Incident follows anti-Armenian graffiti and suspected arson at church

MICHAEL BARBA,

Police are now investigating a string of incidents at Armenian community centers in San Francisco as hate crimes after gunshots rang out at a school near Lake Merced over the weekend, authorities said Monday.

Officers were patrolling the KZV Armenian School at 825 Brotherhood Way at around 2:25 a.m. Saturday morning when someone fired a bullet that damaged the school’s sign, according to police. No one was injured by the gunfire.

The officers were assigned to guard the school after the campus was tagged with anti-Armenian graffiti in July and a church building on Commonwealth Avenue near the Richmond District caught fire in a suspected arson last Thursday.

The incidents have sparked outrage from officials and come amid heightened tensions between Armenia and its neighboring country, Azerbaijan, that escalated in July when violence broke out along the border.

“We will not tolerate intimidation,” U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, who is of Armenian descent, tweeted in response to the first two incidents. “Love will triumph over hatred. Hope will defeat fear. Those responsible will be held accountable.”

In a statement, the San Francisco Police Department said it had “taken steps to increase the safety and security of the community.”

“However, we ask that the community remain alert and report anything suspicious to the police,” the department said. “Investigators are actively working to identify those responsible for the crimes and to place them under arrest.”

Police said the officers who heard the gunshots near the school Saturday “immediately searched for the source of the gunshots, but no suspects were located.”

On Monday, a spokesperson for the FBI in San Francisco said the agency was aware of the incidents and in“regular contact with local authorities.”

“Should information come to light of a potential federal violation, the FBI is prepared to investigate,” the agency said.

St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church has established an online fundraiser in response to the fire at its offices last Thursday. 

This story has been updated to include a new statement from the FBI.

mbarba@sfexaminer.com

Uri Blau, Washington Leaked bank reports reveal money transfers from state-owned defense giant to two companies suspected of money laundering for Azerbaijani government ■ The transfers began just months after a $1.6 billion arms deal was signed with the Azeri regime ■ This report was written with the assistance of Shomrim, the Center for Media and Democracy. Share in Facebook

Israel’s largest aerospace and aviation manufacturer transferred at least $155 million to two companies associated with huge-scale money laundering for the Azerbaijani government, according to leaked bank reports for the period 2012-2014. The reason for these payments by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, which produces aerial and astronautic systems for both military and civilian usage, remains unclear.

The story came to light as part of a huge leak involving thousands of banking documents that ultimately ended up in the hands of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

A Shomrim investigation reveals that the funds were transferred shortly after IAI signed one of its largest-ever business deals with the Azerbaijani government. A source familiar with the particulars of the deal claims, however, that to the best of his knowledge, it did not include an agreement regarding payment to any intermediary. IAI chose not to dispel the fog surrounding the nature of the payments and refrained from responding to questions as to the background of the transfers.

A Shomrim investigation reveals that the funds were transferred shortly after IAI signed one of its largest-ever business deals with the Azerbaijani government. A source familiar with the particulars of the deal claims, however, that to the best of his knowledge, it did not include an agreement regarding payment to any intermediary

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Instead, it offered the following laconic response: “Israel Aerospace Industries is a government company that operates in strict compliance with the provisions of the law. As a defense company, and in keeping with company policy, it doesn’t address or respond to information about its business activities other than as required by law.”

The payments appear in more than a dozen Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) compiled by Deutsche Bank officials and submitted to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, the U.S. Treasury Department entity responsible for detecting illegal financial activity, including money laundering and funding for terrorism. The reports, along with thousands of others from banks worldwide, were leaked originally to BuzzFeed News and then passed on to the ICIJ, which, in turn, shared them with 108 media outlets around the world and some 400 journalists, including Shomrim. See accompanying article for more on the leak.

It’s important to stress, of course, that the submission to FinCEN of a SAR doesn’t mean that the individual or company mentioned in the document has done anything illegal. The transactions to which the report refers could be part of totally legitimate business activities that were carried out in a manner that aroused the suspicion of the financial institution that reported them.

