World
As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat
Washington — After a student leader from the historic Tiananmen Square demonstrations ran for Congress in New York in 2022, a Chinese intelligence operator quickly hired a private investigator to look for any mistresses or tax issues that could jeopardize the candidate’s candidacy, according to prosecutors.
“In the end,” the operative warned his contact, “violence would be fine too.”
Tehran was listening as an Iranian journalist and activist in exile in the United States spoke out against Iran’s human rights violations. According to the Justice Department, members of an Eastern European organized crime group surveyed her Brooklyn home and planned to assassinate her in a murder-for-hire scheme directed from Iran. The attempt was disrupted, and criminal charges were filed.
The instances highlight the extraordinary efforts taken by countries such as China and Iran to intimidate, harass and even plot attacks on political opponents and activists in the United States. They demonstrate the alarming effects that geopolitical tensions may have for regular citizens, as governments that have historically been intolerant of dissent within their borders are increasingly casting a wary eye on those who cry out thousands of kilometers away.
“We’re not living in fear or paranoia, but the reality is very clear: the Islamic Republic wants us dead, and we have to look over our shoulder every day,” Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad stated in an interview.
The Justice Department has taken note of the matter, charging dozens of defendants with acts of global repression during the last five years. Senior FBI officials told The Associated Press that the tactics have become more sophisticated, including the use of proxies such as private investigators and organized crime leaders, and that countries are more willing to cross “serious red lines” ranging from harassment to violence to project power abroad and suppress dissent.
AP News – VOR News Image
As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat
Foreign adversaries are increasingly prioritizing well-funded intimidation campaigns for their intelligence services, and more countries — including some not traditionally hostile to the United States — have targeted critics in America and elsewhere in the West, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their investigations.
The Justice Department, for example, reported last November a foiled conspiracy to assassinate a Sikh activist in New York, which officials said was ordered by an Indian government official. Rwanda kidnapped Paul Rusesabagina of “Hotel Rwanda” fame from Texas and returned him to the country before releasing him, while Saudi Arabia has persecuted dissidents online and in person, according to the FBI.
“This is a huge priority for us,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security officer, citing an “alarming rise” in government-directed harassment.
He stated that the prosecutions are intended not just to hold harassers accountable but also to convey that the actions are “unacceptable from the perspective of United States sovereignty and defending American values — values around free expression and free association.”
Other countries have witnessed a rise in incidents.
According to an April Reporters Without Borders investigation, London is a “hotspot” for Iranian attacks on Persian-language broadcasters, with British counterterrorism police probing a one-month-old attack on an Iranian television presenter outside his London home. Despite Moscow’s protestations, harassment and attacks on Russians in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, including a journalist who became ill as a result of a suspected poisoning in Germany, have long been blamed on Russian intelligence agents.
Inside the United States, the trend is exacerbated by a deteriorating relationship with Iran and tensions with China over issues ranging from trade and intellectual property theft to electoral interference. Emerging technologies such as generative AI are also expected to be used for future harassment, according to a new danger assessment from US intelligence authorities.
“Transnational repression is a manifestation of the broader conflict between authoritarian regimes and democratic countries,” Olsen added. “It’s been a consistent theme of the way the world is changing from a geopolitical standpoint over the last decade.”
According to officials and supporters, China and Iran are two primary offenders.
Emails sent to the Iranian mission at the United Nations have yet to be responded to. A representative for the Chinese Embassy in Washington denied that the country engages in the practice, stating that the government “strictly abides by international law, and fully respects the law enforcement sovereignty of other countries.”
“We resolutely oppose ‘long-arm jurisdiction,'” the statement stated.
AP News – VOR News Image
As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat
However, US officials said China developed a campaign to do just that, starting “Operation Fox Hunt” to locate down Chinese expats targeted by Beijing to pressure them into returning to face charges.
A former Chinese city government official residing in New Jersey discovered a message in Chinese characters pinned to his front door that read: “If you are willing to return to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be fine.” According to a 2020 Justice Department case accusing a group of Chinese operatives and an American private investigator, “that’s the end of the matter!”
Though most defendants charged in transnational repression plans are based in their own country, arrests and prosecutions are rare; that particular case resulted in the conviction of a private investigator and two Chinese residents living in the United States last year.
Bob Fu, a Chinese American Christian pastor whose group, ChinaAid, promotes religious freedom in China, said he has faced extensive harassment for years. Large crowds of demonstrators have gathered for days at a time outside his West Texas house, arriving in well-coordinated operations that he says are related to the Chinese government.
Phony hotel reservations have been made in his name, as well as phony bomb threats to police claiming that he intends to detonate explosives. Flyers picturing him as the devil were given to neighbors. He stated that he has learned to take precautions when traveling, such as instructing his staff not to disclose his schedule in advance and that he has relocated from his home at the request of law authorities.
“I’m not feeling safe,” Fu told the Associated Press. When it comes to returning to China, where he was reared and fled more than 25 years ago as a religious refugee, he says: “I may be permitted to fly back, but it will be a one-way ticket. “I am sure I am on their wanted list.”
In 2020, protesters targeted Wu Jianmin, a former student leader in China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement, outside his home in Irvine, California. The harassment lasted more than two months.
“They shouted slogans outside my home and made verbal abuses,” he added. “They paraded in the neighborhood, distributed all sorts of pictures and flyers, and put them in the neighbors’ mailboxes.”
Wu says that perpetrators of harassment plots include retired Communist Party members living in the United States, their offspring, members of Chinese organizations with deep ties to the Chinese government, and even fugitives seeking bargains with Beijing.
“The end goal is the same,” Wu remarked during an interview in Mandarin Chinese. “Their task, as assigned by the Communist Party, is to suppress overseas pro-democracy activists.”
Last year, the Justice Department charged approximately three dozen officers from China’s national police force with using social media to target dissidents in the United States, including the creation of fake accounts that shared harassing videos and comments, and arrested two men who it claims helped establish a secret police outpost in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood on behalf of the Chinese government.
The year before, federal prosecutors in New York revealed several wide-ranging plans to suppress dissidents, including one to dig up dirt on a little-known and ultimately unsuccessful congressional candidate.
Other targets have included American figure skater Alysa Liu and her father, Arthur, a political refugee who, according to prosecutors, were surveilled by a man posing as an Olympics committee member and requesting passport information.
A dissident artist in California made a sculpture depicting the coronavirus with the visage of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which was similarly destroyed and burned.
“We should be under no illusion that somehow these are rogue actors or people unaffiliated with the Chinese government,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat and member of a special House committee on China, said of the Chinese agents indicted.
‘Remove his head from his torso.’
In some cases, violence is organized in response to global events.
Prosecutors in 2022 charged an Iranian spy with paying $300,000 to “eliminate” Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton in retaliation for an airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful commander.
This year, the Justice Department charged an Iranian, identified as a drug trafficker and intelligence operative, as well as two Canadians, one a “full-patch” member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, in a murder-for-hire plot against two Iranians who had fled the country and were living in Maryland.
AP News – VOR News Image
As China And Iran Hunt For Dissidents In The US, The FBI Is Racing To Counter The Threat
“We gotta erase his head from his torso,” one of the hired Canadians is accused of stating. Law enforcement stopped the threat.
Alinejad, an Iranian journalist, was targeted even before the Justice Department revealed the murder-for-hire scheme last year. In 2021, prosecutors prosecuted a gang of Iranians allegedly working for the country’s intelligence agencies with plotting to kidnap her.
Alinejad is still a renowned journalist and passionate opposition leader, and she says she intends to continue speaking out, including at a sentencing trial last year for a woman who prosecutors say unknowingly sponsored the kidnapping plot.
However, the story specifics are deeply ingrained in her consciousness. The criminal cases revealed the gravity of the threat she faced and the heinous preparations involved, such as researching how to whisk Alinejad out of New York on a military-style speedboat and transport her to Venezuela, as well as discussing lures for luring her from her home, such as asking for flowers from the garden outside.
One of the defendants in the murder-for-hire scheme was apprehended in 2022 after being discovered driving through Alinejad’s Brooklyn neighborhood with a loaded firearm and rounds of ammunition. Another defendant was extradited from the Czech Republic in February to face criminal proceedings. Two other people have been arrested.
The FBI interrupted the plot and encouraged Alinejad to relocate, which she did. But it also meant bidding goodbye to her beloved garden, which had brought her delight as she shared homegrown cucumbers and other veggies with her neighbors.
“They didn’t kill me physically, but they killed my relationship with my garden, with my neighbors,” Alinejad added.
SOURCE – (AP)
Celebrity
Bernice Johnson Reagon, Whose Powerful Voice Helped Propel The Civil Rights Movement, Has Died
Nashville, Tennessee – Bernice Johnson Reagon, a musician and scholar who utilised her rich, powerful contralto voice to support the American Civil Rights Movement and global human rights campaigns, died on July 16, according to her daughter’s social media post. She was 81.
