Fundamentalist Christian Pastor Steven Anderson, who has made headlines in recent years by calling for the execution of all gay people, has just become the first person Ireland has ever banned.
Anderson had planned to preach to a congregation in Ireland on May 26. It took just one petition signed by just 14,000, The Daily Beast reports, for the government of Ireland to act.
Citing biblical passages, Pastor Anderson once told his followers, "if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn't have all this AIDS running rampant."
Anderson has also referred to gay people as "disgusting," "vile," "reprobate," "haters of the lord," "filled with murder," and "basically rapists."
He's also prayed for the death of President Barack Obama.
Anderson has been banned now by over 30 countries, including all 28 in the European Union.
Swedish prosecutors said Monday they were reopening a 2010 rape investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, hoping to bring him to justice before the statute of limitations expires in August 2020.
The 47-year-old has claimed the Swedish allegations were a pretext to transfer him to the United States, where he fears prosecution over the release by WikiLeaks of millions of classified documents.
"I have today decided to reopen the investigation... There is still probable cause to suspect that Mr Assange committed rape," the deputy director of public prosecutions, Eva-Marie Persson, told reporters.
"The previous decision (in May 2017) to close the investigation was not based on difficulties related to evidence, but on difficulties that blocked the investigation."
The Australian whistleblower, who holed himself up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London for seven years to avoid a British extradition order to Sweden, was arrested on April 11 after Ecuador gave him up.
A London court sentenced him on May 1 to 50 weeks in jail for breaching the British order.
AFP / Jonathan NACKSTRAND Persson said "there is still probable cause to suspect that Mr Assange committed rape"
"Now that he has left Ecuador's embassy, the conditions in the case have changed and I am of the opinion that the conditions are in place once again to pursue the case," the prosecutor said.
Persson said she hoped Assange could be questioned again in the case. She said he would soon ask a Swedish court to remand him in custody in absentia, and a European arrest warrant would be issued.
- 'Clear his name' -
Assange's spectacular arrest revived his Swedish accuser's hopes of seeing him brought to justice, and her lawyer asked prosecutors to reopen the rape investigation.
The alleged victim, who says she met Assange at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm, filed a complaint in August 2010.
She accused him of having sex with her -- as she slept -- without using a condom despite repeatedly having denied him unprotected sex.
Assange has always denied the allegations. His website's editor, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said Monday the reopening of the investigation would give him "a chance to clear his name".
Hrafnsson also said in a statement that there had been "political pressure" on Sweden to reopen the case.
With the Australian in the Ecuadoran embassy, the Swedish case dragged on for years over procedural difficulties and prosecutors were never granted permission to question him directly.
In testimony released in December 2016 -- after an Ecuadoran prosecutor grilled him over questions supplied by Swedish prosecutors -- Assange insisted the sex was consensual.
In May 2017, Sweden's director of public prosecutions Marianne Ny decided to close the preliminary investigation into the rape allegations.
She argued that since Assange could not be reached after taking up residence in the embassy in London in 2012, it was not possible to proceed with the probe -- but left open the possibility that it could be reopened if Assange were to become available again.
The statute of limitations on the rape allegation expires on August 17, 2020. If the legal process drags on past that date, then the case would have to be closed, the prosecutor said.
In 2015, Swedish prosecutors dropped a separate sexual assault probe into Assange, filed by another woman, after the five-year statute of limitations expired.
- US extradition request -
Assange's biggest concern however remains an extradition request from the United States, where he is wanted for hacking.
That extradition request was only revealed following his dramatic arrest in London, when police dragged him out shouting from the embassy.
A US indictment charges him with "conspiracy" for working with former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password stored on Department of Defense computers in March 2010.
Manning passed hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, exposing US military wrongdoing in the Iraq war and diplomatic secrets about scores of countries.
Assange could face up to five years in jail if found guilty, although his team is fighting his extradition and the process could take years.
The charge has raised serious concerns among free speech advocates.
The Swedish prosecutor said that if Britain were faced with a conflicting European arrest warrant and US extradition request, it would be the British authorities' prerogative to determine which has priority.
Millions of cryptocurrency investors have been scammed out of massive sums of real money. In 2018, losses from cryptocurrency-related crimes amounted to US$1.7 billion. The criminals use both old-fashioned and new-technology tactics to swindle their marks in schemes based on digital currencies exchanged through online databases called blockchains.
