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Rudy Giuliani tests positive for coronavirus

Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney to President Donald Trump, has tested positive for Covid-19, Trump announced Sunday.

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Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney to President Donald Trump, has tested positive for Covid-19, Trump announced Sunday.

“Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

“Rudy Giuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus,” Trump also said on Twitter.

Giuliani was admitted to Georgetown University Hospital on Sunday, a source familiar confirmed to CNN.

There have been no additional details provided about his condition, and it is unclear when Giuliani received a positive test for Covid-19. He and his spokeswoman have not responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

The former mayor of New York has been crisscrossing the country to battleground states, leading the President’s long-shot legal battle to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Giuliani has repeatedly disregarded public health guidelines, appearing maskless in state capitols, hotel ballrooms and at indoor news conferences in recent weeks. At many of the events, most of the other people in the indoor settings were also not wearing masks.

At some of those events, Giuliani was spotted shaking hands, hugging, and taking pictures with people while not wearing a mask.

He was most recently at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Thursday to attend a Georgia state Senate hearing on the November election. During a break in the hearing, Giuliani removed the mask he was wearing to greet and take pictures with supporters.

Rudy Giuliani traveled to Michigan on Wednesday for a state House committee hearing that lasted four and a half hours, during which he was maskless as he pushed misleading claims that the election was stolen from Trump.

At the beginning of the week, Giuliani was in Arizona Monday, meeting with some GOP members of the state’s legislature to discuss unsubstantiated allegations that the election was fraudulent.

Hours before Trump announced his diagnosis, Giuliani was interviewed on Fox News via satellite.

The 76-year-old is considered at high risk for complications from the coronavirus due to his age.

Giuliani has been traveling with Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who has appeared at his side at all of the events about the 2020 election in the last week.
Ellis on Sunday tweeted out “prayers for Mayor @RudyGiuliani” and called him a “tough warrior.” She vowed the President’s legal team will continue its efforts to overturn the election results.

Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh declined to comment on Giuliani’s condition or whether Ellis has tested positive or plans to quarantine. He referred CNN to tweets by Trump and Ellis.

Last month, Giuliani’s son, Andrew, who is a White House staffer, tested positive for Covid-19 after attending a Trump campaign legal team news conference with his father in Washington, DC.

Andrew Giuliani posted on Twitter Sunday night that his father is “resting, getting great care and feeling well.”

Giuliani also eschewed US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quarantine guidelines after his son, and close contact and campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn tested positive in late November. The day Epshteyn announced he had tested positive, Giuliani traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he addressed a group of Republican state lawmakers in a crowded hotel ballroom.

The former mayor is the latest person in the President’s orbit to contract the virus. The President, first lady Melania Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Barron, his chief of staff Mark Meadows, and a number of other top aides both in his campaign and in the White House have tested positive in recent months.

After news of Giuliani’s test, the Arizona state legislature said it would close both chambers this week out of caution “for recent cases and concerns relating to COVID-19.” Giuliani met with about a dozen Republican lawmakers there last week.

Giuliani was also in close proximity with Bill White, a Trump booster in Georgia who attended the President’s rally Saturday night in Valdosta. White shook hands and closely embraced Giuliani last week.

As the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths have been on the rise, the White House has continued to flout CDC recommendations and host large events without masks and little social distancing.

Georgia Democratic state senator Elena Parent, who attended the hearing at the Georgia Capitol on Thursday with Rudy Giuliani, told CNN that Giuliani and his team “willingly endangered all of us to pander to Trump.”

“It was reckless and irresponsible for the Georgia Senate Republicans to hold an in-person hearing without requiring masks and social distancing during a pandemic. Clearly, the COVID risk from (Giuliani) and team, who have been attending hearings maskless all around the country, was high and they willingly endangered all of us to pander to Trump,” Parent said in a statement emailed to CNN Sunday.

She added, “Mayor Giuliani’s blatant disregard for public safety measures in this pandemic is irresponsible and puts Georgians in danger.”

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Gulf of Oman: The New Battleground Between USA and Iran

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On July 5, 2023, a Wednesday morning, two Iranian Navy ships approached US oil tankers in two separate incidents in the Gulf of Oman. One of the Iranian Navy ships fired its weapons at an oil tanker – escalating tensions in the region. The incident is marking another chapter in a string of incidents that have been occurring since 2019.

The Gulf of Oman Incident

According to commander Tim Hawkins, spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet:

“The Iranian navy did make attempts to seize commercial tankers lawfully transiting international waters.”

At 01:00 AM local time, an Iranian Navy ship came near the oil tanker TRF Moss, which was flagged by the Marshall Islands. However, the Iranian Navy ship left the region when the US Navy destroyer USS McFaul arrived in the area.

Further, three hours later, at 4:00 AM, the US Navy received a distress call from the Bahamas-flagged oil tanker Richmond Voyager. According to the US Navy, the Bahamas-flagged oil tanker was more than 20 miles from the coast of Muscat, Oman, when another Iranian Navy ship came approaching the US oil tanker.

The Iranian Navy ship was signaling the oil tanker to stop when the same US Navy destroyer, USS McFaul, headed towards the oil tanker at full speed. 

US Military ship in the Gulf of Oman

The Iranian Navy fired its weapons before the US Navy destroyer USS McFaul arrived on the scene with a lot of bullets in a short period of time. According to the US Navy, the Iranian Navy fired with both small arms, such as pistols and rifles, and crew-served weapons, such as machine guns and cannons.

The bullets struck the side of the oil tanker near the crew’s living spaces, but no one was injured. However, The US Navy destroyer USS McFaul arrived on the scene, and the Iranian Navy ship left.

The Continual Attacks of Iran in the Gulf of Oman –

Iran has been continuously involved in multiple attacks on oil tankers since 2019 on a major shipping route for oil. According to the US Navy, Iran has either harassed or seized nearly 20 commercial ships that have been flagged by other countries since 2021.

Such attacks on major shipping routes for oil pose a clear threat to the security of shipping in the region and the global economy – according to the US Navy. The recent attack of July 2023 was not the first attempt by Iran; on June 14, 2019, Iran attempted to seize two US oil tankers by blast, which spiked the oil price significantly. However, the explosions raised concerns about a potential military conflict between Iran and the United States.

Earlier this year, Iran took control of two oil tankers in less than a week in the same region of the Strait of Hormuz, near the Gulf of Oman. Hence, knowing the importance and criticality of waterways for the global economy, such seizures prompted the US to send more ships and aircraft to patrol the Strait of Hormuz. The United States is working with individual countries in the region to deter threats to commercial shipping and prevent attacks on commercial ships.

In May 2023, Greece issued a serious notice and warned ship owners to stay away from Iranian waters because there was a risk of being attacked. However, the latest seizure of an oil tanker by Iran is part of a series of attacks on commercial vessels in the Gulf of Oman that have been happening since 2019.

Why is Iran Constantly Attacking US Oil Tankers? 

According to the U.S. Navy, in the past two years, Iran has taken commercial vessels in at least five instances. Additionally, they have recorded more than a dozen instances of Iran bothering commercial vessels during the past two years. And many of the incidents have happened in the Strait of Hormuz or nearby regions, a major shipping route for oil, which accounts for about 20% of all crude oil. 

The constant attack of Iran on US oil tankers in waterways is considered retaliation for withdrawing Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and restoring crippling sanctions by the US during the reign of President Trump. 

The Trump administration’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal and impose new sanctions on Iran has led to increased tensions between Iran and the United States. 

However, after the decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal, Iran has increased its nuclear activities within the country, which could be used to develop nuclear weapons. However, the United States and other countries in the world have worked together to prevent such practices by Iran. 

Nevertheless, Iran has denied such practice and says that its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes, such as generating electricity. Further, Iran is providing Russia with armed drones that can be used in the war against Ukraine. This is further increasing tension among countries and is a serious concern for the international community. 

What will Happen Next?

The ongoing tension between Iran and the US serves as a stark reminder of the delicate balance that should be maintained in international waters. Iran’s repeated attack on the US and other countries’ oil tankers and commercial vessels shows the ever-complex geopolitical landscape in the middle-east region.

However, as countries work together to maintain maritime trade security, diplomatic efforts and international cooperation must be at the forefront of resolving these conflicts. 

The world is watching closely with the hope of a peaceful resolution – especially in times of current economic and diplomatic uncertainties. 

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Israel is and will always be a crime against humanity

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Israel is a crime against humanity

Israel, the misbegotten Zionist entity,  on Wednesday, May 5  celebrated the 74th anniversary of its birthday,  an allusion to the usurpation by brutal military force of the Arab-Muslim land of Palestine.

In the process, Zionist gangs, armed and funded by wealthy Jews and colonialist Western powers, such as the UK, carried out a well-devised terrorist campaign of indiscriminate murder and violence against the virtually-unarmed and defenseless  Palestinian community, during which dozens of hideous massacres, like Dir Yasin, were perpetrated by Zionist gangs, like the Hagana, Irgun, Stern, and others.

Also Read: The most brutal massacres of the “Zionist gangs” in Palestine in 1948

 The grisly atrocities forced the vast majority of Palestine’s population at that time, in 1948, to flee their villages lest they face the same fate that the people of Dir Yasin, Tantura, Dawaymeh, and many other hamlets and villages had just faced.

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when 130 Jewish terrorists from the paramilitary terror groups of Irgun and Lehi stormed Dir Yasin near Jerusalem and murdered 107  Palestinian civilians. Other sources, like New York Times, put the number of victims at 200.

Also Read: Israel having free season on Palestinian civilians including Children and Journalists

In his Memoirs,  the Rvolt, Menachem Begin, the head of the Irgun terror group, who eventually became Israel’s Prime minister,  described the Dir Yasin massacre as a  real miracle because it cast terror in the hearts of the Palestinian populace, prompting them to leave. Even before Dir Yasin, Begin was branded by the British government as “leader of the notorious terrorist organization and banned from entering the UK.”

Since Dir Yasin  74  years ago, Zionist massacres of Palestinians have never really stopped as successive Zionist governments retained and maintained the original Zionist strategy toward the people of Palestine. This genocidal strategy was aimed at achieving three main goals: Expulsion of the bulk of Palestinians.  (There are 7 million Palestinian refugees today), enslaving Palestinians as as “water carriers and wood hewers,”   (apartheid),  or outright physical extermination. This is not propaganda or media hypes. This is the un-official but authentic ideology of the ruling Zionist establishment, even today.

Also Read: Religious Fascism in India & Israel: Tweedledum and Tweedledee

In 1967, Israel launched the 6-days war, during which it seized the rest of mandatory Palestine, namely the West Bank which was under the Jordanian rule, and the Gaza Strip, under the Egyptian rule. Thus, Islam’s first Qibla and third holiest religious place,  al-Aqsqa, fell under the Zionist occupation. 

When East Jerusalem was seized from Jordan, the Israeli army’s rabbi Moshe Goren, strongly advised army generals to blow up the gold-gilded Dome of the Rock, which is part of the Aqsa Mosque. However, a prominent general refused to heed Goren’s exhortations.

Ever since that time, Israel transferred hundreds of thousands of its citizens into the West Bank to live on land that belongs to another people. The purpose of this criminal act is to re-enact the White settlements of the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa and former Rhodesia as well as the Russian demographic presence in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, pending the annexation of the territory and possible expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Also Read: Palestine-Vs. Ukraine: Stark Western hypocrisy  on Palestine and  Ukraine

Numerous UN resolutions were issued, ruling that the settlements were illegal and in a brazen violation of international law. Furthermore, Israel consistently refused to consider the West Bank as an occupied territory, insisting that the region was a “disputed” rather than “occupied” land. The Israeli defiance of the UN and its Security Council’s resolutions is attributed to the almost total American submission to the Zionist entity.

A few years ago during a televised debate with an Israeli official,  I confronted him with the settlements problem as he claimed that it was Israel that really wanted peace and that the Palestinians were the party that displayed intransigence. I asked him rather tersely if he thought that a peace-loving country would build 300 colonies on occupied territories and transfer hundreds of thousands of its citizens to live on land that didn’t belong to them. He was dumbfounded.

Clearly, the brazen Israeli insolence and arrogance of power stem from the absolute, unlimited, and total backing the Jewish state receives from the United States due to the overwhelming influence of American Jewry on the US government, congress, and political life in America.

Also Read: “Jewish State”: A Nazi Concept Implying another final Nakba

I remember one American writer saying half-jokingly that the Palestinians will not be liberated from the Israeli occupation until America is freed from Zionist domination. The Zionist stranglehold on the American government was described amply and analyzed elaborately by the late Jewish intellectual Alfred Lilienthal in his monumental  book “The Zionist Connection: What price peace.”

The Palestinians remain the ultimate reversioner

Despite its military might, economic prosperity, and international connections, Israel still lacks the legal and moral legitimacy.

In ancient times and the Middle  Ages, military conquests gave conquerors sovereignty over occupied territories. However, in the modern era, sovereignty, especially de jure sovereignty, can not be acquired or gained through war. Otherwise, the occupation by Nazi Germany of 8 European states would have been perfectly legal and compatible with international law. The same thing applies to the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait nearly 30 years ago. The same thing can be said about the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

So what makes the Israeli occupation of Palestine, both in 1948 and 1967, different from the Nazi occupation of Europe, the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, and the Russian occupation of Ukraine. In truth, Israel and the Zionist movement have no convincing answer for this crucial question. Instead, they indulge in legalistic sophistry, historical prevarication, and verbal juggling

Also Read: Israel should stop trying to force-feed the Holocaust down people’s throats  as bloody repression of Palestinians  goes on unabated

 Some Zionist apologists try to outsmart themselves by arguing that Israel came under attack and that the occupied territory were won in a  war of self-defense.

However, international law experts make it very clear that coming under attack gives a country the right to repel the attack, but not occupy territories. Thus, the acquisition of territory by military force is absolutely illegal under the international law. This is the reason most countries don’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over both East and West Jerusalem as the city, indeed the entirety of Palestine was conquered by military force, which gave Israel only a de facto sovereignty, but no de Jure sovereign whatsoever.

Needless to say, authentic de jure sovereignty would require all the normal qualifications of sovereignty, which Israel obviously lacks.

Hence, Israel should be viewed as a belligerent occupying power, irrespective of how many countries recognize it and have diplomatic and economic relations with it.

According to Hal Draper ” At the present time Israel is a belligerent occupant of the city (Jerusalem) and is bound by the laws governing such occupation.”

Headly Cook,  an international law expert believes that Israel among all countries of the world possesses not a single inch of territory which she could assuredly proclaim to be her own in perpetuity.(2)

This is why, Palestinians, and Muslims in general, are strongly advised not to ascribe any legal or moral legitimacy to Israel, an entity that has been and continues to be a crime against humanity. (end)

(1)  Draper, Hal.  the Status of Jerusalem,  p. 163

(2)” (Cook, Headly,  Israel: A  blessing and Curse, London 1960, p. 168)

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The US and Israel: The dog versus the wagging tail

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The US and Israel: The dog versus the wagging tail

The US and Israel: The dog versus the wagging tail. By: Khalid Amayreh.

It is an open secret that the United States has been the only country in the world that can prevent Israel from carrying out a holocaust against the Palestinians. Otherwise, the Zionist entity has absolutely no qualms against a full or partial extermination of the Palestinian people. Indeed, the very concept of “Ashmada” (annihilation or extermination) is well-established in the Talmudic literature.

Openly-Nazi Rabbis at the helm of  power in Israel

Several years ago, a Rabbi by the name of  Dov Lior, who holds a Judeo-Nazi ideology advocating the extermination of Palestinian civilians, co-authored a hair-raising book titled “Torat ha’Melekh” (the “Torah of the King”). In the book, he pointed out that there was no such a thing as “enemy civilians” during time of conflict.

Read Also: Is anti-Semitism essential for the survival and growth of Zionism and Jewish peoplehood?

 “The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them.

This is the real moral behind Israel’s Torah and we must not feel guilty due to foreign morals,” he was quoted as saying by the Hebrew newspaper Ma’ariv in 2004.

“A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”

Lior is not a marginal figure in the Zionist religious establishment.

According to the late rabbi Menachem Froman, Lior “is considered among the most learned sages of the Torah in Israel..”

Another Rabbi, David Batzri, told followers that “it is impossible to mix the pure with the impure. They (the Arabs) are a blight, a devil, a disaster.  The  Arabs are donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn’t create them to walk on all four. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean. They don’t have any place in our schools.”

In May 2007,  Mordechai  Elyahu, a former Chief Rabbi of  Israel, issued an edict that would permit the Israeli army to murder hundreds of thousands of Palestinians .

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they don’t stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000.  If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000. Even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

Read Also: Israel’s intense Practices to Uproot the Palestinians in Jerusalem

Interestingly, these and like-minded rabbis are the actual rulers in Israel today, especially following the formation of the latest government, headed by Benyamin Netanyahu.

How the US sought to restrain Israeli bellicosity

Successive U.S. administrations have always sought to restrain Israel’s genocidal propensity, hoping that the Zionist state would not embark on wholesale genocidal massacres of Palestinians.

Normally, the US would give Israel state-of-the-art of the American technology of death. For example, Israel usually receives some of the latest and most lethal war systems before NATO  members and in some cases before the US armed forces themselves. Thanks to this policy, the Israeli air-force is now only second to the US air-force.

Thus, the Israeli air-force can easily defeat the Royal British air-force, the French air-force, the Russian air-force, and the Chinese air-force.

The US consistently calculated that by aggrandizing the Israeli army, especially its air-force, the Jewish state would adopt relatively moderate policies in the region and be more willing to reach peace agreements with the Palestinians.

However, to the chagrin of the Americans, the political-military establishment in Israel, emboldened by its military might, became ever more extremist, recalcitrant and inflexible as far as the prospects of peace were concerned. Not only that, the Israeli leadership became more disobedient and even more contemptuous of the American government.

Some Israeli political and religious leaders even gasconaded about the tight Jewish domination of the American government, Congress and the two main political parties.

There have been two main consequences of this de facto Israeli defiance of its former master and guardian-ally.

First, the US. Leverage on Israel has never been as low and ineffective as it is today. This is despite America’s unfaltering strategic commitment to Israel’s security and military superiority (qualitative edge) overall Arab-Muslim nations combined). 

In fact, one wouldn’t exaggerate much by arguing that within the frame of the American-Israeli alliance, Israel, not the U.S., now constitutes the centre of gravity.

This observation is vindicated by recent developments following the formation of the most openly-fascist government in Israel’s history, which has effectively scrapped all alleged shared values between the two countries. Thus statements by American officials voicing a modicum of US reservation over the new fascist dawn in Israel have been quite restrained, parsimonious, reluctant, and somewhat bashful.

Second,  Israeli officials, including Benyamin Netanyahu, and broader Likud circles have been quite defiant and contemptuous of American officials, such as President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who reiterated U.S commitment to the two-state solution strategy.

Netanyahu retorted to Biden, saying “Israel doesn’t occupy foreign land.” A pro-Netanyahu writer advised the Americans “to take care of their crumbling democracy before lecturing Israel on occupied territories. More contemptuous is likely to be used by people like Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in reference to the Americans.

Who is the dog and who is the wagging tail?

 The dog versus the wagging tail analogy is used to describe a situation in which a powerful entity like the US is being controlled by someone that is much less important or powerful like Israel. Today, the tail is entrenched in the driver’s seat like never before. The Wagging tail is the State of Israel, and the dog is, or should be, the United States of America. Small, isolated, dependent Israel no more dictates to the imperialist U.S. giant than a tail wags a dog. 

In the past, Israel bullied the governments of the US to abandon erstwhile US policy vis-à-vis Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In the 1970s, for example, the US viewed the settlements as illegal and contravening the rule of international law. Eventually, however, the US came to view these criminal facts as mere “controversial” and incompatible with the aspiration for peace.”  

Now, with the likes of Ben Gvir and Smotrich at the helm of power in Israel, it is more likely that the fascist clique in the Jewish state will eventually pull  American leaders off to the Judeo-Nazi home-turf, not the other way around.

American leaders, whether Trump or Biden,  simply lack the moral immunity to tell Netanyahu, who is merely Ben-Gvir’s and Smotrich’s public relations officer, “enough is enough”! These two words would be sufficient to put an end to the political career of any American president. (end)

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