Reagon was best known as the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, an internationally recognized African American female cappella group that she managed from 1973 until her retirement in 2004. The Grammy-nominated group’s purpose has been to educate, empower, and entertain. They sing songs from various genres, including spirituals, children’s music, blues, and jazz. Some of their original compositions pay tribute to American civil rights leaders and foreign liberation movements, such as the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
Bernice Johnson Reagon, Whose Powerful Voice Helped Propel The Civil Rights Movement, Has Died
“She was incredible,” said Tammy Kernodle, a prominent professor of music at Miami University with a focus on African American music. She referred to Reagon as someone “whose divine energy, intellect, and talent all intersect in such a way to initiate change in the atmosphere.”
According to an obituary posted on social media by her daughter, musician Toshi Reagon, Reagon’s musical activism began in the early 1960s when she worked as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and became an initial member of the Freedom Singers. In 2010, the trio reassembled and was joined by Toshi Reagon to play for then-President Barack Obama in a White House performance series televised nationally on public television.
Reagon was born in 1942 in Dougherty County, Georgia, outside of Albany. In the early 1960s, he attended music workshops at Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, an activist training ground. At an anniversary celebration in 2007, Reagon explained how the institution helped her recognize her musical history as unique.
“From the time I was born, we were always singing,” Reagon told me. “When you’re in a culture and, quote, ‘doing what comes naturally to you,’ you don’t notice it. I believe my work as a cultural scholar, singer, and composer would have been very different if someone had not drawn my attention to the people who need songs to stay alive, to keep themselves together, or to boost the energy in a movement.”
Reagon was arrested and dismissed from Albany State College after participating in a civil rights march. She eventually graduated from Spellman College. While a graduate student of history at Howard University and the vocal director of the D.C. Black Repertory Company, she founded Sweet Honey in the Rock.
In 1965, Reagon recorded her debut solo album, “Folk Songs: The South,” for Folkways Records. She joined Atlanta’s Harambee Singers as a founding member in 1966.
According to the Smithsonian, Reagon began working with the institution in 1969 when she was asked to organize and manage a 1970 festival program called Black Music Through the Languages of the New World. She went on to curate the African Diaspora Program and establish and lead the Program in Black American Culture at the National Museum of American History, where she ultimately became curator emeritus. She produced and played on many Smithsonian Folkways recordings.
Reagon was a distinguished professor of history at American University in Washington for a decade, commencing in 1993 and ending as a professor emerita.
According to Kernodle, we think that music has always been a component of civil rights activity, but it was people like Reagon who made music “part of the strategy of nonviolent resistance.” They brought those songs and practices from within the church to the streets and jail cells. And they popularised such songs.”
Bernice Johnson Reagon, Whose Powerful Voice Helped Propel The Civil Rights Movement, Has Died
“What she also did that was very important was that she historicised how that music functioned in the civil rights movement,” according to Kernodle. “Her dissertation was one of the first real studies of civil rights music.”
Reagon won two George F. Peabody Awards, including one for her role as lead scholar, conceptual producer, and host of the Smithsonian Institution and National Public Radio series “Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions.”
She has received the Charles E. Frankel Prize and Presidential Medal for distinguished contributions to public awareness of the humanities, a MacArthur Fellows Program award, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Centre for Nonviolent Social Change’s Trumpet of Conscience Award.
SOURCE | AP
Turner Sports hopes to continue its long-standing relationship with the NBA.
Warner Bros. Discovery informed the league on Monday that it will match Amazon Prime Video’s $1.8 billion annual bid. Turner has had an NBA package since 1984, and games have been broadcast on TNT since the network started in 1988.
“We studied the offers and accepted one of them. This will allow fans to continue to experience our unequaled coverage, including the greatest live game productions in the business, as well as our legendary studio shows and talent, as we build on our proven 40-year commitment for many more years,” WBD stated. “We submitted our matching paperwork to the league today.” We are looking forward to the NBA completing our new contract.”
paris | AP News
Athletes Enjoying Their First Days At The Giant Olympic Village Ahead Of The Paris Games
The NBA Board of Governors approved the league’s 11-year media rights deals with Disney, NBC, and Amazon Prime Video at its meeting in Las Vegas on Tuesday. WBD received all three contracts on Wednesday, beginning the five-day clock for deciding whether to match.
The new deals, for $76 billion, will begin with the 2025-26 season and entail a game being shown or streamed nationally every night during the second half of the season.
The Prime Video package would have offered games on Thursday night after it finished carrying NFL games. The other nights were Friday and Saturday.
TNT would most likely air games on Thursday, with the other nights being streamed on Max.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav warned at an RBC Investor Conference in November 2022 that Turner and WBD “don’t have to have the NBA.”
