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Honest-to-God false flag attack on a US synagogue

TurkeysGhost

Penultimate Amazing
TurkeysGhost
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Apr 2, 2018
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A truly bizarre tale of how a frequent contributer to a extreme left wing, conspiratorial publication was arrested vandalizing a synagogue and trying to frame it on Ukraine's notorious Avoz battalion


A woman accused of spray-painting antisemitic graffiti at the Woodward Avenue Shul Jewish Center in Royal Oak last week has been charged, police said.

Randi Lucille Nord was arraigned Wednesday through 44th District Court in Royal Oak, records show. She was charged with ethnic intimidation, a felony carrying a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a $5,000 fine, and malicious destruction of a building, a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of 93 days in jail and a fine three times the amount of the destruction, police said.



Magistrate Donald Chisholm ordered her to have no contact with the Shul or Rabbi Mendel Polter.

A swastika symbol and the letters AZOV were spray-painted on the side of the building April 27. The word "azov" means “leave” in Hebrew but the letters also are linked to a pro-Nazi Ukrainian militia.
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https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2023/05/03/woman-charged-in-royal-oak-swastika-graffiti/70181046007/

A bit about the publication in which she had worked:

MintPress News (MPN) is an American far-left[1] news website founded and edited by Mnar Adley (née, Muhawesh) which was launched in January 2012.[2] It covers political, economic, foreign affairs and environmental issues. Editorially, MintPress News supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the governments of Russia, Iran, and Syria.[3][4] It opposes the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia,[5] and reports geopolitical events from an anti-Western perspective.[6] In one contentious article, MintPress News falsely asserted that the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria was perpetrated by rebel groups rather than by the Syrian government.[4]

Described as a conspiratorial website,[7][8] MintPress News publishes disinformation and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, according to researchers at Rutgers University and others.[9][10] MintPress News was a major media domain that spread disinformation about the White Helmets, a Syrian volunteer organization.[11] The site has been accused of regularly publishing pro-Russian propaganda.[10]

The source of MintPress News's funding remains unknown.[4] MintPress News is headquartered in Minnesota, United States.[12]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintPress_News#cite_note-MNP_News_Staff-56
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
A truly bizarre tale of how a frequent contributer to a extreme left wing, conspiratorial publication was arrested vandalizing a synagogue and trying to frame it on Ukraine's notorious Avoz battalion
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So...letters to the editor of a left-wing paper make her left-wing also? Does my frequent contributions to this forum, which is US based, make me, an Australian, an American?

Could it have been a possibility some AZOV-supporting twat could contribute to a left-wing publication with the sole purpose of making the vandalism she did a case of guilt by association with a left-wing publication?

Not that I have any truck with Mint Press either. But anyone who is pro-Putin, Pro-Assad, pro-Iran and anti-Western certainly sounds to me to be far more fascist right-wing than any leftish flavour. Or more accurately, pro dictatorship. And far more in line with the sentiments and actions she was convicted of.

But maybe I'm reading it wrong. I suspect there's more to this story than you are letting yourself believe. At the moment, it stinks. Be more sceptical, perhaps?
 
Norman Alexander said:
So...letters to the editor of a left-wing paper make her left-wing also? Does my frequent contributions to this forum, which is US based, make me, an Australian, an American?

Could it have been a possibility some AZOV-supporting twat could contribute to a left-wing publication with the sole purpose of making the vandalism she did a case of guilt by association with a left-wing publication?

Not that I have any truck with Mint Press either. But anyone who is pro-Putin, Pro-Assad, pro-Iran and anti-Western certainly sounds to me to be far more fascist right-wing than any leftish flavour. Or more accurately, pro dictatorship. And far more in line with the sentiments and actions she was convicted of.

But maybe I'm reading it wrong. I suspect there's more to this story than you are letting yourself believe. At the moment, it stinks. Be more sceptical, perhaps?
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She's a staff writer, not just some letter to the editor crank

https://web.archive.org/web/20211124150438/https://www.mintpressnews.com/author/randi-nord/

Randi Nord is a MintPress News staff writer. She is also co-founder of Geopolitics Alert where she covers U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East with a special focus on Yemen.
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This isn't that surprising if you're familiar with this very niche strain of extreme lefties.
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
She's a staff writer, not just some letter to the editor crank
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With Mint Press, there's not a lot of difference. ;)

This isn't that surprising if you're familiar with this very niche strain of extreme lefties.
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See, there you go again. She writes for Mint Press, ergo she must surely be an "extreme lefty". That really doesn't follow.