The mysterious beneficiary

The list of entities and banks mentioned in the Deutsche Bank reports concerning IAI is long and includes Israeli and foreign banks, through which payments were made from customers such as Alitalia, Indian Aerospace Industries, RwandAir, Ethiopian Airlines, Russia’s Rossiya Airlines, the Kenya Police and others. The reports also include a long list of entities to which the IAI itself transferred monies, such as the Defense Ministry, aeronautical companies around the world, and so forth. Sticking out like sore thumbs among the recipients of these payments are two companies – Jetfield Networks and Larkstone – that don’t seem to match the profile of the Israeli company’s other suppliers.

embargo on weapons sale. Baku harbour (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Founded in New Zealand in 2009, Jetfield moved its operations to the Marshall Islands some three years later; and there, according to bank documents obtained by Italian newspaper L’Espresso, the “legitimate heir” of the company branched out into the field of consulting services. Before then, according to the same documents, the company had reported to the banks that it was engaged in commerce, including the buying and selling of construction equipment.

Jetfield’s relocation to the Marshall Islands became official in early February 2012, and almost simultaneously, Israeli and international media reported the signing of a huge contract between IAI and the Azerbaijani government – a product of the close and multifaceted relationship between Israel and Azerbaijan

The company’s beneficiary is a man by the name of Javid Huseynov, an Azeri born in 1961. Huseynov is also the beneficiary of Larkstone, a company that operates out of Estonia.

Jetfield’s relocation to the Marshall Islands became official in early February 2012, and almost simultaneously, Israeli and international media reported the signing of a huge contract between IAI and the Azerbaijani government – a product of the close and multifaceted relationship between Israel and Azerbaijan that remains, for the most part, hidden from public view. Israel buys oil from Azerbaijan, and the Azeris purchase arms and agricultural equipment from Israel. The government in Jerusalem, according to foreign media reports, attaches significant strategic importance to Azerbaijan due to its long border with Iran, with the human rights violations that occur in the country failing to constitute any sort of obstacle to the ties.

In its latest report, U.S.-based organization Freedom House, an independent watchdog that ranks the countries of the world in terms of their standards of democracy and human rights, notes that “power in Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime remains heavily concentrated in the hands of Ilham Aliyev, who has served as president since 2003, and his extended family. Corruption is rampant, and the formal political opposition has been weakened by years of persecution. The authorities have carried out an extensive crackdown on civil liberties in recent years, leaving little room for independent expression or activism.”

An embargo on the sale of weapons to Azerbaijan, imposed in February 1992 by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, has also not deterred Israel from trading with Azerbaijan.

Negotiations over the deal between IAI and Azerbaijan began some two years before the contract was announced, and talks with various IAI sources reveal that very few company officials were in the know. The first batch of products was delivered about two years after the deal was signed and supplies continued for at least five years. According to Israeli and international media reports, the deal included the sale of drones and missile defense systems. For the Azeris, it was a business deal of extraordinary proportions, amounting to more than half the country’s overall annual defense budget of $3.2 billion.

according to Israeli and international media reports, the deal included the sale of drones and missile defense systems. For the Azeris, it was a business deal of extraordinary proportions, amounting to more than half the country’s overall annual defense budget of $3.2 billion

For IAI, too, the deal was almost unprecedented in size, the result of what one of the sources we interviewed for this report defined as “a honeymoon” with the Shia republic that began somewhere around 2007.

“No clear commercial purpose”

“This report is submitted,” begins one of the documents sent by Deutsche Bank to the U.S. authorities, “because Israel Aerospace Industries is involved in the production of arms, which is a high-risk industry [in terms of money laundering, U.B.]” The report then goes on to include data on several large money transfers, in round amounts, that were made “without a clear commercial purpose.” According to Deutsche Bank, IAI said the huge payments were for “management and consulting services” provided by the two companies. We’ll get back to that later.

The payments to Jetfield began in June 2012, just months after the giant deal with Azerbaijan was signed, with a transfer of close to $30 million, followed by an additional $6 million in October that same year, and then repeated transfers in the months that followed. An analysis of Deutsche Bank’s reports to FinCEN shows that by 2014, more than $116 million had been transferred to Jetfield, with Larkstone receiving around $39 million during the same period. In one instance, according to the bank reports, IAI transferred about $8 million to Jetfield for the purchase of helicopter rotor blades. “Deutsche Bank wasn’t able to independently confirm the purpose of the transfer of funds,” the report notes.

The payments to Jetfield began in June 2012, just months after the giant deal with Azerbaijan was signed, with a transfer of close to $30 million, followed by an additional $6 million in October that same year, and then repeated transfers in the months that followed

The money transfers to Jetfield and Larkstone raise questions primarily due to information about the two companies that came to light in the years that followed. Bank documents, which were leaked in 2017 and served as the basis for a series of investigative reports published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) under the title, The Azerbaijani Laundromat, revealed that a sum of 2.5 billion euros had been channeled through companies with very close ties to the Azeri regime to four companies registered in England, through which the money was then laundered. Jetfield, according to the OCCRP investigation, was one of the companies through which some of the money, $109 million, was channeled. Larkstone was part of the system too.

The money, which flowed out of Azerbaijan between 2012 and 2014, was used, inter alia, to purchase luxury goods for government officials in Azerbaijan, but also for greasing palms. More than 2 million euros that left Azerbaijan, with a portion going through Jetfield, for example, ended up in 2012 in the bank account of Italian politician Luca Volontè, Rome’s representative to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), an official European Union body that keeps track of human rights violations and the preservation of democratic institutions. The Italian police believe that, in return for the payment, Volontè undertook to soften European Council reports on human rights violations in Azerbaijan. The investigation, which was launched as far back as 2015, is still ongoing.

The questions only get bigger in light of material uncovered in a worldwide investigation underway into the Estonian branch of Danske Bank of Denmark, which allegedly served as a center for money laundering to the tune of some $200 billion. Both Jetfield and Larkstone managed accounts at the bank, and internal bank correspondence uncovered during the investigation touches on the companies’ ties with IAI.

In one internal email, Oksana Lindmets, a Danske Bank employee and suspect in the affair, provides details about a meeting with representatives of Jetfield in Baku in January 2012. The company, she writes, is part of an array of firms, including Larkstone, that are engaged in “marketing, research, legal, financial and tax consulting, and also the finding of partners.” Its principal customers, Lindmets adds, “are international companies that wish to offer their services and other goods to various government ministries in Azerbaijan (Defense, Communications, etc.).”

Lindmets notes in her email (sent in June 2012, a few months after IAI signed its deal with Azerbaijan) that Jetfield has already signed contracts with IAI. The email explicitly states that Jetfield isn’t involved in the buying or selling of equipment, and that the company will be providing consulting and office management services for IAI, locating local partners and so forth. Jetfield, according to the email, will receive a brokerage fee of 9.9 percent of the volume of the deals.

Another email, dealing with Larkstone this time, was sent in February 2013 and concerned the transfer of $11.5 million from IAI to the company. This contract is unusual, Lindmets writes, as it doesn’t deal with consulting services. According to the email, Larkstone had been contracted by IAI to purchase trucks and a generator to be transferred to Azerbaijan. A third email notes that Larkstone may be involved in the construction of a training base in Azerbaijan on behalf of IAI.

IAI business deals require the approval of the company’s board of directors, as well as that of SIBAT, the International Defense Cooperation Directorate of the Defense Ministry. According to former IAI officials, the regulations regarding the payment of commission fees are very stringent, and the same goes for the due diligence that companies that work with IAI undergo. These regulations, a former senior IAI official told Shomrim, have been even more strictly adhered to since Israel joined the OECD more than a decade ago. In any event, none of the people with whom we spoke were familiar with the names Jetfield, Larkstone or Huseynov.

Source: https://www.hashomrim.org/eng/341

The 47-year-old, a Rhode Island native, is the daughter of immigrants — her father is from India, while her mother is a second generation Armenian

Sara Gideon, the Democratic speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, is challenging longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins. The Huffington Post reported that Gideon had “signaled a potential bid in October after Collins, the state’s GOP senator, voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh.”

Gideon, 47, the daughter of an Indian father and an Armenian mother, is serving her second term as Speaker of the House and fourth term in the Maine House of Representatives, representing the towns of Freeport and Pownal.