Warner Bros. Discovery and the league were unable to negotiate an agreement during their exclusive bargaining period, which ended in April. Zaslav and TNT Sports Chairman/CEO Luis Silberwasser have recently announced that they intend to match one of the agreements.
“During our four-decade collaboration with the NBA, we have consistently provided exceptional coverage for basketball fans. WBD stated that they behaved in good faith to offer strong proposals that were fair to both parties throughout exclusive and non-exclusive negotiations to maintain their long-standing collaboration. “Regrettably, the league notified us of its intention to accept other offers for the games in our current rights package, leaving us to proceed under the matching rights provision, which is an integral part of our current agreement and the rights we have paid for under it.”
NBC and WBD would alternate broadcasting one of the conference finals series. ESPN and ABC will continue to broadcast the league’s top package and will host conference finals and the NBA Finals each year.
According to people familiar with the negotiations, Amazon’s offer contained a mechanism for paying many years in advance into an escrow account, which many thought would be difficult to match. However, WBD has informed the league that it has the financial resources to do so.
“The Ringer’s” Bill Simmons originally mentioned the Amazon provision on “The Town” podcast.
People talked to the A.P. anonymously because they were not at liberty to discuss such serious topics.
WBD pays $1.4 billion per season under the existing nine-year contract, which expires after next season.
WBD is making a large financial investment, but it is necessary. Without the NBA, it would have struggled to charge its present subscriber fees to cable and satellite companies.
Retaining the NBA would also ensure that the popular “Inside the NBA” show will continue. Charles Barkley was dismissive of WBD’s negotiation position and did not believe it would match. Barkley revealed at the end of this season that he planned to retire following the next season.
The village is located in the Saint-Denis district, best known for hosting the Stade de France, home to France’s national soccer and rugby teams. It is located in a once run-down district that has been converted into a dynamic international hub for the Paris Games from July 26 to August 11, as well as the Paralympics from August 28 to September 8.
“It’s great to see so many different countries here,” U.S. rugby sevens center Lucas Lacamp said Monday.
The village has a huge dining hall with several food stations catering to diverse tastes worldwide, a large gym, training grounds for various sports, a polyclinic, prayer rooms, and an anti-doping center.
“I was definitely looking forward to the food court, I won’t lie about that,” said New Zealand rugby sevens player Risaleanna Pouri-Lane, who won the women’s gold medal in Tokyo. “It has been pretty cool. We’ve got a couple of days to soak up the entire village and Olympic environment in Paris.”
Andrew Knewstubb, a silver winner in men’s rugby in Tokyo, emphasized the stark contrast between pandemic-hit Tokyo three years ago and Paris.
“The most noticeable thing is that people are not wearing masks in Paris,” Knewstubb said, adding that he loves how athletes can now greet one other or walk up and swap pins “without the hesitation of Covid.”
Athletes live in five residential zones named after famous Parisian landmarks: Abbesses, Bastille, Dauphine, Étoile, and Fêtes. With environmental protection in mind, the eco-friendly community uses electric automobiles to transport athletes. Pouri-Lane enjoyed riding one of the several bicycles available to athletes.
Anna Meares, a former track cycling star, has four Olympic medals, two of which are gold. Meares is now the Australian team’s Chef de Mission, and he stated that decisions have been made about the team’s residency in the hamlet.
“There was a lot of learning to take out of Tokyo, that played in the decisions we have made in our set up in Paris,” she told me.
Paris | AP news Image
Athletes Enjoying Their First Days At The Giant Olympic Village Ahead Of The Paris Games
One of them was more significant than it may appear.
“We have kept our barista,” she stated. “One big question I had when I took on this role in Paris was, ‘Why was the barista so popular?'” And that was because it established a social hub for the athletes.
Meanwhile, the American men’s rugby sevens squad is ready for a big game on Wednesday against host France, which has probably the best scrumhalf in the world in Antoine Dupont.
“The preparation has been good. “They’ve taken great care of us in Paris; the fields and facilities were excellent,” said U.S. captain Kevon Williams. “Things have been going smoothly for us. “We’re prepared for the moment.”
That moment will be met with the roar of an 80,000-person sell-out crowd at the Stade de France. Williams and his teammates should enjoy a memorable experience at France’s iconic national stadium, but beach volleyball players have possibly the best location of all.
They play their matches against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, which, as famous sites go, is difficult to beat.
“I am not being biased, but I believe it is the best venue of them all,” Artacho del Solar stated. “It’s going to be amazing.”
They got a taste of what was coming when they watched a video of the Australian men’s training session.
