Today, the Department of State designated the Iran Space Agency and two of its research institutes under Executive Order (E.O.) 13382, which targets proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and WMD delivery systems and their supporters – the first time the United States is publicly designating Iran’s civilian space agency.
The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) reports weekly on the methods used by extremists to exploit the Internet and social media platforms to recruit followers and incite violence. This week, a pro-ISIS account that linked to propaganda appeared on YouTube and an unofficial media group that supports the terror group released a video titled, “The Severity of the Caliphate” on multiple websites. Lastly, instructions for making TATP (triacetone triperoxide) explosives were shared on a white supremacist Telegram channel.
-The Oslo Accords were based on the illusion that the PLO could totally change and suddenly become a “partner for peace”… It soon became clear that the Palestinian Authority was still the PLO: terrorist attacks quickly multiplied. The money received by the Palestinian Authority was used to continue incitement to murder and payments to incentivize it.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry claims that earlier this week, a Turkish convoy was bombed in Idlib province in northwest Syria.
There have been ongoing clashes between Assad’s regime and fighters from the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA).
The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) reports weekly on the methods used by extremists to exploit the Internet and social media platforms to recruit followers and incite violence. This week, Teespring was found to be selling t-shirts glorifying violence, white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Additionally, an American white supremacist group on Telegram praises the recent mass shootings, and ISIS releases a new video and radio broadcast on several websites.
Within minutes of news about his death in a Manhattan jail cell Saturday morning, theories spread with pestilential vigour. Was Jeffrey Epstein murdered? Accepting the premise without qualification, the next question followed: Who did it? MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was not giving anyone time to wonder. “A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives end up dead in his jail cell. How predictably…Russian.”
In recent months, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the focus of renewed interest and attention, largely stemming from President Donald Trump’s promised “deal of the century” peace plan. Nearly two years after the idea first became public following Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’ 2017 meeting with Trump at the UN General Assembly, the full details of the plan remain unclear. The economic elements were released in the run-up to the administration’s “economic workshop” in Bahrain in June, but the political components are still under wraps, and according to media reports, they may not be made public until after the Israeli elections in mid-September.
Few observers back then warned that Erdoğan’s pro-West façade was fake and his deep adherence to political Islam, an enemy of the Western civilization, would one day urge him to seek non-Western alliances.
Turkey’s choice of a Russian-made air defense system that is primarily designated to hit NATO aerial assets is a reflection of its anticipation of an aerial military conflict with a NATO member in the future.
No doubt, the S-400 is also a sign of Erdogan’s disregard for Turkey’s increasingly problematic place in the Western alliance. Erdoğan’s ideologues keep on portraying the U. S. as an “enemy country” while many Turks increasingly buy that line. Seven out of 10 Turks now report feeling threatened by U.S. power
Many European nations are avoiding the responsibility of taking back their citizens who traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State; this will only fuel the cycle of radicalization and extremism.
GIFCT Criticism Reiterates Need for Industrywide Standards for Online Extremist Content Removal.
On Wednesday, the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing on social media companies’ efforts to counter online terror content and misinformation. The hearing was called in the wake of March’s New Zealand mosque shootings—in which a terrorist killed 51 people and livestreamed it all on Facebook. A full 24 hours after the livestream, Facebook failed to remove 300,000 reuploads of the attack video. A week later, and then a month later, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) discovered that the video was still widely available. Tech’s failure to prevent reuploads of known terrorist content sheds light on the failings and ineffectiveness of the industry-led Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT).