90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, May 4, 2019

Dallas-area ISIS recruiter goes on trial for recruiting jihadists to kill nonbelievers

“ISIS will chop your head off.”

That was how Taryn Meeks began her opening statement Tuesday to a federal jury in Dallas that’s hearing testimony in the international terrorism trial of a Richardson man.

Meeks, a trial attorney with the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said those were among the words Azzam Mohamad Rahim uttered during his lengthy online campaign to recruit others to join ISIS and kill nonbelievers at home and abroad.

“Smash his head on the wall,” the government also quoted Rahim as saying on Zello, a social media platform. “Think of a way to kill the biggest number of people possible.”

Rahim, 42, sporting a bald head and thick beard, is charged with lying to the FBI about his support for the Islamic State and with plotting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He has been locked up since his March 2017 arrest. The trial is expected to last about a week.

Details from his indictment and two detention hearings revealed how Rahim allegedly used the internet to mobilize people to engage in jihad, or holy war. Rahim, a U.S. citizen who owns or used to own an Oak Cliff convenience store, told listeners on Zello to kill as many “infidels” as possible, court records say.

He is charged with six counts of making a false statement to a federal agency, one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and one count of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

The indictment says Rahim provided ISIS with “services and personnel” from October 2014 to March 2017. Prosecutors plan to detail those allegations during the trial.

Rahim didn’t just encourage people to kill, he did so with specific detail, such as the use of poison, rocks, trucks, burning or even by pushing people off buildings, prosecutors said.

And Meeks said Rahim not only used the Zello channel he controlled to recruit people around the world to commit “horrendous acts of violence,” he bragged about how many members of his channel had already mobilized for jihad.

“This isn’t just talk,” Meeks told the jury. “They would seek out the defendant for guidance.”

Rahim even took credit for an ISIS-inspired attack on an Istanbul nightclub in 2017 that killed 39 people, Meeks said. Rahim claimed to have called for an attack in Turkey about a month before, she said.

And when a truck barreled into a crowd of people in Nice, France, that same year, Rahim cheered the resulting murders of 86 people, she said.

“I was happy for this act,” Rahim said, according to Meeks. “Those dogs.”

Meeks also told jurors that Rahim conspired with Mouner El Aoual, a Moroccan citizen who is being held an Italian prison for allegedly planning a terrorist attack in that country. Italian police officials are expected to ...

‘Worse Than Watergate’: Barr Opens Probe of FBI’s Spying of Trump Campaign

Attorney General William Barr has formed a team to investigate allegations the FBI and Justice Department spied on the Trump campaign in 2016.

“To the extent there was overreach, what we have to be concerned about is a few people at the top getting it into their heads that they know better than the American people,” Barr informed the Senate Judiciary Panel on Friday.

Rt.com reports: “We now know that he was being falsely accused,” the AG said of President Donald Trump. “We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.”

Barr hinted he was zeroing in on senior figures in the Justice Department and FBI and said he would concentrate on when exactly intel collection had begun, whether it was earlier than previously reported, and how many “confidential informants” the FBI had in Trump’s campaign.

Barr’s announcement comes amid heated demand for such an investigation among top GOP figures. Republican party chair Ronna McDaniel echoed Trump’s denouncement of the prosecutorial “witch hunt,” calling out former President Barack Obama and former FBI Director James Comey for overseeing a scandal she called “worse than Watergate.”

McDaniel’s tweet came a day after the New York Times ran a story detailing how the FBI sent an agent named “Azra Turk”to London to meet with former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in 2016. Papadopoulos said he’d met with several spies while in London, who probed him for connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. He maintains that he knew Turk to be a spy from their first meeting, and figured her for a CIA operative.

The FBI’s counterintelligence operation against Papadopoulos and the Trump campaign is currently being probed by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, with a report due later this month or in June, according to Attorney General William Barr.

Among other things, Horowitz’s report will examine the actions of Stefan Halper, a Cambridge University professor and FBI informant who invited Papadopoulos to London and spoke to several other Trump campaign officials to gather information for...

This Is Why We Need Our Guns And Ammo.
Stay Well Oiled My Friends.

A parody website with embarrassing photos of Joe Biden is outranking his official campaign page on Google

Users are reporting that the former vice president’s official 2020 campaign page is nowhere to be found on the first page of results for the search term “Joe Biden.”
Even worse for the Democratic front-runner: A realistic-looking parody site featuring images of Biden touching women and children appears to be doing quite well on Google and other major search engines, particularly for the search “Joe Biden website.”

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is already sunk — at least on Google.

Users are reporting that the former vice president’s official 2020 campaign page is nowhere to be found on the first page of results for the search term “Joe Biden.”

Even worse for the Democratic front-runner: A realistic-looking parody site featuring images of Biden touching women and children appears to be doing quite well on Google and other major search engines, particularly for the search “Joe Biden website.”

“Joe Biden has a good feel for the American people and knows exactly what they really want deep down,” reads JoeBiden.info, the parody site. “He’s happy to open up and reveal himself to voters and will give a pounding to anybody who gets in his way!”

Biden has been under scrutiny after a number of women made allegations that he touched them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. After those allegations surfaced, Biden pledged to be more respectful.

Biden’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

The internet snafu suggests the Biden campaign is having early difficulty with its digital operation. That could pose trouble for the 76-year-old as he competes in a field that has already proven to be savvy with new tools for online outreach and fundraising.

The problem has also emerged despite the Biden campaign’s prolific spending on Google.

An online tracker maintained by the progressive digital advertising firm ACRONYM shows the Biden campaign has spent more than $360,000 on Google platforms, racking up more spending on the site than all the other candidates in the crowded field except Sen. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

While his official campaign page is absent, Google does prominently display an official Biden advertisement for Biden-related searches.

Meanwhile, JoeBiden.org links to a White House page titled “Trump Administration Accomplishments.”

The person who created the JoeBiden.info parody site is not named, and a disclaimer claims it is not funded “by any candidate, committee, organization, or PAC.”

In response to...

Imagine If They Found More Spying On Additional Candidates...
Not Even The Corrupt Leftist Media Could Continue To Pretend It Was Legit.

10 Offbeat Stories You Might Have Missed This Week (5/4/19)

As another week nears its end, it is time to take a look at some of the noteworthy stories with a hefty dose of weirdness. Click here if you want to catch up on last week’s list.

In the world of animals, this week we have a beluga spy, a three-eyed snake, and even an alleged Yeti sighting. People draw penises on the ground and eat bananas in protest. Meanwhile, scientists solve a decades-old computer puzzle and attempt to find the remains of Leonardo da Vinci.

10Yeti In The Himalayas

Photo credit: Indian Army

The Indian army shared on social media several pictures alleged to depict footprints of the Yeti.According to the online post, the army presented its six million followers with “mysterious footprints” found by a mountaineering expedition team at Makalu Base Camp in the Himalayas. The footprints measure 81 by 38 centimeters (32 x 15 in). Soldiers actually made the discovery on April 9 but decided to wait until they’d compared it to previous reports of Yeti activity. In the end, army officials decided it was time to go public in order to “excite scientific temper and rekindle the interest.”[1]Suffice to say, many met the claims with skepticism and derision. This includes the Nepalese Army, which asserted that the prints simply came from the Himalayan black bear. The footprint is elongated because the bear does not put its hind paw completely over the print of the front paw. It places it slightly behind, thus creating the illusion of a single, long footprint.In reply, the Indian army said that they had turned over the evidence to “subject matter experts” and will await new developments.

9The Power Of The Willy

Photo credit: Teesside Connected

The people of Middlesbrough in North Yorkshire, England, showed us the trick to getting potholes fixed quickly: Draw penises around them.The Fane Grove area of the city has had potholes for almost two years. Last week, an anonymous resident adorned them with phallus-shaped graffiti. A few days later, they had been patched, and the graffiti had been removed.A spokesman for Middlesbrough Council claimed that the repairs took so long because they are performed on a priority basis determined by the risk they pose to motorists. However, since a road-mending team was already in the area, it was also able to fix the Fane Grove potholes.At least one resident was not buying this story. Local Brad Nicholson attributed the quick repairs to “the power of the willy.”[2]

8One In A Hole

A man in Mexico had to be rescued after becoming trapped in a tunnel that he had dug under his former partner’s house so that he could spy on her.Authorities from the town of Puerto Penasco made an interesting house call. A woman found her ex-boyfriend on her property, inside a hole that he’d dug over the course of last week. At first, she heard various noises but assumed they came from cats. As the sound intensified, she decided to investigate, and that is when she discovered that her former lover had spent several days burrowing a tunnel so that he could lie in hiding and spy on her.[3] The woman had ended their 14-year relationship because he was too jealous. She also had a restraining order against him for domestic violence.The 50-year-old man required assistance in order to get out of the hole. He was severely dehydrated and seemingly intoxicated when he was released from his underground jail. Subsequently, he was taken to real jail.

7Leonardo Lives

This week marked 500 years since the death of Leonardo da Vinci. Two scientists are eager to find out if a relic purported to contain the Renaissance Man’s DNA can help us identify his final resting place.Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato, both expert scholars on da Vinci, obtained a lock of hair which could have belonged to Leonardo. For a long time, it has been in a private collection in the US, but this week, it was featured for the first time in an exhibition dedicated to the polymath in his hometown of Vinci. Obviously, its credentials are in doubt, but it also comes with documents which seem to attest to its provenance. Besides putting it on display, the scientists also attempted to collect a DNA sample from the hair.[4]We are not sure where Leonardo’s remains are buried, but they are thought to be located in a chapel in Chateau d’Amboise in France. This DNA sample, if genuine and viable, could be compared against the bones to check for a match.

6The Banana Protest

Photo credit: AP/Czarek Sokolowski

The people of Poland have taken to eating bananas in protest over the removal of a popular artwork due to alleged censorship.The 1973 video “Consumer Art” by influential artist Natalia LL had been a mainstay at the National Museum in Warsaw until last week. That is when new museum head Jerzy Miziolek had it removed shortly following a summons to the Ministry of Culture.The video shows a young woman eating a banana with great pleasure. It criticized the food shortage during communist Poland, but Miziolek believes that it “could irritate sensitive young people.”[5] Protesters see the move as censorship instituted by a conservative government. Miziolek denied these accusations and said that “creative changes” were necessary due to the limited space of the gallery.Many people took to social media and posted pictures of themselves eating bananas to object the removal of “Consumer Art.” Several hundred of them even staged a protest in person on Monday. They all gathered in front of the museum and ate bananas, and some wore the peels on their heads.

5A Case Of Meth-taken Identity

An elderly couple from Melbourne, Australia, called the police after taking delivery of the wrong parcel, which happened to contain 20 kilograms (44 lb) of methamphetamines worth approximately A$10 million ($7 million).The couple was not expecting a package but signed for it anyway. Inside, they found bags of white powder. Although they did not realize the full significance of the strange delivery, they still...