″Whether it’s been on the town council, as a state representative or as Maine’s speaker of the House, I’ve learned that if you listen and if you are willing to work with others, it’s still possible to get things done,” the Indian-American said in a video announcing her decision to run against Collins on June 24.

News reports say that defeating Collins is key to Democratic hopes of winning back control of the Senate in 2020 and speculate that this will be one of the most high-profile Senate race of 2020. 

“Susan Collins has been in the Senate for 22 years and at one point maybe she was different than some of the other folks in Washington,” the Gideon said in her campaign video. “But she doesn’t seem that way anymore.”

Gideon, a Rhode Island native, is the third candidate to have formally announced plans to run for Senate against Susan Collins. Betsy Sweet, a former candidate for governor of Maine, announced in June that she was running for the Senate. And Bre Kidman, a lawyer and the first openly non-binary U.S. Senate candidate in the country, announced her candidacy back in April.

Susan Rice, the former National Security adviser and one-time ambassador to the United Nations, who had earlier hinted that she might consider running to replace Susan Collins, has however decided against it, news reports said.

Derek Levasseur, a conservative blogger, has announced he will run against Collins in the Republican primary.

In an interview with the Press Herald on June 24, Gideon said she didn’t believe Collins was still acting in the best interest of Maine people. She said Collins had become “a creature of Washington, D.C.,” serving mostly the interests of the Republican Party.

“When I think about Sen. Collins, I think she might have been different from the other people in Washington when she was first elected, but I have to ask is that still the case,” Gideon said. She told the Press Herald that as a U.S. senator she would put “Maine and its people first.”

A June 25 Huffington Post report says that a day after announcing her candidacy, Gideon received three key endorsements. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and NARAL Pro-Choice America announced their support, along with EMILY’s List, a political action committee that backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights.

According to her website, Gideon had sponsored legislation in Maine, which was signed into law this year, to expand abortion access by permitting health care professionals who are not physicians to perform the procedure. She was also behind an effort to expand benefits to families in poverty.

On her website Gideon says her number one priority is building an economy that works for everyone. She believes that “Maine people are our best resource, that Maine students deserve our investment and that fostering innovation and entrepreneurship will lead to successful businesses statewide.”

The New York Times reported that Gideon said she first got the idea to run for public office in 2009 when someone left a message on her family’s answering machine asking her husband to consider running for town council. When she pushed the button and heard the message, she said, “I thought to myself, actually I think that’s a job that I can do.”

Gideon graduated from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where she also worked as an intern for U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island. She spent most of her career as an advertising account executive for a nationally renowned newspaper, where she was awarded the president’s award for excellence in sales.

She is a past member of the Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology, where she worked to lower energy costs, encourage increased energy efficiency and promote clean and renewable energy to capitalize on Maine’s natural resources and build a clean-energy economy. She also served as assistant majority leader for House Democrats in the 127th Legislature.

Although there isn’t much information on Gideon’s father, news reports say he immigrated from India and worked as a pediatrician in Rhode Island, where Gideon, the youngest of four children, grew up. After meeting her husband Ben Gideon, a personal injury trial lawyer with the firm of Berman & Simons, she moved with him to Maine. The couple now lives in Freeport with their three children, Julian, Alek and Josie.

read: https://saragideon.com/meet-sara/

The Iran-Iraq War is one of the deadliest military conflicts in the Middle East. The eight-year-long conflict, which saw the use of chemical weapons, killed thousands of people and divided the region on sectarian lines.

A territorial dispute

On September 22, 1980, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein sent troops into neighboring Iran, starting an eight-year-long deadly war that killed thousands of people. The conflict started with a territorial dispute between the two Shiite majority countries.

The Algiers accord

Five years earlier, in March 1975, Hussein, then Iraq’s vice president, and the Shah of Iran signed a deal in Algiers to settle the border dispute. Baghdad, however, accused Tehran of plotting attacks and called for the evacuation of three strategic islands in the Strait of Hormuz, claimed by both Iran and the UAE.

A key water source

On September 17, 1980, Baghdad declared the Algiers accord null and void and demanded control of all of the Shatt al-Arab — a 200-kilometer-long (125 mile) river formed by the meeting of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which flows into the Gulf.