Please explain how anybody who is pro-Putin (fascist dictator), pro-Saddad (fascist dictator) and pro-Iran (fascist theocracy) is "extreme lefty". Especially since AZOV are fascist but anti-Putin Ukrainian nationalists. Not seeing any hints of "lefty" but plenty of variants of fascism.

To be clear, I do not support what she did, why she did it, nor her views. She also deserves all legal punishment coming her way.
 
There's a lot of people on the "far left" who are very anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. I'm not sure I'd consider MintPress News to be far-left, but there are several sources cited on Wikipedia that characterize it as far-left.

Also, I suspect that she was using the letters AZOV to mean "leave" and not to mean the Ukrainian far-right brigade.

Edited to add: I could be wrong about that last statement, I just noticed this on that Wikipedia page:

MintPress News defended Russia's invasion of Crimea, claiming Ukraine's post-revolution government was "illegitimate."
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So maybe it was an attempt to discredit the Azov Brigade.
 
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shemp said:
There's a lot of people on the "far left" who are very anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. I'm not sure I'd consider MintPress News to be far-left, but there are several sources cited on Wikipedia that characterize it as far-left.

Also, I suspect that she was using the letters AZOV to mean "leave" and not to mean the Ukrainian far-right battalion.
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From my limited perspective consuming left media, including a bit of very alternative, fringey media, there's definitely a small but vocal contigent of US lefties that have a very reductive view of foreign affairs where any anti-US force is good, no matter what. Lots of apologism for Russia, for example, because they are standing up to NATO so they must be good.

There's definitely some really fringe alt-media on the left that take very esoteric views of the world that includes stanning for authoritarian regimes just because they happen to be a thorn in the capitalist West's side.

There's also the known path of edgelord lefties to eventually become out and out fascists. Things can get pretty weird out in the ideological hinterlands.
 
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I wouldn't be completely surprised if the swastika and "AZOV" were not in fact meant as false-flag pro-Nazi intimidation against Jews.

Just because it seems completely obvious to us doesn't mean the person who did it thinks that way. It's actually more likely IMV that in the mind of a pro-Russian, anti-Israeli and presumably anti-Ukrainian and anti-Zelensky activist, the Jews are supporting the Jewish leader of the Ukrainian Nazis in their war against the poor innocent embattled Russians. So the graffiti is accusing them of being the AZOV Nazis.

If only CE was still here, he could explain it to us.
 
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When you get extremely far out on the left, or extremely far out on the right, you get sucked into the Black Hole of Stupid, where all political views are a naked singularity and there's no coming back.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
It's actually more likely IMV that in the mind of a pro-Russian, anti-Israeli and presumably anti-Ukrainian and anti-Zelensky activist, the Jews are supporting the Jewish leader of the Ukrainian Nazis in their war against the poor innocent embattled Russians. So the graffiti is accusing them of being the AZOV Nazis.
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Very good point.

A swastika symbol and the letters AZOV were spray-painted on the side of the building
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How was this a 'false flag'? Is the Ukraine's 'notorious' Avoz battalion currently doing such things?
 
shemp said:
When you get extremely far out on the left, or extremely far out on the right, you get sucked into the Black Hole of Stupid, where all political views are a naked singularity and there's no coming back.
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I see it as a circle. 'Moderate' is one point on the perimeter, 'extreme' is one on the opposite side. Whether you move to the right or the feft, if you go far enough you end up at the same place.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I wouldn't be completely surprised if the swastika and "AZOV" were not in fact meant as false-flag pro-Nazi intimidation against Jews.

Just because it seems completely obvious to us doesn't mean the person who did it thinks that way. It's actually more likely IMV that in the mind of a pro-Russian, anti-Israeli and presumably anti-Ukrainian and anti-Zelensky activist, the Jews are supporting the Jewish leader of the Ukrainian Nazis in their war against the poor innocent embattled Russians. So the graffiti is accusing them of being the AZOV Nazis.
If only CE was still here, he could explain it to us.
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That was more where I was thinking. The graffiti is more in the line of assembling all the nasty epithets they could think of, and applying them to their chosen hate-target. Whether appropriate or not.
 