An even more basic question arises, though: How are unsuspecting investors attracted to cryptocurrency frauds in the first place?
Fast-talking swindlers
Some cryptocurrency fraudsters appeal to people’s greed, promising big returns. For example, an unknown group of entrepreneurs runs the scam bot iCenter, which is a Ponzi scheme for Bitcoin and Litecoin. It doesn’t provide information on investment strategies, but somehow promises investors 1.2% daily returns.
The iCenter scheme operates through a group chat on Telegram. It starts with a small group of scammers who are in on the racket. They get a referral code that they share with others, in blogs and on social media, hoping to get them to join the chat. Once there, the newcomers see encouraging and exciting messages from the original scammers. Some newcomers decide to invest, at which point they are assigned an individual bitcoin wallet, into which they can deposit bitcoins. They agree to wait some period of time – 99 or 120 days – to receive a significant return.
During that time, the newcomers often use social media to share their own referral codes with friends and contacts, bringing more people into the group chat and into the investment scheme. There’s no actual investment of the funds in any legitimate business. Instead, when new people join, the person who recruited them gets a percentage of the new funds, and the cycle continues, paying out to earlier participants from each round of newer investors.
Other scams are based on impressing potential victims with jargon or claims of specialized knowledge. The Global Trading scammers claimed they took advantage of price differences on various cryptocurrency exchanges to profit from what is called arbitrage – simply buying cheaply and selling at higher prices. Really they just took investors’ money.
Global Trading used a bot on Telegram, too – investors could send a balance inquiry message and get a response with false information about how much was in their account, sometimes even seeing balances climb by 1% in an hour. With returns looking like that, who could blame people for sharing the scheme with their friends and family on social media?
Exploiting friends and family
Once a scheme has started, it stays alive – at least for a while – through social media. One person gets taken in by the promise of big returns on cryptocurrency investments and spreads the word to friends and family members.
Not all the celebrities know they’re involved. In one blog post, iCenter featured a video that purported to be an endorsement by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, holding a sign featuring iCenter’s logo. Videos of Justin Timberlake and Christopher Walken were deceptively edited so they appeared to praise iCenter, too.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson does not actually endorse this cryptocurrency scam.
Fraudulent initial coin offerings
Another popular scam technique is called an “initial coin offering.” A potentially legitimate investment opportunity, an initial coin offering essentially is a way for a startup cryptocurrency company to raise money from its future users: In exchange for sending active cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum, customers are promised a discount on the new cryptocoins.
Many initial coin offerings have turned out to be scams, with organizers engaging in cunning plots, even renting fake offices and creating fancy-looking marketing materials. In 2017, a lot of hype and media coverage about cryptocurrencies fed a huge wave of initial coin offering fraud. In 2018, about 1,000 initial coin offering efforts collapsed, costing backers at least $100 million. Many of these projects had no original ideas – more than 15% of them had copied ideas from other cryptocurrency efforts, or even plagiarized supporting documentation.
Investors looking for returns in a new technology sector are still interested in blockchains and cryptocurrencies – but should beware that they are complex systems that are new even to those who are selling them. Newcomers and relative experts alike have fallen prey to scams.
In an environment like the current cryptocurrency market, potential investors should be very careful to research what they’re putting their money into and be sure to find out who is involved as well as what the actual plan is for making real money – without defrauding others.
Environmental protesters spilled fake blood Sunday on the steps of the Trocadero, a Paris tourist landmark, in a stunt to highlight the accelerated loss of biodiversity on Earth, AFP journalists reported.
As sightseers and police looked on, members of the Extinction Rebellion campaign group emptied canisters containing around 300 litres of red liquid on the famous esplanade across from the Eiffel Tower.
Brandishing banners with the slogan: "Stop the sixth mass extinction", the protesters then observed a few minutes' silence before cleaning the steps.
Also on Sunday, six Extinction Rebellion activists were detained in the south-west city of Bordeaux for putting up a banner overnight on the scaffolding of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a popular tourist site.
In a landmark report last week, the United Nations warned that a million of Earth's estimated eight million species are at risk of extinction.