Bombing of ports and cities

Hussein’s forces bombed Iranian airports, including the one in Tehran, as well as military facilities and Iran’s oil refineries. Iraqi forces met little resistance in the first week and seized the towns of Qasr-e Shirin and Mehran, as well as Iran’s southwestern port of Khorramshahr, where the Shatt al-Arab meets the sea.

Common enemy

Many Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, backed Baghdad in the war against Iran, fearing that the Islamic Revolution spearheaded by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini could influence the Shiite population in the Middle East. Western countries, too, supported Baghdad and sold weapons to Hussein’s regime.

Iran pushes back

Iran’s counterattack took Iraq by surprise as Tehran managed to take back the control of the Khorramshahr port. Baghdad announced a ceasefire and pulled back troops, but Tehran rejected it and continued to bomb Iraqi cities. From April 1984, the two sides engaged in a “war of the cities,” in which some 30 cities on both sides were battered by missile attacks.

Truce

On July 18, 1988, Khomeini accepted a UN Security Council resolution to end the war. While the exact number of those killed in the war is not known, at least 650,000 people died during the conflict. A ceasefire was declared on August 20, 1988.

A new chapter

The toppling of Hussein’s regime by the US in 2003 ushered in a new era in the Middle East. Relations between Iraq and Iran have improved since then and the two countries increasingly cooperate economically, culturally and socially.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has exerted an unusually strong hold on US President Donald Trump. A new research news study reveals that this romantic relationship is built by a strong circle of interest.

At the center of the circle of interest are an “oligarch” associated with the Kremlin and a shipping king accused of terrorism. Those who brought these names together with the Trump Administration is a president’s favorite lobbyist and a key person who was dismissed for the Ukraine investigation.

Aubrey Belford and by Adam Klasfeld “oligarchs and Watergate: Trump Turkey Reverse Side of Love” title, Courthouse News, how it starts and complex background on the extensive research news studies published in reputable sites, portals, such as organized crime and corruption watchdog OCCRP and NBC is described as follows :

“The day before Donald Trump took office, at lunch at the Washington Watergate Hotel, a foreign government was pushing ways to engage with the new US administration. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and powerful lobbyist Brian Ballard, then deputy chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee, met for the first time for a job interview that had never been heard before. The two men who held the meeting were also present there; One of them, nearly three years later, which lead to an indictment Trump because informal activities in Ukraine Floridians businessman Lev Parnas, the other is today on trial on terrorism charges in Turkey Mansimov Turkey-Azerbaijan Mubariz maritime king. “

“The agenda includes the United States, there were two million dollar contract to lobby on behalf of Erdogan, Turkey’s Islamist leader.

Parnas describes that period as follows in a 90-minute interview:

‘There were many guards, Turkish guards. It was a small restaurant. We entered. [Çavuşoğlu] was sitting at the restaurant with several Turkish senior officials. ”

According to Parnas, Azerbaijani businessman Mubariz named Ballard, known as “Trump’s Strongest Lobbyist in Washington” by Politico news portal and known as the best fundraiser for Trump in Florida, as “Trump’s No. 1 man”. introduced. “

Courthousnews reporters underline that the developing bilateral relationship has stunned the Trump administration and advisors who believe that Erdogan’s interests are put before the interests of America with the decisions taken by the president himself.

John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, also described the relationship between Trump and Erdogan as “bromance – the close relationship between two boyfriends.”

According to research by Courhousenews and two other media groups, there is a deeper story behind this “close relationship”: parts of this story are Russia-linked oligarchs and fraudsters and key players in the Ukrainian scandal that led to the launch of impeachment investigations targeting Trump.

According to the report, lobbying agreements with Ballard were established with the help of Parnas and shipping king Mansimov, as well as Farhat Ahmedov, who was identified by the US Treasury as the Russian oligarch closely related to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to official records, at the end of the contracts, Ballard’s firm required to receive $ 125,000 a month to represent the Turkish state bank Halkbank, which is being tried in the US for fraud, money laundering and sanctions.