“We know it’s going to be electric, exciting, as beach volleyball always is,” said Clancy, whose first assignment during her first practice session was to test the wind, sand depth, and grain quality.
SOURCE | AP
World
Too Soon For Comedy? After Attempted Assassination Of Trump, US Politics Feel Anything But Funny
Political jokes: is it too soon?
Many quarters responded with a loud yes at midweek, days after an assassination attempt on Republican former President Donald Trump shook the nation over decades of political violence in the United States.
Several late-night shows that rely on political humor instantly modified their plans, with Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” canceling its Monday show and intending to broadcast from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week. Its host, Jon Stewart, and his guests gave sad monologues.
By Tuesday, the comic rock duo Tenacious D, comprised of Jack Black and Kyle Gass, had canceled the remainder of their global tour “and all future creative plans” after Gass proclaimed onstage his birthday wish: “Don’t miss next time.” Gass apologized.
Too Soon For Comedy? After Attempted Assassination Of Trump, US Politics Feel Anything But Funny
Democratic President Joe Biden, no stranger to criticizing Trump, contacted his wounded competitor, paused his political advertisements and messaging, and urged the country to “cool” the rhetoric.
So, if comedy is tragedy plus time, when is joking acceptable again? And who gives a thumbs up, given that the shooter who targeted Trump also killed former fire chief Corey Comperatore while protecting his family?
The attempted assassination on Saturday, or any of the bloodshed that has afflicted the United States since its inception, is not funny. Trump was smacked in the ear while speaking to rallygoers in Pennsylvania. A Trump supporter and the gunman were dead, while two onlookers were injured. The attack sparked severe concerns about security shortcomings. It was the most recent example of political violence in America, where attacks on politicians date back to at least 1798 when two legislators from opposite parties brawled in the United States House.
Other examples abound in history texts, but the list from this century is particularly striking. Former Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords, D, was shot in the head in 2011. Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the current House majority leader, was shot and badly injured in 2017. On January 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters invaded the US Capitol, preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s election. Paul Pelosi was bludgeoned at his home in 2022 by a guy looking for his wife, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In addition to that, unwavering fears about Biden’s fitness for office following his catastrophic debate performance, Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, and American politics in 2024 appear anything but hilarious.
However, political comedy is as old as politics and administration.
It softens the impact of democratic decisions and is a powerful tool for politicians aiming to alleviate or increase concerns about themselves or their opponents. And in recent years, Trump has been the focus of more jokes than anyone else. According to a 2020 study by George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs, late-night hosts made 97% of their jokes about Trump.
“It’s never too soon, unless it’s not funny,” Alonzo Bodden, a 31-year-old stand-up comedian, said in a phone interview Wednesday. He is not a Trump supporter but stated that comedians “will always make it funny no matter what happens.” That is what we do. “It is how we communicate.”
“In this case, Donald Trump is such a character and the fact that he wasn’t killed, the jokes started immediately,” said Bodden. “And I don’t believe he minds. He’s one of those persons who is always happy to be mentioned.”
Humor humanizes large figures.
Perhaps most effectively, political humor can make arrogant leaders appear more human or at least self-conscious.
Consider “covfefe,” Trump’s strange middle-of-the-night tweet in 2017 that went viral, prompting Jimmy Kimmel to despair that he’ll never write something funnier. “Make the Pie Higher,” a poem by late Washington Post cartoonist Richard Thompson, was composed solely of President George W. Bush’s botched words and was published for his inauguration in 2001.
“It is a very complicated economic point I was making there,” Bush said with a smirk at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner a few months later. “Believe me, what this country needs is taller pie.”
Before the debate, Biden attempted to use humor to bring the age issue to the forefront, but it became evident that the concern was more about his cognitive ability. “I know I’m 198 years old,” Biden declared, to wild laughter and clapping.
Too Soon For Comedy? After Attempted Assassination Of Trump, US Politics Feel Anything But Funny
Humor is such an effective campaign tactic that candidates flock to guest appearances on late-night shows, which have risen in political prominence. However, following the assassination, a pause settled over everything, as indicated by Stewart’s serious address on Monday.
“None of us knows what’s going to happen next other than there will be another tragedy in this country, self-inflicted by us to us, and then we’ll have this feeling again,” Stewart told the crowd.
“Though I could just as easily start the show moaning on the floor,” he laughed, “because how many times do we need to learn the lesson that violence has no role in our politics?”
As is customary for social media, it was acting more freely. “I think it’s ironic that Trump almost died from a gun today because he was too far right-leaning,” comedian Drew Lynch remarked on YouTube. “Alright. That’s all I have. I believe my neighbors might be listening.”
SOURCE | AP
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