Nun the Wiser. Paul Larudee presents Mother Agnes-Mariam, shilling for Assad

Last month on "Meet the press", Israel's Prime minister Netanyahu  revealed to David Gregory  “I don’t think Assad is in power. I think Iran is in power. Because basically, Syria has become an Iranian protectorate. Iran’s henchmen, Hezbollah, are doing the fighting for Assad, for his army. To the extent he has an army, it’s the Hezbollah Army.” 

Paul Larudee, head of the Northern California International Solidarity Movement and one of the founders of the Free Gaza movement is over all else , an  Iranian apologist.   In that role, he'll be parading Mother Agnes-Mariam throughout the Bay area this week,  shilling for Iran's henchman,  Bashar Assad.

Mother Agnes is the head of a convent in the town of Qara in Syria, and is a frequent commentator on Russia Today. She appears to have a rather unholy past.

From  Alex Rowell's  article  "What is a pro-Palestine activist doing promoting an Assadist nun?"

The figure of Mother Agnes-Mariam will be recognizable to anyone familiar with the record of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the early 1990s. Never happier than when hysterically decrying the unbounded barbarism of Bashar al-Assad’s opponents, the Carmelite nun has made her name by both fabricating rebel atrocities and imputing real ones carried out by the regime, such as the 2012 Houla massacre, to the opposition. Among her more memorable recent stunts has been her claim that the videos of the aftermath of the regime’s chemical weapons attacks in East Ghouta two months ago were faked. Much more seriously, she has been accused by the widow of the late French journalist Gilles Jacquier, killed in Homs last year, of personal complicity in a regime-orchestrated plot to murder him. Not since Mother Teresa herself has anyone better exemplified Orwell’s injunction that the saintly are to be judged guilty until proven innocent.

 From Buzzfeed politics, an article by Rosie Gray 

The trip has been organized by a group calling itself the Syria Solidarity Movement, a 501c3 nonprofit based in California and run by Paul Larudee, an anti-Israel activist involved with the International Solidarity Movement and Free Palestine Movement.

 According to Larudee, Mother Agnes will be making stops in Tucson, several cities on the West Coast; Cleveland; Denver; Vancouver, Canada; Lincoln, Neb.; and then New York and Washington after a trip to Rome and the U.K. She will speak mostly in churches but also at a few college campuses, Larudee said.

 “This is a total grassroots operation,” Larudee said. “We don’t have any grants of any kind and it’s not coming out of any preexisting budget.” The Syria Solidarity Movement grew out of an online Listserv opposed to military action in Syria and has no financial connection to the Syrian government, Larudee said.

Paul accepts donations for his various "grassroots" ventures at his El Cerrito home  under the guise of a non-profit "Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees"  (Yep, abbreviated AIPAC), . Registration number 20-5516191. 

Do you want to hear how any one can justify the atrocities of the Syrian regime against its own people? In the Bay Area,  you can hear Mother Agnes-Mariam  at the following locations:

• Sunday, Nov 3 at 5:30 PM, St. Thomas More Church, 1300 Junipero Serra Blvd. at Brotherhood and Thomas More Ways, San Francisco
• Tuesday, Nov 5 at 4:00 PM, Creekside Room, 1010 Stanley Dollar Drive, Walnut Creek (Rossmoor)
• Wednesday, Nov 6, 7:00 PM, Our Lady of Grace Church, Stack Hall, 3433 Somerset, Castro Valley
• Thursday, Nov 7 at 7:00 PM, First Christian Church/Oakland Peace Center, 111 Fairmount Ave./259 29th Street (two blocks from Broadway and 29th), Oakland