Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Tehran and Washington have reached an agreement to ease the naval blockade of Iranian ports in exchange for the gradual opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Why?
This was reported on May 7 by Al Arabiya television, citing Pakistani sources.
According to them, active negotiations are currently underway on this issue, and progress is expected in the coming hours toward resolving the issue of ships blocked in the strait. However, Pakistani sources clarified that there are currently no agreements on direct meetings between Iran and the United States. Contacts continue to take place through intermediaries.
The channel's sources also reported that US President Donald Trump has requested the Iranian side's fastest possible response to the American de-escalation proposal. It is noted that the negotiation process is proceeding smoothly, and Iran could transmit its response to Pakistani mediators as early as today.
On May 6, NBC reported that Trump had announced the suspension of the Project Freedom escort mission in the Strait of Hormuz. According to the network's sources, the White House paused amid criticism from Saudi Arabia for not having been given advance notice of the operation. Riyadh allegedly not only banned American military flights from Prince Sultan Air Base but also banned flights through Saudi airspace.
Earlier, the American leader announced in the media the suspension of the Project Freedom mission in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump explained that this decision was made to see if the agreement with Iran could ultimately be finalized and signed.
Prior to this, Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz in response to attacks by the US and Israel that began on February 28. In a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian expressed appreciation for Russia's principled position on the conflict in the Middle East and thanked him.
Posted by: badanov ||
05/08/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1772 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
[NY Post] Even more fallout. Peel the onion
They just never lear.
The head of a Texas Islamic group that rented out a taxpayer-funded waterpark for an event that was advertised as "Muslim only"
…the East Plano Islamic Center in Plano, Texas…
runs a childhood education center with the exact same unfortunate ’Learing Center’ typo first seen at an infamous daycare in Minneapolis.
The Excellence Early "Learing" Center typo drew comparisons to the now-infamous Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis which is under investigators’ microscope as a possible fraud. excellenceearlylearningcenter.com
The "Excellence Early Learing Center," as its misspelled website header reads — located in the Fort Worth suburb of Hurst — offers a variety of programs for youngsters from infants to pre-K, and promises to provide children with "the loving, personal care that they need to thrive and feel confident."
The center boasts "multiculturalism, small classroom sizes, healthy eating and a warm, loving environment that feels like home" and staff with degrees in "education, accounting, biology, pharmacology, science, nursing and mathematics from their home countries."
Its owner, head operator and curriculum designer is Aminah Knight, who boasts a master’s degree from the University of Southern California and a doctorate from Vanderbilt University.
Earlier this week, Knight and her DFW Epic Eid organization drew massive criticism for a flyer advertising an event at Epic Waters in Grand Prairie billed as "Muslim only" and requiring modest swimsuits for all attendees.
Epic Waters, a sprawling, 80,000-square-feet indoor waterpark opened in 2017 at a cost of $88 million — funded by a 0.25% sales tax hike residents approved at the ballot box in 2014.
The FAQ for the third-annual event, which was being held to celebrate the Muslim holiday Eid, initially proclaimed "the entire waterpark has been exclusively reserved for Muslims."
After the backlash, Knight modified the advert to omit the exclusionary language, and acknowledged to The Post in an email that the original messaging wasn’t intended to bar non-Muslims.
#2
"Mohammedans dearly love Learing!"
"How queer, Mr. Lear, but... endearing."
"Hear them sing to the young
In a guttural tongue
Untranslatable smut-- what?!? Oh, leering."
[IsraelTimes] Amount is three times more than $8.6 billion sale that was originally reported, according to Bloomberg; weapons not expected to arrive in near future
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration... approved $25.8 billion in sales of missile interceptors and other arms to Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, 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... and the United Arab Emirates last week, triple the amount originally announced, Bloomberg News reported.
On May 1, the US State Department said it was approving military sales totaling over $8.6 billion to Israel, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The announcement did not mention Bahrain. Rubio’s emergency declaration allowed the sales to bypass a mandatory review period.
The reason for the discrepancy is that the US said the sales are an update to existing approvals, rather than new deals, Bloomberg reported.
The announcement came amid a ceasefire in the US-Israeli war with Iran, during which Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... pounded Israel and Gulf states with repeated missile volleys, testing their missile defense systems. That has prompted mounting concerns over the countries’ dwindling interceptor stocks.
Iran shot missiles at the UAE earlier this week, as tensions rose during the truce. Israel deployed an Iron Dome battery along with troops who know how to operate the missile defense system to the UAE to help Abu Dhabi fend off attacks from Iran during the war, an Israeli official and an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel, confirming a report in the Axios news site.
The officials denied a separate report claiming that Israel also deployed its Iron Beam laser-based air defense system to Abu Dhabi, explaining that the technology is too sensitive for use abroad.
But Israel and other countries in the region may still face a long wait before they receive the interceptors.
"The only way that you really get any delivery timelines that are faster than two or three years — and that’s optimistic — is if we have it in stock," Elaine McCusker, a former Pentagon official, told Bloomberg. "You’re definitely not going to get something for the current conflict."
[IsraelTimes] Loay Alnaji will spend no more than a year in county jail after pleading guilty to all charges including involuntary manslaughter
The local director of the Anti-Defamation League was one of multiple Jewish leaders to decry a plea deal reached Tuesday in the trial of a man charged with causing the 2023 death of a Jewish pro-Israel protester, Paul Kessler, in a Los Angeles suburb.
Under the terms of the deal, defendant Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji
…a computer science professor, he’s been a faculty advisor for Moorpark College’s Muslim Student Association — a long-established youth arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America — and is an active member of the Islamic Society of Simi Valley. His YouTube channel, shut down after his arrest, while said to be an adjunct to his classroom teaching, was reportedly chock full of videos in Arabic.
would face no more than a year in county jail.
Alnaji, 53, of Moorpark, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, admitted to hitting Kessler, then 69, in the head with a megaphone during dueling pro-Paleostinian and pro-Israel demonstrations in a Los Angeles suburb in November 2023.
Kessler later died of his injuries, and his death became the first tied to demonstrations surrounding the Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... -led October 7, 2023, attack and subsequent war 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... in the United States.
On Tuesday, Alnaji pleaded guilty to all charges related to Kessler’s death, including felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury, after initially pleading not guilty.
While the maximum sentence for his charges is four years in state prison, the court indicated that, as a result of the guilty plea, it is likely to place Alnaji on formal probation and that he will serve no more than 365 days in county jail. A county jail sentence is generally considered less severe than time in state prison and is served locally, often with possibilities for work release, electronic monitoring or early release.
Alnaji’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 25, and he remains free on $50,000 bail, according to the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office.
Both state prosecutors and Jewish advocates denounced the deal, saying the sentence would be too light.
"Alnaji should be sentenced to prison for his violent mostly peaceful behavior, and our office strongly objects to any lesser sentence," Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said in a statement. "While no amount of punishment will ever fully account for the Kessler family loss, a prison commitment underscores the severity of this crime and will deter others from committing similar acts of violence."
Joshua Burt, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of Santa Barbara/Tri-State counties, said the deal would yield a sentence too light to be a deterrent.
"The sentence attached to this plea deal is woefully inadequate and emboldens others to act in anger against the Jewish community," Burt wrote in a post on Instagram. "Without real, lasting consequences, men with evil intent or anger in their hearts will not be deterred from harming an already vulnerable community, elderly and Jewish alike."
Citing the recent spate of violent mostly peaceful attacks on Jewish communities and individuals, including last year’s deadly shooting of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, DC, and the fatal Molotov cocktailing attack on a march in support of the Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado — for which the perpetrator was handed a sentence of life without parole on Thursday — Burt warned that the plea deal will "only serve to further isolate and victimize Jewish communities in the United States and beyond."
Rabbi Noah Farkas, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, told JTA in a statement that Kessler’s death carried deep significance because "not only was he the first Jew to die [in the US] during the Israel-Hamas protest movement after October 7, but he did so while peacefully supporting his people."
More from the Times of Israel:
A former Southern California college professor has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and battery in the death of a Jewish counterprotester during US demonstrations in 2023 over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, 53, was accused of striking Paul Kessler with a megaphone in November 2023 during a confrontation at an event that started as a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Thousand Oaks, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles.
Kessler was among a group of pro-Israel demonstrators who showed up at the event that was advertised as a peaceful gathering, officials said. About 75 people in total were there and patrols in the area reported seeing no indication of violence 15 minutes before the altercation happened.
After being struck, Kessler fell backward and struck his head on the pavement. He died the next day in a hospital. He was 69.
Involuntary manslaughter is the unintentional killing of another person.
While the Ventura County Sheriff told reporters in November of 2023 that investigators had not ruled out the possibility of the incident being a hate crime, Alnaji was not charged with and did not plead guilty to a hate crime.
Alnaji, a former professor of computer science at Moorpark College, at the time stayed at the scene and told deputies he had called 911.
He also admitted to a special allegation that he personally inflicted great bodily injury and to aggravating factors that he used a weapon and that the victim was particularly vulnerable, according to the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office.
Alnaji’s lawyer, Ron Bamieh, said he and his client have both received multiple death threats and Alnaji feared coverage of the trial could endanger his family further. Alnaji has been out after posting $50,000 bail.
Following the incident, Fox News reported that Alnaji shared a video on his since-deleted Instagram account that featured a pro-Palestinian activist who compared the Hamas terror group to civil rights leaders Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.
The court has told Alnaji to expect to spend time in jail and then be put on probation, Bamieh said. He would likely serve about six months with good behavior, he added. The maximum sentence for the charges is up to four years in prison.
Bamieh said the brief time in jail followed by probation has been the norm for cases in which the defendant was not the aggressor in a fight that led to death.
Prosecutors have objected to that.
“Alnaji should be sentenced to prison for his violent behavior, and our office strongly objects to any lesser sentence,” District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said in a statement. “While no amount of punishment will ever fully account for the Kessler family loss, a prison commitment underscores the severity of this crime and will deter others from committing similar acts of violence.”
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/08/2026 2026-05-08 05:32 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1820 views]
Top|| File under: Muslim Brotherhood
#1
If they can try the cops in Rodney King beating, once in state and once in federal court, they can do the same here. You just need to be 'creative' with how the crime is defined.
[IsraelTimes] Transfer is largest sum US-led oversight body has received to date after $17 billion in pledges, indicating Abu Dhabi’s commitment to initiative even as Iran war has forced countries to reprioritize spending.
[NY Post] A US government watchdog has found at least four more staffers for the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee aid agency “kidnapped” Israelis and aided Hamas’ terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023, information that is likely to feed into a federal criminal probe, sources told The Post.
The USAID Office of Inspector General, in an April 30 investigative summary, cited “four additional current or former staff” at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, three of whom were teachers and one of whom was a social worker.
The unnamed staffers were “alleged to have participated in the holding of civilian hostages kidnapped from Israel and/or the terrorist activities in Israel on October 7, 2023,” the summary stated.
More than 100 UNRWA officials are being investigated by the IG’s office — with evidence now supporting at least 21 were affiliated with Hamas or participated in the terror group’s massacre of 1,200 in the Jewish state, including 46 US citizens. More than 250 hostages were also taken back to the Gaza Strip.
“The recent investigation by the USAID IG confirms that the UN is deficient in vetting its own staff for ties to terrorist organizations,” a senior State Department official told The Post.
“As the UN itself doesn’t consider Hamas a terrorist organization, both UN agencies and local NGOs [non-governmental organizations] may still hire Hamas-affiliated staff that place programs at high risk for diversion. This will not be tolerated.”
All 21 UNRWA staffers have since been proposed for suspension or debarment from receiving federal funds for the next decade. Past USAID OIG reports have called out the risk of hundreds of millions of dollars in US taxpayer funding to the UN agency being diverted to terror groups.
In response to the IG probe’s findings, Department of Justice senior counsel Leo Terrell also posted on X of the four most recent employees flagged for Hamas ties: “Jail them!”
The DOJ and FBI have already been looking into allegations that UNRWA employees assisted Hamas, according to two sources familiar with the matter. One of those people noted that USAID OIG’s evidence could be forwarded eventually to prosecutors should they decide to bring a case.
“The FBI is definitely involved in it on the counterterrorism side,” the other source noted, adding that “the murder of Americans” in Israel had prompted their involvement.
UNRWA had already faced a civil suit that alleged it “aided and abetted” Hamas by providing more than $1 billion to Gaza, but a Manhattan federal judge ruled last October that the agency has immunity from such legal claims since it is part of the United Nations.
A bit of an amusing double entendre in the title as the English word for the Druze and the Russian word for friend are nearly identical.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Shamil Kerashev
[REGNUM] A new, rather unexpected player has emerged on Israel's political landscape, which is ravaged by various crises. The local Druze community has announced the creation of its own party, Brit Achim (Union of Brothers).
The Druze are known in Israel primarily as a highly entrenched professional military caste. They are the only ethnic and religious group of Arab descent whose members are required to serve in the army, often building successful careers there. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the party is led by their former commander, Wajdi Sarhan, a veteran of the Second Lebanon War.
According to him, Brit Achim has already set a specific goal: to win two seats in the upcoming Knesset (parliament) elections and to represent the interests of the Druze as an independent, self-sufficient force.
In analyzing these statements, it's worth keeping in mind that Israeli Druze have never had much reason to complain about a lack of representation. They have consistently run for parliament on the lists of heavyweight parties, whether the ruling Likud or Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu. Furthermore, just recently, Yashar Party leader Gadi Eisenkot offered to allocate a seat to a Druze.
The well-established system, on the one hand, consistently allowed major factions to garner a certain number of votes at polling stations in Maghar and other Druze settlements. On the other hand, it gave the Druze candidates themselves a chance to fulfill their political ambitions.
However, as the aforementioned Colonel Sarhan notes, this is no longer enough: "We've been given promises again and again, only to have them vanish the day after the elections. Now we want to go beyond simply approving of someone else's party discipline, and actually take care of ourselves."
Will it be possible to back up these ambitions with actual capabilities? Experience shows that to overcome the electoral threshold of 3.25%, a party needs to secure 140,000–160,000 votes. Meanwhile, the Israeli Druze population does not exceed 150,000, of which approximately 90,000 are eligible to vote.
There are also Syrian Druze in the occupied Golan Heights. In recent years, many of them have begun applying for Israeli citizenship and will be able to officially cast ballots. However, according to various estimates, this number ranges from 6,000 to 10,000 voters. The threshold remains insurmountable, as it is extremely difficult to imagine anyone other than the Druze voting for them.
Consequently, their independent political pursuits create the impression of a pointless adventure. However, according to Israeli analysts, things aren't quite that simple—since behind Sarhan's loud statements, there are likely internal intrigues being woven, in which the hand of Benjamin Netanyahu is easily discernible.
The most primitive of the realistic scenarios assumes the role of the “Union of Brothers” as a spoiler, clearly not claiming anything, but quite capable of neutralizing inconvenient Druze voices.
It's important to emphasize here: while the older generation of Druze, along with career security officials, traditionally gravitate toward Likud, the youth and intelligentsia increasingly favor the liberal, centrist, and moderate-right opposition. Consequently, they are prepared to support Netanyahu's most dangerous opponent—the recently formed Be'Yahad alliance of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. At such a moment, the sudden creation of an ethnic party would allow for the indiscriminate suppression and banal suppression of all Druze votes within the communal agenda.
But a far more elegant combination cannot be ruled out, in which the Druze party, just before the elections, will join one of Netanyahu's other traditional allies in order to enter the Knesset as a formally equal partner.
True, there's still the question of which of the technically possible alliances is most likely. The ultra-Orthodox—the Sephardic Shas and the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism—are immediately ruled out due to insurmountable theological differences.
Likud itself is unlikely to need a direct bloc either. It's one thing to slightly dilute the party lists with non-Jewish candidates, as has already happened with the Druze, Arab Muslims, and Ethiopians. But it's quite another to drag along a separate movement with its own program. After all, this simply isn't the status of Israel's most powerful (albeit significantly weakened) political brand.
So the only relatively viable option left is a merger between Brit Achim and the far-right front of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
At first glance, such a merger might seem completely paradoxical, not to mention ridiculous. However, while employing the harshest rhetoric toward "ordinary"—or supposedly disloyal—Arabs, both Jewish radical politicians regularly make overtures to those who ostentatiously espouse the Star of David. That is, firstly, the Druze, and secondly, the Circassians, who also serve in the armed forces and law enforcement, paying their "blood tax."
It was Smotrich, as head of the Ministry of Finance, who about a year ago lobbied for the allocation of 4 billion shekels from the budget for the development of Druze and Circassian settlements. This enormous sum is to be spent on the construction of new housing, educational institutions, and social infrastructure.
Ben-Gvir, while heading the Interior Ministry, repeatedly thanked both nations for their active participation in border defense. And, of course, he was also solving important reputational problems—after all, when an outspoken nationalist publicly showers national minorities with compliments, it's a little harder to accuse him of promoting apartheid ideology.
Hypothetically, nothing would prevent this tried-and-true image trick from being taken to the next level, transformed into a tool of real politics. However, in the case of the Circassians, there are no objective prerequisites: their 5,000-strong diaspora in Israel is too small to significantly influence the electoral arithmetic, let alone create their own party.
However, the demographic weight of the Druze gives them the opportunity to aim for something much greater than just a "showcase minority." At the finish line of an unprecedentedly tough election race, 100,000 votes will likely become, at a minimum, a liquid asset for Netanyahu's coalition. At the most, a decisive factor in the fight to maintain a parliamentary majority.
However, if this is indeed the case, the prime minister's team should not discount certain risks. Chief among them is the presence within the Druze community of a shadowy group of young officers who remain de jure loyal to the center but categorically disagree with the 2018 law declaring Israel an exclusively Jewish nation-state.
Israel is not exclusively Jewish by law. By law it is a Jewish nation, just like 57 nations define themselves as Moslem and while 120 countries have Christian majorities, only about two dozen define themselves as Christian. Like the Christian countries, Israel’s non-Jewish citizens have freedom of worship and equal rights in general under the law. It’s only the Moslem countries that penalize members of minority religions, including other varieties of Islam, for stubbornly clinging to their faith.
The position of these military men, who wield considerable authority among some of their fellow tribesmen, is well known. In their view, neither massive financial injections, nor other demonstrative incentives, nor any ad hoc political alliances are capable of offsetting the diminished sense of dignity of those who have essentially been declared "second-class citizens."
This means there's no guarantee that the proposed play of the Druze card by any wing of the Zionists won't lead to a split in the community and won't result in extremely painful sabotage for Netanyahu and his radical partners.
#1
The last paragraphs are all nonsense. The Druze know that they're a minority wherever they live. And it's a lot better being a minority in a Jewish state than in any Arab pseudo-nation.
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.
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