The campaign group was set up in Britain last year by academics and has become one of the world's fastest-growing environmental movements.
It advocates the use of non-violent acts of civil disobedience to force governments to declare a climate and ecological emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt biodiversity loss.
When in 1948 US bombers started dropping tiny, improvised parachutes loaded with sweets into Berlin during the Soviet blockade, one little German girl wrote to complain.
Mercedes Wild, now 78, recalled how she protested that the constant drone of airlift planes disturbed her chickens -- and during the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, eggs were a valuable commodity.
Then Gail Halvorsen, the US pilot who dreamed up the candy drops, wrote back, enclosing sticks of chewing gum and a lollipop with his letter.
His gesture sparked a long-lasting friendship between Halvorsen, Wild and their families which mirrored the post-World War II German-American relationship, she told AFP.
AFP / MICHELE TANTUSSI Halvorsen was the guest of honour at the site of the airfield where he once flew supplies to blockaded Berlin
"It wasn't the sweets that impressed me, it was the letter," she said. "I grew up fatherless, like a lot of (German) children at that time, so knowing that someone outside of Berlin was thinking of me gave me hope."
"Candy bomber" Halvorsen insists that the real heroes of the Berlin Airlift -- the mammoth logistical operation to air-drop supplies into West Berlin after the Soviet Union blockaded it -- were inside the city.
"The heroes were the Germans -- the parents and children on the ground," the 98-year-old US airforce veteran said, calling them "the stalwarts of the confrontation with the Soviet Union".
The frail ex-pilot was back at Berlin's former Tempelhof airport, now a public park, for a commemoration of the daring aviation feat by western Allies in 1948-49, officially known as 'Operation Vittles'.
- 'Uncle Wiggly Wings' -
Tens of thousands of people on Sunday flocked to the festivities for the 70th anniversary of the end of the 15-month Soviet blockade.
"Berlin is my second home," Halvorsen, wearing his air force uniform, told a cheering crowd at the park where a vintage C-54 Skymaster plane was on display.
Looking at the blue spring sky, he said "its a beautiful day today" and added wryly that the weather "was not that good during the airlift most of the time".
The airlift was "the outstretched hand of the former war enemies to Germany," Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said at a ceremony on the eve of the commemoration.
It was "an act of resistance against dictatorship" and "an act of trust-building" that helped Germany's post-war democracy, she said.
Pilots flew supplies to West Berlin's 2.5 million people amid Cold War tensions in Germany's ruined capital, still reeling from the Second World War.
AFP / MICHELE TANTUSSI The real heroes of the Airlift were the ordinary people in the city, says Halvorsen
Operating almost non-stop and through a harsh German winter, the airlift brought in more than two million tonnes of supplies on more than 277,000 flights, mainly into Tempelhof.
At least 78 US, British and German pilots and ground crew lost their lives in accidents in the air and on the ground, as the Allies delivered fuel and food to prevent Berlin's population from starving.
It was the first major salvo of the Cold War.
- 'Best ambassador' -
Halvorsen was the first American pilot to famously drop bundles of chocolate in handkerchief parachutes to children waiting below.
To signal that he was about to release the candy-laden parachutes, Halvorsen would dip his plane's wings, earning him the nickname "Uncle Wiggly Wings".
Halvorsen rose to the rank of colonel and eventually ended up commander of the airfield.
To honour the airman, the Berlin Braves, the city's baseball team, named their ground at Tempelhof "the Gail S Halvorsen Ballpark".
The veteran flew from his home in Utah to throw the honorary opening pitch on Saturday.
After handing out candy to local children, Halvorsen urged future leaders in both Germany and America to safeguard their freedom.
AFP / MICHELE TANTUSSI At least 78 US, British and German pilots and ground crew lost their lives in accidents in the air and on the ground during the operation
"I would exhort the young people to keep an open mind to know that some leaders will lead free people in the wrong direction," Halvorsen warned.
"Freedom is important and sometimes you have to fight for it."
Mercedes Wild said she still has Halvorsen's first letter to her in its original envelope.
"He became a father-figure for me," she said. "Our families have a special bond, and he's the best ambassador we could have for German-American friendship."
Poland on Monday said it had cancelled a visit by Israeli officials over their intention to raise the issue of the restitution of Jewish properties seized during the Holocaust, a matter Warsaw insists is closed.
