps the United Nations is taking to address them.”

In addition to the U.S., Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria, Sweden, Iceland and Romania also all suspended funding.

Three of those nations — Canada, Sweden, and Australia — have since restored aid, but the United States has not.

“UNRWA has blood on its hands. And VP Harris knows this – or she should. I hope she’ll tell as many people as she can,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Ella Emhoff’s appeal comes just months after The Post revealed she was raising money for Gaza through the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

When she’s not raising cash for terrorists, Emhoff also works as a model for IMG.

Though Doug Emhoff is Jewish, his daughter has pointedly distanced herself from the faith.

“Ella is not Jewish,” a rep for the second daughter insisted to the Forward in 2021.

The White House declined to offer an on-the-record comment.

https://nypost.com/2024/03/16/us-news/kamala-harris-stepdaughter-ella-emhoff-publicly-raising-money-for-unrwa-despite-alleged-terror-ties/

Friday, March 15, 2024

Anti-Trump Neocons Raising $50 Million To Keep Open-Border Democrats In Power

An anti-Trump neoconservative cabal is raising $50 million in a campaign to keep open-border, spendthrift Democrats in power this November.

Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), headed by Bill Kristol ally and GOP strategist Sarah Longwell, will use the money to deploy a series of anti-Trump ads on streaming platforms, billboards, radio and digital media, The Hill reports.

The ads will run in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Longwell believes the anti-Trump coalition built up in 2020 was one of the determining factors in that contest, and that expanding the demographic in 2024 could be a determining factor in whether Trump returns to the White House.
“Former Republicans and Republican-leaning voters hold the key to 2024, and reaching them with credible, relatable messengers is essential to re-creating the anti-Trump coalition that made the difference in 2020,” Longwell, the president of the group’s Republican Accountability PAC, said in a Tuesday statement. -The Hill

"It establishes a permission structure that says that — whatever their complaints about Joe Biden — Donald Trump is too dangerous and too unhinged to ever be president again. Who better to make this case than the voters who used to support him?" Longwell continued.

The rubenesque Longwell and Kristol are behind "Republicans for Ukraine," which was launched last August and exists to convince congressional Republicans to protect Ukraine's borders, as opposed to America's.

In order to sell the Ukraine support, the group planned to similarly launch ads online, on billboards, and on nationwide television.

"It was alarming in the focus groups to see so many Republican voters talk about Ukraine or [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky in disparaging terms," said Longwell. "But we also knew, running focus groups, that there were plenty of people who still kind of had the belief that we should be supporting Ukraine, that it was important to stand up against invading forces."

Important to stand up against invading forces? On which border?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/anti-trump-neocons-raising-50-million-keep-open-border-democrats-power

US agency urges states' interim payments for healthcare providers hit by UnitedHealth hack

The U.S. government said on Friday it has urged states to make interim payments to healthcare providers that were hit by the cyberattack at UnitedHealth's unit Change Healthcare.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) new guidance allows states to start making interim payments retroactively to the date when claims payment processing was disrupted due to the cybersecurity incident, the federal health agency said.

CMS is reopening the system for some incentives given in cases of uncontrollable circumstances for healthcare providers affected by the hack.

The agency, earlier this month, said it will accelerate Medicare and Medicaid payments to some hospitals impacted by the cyberattack and encouraged Medicare Advantage plans to offer advance funding to the providers most affected.

The U.S. Department Of Health and Human Services has also opened an investigation into the cybersecurity incident, perpetrated by hackers who identified themselves as the "Blackcat" ransomware group, which disrupted claims processing across the United States.

UnitedHealth said last week it expects to restore disrupted services for medical claims and payments platforms by mid-March.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/cms-urges-states-interim-payments-204736611.html

Supreme Court denies 'thousands' of inmates a chance at shorter sentences

The Supreme Court on Friday dealt a blow to potentially thousands of federal prison inmates by ruling against a convicted drug dealer seeking a shorter sentence under a 2018 law.

Divided 6-3 in an unusual ideological alignment, the court said Mark Pulsifer, who pleaded guilty to distributing methamphetamines in 2020, could not benefit from a provision of the First Step Act, a significant sentencing reform law.

The issue was whether Pulsifer was subject to a mandatory 15-year sentence or a "safety valve" provision that laid out circumstances in which a lower sentence could be imposed on nonviolent, low-level drug dealers.

In an opinion by liberal Justice Elena Kagan, the court said Pulsifer had not met the necessary requirements. She was joined in the majority by five of the court's six conservatives.

The provision in question lays out a list of criteria for handing down sentences that are lower than the mandatory minimums. The court ruled that Pulsifer had to meet all the conditions, rejecting his argument that he could meet some of them and still obtain relief. The decision centered in part on the court's interpretation of the word "and."

Congress “did not extend safety-valve relief to all defendants, but only to some,” Kagan wrote.

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, joined by the two remaining liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Gorsuch complained that the court had significantly limited the aim of the First Step Act.

"Adopting the government's preferred interpretation guarantees that thousands more people in the federal justice system will be denied a chance — just a chance — at an individualized sentence. For them, the First Step Act offers no hope," he wrote.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-denies-thousands-inmates-174910886.html

Boeing 737 With 139 Passengers Loses External Panel Mid-Air

Literally, not a day goes by without Boeing suffering some major incident, whether it is doors and tires falling off, runway excursions, engine fires, hydraulic leaks, pilot seats flailing around the cockpit and slamming the yoke and, OH YEAH, a "suicided" whistleblower who told a close friend if anything happened to him, it most certainly wasn't suicide. Well, we can now add one more: a United Airlines flight - because it's never American or Delta... always United - that took off from San Francisco International Airport Friday morning landed in Oregon with a missing external panel, abc7 reported citing to officials.

As the NY Post notes, United Airlines Flight 433 departed from San Francisco around 10:20 a.m. local time and landed safely at its intended destination, Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport, about 70 minutes later, according to airport officials and flight data.

Once the plane reached the gate, an external panel was found to be missing, halting operations at the airport while a runway safety check was conducted, airport director Amber Judd told The NY Post.

Amazingly, there was no indication of a problem and no emergency was ever declared during the flight, which had 139 passengers and 6 crew members on board, according to United.

Airport staff searched for the missing panel on the airport premises, but were unable to locate it.

“After finding no debris on the airfield, normal operations at MFR resumed a few minutes later,” she said.

United Airlines said it plans a “thorough examination” of the 25-year-old plane and will “perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service.” Who knows, maybe another whistleblower will "commit suicide" too.

“We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred,” the airline added.

The Federal Aviation Administration will also investigate the incident, a spokesperson said.

Incidents have plagued Boeing airplane in the past few weeks: on Monday, a United Airlines Flight heading from Sydney to San Francisco, was forced to turn around mid-flight due to a hydraulic leak. The Boeing 777-300 plane, which was carrying 167 passengers and 16 crew member, landed safely back in Sydney.

Hours earlier, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner en route Sydney to Auckland, New Zealand experienced a technical issue that resulted in injuries to 50 passengers. Then, a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Japan diverted to Los Angeles International Airport on March 7 after a tire on the Boeing 777-20 fell off after takeoff, damaging cars in a parking lot on the ground.

Boeing told its employees in a memo Tuesday that the company is implementing weekly compliance checks for every 737 work area and additional equipment audits to reduce quality problems.

It isn't quite clear what is behind the recent surge in incidents which are just too many to keep track of at this point..

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/boeing-737-139-passengers-loses-external-panel-mid-air

Doha Hunts For Whistleblowers Who Revealed Qatar's Funding Of ISIS

Via The Cradle

Qatar National Bank (QNB) and Qatar Charity (QC) are attempting to uncover the identities of confidential sources that supplied documents to lawyers representing the family of murdered US journalist Steven Sotloff, which allege the financial institutions – acting at the behest of Qatar’s royal family – wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to the ISIS judge who ordered Sotloff’s execution.

QNB and QC filed an application on March 12 in the US to obtain "limited discovery" of the law firm representing Sotloff’s family, specifically regarding the names of those who provided the bank records linking Doha to the murder. In an email to Bloomberg, the general counsel for QNB confirmed the filing and said the bank "is the victim of an effort to tarnish its reputation" and plans to hold the individuals "to account to the fullest extent of the law." Sotloff and another US journalist, James Foley, were beheaded in 2014 by ISIS in Syria. The terrorist group published videos of its executions online directed at US government officials.

In a May 2022 lawsuit filed in Florida, Sotloff’s family accused the Qatari institutions of wiring $800,000 to ISIS judge Fadhel al-Salim before he ordered Sotloff’s execution. The family also says Qatar "knowingly funded extremist insurgents" to destabilize the Syrian government and named both QNB and QC as co-conspirators in the murder.

"The amount of assistance – $800,000 – was substantial as evidenced by Salim’s ability to cross over into Syria the very next day to begin raising his ISIS brigade," Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks from the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida said in May 2023 when he ruled against dismissing the case.

"The allegations plausibly show that Defendants, in participating in a terrorism financing conspiracy, held a culpable state of mind in relation to the transaction and the foreseeable acts of terror to follow," the US judge highlighted.

"Perhaps the most outstanding allegation in support of a conspiracy is that [former Qatari Prime Minister] Hammad bin Jassim funded several terrorist organizations at a September 2011 meeting attended by the apparent ‘who’s who’ of terrorism financing," Middlebrooks added. "Simultaneously, Hammad bin Jassim was a member of the Royal Family who served as prime minister, foreign minister, and head of the Qatar Investment Authority, which held a 50 percent stake in QNB."

Following years of improved relations between Doha and Damascus in the early 2000s, the 2011 outbreak of unrest in Syria quickly showed signs of a Qatari campaign to destabilize the country, starting with Al-Jazeera – Doha's most prominent media outlet – and its biased, often inciteful coverage of events in the Levantine nation.

Qatar became one of the first foreign entrants into the Syrian conflict, bank-rolling armed factions in coordination with the CIA, including the precursor to Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Jabhat al-Nusra. Doha’s role was even acknowledged by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which stated in 2016 that the Nusra Front "probably received logistical, financial and material assistance from the elements of the Turkish and Qatari governments."

"It turned out that all the steps of Qatari and Turkish rapprochement before the war were part of a US plan to contain Syria and pass the Qatari gas pipeline through its territory to Turkiye and then Europe, which is what President Assad was aware of. After the US discovered the difficulty of containing Syria, the decision was taken to overthrow the regime and divide the country, and this is one of the reasons for the war. Unfortunately, Qatar, with its money, media, and support for terrorist groups, spearheaded this conspiracy, and still is," Bassam Abu Abdallah, former cultural attache at Syria's embassy in Ankara and current Al-Watan columnist, told The Cradle in October 2022.

At the height of the Syrian war in October 2014, then-US vice president Joe Biden candidly spoke about how Washington's Sunni Muslim allies have been responsible for funding and arming Al-Qaeda-type extremist militants in Syria.

"Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends – and I have the greatest relationship with Erdogan, which I just spent a lot of time with – the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni–Shia war; what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world" the current US president said during a discussion at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

"Now you think I’m exaggerating – take a look. Where did all of this go? So now what’s happening? All of a sudden, everybody’s awakened because this outfit called ISIL [ISIS], which was Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which, when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space in territory in eastern Syria, working with Al-Nusra, who we declared a terrorist group early on and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them," Biden added.

In 2016, WikiLeaks released an email from former US State Secretary Hillary Clinton about Saudi and Qatari funding for ISIS. "We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region," Clinton's email reads.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/doha-hunts-whistleblowers-who-revealed-qatars-funding-isis

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