Parnas was paid 45 thousand dollars for the deal, which introduced the two sides. Parnas says this money is a “silence.”
The contracts with Ballard were part of a much wider Turkish influence. agreement between Ballard and Turkey, Turkish businessmen and ministers of illegally Trump, one of the former national security adviser, retired General Mike Flynn with the agreement as a lobbyist, the CIA, the former president James Woolsey, such as a name with the $ 10 million that it had discussed the influence campaigns before it also coincided with some of the news that were widely reflected in the media.

Sezgin Baran Korkmaz, one of the businessmen who met both Mansimov and Flynn, was also in partnership with an Armenian-American gangster during this time who was convicted of defrauding some members of a Mormon sect that advocated polygamy.

IRS (US Tax Authority) connected in court in connection with a federal agent Korkmaz fraudsters directly linked to Erdogan that Turkey and testified the way they provide protection from the government.

According to the Courthousenews report, Mansimov, who is currently in jail on terrorism charges, said that Mansimov, who is currently in prison on charges of terrorism, told him that he gave a 25 million dollar oil tanker to the Erdogan family.

Source: https://ahvalnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/ahvalnews.com/?amp

A prediction made in March — unfathomable at the time — has come to pass.

By Erika Edwards and Denise Chow

In the predawn hours of March 30, Dr. Deborah Birx stepped in front of the camera on the White House lawn and made an alarming prediction about the coronavirus, which had, by then, killed fewer than 3,000 people in the United States.

“If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we can get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, told Savannah Guthrie of NBC News’ “Today” show.

“We don’t even want to see that,” she added, before Guthrie cut her off.

“I know, but you kind of take my breath away with that,” Guthrie said. “Because what I hear you saying is that’s sort of the best-case scenario.”

“The best-case scenario,” Birx replied, “would be 100 percent of Americans doing precisely what is required.”

On Saturday, Birx’s prediction came true, as the number of lives lost to Covid-19 in the U.S. topped 200,000.

Experts like Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it didn’t have to be this way.

“Tens of thousands of people would not have died if the U.S. response had been more effective,” said Frieden, now president of Resolve to Save Lives, a global public health initiative.

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said Birx’s prediction in late March was “very sobering.” That was the time, he said, to develop and implement a plan to stop or at least slow the spread of the virus.

That didn’t happen then, and it hasn’t happened since. “Where is our national plan?” Osterholm asked. “How are we this far along and we don’t have one?”

“We have a long way to go,” he added.

ndeed, the country still faces many challenges in overcoming the pandemic, including agreeing on even the most basic facts. Americans are still fighting over whether to wear masks, whether the virus is serious and to what extent it’s safe to reopen certain businesses and to resume certain activities.

In short, 100 percent of Americans — government officials included — still aren’t doing precisely what is required.

Another ominous prediction

Now, many experts are making another ominous prediction: A surge in the number of new infections in the fall and winter, combined with growing fatigue over social distancing and other public health measures, could result in more than 415,000 deaths in the U.S. by January, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, or IHME, at the University of Washington.

On July 24, a dozen young and armed members of the Grey Wolves group of Turkish extremists attacked peaceful Armenian demonstrators and caused great material damage in the French city of Dessin, after which the organizer Ahmet Cetin and another four members of the organization were arrested and are charged with inciting hatred against the Armenians, as reported ermenihaber.am.

This is one of the two complaints submitted by the Committee for Defense of the Armenian Cause (CDAC) regarding the July 24 incident. The other complaint is devoted to the actions carried out during the armed attack.

The first court hearing on the case was held on September 17.

The Prosecutor General’s Office of Bourg-en-Bresse demanded 6 years of conditional imprisonment, deprivation of the right to vote for 5 years and a payment of EUR 2,000 for the offense stated in the indictment regarding Cetin.

The attorney stated that Cetin has acknowledged his mistake and stopped implementing political actions.

During a live broadcast, Cetin had said the following:

“Let the Turkish government give me EUR 2,000 a month and weapons, and I will do what is necessary in any part of France.”

The verdict will be announced on November 5.

On July 24, nearly 500 French-Armenians held a peaceful demonstration against Azerbaijan’s provocations. Members of Turkey’s far-right, extremist Grey Wolves organization attacked the peaceful Armenian demonstrators with Turkish national flags, metal rods and knives, but the attack was prevented after the intervention of the French police.

On July 24, a dozen young and armed members of the Grey Wolves group of Turkish extremists attacked peaceful Armenian demonstrators and caused great material damage in the French city of Dessin, after which the organizer Ahmet Cetin and another four members of the organization were arrested and are charged with inciting hatred against the Armenians, as reported ermenihaber.am.

This is one of the two complaints submitted by the Committee for Defense of the Armenian Cause (CDAC) regarding the July 24 incident. The other complaint is devoted to the actions carried out during the armed attack.

The first court hearing on the case was held on September 17.

The Prosecutor General’s Office of Bourg-en-Bresse demanded 6 years of conditional imprisonment, deprivation of the right to vote for 5 years and a payment of EUR 2,000 for the offense stated in the indictment regarding Cetin.

The attorney stated that Cetin has acknowledged his mistake and stopped implementing political actions.

During a live broadcast, Cetin had said the following:

“Let the Turkish government give me EUR 2,000 a month and weapons, and I will do what is necessary in any part of France.”

The verdict will be announced on November 5.

On July 24, nearly 500 French-Armenians held a peaceful demonstration against Azerbaijan’s provocations. Members of Turkey’s far-right, extremist Grey Wolves organization attacked the peaceful Armenian demonstrators with Turkish national flags, metal rods and knives, but the attack was prevented after the intervention of the French police.

REVEALED: Trump to announce billions in aid to Puerto Rico in desperate attempt to win Florida,

President Donald Trump on Friday will announce a multi-billion dollar federal aid package for Puerto Rico, with most of the funds to be used to rebuild the U.S. territory’s power grid, devastated by hurricanes that attack the island every year.

The desperately needed assistance comes after Trump has spent his entire tenure in office attacking Puerto Rico, its leaders, and complaining repeatedly about congressionally-approved funds for the overlooked island. Recently it was revealed he wanted to sell Puerto Rico, after the 2017 Hurricane Maria that took the lives of 3059 people, and did nearly $92 billion in damage.

Trump has fought giving assistance to Puerto Rico, and called it “one of the most corrupt places on earth.”

He denied the death toll from Hurricane Maria, which in large part came from his mismanagement of the crisis. Some have said his performance then was a precursor of his disastrous performance with the coronavirus pandemic.

Others note the announcement comes just weeks before the presidential election, and see it as an attempt to win Florida. Many Puerto Ricans moved to Florida after Hurricane Maria. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens but do not have the right to vote. Those who moved to Florida do, after changing their residence.

They likely will not forget his visit in October of 2017, when he threw rolls of paper towels to Puerto Ricans in need at a disaster relief distribution center near San Juan.

The amount of federal funds appears to be in flux, with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer saying the White House agreed to nearly $10 billion, and the Governor of Puerto Rico, Wanda Vázquez Garced, saying $13 billion. There are multiple aid packages which could account for the different amounts.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A building next to an Armenian church in San Francisco’s Laurel Heights burned down overnight Thursday and the church’s leaders worry it was arson.

Dispatchers received reports around 4 a.m. of a fire at the building next to the St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church at 70 Commonwealth Ave. Fire crews arrived not long after and managed to prevent it from spreading to the church, but the building appeared to be gutted.

“The San Francisco Fire Department responded immediately, however, the building has suffered a great loss,” V. Rev. Fr. Smpad Saboundjian and church chairman Rostom Aintablian wrote in a message to parishioners.

According to the church’s Pastor Board of trustees, the building housed an auditorium called Vasbouragan Hall, as well as offices for St. Gregory Armenian Church and other various organizations. Church leads say the blaze began inside the church’s Sunday school classrooms.

Both the San Francisco Police and Fire departments are investigating the fire, according to church officials.

“The Church Board of Trustees and community leaders are on site assessing the damage and working closely with San Francisco Fire and Police Departments in their investigation,” the statement said.

Church leaders Said that they suspect the fire is a form of harassment. The alleged arson follows an incident back in July where vandals spray-painted the Krouzian-Zekarian Vasbouragan Armenian School and the adjacent community center with anti-Armenian, pro-Azerbaijani graffiti.

Alex Bastian, deputy chief of staff for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, posted photos of the fire’s destruction on Twitter, stating he was troubled that someone would burn down the church he was baptized in.

“For some context, in our history and around the globe, every time Armenians have been targeted, they come for our churches and our schools,” Bastian tweeted. “But you know what? It’s very hard to terrorize my community, no matter how hard people try. We are hardened by the millennia of hardship and the centuries of injustice. Most of us in the community, are refugees, or the children of refugees, from war zones around the world.”

“So here is another message to the perpetrators of this cowardly act, we will not be terrorized, bullied or intimidated,

salon Republicans say the quiet part out loud: Americans must die of the coronavirus in order to save capitalism

Donald Trump has given the Democrats a gift — if they are brave enough to use it.

Last Sunday, Donald Trump declared on Twitter: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

This slogan, imported from the libertarian far right, signaled an important shift toward ending social distancing and “reopening” the economy, even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread. Trump’s mouthpieces at Fox News and elsewhere then began to parrot the same macabre and disturbing argument. 

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, told Fox News: “Let’s get back to living… And those of us that are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves.”

Right-wing propagandist Glenn Beck told viewers of his BlazeTV show that Americans who are older should just go back to work and prepare to die: “Even if we all get sick, I would rather die than kill the country.”

Brit Hume of Fox News told Tucker Carlson that he supported Dan Patrick’s view of this potentially lethal transaction:

What we’re living in now, this circumstance as we try to beat this virus, is not sustainable — that the utter collapse of the country’s economy, which many think will happen if this goes on much longer, is an intolerable result… [H]e is saying, for his own part, that he’d be willing to take a risk of getting the disease if that’s what it took to allow the economy to move forward. And he said that because he’s late in life, you know, that he would be perhaps more willing then he might’ve been at a younger age, which seems to me to be an entirely reasonable viewpoint.

What are they really saying? Donald Trump and the Republican Party are now openly willing to sacrifice those Americans they consider to be “useless eaters” — in this case older people, people with pre-existing health conditions and anyone else who may die from the coronavirus pandemic.

On Wednesday, Trump said the quiet part loud, basically admitting on Twitter that his electoral fortunes are tied to the pandemic’s impact on the American economy:

To paraphrase the character Ivan Drago in the movie “Rocky IV”: “If they die, they die.” Or as another famous Russian, Joseph Stalin, is reported to have said: “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” 

For Trump and his allies, worsening the coronavirus pandemic, even at the risk of many lives, is of little importance compared to keeping him in office to continue a regime of looting, extortion and massive corruption.

The Democratic Party needs new slogans for the 2020 presidential election. I would suggest these:

• Trump wants you to die — so he can stay in office forever.
• Trump and the Republicans are trying to kill you — for money. 
• Are you 60 or older? Have a pre-existing health condition? Donald Trump and his Republican Party don’t care if you die from the coronavirus.
• Donald Trump could have stopped the coronavirus. He lied, and people died. 

Yes, Trump and the right are embracing and celebrating death. It is ghoulish. It is also one more illustration that the Age of Trump is an American dystopia where what was previously unimaginable (for most decent people) has become “normal.”

Yes, Trump and his movement’s death impulses are part of a natural progression in which an authoritarian regime maximizes its power by terrorizing the public.

These calls by Trump and his allies for millions of Americans to sacrifice themselves for such abstractions as “the country,” “the economy” and “the market” should not be a surprise. Such madness and cruelty are the logical and inevitable results of decades of right-wing strategy and policies.

These plans were never hidden. Indeed, they were clumsily obvious. Since the 1970s, predatory gangster capitalism has been accepted as either “normal” or “inevitable” in the United States (as well as the United Kingdom and elsewhere). To that end, the “free market” was presented by the news media, many Democrats, virtually all Republicans, and most of the educational system as somehow synonymous or interchangeable with “freedom” and “democracy.”

This form of predatory gangster capitalism, now often called “neoliberalism,” rests upon several basic tenets:

Source: https://www.salon.com/2020/03/27/trumps-death-cult-finally-says-it-time-to-kill-the-useless-eaters-for-capitalism/