"Poland decided to cancel the visit of Israeli officials after the Israeli side made last minute changes in the composition of the delegation suggesting that the talks would primarily focus on the issues related to property restitution," the foreign ministry said in a statement posted to its website.
It said a delegation headed by Avi Cohen-Scali, the director general of the Israeli Ministry for Social Equality, had been due in Warsaw on 13 May.
Several thousand nationalists rallied in the Polish capital on Saturday against a US law on the restitution of Jewish properties seized during the Holocaust, an issue which has surfaced ahead of parliamentary elections later this year.
Poland's governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party as well as the centrist and liberal opposition have downplayed the law signed by US President Donald Trump in May 2018, insisting that it will have no impact on Poland.
The US Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act -- known as the 447 law -- requires the US State Department to report to Congress on the progress of countries including Poland on the restitution of Jewish assets seized during World War II and its aftermath.
Pre-war Poland was a Jewish heartland, with a centuries-old community numbering some 3.2 million, or around 10 percent of the country's population at the time.
Anti-Semitic concerns regarding Poland have recently resurfaced.
Last year, Warsaw passed a law that made it illegal to accuse the Polish nation or state of complicity in Nazi German war crimes.
The move sparked an outcry from Israel, which saw it as an attempt to ban testimonials on Polish crimes against Jews.
In response, Warsaw amended the law to remove the possibility of fines or a prison sentence.
In February, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz drew Poland's ire by saying "Poles suckle anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk."
In April, the World Jewish Congress condemned a Polish town after reports that residents hung and burnt an effigy "made to look like a stereotypical Jew" in a revival of an old Easter tradition.
“This is the worst I have ever seen it, by far,” said one veteran Border Patrol agent in South Texas.
Overcrowding at Border Patrol stations in South Texas has become so acute in recent days that U.S. authorities have taken the rare step of using aircraft to relocate migrants to other areas of the border simply to begin processing them, according to three Homeland Security officials.
The first flight left McAllen on Friday, transferring detainees to Border Patrol facilities in Del Rio. There are daily flights scheduled for the next several days, with two planned for Tuesday, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the operations.
The flights are conducted by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, but the detainees remain in the custody of the Border Patrol, officials said. Though ICE routinely uses aircraft to move detainees among its detention facilities, it is very unusual for the Border Patrol to fly recent arrivals from one part of the border to another to perform routine booking procedures.
Homeland Security officials requested the aircraft because the Border Patrol has an urgent need to move single adults out of the lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. The agency is scrambling to make room for the large volume of families and children who have come across the border in dramatically higher numbers in the past several days, officials said.
One official said the U.S. government has resorted to using aircraft because all available buses were already in use and authorities needed every available transportation option.
“This is the worst I have ever seen it, by far,” said one veteran Border Patrol agent in South Texas who was not authorized to speak to reporters.
The number of people taken into custody along the Mexico border has exceeded 5,500 each day for several days in a row, and the Border Patrol currently has more than 17,500 people in holding cells and tent sites set up in parking lots outside stations, officials said. That is a 30% increase from late March, when authorities said border agents and infrastructure had hit the “breaking point.”
Tents have been set up in the parking lots outside Border Patrol stations in the lower Rio Grande Valley cities of McAllen, Brownsville and Rio Grande City to ease overcrowding. Emergency tents for families also have been erected in El Paso and at Camp Donna, a military site in the Rio Grande Valley.
To alleviate overcrowding in holding cells, the Border Patrol in recent weeks has begun releasing migrants directly from its custody, instead of waiting for ICE to pick them up and either detain or release them.
But the sheer volume of people coming across the border in the past several days has swamped the agency’s ability to process families and children, so holding cells are filling with single adults because they are a lesser priority.
The Border Patrol will use the flights to transfer some of those adults to Del Rio, where facilities are less overcrowded, instead of having to conduct releases, officials said. Each flight costs $16,000 and can transport approximately 135 adults.
President Donald Trump appears to have underestimated and miscalculated his Chinese counterparts when it comes to negotiating a trade deal with the large manufacturing giant.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. initially tried to appeal to President Xi Jinping's "nationalistic tendencies" on international property theft. The Trump team tried to paint it as a strange admission that the Chinese would need to steal U.S. technology. It didn't do anything to move the needle.
"The Trump administration believed it had an agreement that included a satisfactory level of enforcement should the Chinese record not improve," The Journal reported.
“Not tiger teeth, but real enough to make a deal,” one of the people tracking the talks explained.
Thousands of Catholics attended mass in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo Sunday amid tight security to prevent a repeat of Easter bomb attacks that killed 258 people.
Soldiers armed with automatic assault rifles guarded St. Theresa's church at Colombo's Thimbirigasyaya residential quarter, while members of the congregation were searched for explosives.
The sprawling church car park was empty as the authorities did not allow any vehicles into the compound as part of high-level security.
The government has blamed local jihadists for the deadly April 21 bombings, which targeted three Christian churches and three luxury hotels.
Regular services were cancelled across all churches soon after the deadly suicide attacks, but the archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith announced Thursday that mass would be held in his diocese from Sunday.
The Cardinal conducted private Sunday services in the past two weeks, which were broadcast live on national television.
He also said a special mass for the victims of the April 21 attack at the St. Lucia's cathedral on Saturday. The congregation was made up of relatives of victims and survivors of the Easter Sunday attacks.
At least 258 were killed and nearly 500 people were wounded.
Most churches outside Colombo had resumed regular services from last week, but under tight security provided by the local police.
Catholic private schools which remained closed after the Easter holidays will now reopen on Tuesday, church officials said.
All state-run schools -- more than 10,000 in total -- resumed classes last week after police and security forces deployed armed guards.
But attendance has been low despite a raft of new security measures, including parking restrictions near schools.
The government has blamed a local group, the National Thowheeth Jama'ath (NTJ), for the bombings. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility and the bombers filmed themselves making a pledge of allegiance to the militants' elusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before the attacks.
The authorities have banned the NTJ under new emergency laws that were invoked to deal with Islamists responsible for the attacks.
President Maithripala Sirisena has vowed to eliminate the militants and restore normality in the country which is still emerging from a 37-year Tamil separatist war that ended almost a decade ago.
Sri Lanka's police say they have either killed or arrested all those responsible for the bombings but that the threat of global terrorism persists.
Flaring tensions between Washington and Beijing are raising the prospect of new global diplomatic and economic fault lines, with consequences that analysts say could pose unfamiliar challenges to world leaders.
From an escalating trade war to an influence struggle in the South China Sea, "we've entered a period of strong and long-term rivalry between the United States and China," said Alice Ekman of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
President Donald Trump's combative stance, highlighted by the new round of import tariffs imposed this week, has upended decades of cautious statecraft in the West aimed at coaxing China to join the global order.
"A paradigm shift in America's China policy is under way, with major implications for the world's most important bilateral relationship and, more importantly, for global security," said Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
The fallout could prove long-lasting, requiring countries in Europe, Asia and Africa to rethink how they engage with two diametrically opposed superpowers.
"The profound policy shift under Donald Trump will outlast his presidency because it reflects a bipartisan consensus in Washington that the earlier policy of 'constructive engagement' with China had failed," Chellaney said.
For Trump, "the fatal error was letting China join the World Trade Organisation in 2001," said Jean-Francois Di Meglio of the Asia Centre research and advisory firm in Paris.
"Before then, we had a Chinese administration that played the game on westernising, which led the United States and the EU to say, 'Let's give them more than the benefit of the doubt, let's open the door and give them developing country status'," he said.
"China saw it has a huge victory. And 2001 is when its trade surpluses exploded and Beijing's currency reserves got so huge."
- Opposing visions -
So far, Trump's moves haven't had any major negative consequences for the US economy, but analysts say the fallout from their escalating rivalry could eventually be felt worldwide.
"Humiliating the Chinese... means exposing his successors to a huge problem with China, which isn't North Korea or any other country that can be pushed around without major repercussions," Di Meglio said.
And even if their trade war doesn't escalate further, there are plenty of other areas for confrontation, such as China's growing technological might, in particular its prowess with ultrafast 5G cellular networks.
Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative of infrastructure and trade development across Asia and Africa and even into Europe will also keep tensions simmering.