Norman Alexander said:
So...letters to the editor of a left-wing paper make her left-wing also? Does my frequent contributions to this forum, which is US based, make me, an Australian, an American?

Could it have been a possibility some AZOV-supporting twat could contribute to a left-wing publication with the sole purpose of making the vandalism she did a case of guilt by association with a left-wing publication?

Not that I have any truck with Mint Press either. But anyone who is pro-Putin, Pro-Assad, pro-Iran and anti-Western certainly sounds to me to be far more fascist right-wing than any leftish flavour. Or more accurately, pro dictatorship. And far more in line with the sentiments and actions she was convicted of.

But maybe I'm reading it wrong. I suspect there's more to this story than you are letting yourself believe. At the moment, it stinks. Be more sceptical, perhaps?
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There's a few people who were tankies back in the day, when there was still a USSR, who haven't given up on their dreams of a worldwide communist revolution. They haven't noticed how far-right Russia and its former client states have gone, delusion being less dissapointing than reality.

Most ex-tankies on the other hand just jumped on the far-right bandwagon.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
There's a few people who were tankies back in the day, when there was still a USSR, who haven't given up on their dreams of a worldwide communist revolution. They haven't noticed how far-right Russia and its former client states have gone, delusion being less dissapointing than reality.

Most ex-tankies on the other hand just jumped on the far-right bandwagon.
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Roger Ramjets said:
Very good point.

How was this a 'false flag'? Is the Ukraine's 'notorious' Avoz battalion currently doing such things?
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Doing what things?

Presumably spray painting a swastika and Azov on the side of a synagogue is meant to make the community think that an Azov supporter wanted to intimidate them. Considering MintPress coverage of Azov is generally fairly critical, I don't think it's a speculative leap that this writer turned vandal is not a genuine supporter of theirs.
 
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smartcooky said:
Remembering, of course, that what you call "Liberal" in the UK, would be considered left wing in the US. The whole of US politics is shifted to the right by both your standards and mine. What passes for centrist in the US, would be conservative in the UK, NZ and probably Australia.

Also keep in mind that the issue under discussion was an incident that happened in the US, so the politics of other countries are not really relevant.
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No - liberal in the UK is a sperate category to left and right and I was using it in that way. Liberals often have "right wing" views in matters of economy and so on. It is why the 2010 government in the UK was a well meshed coalition of the Conservative and Liberal Democrats parties, Cameron for a Tory was very liberal in terms of personal freedoms etc. Clegg for a LibDem was very Tory in areas such as the economy. They were kindred spirits, one criticism was that neither of them was representative of their core parties.
 
What is the point of removing a link to a quoted post as well as the poster's name? :confused:

smartcooky said:
It's a well-known fact that only radical Marxists like Jenny McCarthy were anti-vaxxers before 2020!
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Andrew Wakefield
Charlie Sheen
Alicia Silverstone
Rob Schneider
Robert De Niro
Jenna Elfman*
Esai Morales
Jim Carrey
Kirsty Alley*
Selma Blair
Erin Brockovich
Miranda Bailey
Danny Masterson*
Juliet Lewis*

None of these are/were anything close to Marxists.

ETA: * Scientologists. Well, colour me surprised!
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It is not immediately clear to me why the link to my post as well as my name disappeared when smartcooky quoted it. It doesn't happen when you use the quote function, so I assume that it was done deliberately. That my link to Jenny McCarthy is still there indicates that the missing link and name can't be due to copy-pasting the sentence.

It is unfortunate that they are missing because it makes it difficult to understand the obvious irony. It is necessary to see the context to do so, so why remove the link to that context?

This was it:
dann said:
smartcooky said:
Before the recent pandemic, anti-vaxxers were far more prevalent in the left wing than the right.
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It's a well-known fact that only radical Marxists like Jenny McCarthy were anti-vaxxers before 2020!
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It is quite obvious that none of the names on the list of prominent antivaxxers "are/were anything close to Marxists," unless somebody had a change of heart recently.
I have been trying to find out what they think of the C-19 vaccines and if they have been vaccinated, but they seem to have kept their mouths shut about this theme for the past couple of years. De Niro hates Trump and his pandemic response, but unlike many antivaxxers he doesn't appear to be an antimasker: But that was in 2020 ...
 
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