Latest news with #DanielPearl
Euronews
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Terror to tourism? Hostage-style video invites visitors to Afghanistan
Two men kneel on the ground — hands seemingly bound behind their backs and heads covered with black plastic bags — as the armed men looming over them stare into the camera and issue a chilling demand. "Ciao Italia. If you want your two citizens safely back in Italy, you must send us $5 billion via bitcoin," the men wielding a rifle say in a video widely shared on X, including by many Taliban-linked accounts. The supposed hostage video takes a twist when the captors remove the black bags to reveal two smiling young men, give a thumbs-up and say: "Welcome to Afghanistan!" The rest of the 30-second clip — which is in fact a promotional video made by a tour agency — shows the visitors visiting communities with their Afghan hosts, playing with children, photographing nature, eating local food and trying on clothes at a market. A previous video produced by Raza Afghanistan follows the same template, but with an ominous "Message for America" threatened before the purported victims are revealed to be US tourists, and an ensuing montage shows them enjoying a tour of the country. The video further shows the men examining a US-made assault rifle, laughing that the safety is not on, eating large watermelons and their Afghan hosts doing pullups on the barrel of a tank gun, among other scenes. The social media stunts are reminiscent of hostage execution videos such as the 2002 beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and the 2014 decapitation of James Foley, also a reporter from the US, by the so-called Islamic State group in Syria. Reactions to Raza Afghanistan's videos on X have ranged from praise for the "great promotion and unique concept" to criticism over a lack of women in the footage and an unwillingness to visit a country where women's and girls' rights are so severely curtailed. In a recent post on Instagram, the tour agency's founder Yosaf Aryubi explained how he wanted to challenge stereotypes — and said he had "no affiliation with any government". "You also understand that the media and Hollywood painted the mountains of Afghanistan and those who protect them, to be merciless and wicked," wrote Aryubi, 28, who grew up in the US and now splits his time between California and Kabul. "Such a blessing to share experiences in the country I couldn't travel much in due to the situation during the 20-year occupation." Taliban eye tourism boom Nearly four years after seizing control of Afghanistan, the Taliban is increasingly eager to attract tourists to the country and boost revenue for the fledgling industry. Afghanistan's isolation on the global stage, largely because of the Taliban's restrictions on women and girls, has left much of its 41 million people mired in poverty. As it struggles to attract foreign investment, the potential of tourism is far from lost on the government. "The Afghan people are warm and welcoming and wish to host tourists from other countries and engage with them," Deputy Minister of Tourism Qudratullah Jamal said in an interview last month. "Tourism brings many benefits to a country. We have considered those benefits and aim for our nation to take full advantage of them," he added. Nearly 9,000 foreign tourists visited Afghanistan last year, while some 3,000 people arrived in the first three months of this year, according to the tourism ministry. Four decades of near-continuous conflict kept nearly all tourists away from the landlocked country of towering mountains, deep gorges and millennia of history. The Taliban's takeover from a US-backed government in August 2021 stunned the world and sent thousands of Afghans fleeing. While the previous bloodshed from frequent bombings and suicide attacks is largely over, sporadic attacks do still occur — as do kidnappings and detentions of foreigners. IS gunmen killed six people, including three Spanish tourists, in a May 2024 attack in Bamiyan, one of the country's main tourist attractions where centuries-old giant Buddhas carved into the cliffs were blown up by the Taliban in 2001. In February this year, a British couple in their 70s who ran education programmes in Afghanistan were arrested by the Taliban. In April, a Taliban interior ministry spokesperson said Peter and Barbie Reynolds were being investigated over a "small matter" and that they would soon face a court's judgement based on Islamic law. Meanwhile, George Glezmann, a US tourist who had been detained by the Taliban while visiting Kabul in 2022, was freed in March after being held for more than two years.
National Post
06-07-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Barbara Kay: How Islamists hijacked leftist oppression narratives
Article content A former Wall Street Journal reporter, Indian-born Muslim Nomani was a friend and colleague of Daniel Pearl, the WSJ's South Asia bureau chief who was kidnapped and publicly beheaded in 2002 by rabidly Judeophobic al-Qaida operatives. Pearl's gruesome death galvanized Nomani to political activism as a Muslim 'Reformer,' a Muslim who supports an interpretation of Islam that is compatible with human rights, gender equality, religious (or atheist) pluralism and secular governance. Article content Irritated by her criticism, Muslim Brothers' machinations drew Nomani into a world of grief orchestrated by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), nominally a 'civil rights' organization but in Nomani's account, 'a front for an extremist form of Islam.' But she persevered, and Woke Army is, therefore, not only an enlightening exposé of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, but the absorbing story of Nomani's personal near-martyrdom and eventual triumph. Article content Article content To silence Nomani, CAIR foot soldiers cooked up a years-long character assassination campaign through 'the deadly underbelly of cyber jihad' — specifically Loonwatch, a GoDaddy website that protected their users' anonymity. Her foes there labelled her a 'Zionist media whore' amongst other slurs, and accused her of being funded by Israel. In 2018, Nomani responded with a defamation suit that halted Loonwatch harassment and permitted her to subpoena internet service providers for the real identities of 48 'John Doe' anonymous stalkers, most of them outed in Woke Army. Article content The 'perception management' campaign found low-hanging fruit in left-leaning political leaders. President Obama, who flinched at Black anti-Americanism and antisemitism, was eager to please on the equally phobic Islamist file. When CAIR issued a statement Nomani described as advocating for 'separating the brutal actions of ISIS from the faith of Islam,' Obama obliged, she writes, with his government agencies giving in to pressure to scrub terms like 'jihadist' and replace them with 'extremist.' Article content Although Nomani's research treats Islamism in the U.S., her themes map neatly onto Canada. Following the Islamism-driven 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Justin Trudeau, asked to identify the bombing's 'root causes,' reflexively saw, heard, and spoke no Islamist evil, responding: 'there is no question that this happened because of someone who feels completely excluded, someone who feels completely at war with innocence, at war with society.' Article content The Muslim Reform Movement, in which Nomani and Canada's own heroic Raheel Raza play prominent roles, has been stalwart in its resistance to Islamist bullying, but their members are in a David-and-Goliath relationship with what Nomani describes as Muslim Brotherhood's well-funded machine. They get worn down by what Nomani's young son articulated as a 'terrorism of the mind.' Article content It would help if politicians cold-shouldered Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups and instead elevated Muslim Reformers' public status, seating them 'above the salt,' so to speak. Active pushback against institutionalized Islamism is in motion in the U.S. But in Canada, alas, 'perception management' rules at the desk where the buck on a threat to our cultural health is supposed to stop. Article content
Fox News
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
ASRA NOMANI: Iran's ideological foot soldiers wage proxy war in America
Even as President Donald Trump announces a "Complete and Total ceasefire" between Israel and Iran, there is a chant that is certain to echo for weeks to come: "There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!" That was the fierce battle cry of a young Palestinian American man from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, as he pumped his fist in the air in front of the White House on Sunday, with protesters waving flags of Iran and Palestine beside him. A phalanx of young Iranian American girls stood nearby, watching intently, some of them chanting quietly along, others fidgeting with their head scarfs, tight around their faces in the sweltering 90-degree heat. This scene – a disturbing portrait of youth absorbing radicalization – was one front in a national propaganda war that a network of 93 groups with an estimated $100 million in annual revenues has unleashed on America in a coordinated proxy campaign for the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to my latest reporting for the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative named for Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. I identify all of the groups by name in a Pearl Project database I am updating in real time to document the professional protest industry sowing chaos in America. You can be certain the list will keep growing even amid talk of peace in the Middle East. This pro-Iran network includes socialist revolutionaries, Islamist activists, foreign-influenced nonprofits and even political operatives from Democratic groups including Indivisible Action, 50501 and Progressive Democrats of America — groups that have fused their interests to topple power in America and created a coalition running cover for America's enemies. They are the red-green alliance that I call the Woke Army. They aren't buying the ceasefire because war stokes their agendas. About five of 10 of the groups are self-described Marxist, socialist, or communist, openly praising the Chinese Communist Party, Marx and Lenin. Another two of 10 of the groups are aligned with Islamist interests. The final three of 10 are socialist- and Islamist-adjacent groups, a disturbing place for Democratic groups to be. They do not disclose their donors, making them classic "dark money" groups. Early Sunday, at a press conference with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Cain warned that "it would be a very bad idea for Iran or its proxies to attempt to attack American forces." Most Americans assumed he meant military operations. But the truth is: some of those proxies are already here. Not with bombs, but with bullhorns. Just after 2 p.m. on Sunday, the D.C. theater of this operation came into focus. A formation of about 20 members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition — a self-described Marxist, Leninist, Communist group — advanced across Lafayette Park with the discipline of a street-level infantry unit. At the front, two men carried cameras to capture the propaganda about to unfold. Behind them, two women in shorts and sneakers hauled a pop-up wooden stage. Three more followed, gripping the wooden handles of pre-printed placards with the message, "HANDS OFF IRAN," and laying the signs on the curb in front of the White House for easy pickup by demonstrators they'd summoned in an email blast. One young man in khaki shorts and sunglasses pushed a shopping cart filled with drums. Another pulled a collapsible red wagon loaded with megaphones and boxes of gear. Yet another cradled rolled-up banners. Even at this protest for Iran, demonstrators wore the black-and-white keffiyeh, the sartorial propaganda of the Palestinian intifada, because Iran's "Death to Israel" slogan hasn't just inspired hatred; it has financed, armed and directed terrorism against Jews in Israel for decades. A man shrouded in a black face mask and the keffiyeh, held a drum over his shoulders, wearing the Party for Socialism and Liberation's logo on the front and its motto on the back: "SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE." These foot soldiers moved with purpose and precision — establishing their base directly in front of the White House gates. Like a field marshal, one of the men in sunglasses and khaki shorts directed two Black street vendors to give them space for their ideal staging ground and move their carts filled with SpongeBob Square Pants Popsicles, Blue Bunny cones and red-white-and-blue rocket pops. The vendors had been there since 10 a.m.. But the organizers had a higher purpose that transcends any ceasefire: to deploy an asymmetric warfare campaign: delegitimizing the American government and destabilizing the nation from within in an operation that intelligence and law enforcement understand as "malign foreign influence" – three words that every American should know. The mission statements, protest chants and statements of protest organizers at the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition reveal their real function is to advance ideological agendas that mirror the messaging of regimes like Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba. At last count, the pro-Iran groups are active in at least 50 cities nationwide — from Ukiah, Ca., to Salisbury, Ct.. beyond any ceasefire. One of their field marshals opened the protest with a chant familiar to veterans of the anti-Israel movement: "Free, free Palestine!" They were the words that Elias Gonzalez, radicalized as a Party for Socialism and Liberation member, chanted after recently murdering two Israeli Embassy officials. Over the next hour, organizers followed a playbook: railing into the microphone against Trump, Israel and the United States. The leaders of the "red" wing of the Woke Army aren't "anti-war" grassroots operations, and Americans should know their names and financial structures: Members of the pro-Iran "green" wing, representing the color associated with Islam, include: In the crowd on Sunday, Sara Hawrami, director of staff and operations at the National Iranian American Council, weaved through the crowd in front of the White House, distributing "NO WAR WITH IRAN!" signs from a bundle cradled in her arms. A man stood with a CodePink t-shirt that read: "PEACE WITH IRAN." The many organizations in the Woke Army don't register with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite many of them parroting propaganda lines from foreign regimes. In March, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee urging senators to require these organizations to register as foreign agents. In April, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel requesting investigations into CodePink and The People's Forum. "Secretive foreign lobbying and public relations campaigns by China and other adversaries undermines the political will and interests of the American people," Grasley wrote. Earlier this month, Senate Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer and other senators sent a letter to Singam to produce documents into his funding of the People's Forum, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation and any ties between these organizations and the Chinese Communist Party. The senators have it right. What looks like decentralized activism is, in fact, a centralized political warfare strategy aimed directly at American institutions — not just political parties. At the White House, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation handed out flyers for the next big "direct action" – a "National March on Washington" planned for June 28 at 1 p.m. The flyer included a QR code and a URL created by the ANSWER Coalition: It offered a sign-up for New York residents to travel to D.C. by chartered bus from The People's Forum HQ on West 37th Street in Manhattan—$60 per seat, or $120 for a "Solidarity Rate Ticket." In fine print at the bottom were the slick logos for their allies in the Woke Army, featuring the red wing – the ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, Democratic Socialists of America, The People's Forum – and the green wing, represented by the Palestinian Youth Movement and the National Iranian American Council. Ironically, after seizing power in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini quickly turned on one of the very groups that had helped galvanize the revolution: leftists and socialists, including influential thinkers like writer Ali Shariati. One of the most dangerous elements of these protest groups is their camouflage. NBC News, USA Today, India Today and other media outlets reported that "anti-war" protests "flood" the cities and "erupt" on the streets, with no mention of their radical agendas and propaganda for foreign powers. Some media outlets even relied on footage from "Breakthrough News," a propaganda wing of the ANSWER Coalition, according to the 2023 tax records for the Progress Unity Fund, which said it doled out $232,244 to ANSWER Coalition and other "progressive" organizations for "mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people in a mass action in Washington, D.C., that promoted a permanent ceasefire to end the war that took thousands of civilian lives in Gaza." It said it pumped another $45,000 to BreakThrough Media, based in New York City, for "Gen support educational programs." Sure enough, BreakThrough Media's camera crew posted a video on Instagram from the White House of the cute Iranian American children waving their placards behind the headline: "Iranian Children Join Anti-War Protest outside White House." Max Reed, 21, a member of the American Communist Party, stood at the edge of the protest, propping the only American flag in the crowd over his shoulder. "A lot of American so-called 'left-wing' groups don't like the American flag and don't like the working class," he admitted. A comrade handed out a press release with the headline: "Against the Criminal Imperialist War on Iran," denouncing "the U.S. regime," "the Zionist entity" of Israel and "its agents." Photographers scrambled to take photos of the children, the perfect props for the ideological warriors leading the protests. One of their mothers stage-managed them behind the cameras. Their parents, who declined to share their names, said they had traveled from Michigan to visit relatives in the area and brought their children to the protest. That morning, they said their older children had made protest signs while sitting at the café of the Diyanet Center of America in nearby Lanham, Md, a sprawling Turkish mosque, Islamic school, and restaurant complex built as a soft power project by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an Islamist. The parents said they bought fly swatters at a local Giant to use as makeshift handles for the protest signs. One of the mothers said she didn't support the Islamic Republic of Iran but didn't want war in her homeland. She said she didn't agree with the socialists in the crowd. But messages on the signs were clearly politically aligned: "Impeach Trump," they read. Nearby, an Iranian-American woman with a keffiyeh tightly wrapped around her face, waved a black flag, beckoning the "mahdi," the messiah in the eschatology, or end times revelations, of Muslims in the Shia sect of Islam practiced in Iran. Finally at about hour's end, the protest ended quickly. Demonstrators returned their signs to the curb by the White House gates, where a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation bundled them up with a rubber band. As the ideological operatives for the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition walked back into Lafayette Park with their pop-up stage, signs, red wagon and megaphones, another set of protestors, these ones from Democratic Socialists of America's campaign, rolled onto Pennsylvania Avenue for their moment in front of the White House. "War on Iran, we say no!" they chanted. Regular Americans smiled and laughed, mostly oblivious to the chants, taking selfies in front of the White House. The Iranian American parents hustled their children to the corner Peet's Coffee for snacks. The vendors shouted, "Ice cold Gatorade!" and returned to selling their SpongeBob SquarePants Popsicles, uninterrupted, while the day's ideologues headed home to upload their video footage to social media, later posting Instagram videos from across the nation to create the myth of the marching millions with headlines blasting: "HAPPENING NOW."
India.com
07-06-2025
- Politics
- India.com
Pakistan humiliated again as US MP gives stern warning to Bilawal Bhutto's delegation, says, 'Eliminate terrorism and...'
Pakistan humiliated again as US MP gives stern warning to Bilawal Bhutto's delegation, says, 'Eliminate terrorism and...' Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is leading a team of experts to inform the world about the recent conflict with India, has been facing humiliation throughout his US tour. US lawmaker Brad Sherman gave a strong message to Pakistan and said that it should take decisive action against the terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). He described this terrorist organization as vile and said that this group is responsible for many heinous crimes including the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. While meeting the Pakistani delegation led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in Washington, Sherman said that Pakistan should take all possible steps to completely eliminate this despicable terrorist organization and fight strongly against terrorism in the region. Interestingly, Indian delegation led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is also present in Washington, which is briefed the US officials about 'Operation Sindoor' and the recent terrorist attack in Pahalgam. India has blamed Pakistan-backed terrorists for this attack and has reiterated its zero tolerance policy towards cross-border terrorism. Brad Sherman on X said, 'I told the Pakistani delegation the importance of the fight against terrorism, especially against the group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which killed Daniel Pearl, a resident of my constituency, in 2002. His family still lives in California. Terrorist Omar Saeed Sheikh was convicted in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl.' Role of Jaish-e-Mohammed Jaish-e-Mohammed is declared a banned terrorist organization by the United Nations and is also believed to be responsible for several major attacks in India, including the 2019 Pulwama attack, in which 40 Indian soldiers were martyred. Apart from terrorism, Brad Sherman also expressed concern over the condition of minorities in Pakistan. He said that Christians, Hindus and Ahmadiya Muslims in Pakistan should get complete freedom to follow their faith without fear and participate in the democratic system. Demand for release of Dr. Shakeel Afridi The US lawmaker also demanded the release of Dr. Shakeel Afridi, who allegedly ran a fake polio vaccination campaign to find Osama bin Laden with the help of the CIA, was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to 33 years. Sherman said that the release of Dr. Afridi would be a big step towards justice and closure to the victims of 9/11.
Deccan Herald
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Deccan Herald
US lawmaker tells Pak delegation to eliminate ‘vile' terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed
I emphasized to the Pakistani delegation the importance of combatting terrorism, and in particular, the group Jaish-e-Mohammed, who murdered my constituent Daniel Pearl in 2002. Pearl's family continues to live in my district, and Pakistan should do all it can to eliminate this…