Yet analysts contacted by AFP played down the risk of a "Thucydides's Trap" as envisioned by American political scientist Graham Allison.
The concept refers to a rising power inspiring fear in an established power that leads to outright war.
Nonetheless, the antagonism will force other nations to move carefully on a more delicate geopolitical chessboard.
"In the long term, it's possible to envisage the emergence of two rival poles" and "two distinct forms of globalisation," said Ekman.
"The polarisation of international relations would provoke a new form of competition over infrastructure networks, standards, international institutions, et cetera," she said.
Di Meglio added that European firms hoping to win Chinese contracts might be told they have to replace sensitive technologies or components that might later be used by Americans.
"Imagine that happening with phones, or cars, in any number of industries, and you'd have the world splitting along lines we can't foresee -- would they occur in Germany? In Central Europe? In Central Asia?" he said.
In effect, nations might be forced to pick sides, aligning themselves with either the US or China.
"Other countries would have a choice of options that would be influenced by their political preferences, their geographic proximities, and their economic vulnerabilities to one of the two countries," Ekman said.
Facing widespread criticism over his plot to travel to the Ukraine and lobby their government to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, President Donald Trump's counsel Rudy Giuliani backed off the idea.
But according to the Washington Post, the whole scheme may not have worked anyway, for one key reason: Ukrainian officials didn't want to get involved. Officials supporting President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky have said they do not have any interest in getting bogged down with U.S. politics. One person close to Zelensky said, "This is definitely not our war ... We have to stay away from this as much as possible."
Zelensky, a comedian with no political experience before unexpectedly toppling incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, is opposed to the separatists backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his incoming administration does not want to meddle in the internal affairs of the U.S., a necessary ally in their new leader's efforts.
Giuliani was hoping that Ukrainian investigations would yield information on Biden's son Hunter's investments in a utility company that was investigated by a former state prosecutor Biden pushed to have fired. The notion that Biden behaved improperly has already been debunked — the prosecutor had actually quashed that investigation a year before, and was fired for substantive corruption issues.
According to Christianity Today, a cryptocurrency scam in the South Pacific preyed on Christian churches — and got their pastors to preach the scam to their congregations.
Two churches, the Samoa Worship Centre Christian Church and an Auckland branch of the Samoan Independent Seventh Day Adventist Church, were targeted by the investors of OneCoin, with the result that several congregants invested in the scheme, losing some $2 million.
Moreover, while the church leaders who preached OneCoin claimed to be victims of the scam themselves, the Central Bank of Samoa (CBS) concluded that they were knowing participants and in on the fraud.
OneCoin, created in Bulgaria by Ruja Ignatova and Sebastian Greenwood in 2014, has been described by prosecutors as both a Ponzi and a pyramid scheme. Investors were given wild promises about the coin's value, despite the fact that there was no way to sell or transfer it, it was not accepted as currency anywhere, and it was not backed by a public blockchain that would allow security and oversight. Furthermore, Ignatova and Greenwood's network of shell companies is linked to alleged organized crime figures, like Hristofos Amanatidis, the Bulgarian "Cocaine King."
By 2015, financial authorities were warning OneCoin was a scam, and many countries began banning it. Ignatova and Greenwood both face charges of fraud, and Ignatova has not been seen since 2017.
While cryptocurrencies are not inherently a fraudulent operation, the market is in its infancy and dangerously underregulated, allowing scams and money laundering to run rampant throughout the sector.
Racist demagogue and dangerous fundamentalist to some, heroic crusader for black rights to others, incendiary religious leader Louis Farrakhan is finding the audience for his message increasingly hard to reach.
The head of the Nation of Islam -- barred for years from Britain and blocked from mainstream TV -- has been declared an undesirable by Facebook for his long record as an unrepentant merchant of anti-Semitism and homophobia.
Farrakhan's black advocacy and mantra of self-reliance has lent him a measure of legitimacy over the years, bolstered by his role a quarter century ago in organizing the Million Man March that drew hundreds of thousands of African Americans to Washington.
And while his continuing influence is undeniable, critics of the 86-year-old son of a Massachusetts seamstress point out that he has compared Jews to "termites," called Hitler a "great man" and claimed that the white race was created by an evil wizard.
True to form, one of the most divisive political figures in modern American history reacted to his May 2 ouster from Facebook by casting himself as a victim silenced by powerful forces.
"What have I done that you would hate me like that?" Farrakhan asked before an audience of more than 1,000 at Saint Sabina Church in Chicago on Thursday.
AFP / KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI The congregation used smartphones to record Farrakhan as he spoke
Cheered on by the rapt congregation -- many of whom were members of the Nation of Islam -- he denied misogyny, homophobia and racism, telling the crowd: "I do not hate Jewish people. No one who is with me has ever committed a crime against the Jewish people."
Farrakhan's supporters say his words have been twisted.
"If they actually heard what he had to say and not listen to a soundbite it would be very helpful," said Enoch Muhammad, 40, a member of the Nation of Islam and founder of the community group Hip Hop Detoxx.
- 'Most popular anti-Semite' -
What hasn't been taken out of context is Farrakhan's claim that Jews played a key role in the slave trade and have systematically oppressed black people in the US.
On Thursday night, he once again uttered the kind of statements that have gotten him in trouble, criticizing the influence of Jewish scriptural thinking on the Catholic Church.
"It's this that they fear," he said, pointing to his mouth. "I don't have no army. I just know the truth. And I'm here to separate the good Jews from the Satanic Jews."
AFP/File / SANDY HUFFAKER The era of increasingly high-profile hate crimes such as the deadly Chabad of Poway Synagogue shooting in April 2019 may have finally caught up with Farrakhan
In recent decades, his star has faded, but the current era of increasingly high-profile hate crimes may have finally caught up with Farrakhan.
Last month, a teenage gunman who wrote a hate-filled manifesto online opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing a worshiper.
Six months earlier, another man spouting anti-Semitic and white nationalist vitriol shot dead 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
"Farrakhan may be the most popular anti-Semite in the United States," said Oren Segal of the Anti-Defamation League, describing his group as Farrakhan's "biggest foil."
"He often gets a pass for his vitriol, because of the way he's tried to present his standing within the community," Segal said.
- 'Bold voice' -
Born in 1930s New York as Louis Eugene Walcott, and brought up in Boston's fundamentalist Christian tradition, Farrakhan has been credited for bringing hope to African American communities.
AFP/File / Angela Weiss Former US president Bill Clinton (right) was criticized for sharing the front row with Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin's funeral in 2018
His followers have stood guard in neighborhoods against gang violence and ministered to convicts in prison who are disproportionately African American.
And while former president Bill Clinton may have been criticized for sitting alongside Farrakhan at the televised funeral of Aretha Franklin last year, many younger Americans have no qualms about being associated with the preacher.
As recently as April, he commanded a crowd while giving a speech in Los Angeles on the spot where popular rapper Nipsey Hussle was shot dead.
"The enemy wants to keep this killing of one another going," he told the rapt crowd.
"Because as long as we keep killing one another, he can maintain power in what we call the tyranny of white supremacy," he said.
Misbahudeen Ahmed-Rufai, a Chicago-based history and African American studies professor at Malcolm X College, said Farrakhan's group speaks to "the pain that a lot of African Americans feel."
Prominent figures that have come to Farrakhan's defense include hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg, who posted an angry Instagram video following Facebook's action asking his 31 million followers to post clips of Farrakhan's sermons.
AFP / KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI Farrakhan's supporters include Michael Pfleger -- the politically-active Chicago priest who invited the minister to speak at his Saint Sabina church
"Show what he really be talking about -- educating the truth. Can't ban all of us," Snoop Dogg said.
Among Farrakhan's other supporters is Father Michael Pfleger -- the politically-active Chicago priest who invited Farrakhan to speak at his Saint Sabina church Thursday night.
The public show of support gave Farrakhan a boost and led to a public rebuke of the priest from the Illinois Holocaust Museum.
"Minister Farrakhan has been a bold voice against injustice done against black people in this country and his voice deserves and needs to be heard," Pfleger said.
AFP / Jonathan NACKSTRAND 
AFP / MICHELE TANTUSSI 
AFP / MICHELE TANTUSSI 
AFP / MICHELE TANTUSSI 
AFP / KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI 
AFP/File / SANDY HUFFAKER 
AFP/File / Angela Weiss 
AFP / KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI