Please read current events from a variety
of sources.
October
2018
Historians have long documented Islam's cruelty
Posted By Bill Federer
10/01/2018
In American Minute
Historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee, who died in 1975,
provided foreign intelligence for the British during
World Wars I and II, and served as a delegate to the
Paris Peace Conferences following both wars. He was
educated at Oxford “almost entirely in the Greek and
Latin Classics.” Toynbee taught at King’s College of
London, the London School of Economics, and the Royal
Institute of International Affairs. Toynbee authored
many history books, including “Greek Policy Since
1882” (1914), and “The Murderous Tyranny Of The Turks”
(London, New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917), in
which he wrote: “Turks … from Central Asia, ruled
during the first two centuries of their conquests by …
unscrupulous Sultans, who subjugated the Christian
populations of Asia Minor and South-Eastern Europe,
compelling part of these populations to embrace
Mohammedanism, and supporting their own power by
seizing the children of the rest, forcibly converting
them to Islam, and making out of them an efficient
standing army, the Janizaries, by whose valour and
discipline the Turkish wars of conquest were carried
on from early in the 15th down into the 19th century.
…”
Douglas' Office
Defends Creationist on Panel: Christianity Not a
'Fringe
View'
Joseph
Flaherty
September 18, 2018
Phoenix New Times (Arizona)
Diane Douglas' office is defending her
decision to appoint a young-earth
creationist to help review and change state
education standards on evolution.
As Phoenix New Times reported last
week, Douglas, the Arizona
superintendent, tapped Arizona Origin Science
Association President Joseph
Kezele, who believes in a literal interpretation of
the Bible's Genesis
narrative, for an August 30 working group that
finalized the evolution science
standards.
In interviews following the article's
publication, the superintendent's
chief of staff, Michael Bradley, said, "We wanted to
include a wide
variety of views so that we’d get the best product
possible."
This video is based on on an article Mr Prager wrote
about a year ago if you prefer to read more than
watch. Here it is:
Published
September 12, 2017
in
National Review
by Dennis Prager
The
two have almost nothing in common.
What
is the difference between a leftist and a liberal?
Answering
this question is vital to understanding the crisis
facing America and the West today. Yet few seem able
to do it. I offer the following as a guide.
Here’s
the first thing to know: The two have almost nothing
in common.
On
the contrary, liberalism has far more in common with
conservatism than it does with leftism. The Left has
appropriated the word “liberal” so effectively that
almost everyone — liberals, leftists, and
conservatives — thinks they are synonymous.
But
they aren’t. Let’s look at some important examples.
Race:
This is perhaps the most obvious of the many moral
differences between liberalism and leftism. The
essence of the liberal position on race was that the
color of one’s skin is insignificant. To liberals of
a generation ago, only racists believed that race is
intrinsically significant. However, to the Left, the
notion that race is insignificant is itself racist.
Thus, the University of California officially
regards the statement “There is only one race, the
human race” as racist. For that reason, liberals
were passionately committed to racial integration.
Liberals should be sickened by the existence of
black dormitories and separate black graduations on
university campuses.
Capitalism:
Liberals have always been pro-capitalism,
recognizing it for what it is: the only economic
means of lifting great numbers out of poverty.
Liberals did often view government as able to play a
bigger role in lifting people out of poverty than
conservatives did, but they were never opposed to
capitalism, and they were never for socialism.
Opposition to capitalism and advocacy of socialism
are leftist values.
Nationalism:
Liberals deeply believed in the nation-state,
whether their nation was the United States, Great
Britain, or France. The Left has always opposed
nationalism because leftism is rooted in class
solidarity, not national solidarity. The Left has
contempt for nationalism, seeing in it intellectual
and moral primitivism at best, and the road to
fascism at worst. Liberals always wanted to protect
American sovereignty and borders. The notion of open
borders would have struck a liberal as just as
objectionable as it does a conservative. It is
emblematic of our time that the left-wing writers of
Superman comics had Superman announce a few years
ago, “I intend to speak before the United Nations
tomorrow and inform them that I am renouncing my
American citizenship.” When the writers of Superman
were liberal, Superman was not only an American but
one who fought for “Truth, justice, and the American
way.” But in his announcement, he explained that
motto is “not enough anymore.”
View
of America: Liberals venerated America. Watch
American films from the 1930s through the 1950s and
you will be watching overtly patriotic,
America-celebrating films — virtually all produced,
directed, and acted in by liberals. Liberals well
understand that America is imperfect, but they agree
with a liberal icon named Abraham Lincoln that
America is “the last best hope of earth.”
To
the Left, America is essentially a racist, sexist,
violent, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic
country. The Left around the world loathe America,
and it is hard to imagine why the American Left
would differ in this one way from fellow leftists
around the world. Leftists often take offense at
having their love of America doubted. But those
left-wing descriptions of America are not the only
reason to assume that the Left has more contempt
than love for America. The Left’s view of America
was encapsulated in then–presidential candidate
Barack Obama’s statement in 2008. “We are five days
away from fundamentally transforming the United
States of America,” he said.
Now,
if you were to meet a man who said he wanted to
fundamentally transform his wife, or a woman who
said that about her husband, would you assume that
either loved their spouse? Of course not.
Free
speech: The difference between the Left and liberals
regarding free speech is as dramatic as the
difference regarding race. No one was more committed
than American liberals to the famous statement “I
disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the
death your right to say it.”
Liberals
still are. But the Left is leading the first
nationwide suppression of free speech in American
history — from the universities to Google to almost
every other institution and place of work. It claims
to oppose only hate speech. But protecting the right
of person A to say what person B deems objectionable
is the entire point of free speech.
If
the Left is not defeated, American and Western
civilization will not survive.
Western
civilization: Liberals have a deep love of Western
civilization. They taught it at virtually every
university and celebrated its unique moral, ethical,
philosophical, artistic, musical, and literary
achievements. No liberal would have joined the
leftist Reverend Jesse Jackson in chanting at
Stanford University: “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Western civ
has got to go.” The most revered liberal in American
history is probably former President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, who frequently cited the need to protect
not just Western civilization but Christian
civilization. Yet leftists unanimously denounced
President Donald Trump for his speech in Warsaw,
Poland, in which he spoke of protecting Western
civilization. They argued not only that Western
civilization is not superior to any other
civilization but also that it is no more than a
euphemism for white supremacy.
Judaism
and Christianity: Liberals knew and appreciated the
Judeo-Christian roots of American civilization. They
themselves went to church or synagogue, or at the
very least appreciated that most of their fellow
Americans did. The contempt that the Left has — and
has always had — for religion (except for Islam
today) is not something with which a liberal would
ever have identified.
If
the Left is not defeated, American and Western
civilization will not survive. But the Left will not
be defeated until good liberals understand this and
join the fight. Dear liberals: Conservatives are not
your enemy. The Left is.
The bottom line: The events of the past few
months serve as a sharp reminder that the Islamic
State still poses a significant danger, that the
conditions that fueled its rise have not been
adequately addressed, and that in the absence of a
sustained, multi-pronged strategy to confront this
threat, the Islamic State will almost certainly regain
its footing and force its way back to the top of
America’s crowded security agenda. Please
click here to read the article in its entirety
at cfr.org
Revolt
grows over Islamization of U.S. schools
Group already in court over San
Diego decision to let activists define curriculum
Published:
July 11, 2018
Bob
Unrah
World
Net Daily
An
organization fighting Islamic indoctrination in the
San Diego Public schools – it’s already in court
over the issue – is now insisting on access to
communications between Seattle school officials and
the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
U.S.
District Court Judge Cynthia A. Bashant issued an
order setting July 17 as the hearing date regarding
a motion for a preliminary injunction in that
dispute. The organization alleges that school
officials improperly are giving CAIR, and its
“anti-Islamophobia” initiative, undue control over
school curriculum.
The
case was brought by parents in the district who are
suing over the pro-Islam instructional materials
sold by CAIR to the district.
Ocala will move to vacate First Amendment violation
ruling
By Katie Pohlman Posted June 20, 2018 Ocala Star Banner
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan ruled in May
that the city of Ocala and Police Chief Greg Graham
violated the clause by organizing, promoting and holding
a prayer vigil in September 2014.
The Ocala City Council has voted to file a motion to
vacate judgement in a federal case in which a judge
ruled the city and its police chief violated the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
In a May decision, U.S. District Judge Timothy J.
Corrigan ruled that the city of Ocala and Ocala Police
Chief Greg Graham violated the clause by organizing,
promoting and holding a prayer vigil in September 2014
after a drive-by shooting in which several children were
injured. The chief and city were ordered to pay $3 each
in damages ($1 to each plaintiff) plus attorney fees and
costs.
City Attorney Pat Gilligan said during an Ocala City
Council meeting on Tuesday that the motion to vacate is
based on other federal case law.
The city had the opportunity to appeal Corrigan’s
ruling, but decided against that.
Attorneys who represent the city and Graham in the
lawsuit did not immediately respond to an email request
for comment.
A group of four Marion County residents originally filed
the suit, claiming the prayer vigil violated the
constitution by having uniformed police officers
participate, having government officials plan the event
and having the event promoted on OPD letterhead.
“Not only did they violate well-settled constitutional
rights ... but they did so in the face of repeated
actual warnings from counsel that their conduct was
violating the Establishment Clause,” the plaintiff’s
motion for summary judgement read.
The Establishment Clause refers to the first 10 words of
the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion.”
STOP RIGHT HERE.
What does a community's decision have to host a prayer
vigil have to do with the fact that Congress is banned
from making laws regarding established religions???!!
Does it bother you, too, that a Judge who is supposed to
uphold the Constitution which is written to protect WE
THE PEOPLE from an ever encroaching government,
encroaches on a community's natural right to gather in a
peaceful manner, whether they pray, or sing songs, or
eat ice cream??? Isn't this judge overstepping??!!
Read
the articles in its entirety here, and share it
with organizations that are concerned with our
preserving our Constitution and basic civil freedoms
that it was meant to protect. June 1,
2018
There has been a fair amount of buzz recently about
the "morally straight" organization of the Boy Scouts
and the attempt to move gender identity into the
psychological realm, away from the realm of the
physical way that God created people- man, and woman.
God loves all his children and wants us to carry
out loving-kindness for one another, and God is full
of forgiveness for all of us; and who among us doesn't
error in some behaviors and omissions? When we ask,
God is ready to forgive us and point us to a healthier
and happy direction, for that is what God wants all us
children. Wondering what the Scripture plainly
says about sexual behavior and morality, a particular
website came to notice. It's worth your time to read
and ponder. In case you need to save it to
visit later, the website is: http://www.livingout.org/the-bible-and-ssa
Trump’s latest appeal to evangelicals: a new office
to protect religious liberty
Trump will sign an executive order launching the new
White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative today.
Published: May 3, 2018 Author: Tara Isabella Burton Vox.com
...The institution of faith-based initiatives is not
uncommon in the White House — Barack Obama launched the
Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and
George W. Bush instituted an Office of Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives. Both programs were designed to
provide faith-based charity organizations with a clear
avenue to get federal funding for their work.
That said, Trump’s initiative seems to expand previous
offices’ remit in a number of ways. For starters, the
office isn’t just focusing on community-based or
charitable initiatives. According to the Religion News
Service, it’s also charged with informing the
administration of “any failures of the executive branch
to comply with religious liberty protections under law.”
The Trump administration has consistently been a
champion of religious liberty, particularly insofar as
it pertains to evangelical Christian causes. ... Please
click here to read the entire article at Vox.com.
England Moves Submarines Armed With Cruise
Missiles Within Striking Range Of Syria Theresa May
Convenes ‘War Cabinet’
Geoffrey Grider Apr. 11, 2018 Nowthenedbegins.com
Theresa May was poised last night to defy calls
for a Commons vote on military action in Syria. The
Prime Minister summoned ministers back
to London to seek their support for joining an
American-led attack on the Assad regime within days.
EDITOR’S NOTE: British Prime
Minister Theresa May is prepared to act with or
without the consent of Parliament, sources are now
saying. UK submarines armed with Tomahawk cruise
missiles have already been positioned off the coast
of Syria to support the United States just as soon
as President Trump gives the go ahead to launch the
missile strike. Kinda funny to think that a
potential war of such Biblical proportions could be
waged largely on Twitter and social media, yet it
is. The end times clock is ticking, the only
question is will it blink or go boom?
Clearing the way for action, she
declared the use of chemical weapons could not go
unchallenged and said ‘all the indications’ suggested
that Bashar Assad’s forces were responsible for
Saturday’s atrocity near Damascus.
"Colonel Bohannon had the right to exercise his
sincerely held religious beliefs and did not unlawfully
discriminate." Please
click here to read the article in The Patriot Post
in its entirety.
Islamic intimidation of the secular British school
system
Click
here to read an interesting article from
the Gatestone Institute about intimidation of
the secular British school system.
Islamist threats that would be unacceptable coming
from other groups, are not prosecuted by law
enforcement policies in Britain. Policies do not
defend school administrators, or the general
public. But Brits do have a choice- they can be
engulfed by the misogenist totalitarian rule of
Sharia, or die.
What will be the tipping point in America?
The First Amendment Is In Far Greater Danger Than
The Second
Frank Cannon
Town Hall
March 1, 2018
Our
nation’s elites are waging war on the American
people, wielding the institutions they’ve spent
several decades capturing to punish those who
disagree with their preferred positions and to deny
them the ability to speak publicly, all in an effort
to stifle free and open debate. And no, this isn’t a
George Orwell novel — this is the United States of
America.
While
many still mistakenly view our political arena as a
skirmish between “liberals” and “conservatives”, it
would be more accurate to describe it as an all-out
war between “elitists” and “populists”. As my late
friend Jeff Bell argued in his 1992 book, “Populism
and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality”,
elitists believe in a top-down approach where a
cadre of experts rule the country and determine what
is acceptable discourse and what is not, while
populists believe the people should ultimately
determine the course of our politics and culture.
Traditionally,
the “elitists” have always had the upper hand in
this battle by controlling many of our cultural
institutions, but the respect for the will of the
people — exercised by the ability to elect our
political leaders — remained in place. Over time,
however, that respect eroded, and today, it is
completely gone. Now the “elitists” find the
“populists” to be repugnant, backward, and bigoted,
and they believe the only way to defeat the people
is to use elite institutional power in academia,
corporate America, the administrative state, and the
mainstream media to stifle debate, force-feed elite
opinions masquerading as facts, and stamp out
dissent.
For
example, consider these three widely held views by
the American people:
Young children should
not be taught about transgenderism or changing
their gender.
Abortion is wrong,
especially after the first trimester.
The right to bear
arms shall not be infringed.
Despite
their relative popularity, these views are repulsive
to our elites, and in recent years, they have sought
to shut down debate on all three topics by calling
anti-gender ideology activists “transphobic”,
anti-abortion activists “anti-women”, and defenders
of the Constitution “gun nuts” who have “blood on
their hands”. On the gender ideology issue, elites
have been wildly successful in completely removing
debate over transgenderism from the public square
and even politics. On abortion, they have largely
failed as pro-life sentiment among the people has
proven too strong for elites to overcome. And on
guns, the jury is still out, but elites are engaging
in perhaps their most brazenly outrageous effort to
silence opposing views to date.
It’s About Tactics, Not Issues
The
battle between elite opinion and popular opinion is
as old as time, but the recent tactical change among
elites seeking to stifle dissenting speech is a new,
and frightening, development. In a departure from
the normal give-and-take of American democracy, the
elites have begun using their clout within every
major institution of civil society to demonize and
punish their opposition — through public shaming in
the media, economic extortion and retaliation by big
businesses, and even criminalization of certain
protest activities. And given their entrenchment
within these institutions, the elites face little or
no consequences for their blatant illiberality.
A
case in point of this change has been the aftermath
of the Parkland school shooting. Despite the
complexity of the issues involved and the diversity
of views held by Americans as to the proper
response, the elites have pursued a scorched earth
campaign against those who do not hold their
black-and-white views on guns. In the news media, a
narrative emphasizing the immediate necessity of
national gun control legislation has become a
24-hour rallying cry, with victims of the tragedy
exploited to advance this narrative and brand those
who disagree as somehow complicit in the violence.
Meanwhile, corporations have begun to sever ties
with the NRA, sending a message that only one side
of the debate is socially acceptable while the other
is deserving of punishment.
A
similar strategy has been playing out with the
movement to normalize the Left’s gender ideology.
Despite a lack of scientific evidence — and
widespread parental skepticism — regarding the
soundness of treating young, gender dysphoric
children with highly experimental puberty blockers
and hormonal treatments, elites have slowly co-opted
influential medical associations in order to ensure
that these treatments are not only widely adopted
but also that alternative approaches to gender
dysphoria are marginalized and even criminalized.
Moreover, opponents of this takeover, no matter how
well-grounded their opposition, are branded by the
media and its self-appointed experts as
“transphobes” and “bigots” while being denied any
opportunity to make their arguments in a respected
forum.
Most Americans Already Understand
What’s Happening
Make
no mistake: an America with total elite control over
the population and where dissent from their views is
vilified is not an America at all. The gun debate is
simply another battle in the all-out war elites are
waging on the American people’s right to even have
an opinion, let alone speak out about it and not be
punished for it.
Fortunately,
the American people are fully cognizant of what is
taking place, which is why they voted for Donald
Trump in 2016. Instead of looking at Trump and
Clinton through the two lenses voters typically use,
moral character and issue positions, voters applied
a third lens: would their views be allowed to be
articulated at all without dire consequences under a
Clinton administration?
We
cannot keep pretending, like so many Never Trumpers
do, that we are operating in an environment of
normal political give-and-take on issues. That time
has passed. We are instead operating in a country
now where elites demonize the populist position with
such ferocity that many are afraid to voice their
opinion at all, which is, of course, the entire
point of their strategy. Our fight is no longer just
over political issues — it is a battle against the
very tactics being used by elites to stifle debate
and destroy the essence of what makes America
great.
Frank Cannon is the president at
American Principles Project.
Islamists seem to be influencing the
British school system with ease: there is simply
no solid opposition to them. The government even
stays silent about the harassment and
intimidation.
Islamists in Britain seem to be
intent on establishing regressive requirements,
such as the hijab for young girls, wife beating,
making homosexuality illegal, death for apostates,
halala rituals in divorce, and exploitation
of women and children through Sharia courts as
part and parcel of British culture.
That St. Stephen's School allowed
itself to be blackmailed in this way bodes ill for
both Britain and its education system.
St. Stephen's School in East London recently imposed
a ban on hijabs (Islamic headscarves), but reversed
its decision after administrators received hundreds
of threats from enraged Muslims.
"This
is an important step in promoting religious
extremism, mob rule and refusing to give #Muslim
young girls equal gender equality rights.... So much
for choice and individual liberty. Terribly sad day
for a secular democracy."
While
secular British values need to be upheld to provide
equal opportunities to everyone, regardless of
caste, creed, gender or color, Islamists seem to be
influencing the British school system with ease:
there is simply no solid opposition to them. The
government even stays silent about the harassment
and intimidation.
Was
St. Stephen's forced to succumb to the pressure of
ignorant zealots, who either do not know or choose
to ignore that under Islamic law (Sharia), girls are
not required to cover their heads until they reach
puberty? Ignorance also seems not to have prevented
them from accusing anyone who says or acts otherwise
of "Islamophobia." It is a form of political
blackmail used by Muslim extremists against the
Western institutions, the values of which they
abhor.
Parliamentary
Under
Secretary of State for the School System, Lord Agnew
of Oulton, pledged to support the schools that are
trying to ban hijabs as well as obligatory fasting:
in Islam, young children are not subject to either.
Lord
Agnew said that the government should support head
teachers in making difficult and "sensitive"
decisions in the face of vitriolic opposition. We
have yet to see the effects of his statement.
Supporting head teachers is one thing, but there is
also a dire need to confront these extremists on all
levels, including law enforcement, if they try to
harass or intimidate anyone.
Someone
please
needs to back up Lord Agnew: there are only a few
such policy-makers left willing to offer rational
help during such crises.
Islamists
in
Britain seem to be intent on establishing regressive
requirements, such as the hijab for young girls,
wife-beating, halala rituals in divorce,
making homosexuality illegal, death for apostates, and the exploitation
of women and children through Sharia courts
as part and parcel with British culture.
Instead
of making statements, the British government needs
to take concrete steps to stop the further
infiltration of these practices into Britain's
social fabric, the warping of children's minds, and
the harassment of whoever disagrees with those
plans.
That
St. Stephen's allowed itself to be blackmailed in
this way bodes ill for both Britain and its
education system.
Khadija Khan is a Pakistani
journalist and commentator, currently based in
Germany.
Under Islamic repression, 'Christianity has ignited
like a flame'
By Bob Unrah 19 February 2018 World Net Daily
Hopeful news out of Iran....
Has Iran taken on a fight that it can never win?
Evidence suggests that might be the case, as the
internationally renowned American Center for Law and
Justice points out that the Islamic regime now is
becoming desperate to extinguish a surging population
of Christians inside its borders.
Iran, after all, is a nation that has exported
terrorism for decades. It has the free world worried
about its nuclear-weapons program. It routinely
threatens to destroy Israel. It interferes with Middle
East conflicts and engages in cyberwar against the
West.
But the American Center for Law and Justice reports
Christianity “has ignited like a flame across the
country of Iran, making the Iranian government so
nervous they’re desperate to extinguish it quickly.”
Iranians are converting to Christianity at a
record-setting pace, with an estimated 360,000 to
800,000 Christians in the country.
There were fewer than 500 back in the 1980s.
“It’s difficult to take an accurate census because
fears of retribution, arrest, and violence keep many
Christian converts from self-identifying. Iranian
authorities have been raiding the homes of suspected
Christians, confiscating their books, computers, and
other media and arresting the men,” ACLJ said.
The government has spent millions of dollars to fight
the growing interest in Christianity, the mission
group Elam Ministries told Mohabat News, a website
that reports on Christians in Iran.
The money has gone toward Islamic propaganda, jailing
church members, confiscation of Christian materials
and more, the report said.
Ayatollah Alavi Boroujerdi, an official at an Islamic
seminary, has confirmed that “youth are becoming
Christians in Qom and attending house churches.”
Christians are being forced to hide their faith to
protect themselves and their families, because
worshipping Jesus “will get you arrested, and very
possibly get you killed,” a critic reported.
“This is something we at the ACLJ have witnessed first
hand, advocating for a number of imprisoned Christians
pastors in Iran – including Youcef Nadarkhani, who we
successfully fought to free from multiple false
imprisonments for his faith. In each of these cases,
Iran has targeted pastors in an attempt to squelch the
Christian church. It has failed each and every time.
In fact, the attempts to silence the church has only
made it louder as Christianity grows in Iran,” ACLJ
said.
What
'peace' means to Muslims; just ask Jefferson By Bill Federer
16 February 2018
World Net Daily
Bill Federer recounts brief history of American
conflicts with brutality of Islam
“The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco,”
stated President Obama in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009.
Morocco began recognizing American colonists in 1625.
Governor William Bradford described the incident in the
History of the Plymouth Settlement. In 1625, the
Pilgrims sent two ships back to England carrying dried
fish and 800 lbs of beaver skins to trade for much
needed supplies.
What happened next?
Bradford related the fate of one ship: “They … were well
within the England channel, almost in sight of Plymouth.
But … there she was unhapply taken by a Turkish
man-of-war and carried off to Morocco where the captain
and crew were made slaves. … Now by the ship taken by
the Turks … all trade was dead.”
...
When America became independent, it was no longer
covered by the British extortion tribute payment to the
Muslim pirates. Morocco “recognized” the United States
in 1785 by capturing two American ships and holding the
sailors for ransom. Thomas Jefferson worked to free
them, writing to John Jay, 1787: “There is an order of
priests called the Mathurins, the object of whose
institution is to beg alms for the redemption of
captives. They keep members always in Barbary, searching
out the captives of their country, and redeem, I
believe, on better terms than any other body, public or
private. It occurred to me, that their agency might be
obtained for the redemption of our prisoners at
Algiers.”
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Carmichael
regarding Tripoli’s demand for extortion tribute
payment, 1786: “Mr. Adams and I had conferences with a
Tripoline ambassador, named Abdrahaman. He asked us
thirty thousand guineas for a peace with his court.”
When Jefferson asked the Muslim Ambassador what the new
country of America had done to offend them, he reported
to John Jay, March 28, 1786: “The ambassador answered us
that it was founded on the laws of the prophet, it was
written in their Qur’an, that all nations which had not
acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the
right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave;
and that every mussulman (Muslim) who was slain in this
warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that
the man who was the first to board a vessel had one
slave over and above his share, and that when they
sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held
a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which
usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried
out for quarter at once.”
Jefferson read the Qur’an, not out of admiration but to
understand why Muslims were attacking Americans
unprovoked.
Crisis Magazine
William Kilpatrick
January 2, 2018
Secularists like to advise Christians
that, for the sake of social harmony, they ought to
keep their religion to themselves. Religion, they
argue, is a private affair between an individual and
his designated deity, and ought not to be dragged into
the public square. Moreover, they helpfully add, it’s
an imposition on others to confront them with beliefs
that they may find offensive.
As for themselves, secularists have no
qualms about imposing their own values on everyone
within reach. They are convinced of the rightness of
their beliefs, and consequently they don’t think twice
about forcing Christian bakers, florists, and
photographers to endorse gay weddings. They are also
convinced that they know what’s best for your
children. And what’s best for them, they are quite
certain, is that they learn all the latest fashions in
gender identity and marriage equality. In his groundbreaking 1984 book, The
Naked Public Square, Richard John Neuhaus argued that
the public square can never be naked for long. In
other words, it cannot be neutral about values: “If it
is not clothed with the ‘meanings’ borne by religion,
new ‘meanings’ will be imposed by virtue of the
ambitions of the modern state.” In short, the committed secularist won’t
be satisfied with the removal of the crèche from the
town square. He’ll insist that it be replaced with
something that more accurately reflects American
diversity—say, a monument to Margaret Sanger or a
statue of James Obergefell. Of course, secular
society’s reach extends well beyond the town green.
The religion of secularism is constantly being
advanced in a variety of venues—in courtrooms, school
rooms, and in the newly remodeled bathrooms that
accommodate the newly invented genders. Fr. Neuhaus was right in predicting that
“a perverse notion of the disestablishment of religion
leads to the establishment of the state as Church.”
The secular state quickly moves to enshrine whatever
values it currently smiles upon. And it defends them
as though they were divinely revealed dogma. But,
despite his prescience, Neuhaus did fail to anticipate
another development—namely, that the Judeo-Christian
tradition might be displaced from the public square
not only by the state, but also by another religion.
The possibility that Islam would one day
be a contender for control of the public square
probably didn’t enter his mind. That’s no surprise.
Except for the blip caused by the Iranian Revolution,
Islam wasn’t on anyone’s radar in the early eighties.
Yet Islam is now well on its way to controlling the
public square in parts of Europe. And, were it not for
the election of Donald Trump and the defeat of the
Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Clinton machine, the U.S.
would now be playing catch-up. As has often been observed, Islam is a
political religion. Some, like Dutch MP Geert Wilders,
contend that it is almost totally political with only
a thin and deceptive veneer of religiosity. Whatever
the exact proportion of politics to religion, it’s
hard to deny that the political dimension looms large
in Islam. Muhammad, after all, was a warlord. He
conquered all of Arabia, and within a relatively short
time after his death, his followers conquered an area
larger than the Roman Empire. Sayyid Abul A’la
Maududi, one of the most important twentieth-century
Islamic theorists, wrote that “Islam requires the
earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet.”
ISIS Kills Scores of Christians in Retaken Syrian
Town: Report
By Conor Gaffey Newsweek.com 4/11/16
The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) killed scores of
Christians when they captured a Syrian town recently
liberated by the government, a Syrian Christian leader
has said.
ISIS swept into the town of Al-Qaryatain in August 2015,
kidnapping at least 230 civilians including dozens of
Christians in the central Syrian town, which lies 104
kilometers (65 miles) southwest of Palmyra. The town had
a population of some 2,000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox
Christians prior to the outbreak of civil war in Syria
in 2011, but this had dropped to just 300 before ISIS
took control.
Al-Qaryatain was retaken by Syrian government forces
with the backing of Russian airstrikes earlier in April
and reports are just beginning to emerge of life under
the extremist group for civilians in the town. Patriarch
Ignatius Aphrem II, the head of the Syrian Orthodox
Church, told the BBC on Sunday that 21 Christians were
murdered when ISIS first captured the city.
Some died trying to escape while others were killed for
violating the terms of contracts they had signed
requiring them to submit to the extremists’
interpretation of Islamic law. Hundreds of Christians in
Al-Qaryatain were reportedly forced to sign so-called
dhimmi contracts, which enabled them to live under ISIS
rule in the town. The patriarch added that five other
Christians are missing and presumed dead, while ransoms
had been paid to ISIS to secure the release of the rest
of the Christians.
The civil war in Syria has had a devastating impact on
the country’s Christian contingent, which made up
approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population before
the outbreak of the conflict. The European Parliament
stated in October 2015 that about 40 percent of Syria’s
Christian population—or 700,000 people—had fled the
country.
NOTE: Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem, was dead
for three days, and rose from the dead, and walked among
us for forty days until his Ascension. After the
Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles,
they spread out to different areas of the land to spread
the good news, of our salvation. One of the first places
they went to was what is now Syria, which was the home
of Simon Peter. Not only does ISIS eradicate people who
do not bow down to their cult they attempt to erase the
ancient traces of preceding times like in Palmyra which
was a Roman outpost in Syria, from the first or second
century after the year of our Lord. Click
here to view more about that.
R.I.P. Justice Scalia
Feb. 18, 2016
It is hard to imagine a greater
loss to Liberty in America than has occurred in the
passing of Justice Antonin Scalia. His understanding
of the Constitution as a pact between free people
and government, and our protection from oppressive
government, was unparalleled.
The fact that 30% of Americans do not know who he
was, speaks volumes about the state of our Union and
our education system.
My words and thoughts are totally inadequate but you
can easily find more about the great man's life and
legacy. Click
here for a link to wikipedia. Or click
here to read the thoughts of the other
Justices on the Supreme Court about him.
R.I.P. Justice Scalia.
Shariah Law at work in the Obama Administration
Obama DHS scrubs records of hundreds of Muslim
terrorists
Published: 7 Feb 2016 World Net Daily Pamela Geller
Not only did the Obama
administration scrub counter-terror programs of jihad
and Islam, now we find out that his administration
scrubbed the records of Muslim terrorists. If the
enemedia were not aligned with the jihad force, this
would be front-page news across the nation.
An agent of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS,
for 15 years, Philip Haney, reported Friday that after
the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, tried to blow up a crowded passenger jet
over Detroit, “President Obama threw the intelligence
community under the bus for its failure to ‘connect the
dots.’ He said, ‘This was not a failure to collect
intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and
understand the intelligence that we already had.'”
Haney revealed: “Most Americans were unaware of the
enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland
Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His
words infuriated many of us because we knew his
administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort
to destroy the raw material – the actual intelligence we
had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots
constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans
safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be
wiped away.”
What Haney discloses is truly shocking: “Just before
that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was
ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland
Security to delete or modify several hundred records of
individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups
like Hamas from the important federal database, the
Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These
types of records are the basis for any ability to
‘connect dots.’ Every day, DHS Customs and Border
Protection officers watch entering and exiting many
individuals associated with known terrorist
affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a
political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly
affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going
forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from
entering pertinent information into the database.”
Who gave the order to scrub the records of Muslims with
ties to terror groups?
These new shocking revelations come fresh on the heels
of whistleblower testimony in the wake of the San
Bernardino jihad slaughter, revealing that the Obama
administration shut down investigations into jihadists
in America (and quite possible the San Bernardino
shooters) at the request of the Department of State and
the DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division.
Haney noted: “They claimed that since the Islamist
groups in question were not Specially Designated
Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals
related to these groups was a violation of the
travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost
exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted
the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?”
How is this not impeachable? When did foreign terrorists
get civil rights?
Haney described how he began investigating scores of
individuals with links to the traditionalist Islamic
Indo-Pakistani Deobandi movement, and its related
offshoots, prominently, Tablighi Jamaat.
I have reported on this infiltration for years. I
reported on it extensively in my book, “Stop the
Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the
Resistance.” Obama has partnered with terror-tied groups
such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the
Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American
Society and others. The stealth jihad in the information
battle-space has led to the vigorous enforcement of
blasphemy laws under the Shariah, as Obama ordered that
counter-terror training materials must avoid all
reference to Islam and jihad. Under Islamic law, it is
prohibited to criticize Islam.
The Obama administration is Shariah-compliant at all
costs. Its number one priority is to protect Islam, even
when it puts American lives at risk. The cold-blooded
slaughter of Americans in the homeland by Muslims has
not tempered Obama’s Shariah enthusiasm. On the
contrary, Garland, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, UCMED, San
Bernardino, etc., have accelerated it.
My civil liberties and your civil liberties are being
abridged in accordance with the blasphemy laws under
Shariah. My organization is engaged in 15 different
free-speech lawsuits against various cities. Our
free-speech lawsuit against Boston is heading to the
Supreme Court, because even though truthful, our ads
violate the laws of Shariah (“do not criticize Islam”).
We are being forced to adhere to Shariah mores, but
jihad murderers are given sanctuary and protection – to
slaughter Americans.
The moral, or in this case the immoral, of the story is
this: Jihad terror works.
Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and
the author of the WND Books title "Stop the
Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the
Resistance."
Wisconsin firm fires Muslims in prayer dispute
Religious breaks disrupted production at lawn mower,
snowblower manufacturer
Published: 02/04/2016 (ABC News) A civil liberties group said
Wednesday that it plans to file federal discrimination
and harassment complaints after a Wisconsin manufacturer
fired seven Muslim employees for violating a company
break policy that doesn’t provide extra time for prayer.
Ariens Co. terminated the workers in a dispute that
began last month when it moved to enforce an existing
rule of two 10-minute breaks per work shift and dozens
of Muslim staffers of Somali descent walked off the job
in protest.
Of the 53 employees involved, 32 have abided with the
policy, 14 resigned and seven were terminated Tuesday,
according to Ariens spokeswoman Ann Stilp. The news of
the terminations was first reported by WLUK-TV in Green
Bay.
If shouting 'No!' doesn't work, then swat attacker
with purse
World Net Daily Published: 02/03/2016 by Leo Hohmann
A public-service advertisement running on Finland TV
instructs women in the Scandinavian country on how to
fend off a rapist.
But rather than pull out a handgun or even pepper
spray, the women of Finland are taught to confront
their attackers with bare hands and a purse.
Rape epidemics have engulfed Finland, Sweden and
Germany in a sea of fear since the mass influx of
migrants from the Middle East and North Africa began
two years ago.
Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president and
founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he
found the video laughable.
Anti-Shariah activist and author Pamela Geller posted
the video on her website earlier this week under the
title "It just gets more absurd."
Netanyahu: Islamic terrorism is flooding the
world from Jakarta to California
The prime minister says the struggle against
terrorism will take time but that Israel is fighting
hard.
Jerusalem Post by JPOST.COM STAFF BEN HARTMAN 02/04/2016
Islamic terrorism is flooding the world and inciting
millions from Jakarta to Africa and all the way to
California, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
during a trip on Thursday to the Jerusalem hospital
treating a Border Police officer who was injured in
yesterday's attack at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's
Old City.
Netanyahu praised the courage of the security forces
and the courage and strength the Border Police officer
shown during Wednesday's attack. He also expressed his
condolences to the family of Border Police officer
Hadar Cohen who was killed in the combined shooting
and stabbing attack.
Three Arab terrorists wielding machine guns, pipe
bombs and knives carried out the attack on Wednesday
killing Cohen, 19, who died of her wounds shortly
after being rushed to the capital's Hadassa University
Medical Center at Mt. Scopus. Her partner, Ravit, was
seriously wounded and underwent emergency surgery at
the hospital. As of Thursday morning she was
considered to be in moderate condition.
"We are all saddened by the death of Hadar Cohen, a
real hero. We all embrace the family," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister emphasized that a great effort is
being put into the fight against terrorism, during the
lengthy effort to defeat it.
"It will take time, it is a long struggle," Netanyahu
said. "We are in this fight, it is not passing us by,
but we are fighting it with great force and will
continue to do so."
"Kabatiya has been closed off while the IDF and the
Shin bet make widespread arrests of wanted suspects,
we have cancelled many work permits and the
attorney-general informed me yesterday that he has
added a number of houses belonging to terrorists to be
slated for demolition," Netanyahu said of the West
Bank village, from where Wednesday's terrorists
hailed.
Police Commissioner Inspector General Roni Alsheich
paid a visit to the wounded Border Police officer on
Wednesday night.
During his visit, Alsheich praised the two teenager
Border Police officers who had recently drafted into
the force for preventing a major terror attack.
Alsheich said “I have no doubt that a terror cell that
comes with an arsenal like this has every intention of
carrying out a massive attack.”
Ravit and Cohen were part of a three-man patrol along
with their commander. They had only been drafted a
couple months before and their deployment at Damascus
Gate in East Jerusalem was part of their training.
Since the attack yesterday, police and the Border
Police have drawn criticism for the fact that the two
women were posted at one of the most dangerous
flashpoints in the country so soon after they were
drafted.
The three terrorists were responsible for the attack
were identified as Ahmed Rajeh Zakarneh, Muhammad
Ahmed Kmail, and Ahmed Najeh Abu al-Rub. All three
were shot dead at the scene. Their explosives did not
detonate and were later neutralized by a police bomb
disposal team.
No holds barred: Torrent of anti-Israel advice found
in Hillary’s emails
Jerusalem Post - Opinion By Shmuley Boteach 02/01/2016
Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests
in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its
best interests? Advice like this was par for the course
with Clinton’s advisers.
It’s already been established that one of Hillary
Clinton’s most trusted advisers, Sid
Blumenthal, sent her anti-Israel articles, ideas
and advice during her time as secretary of state. But
the stream of anti-Israel advice received by Clinton was
much more comprehensive.
In the entire forced dump of Clinton’s emails, you will
be hard pressed to find a single one sympathetic toward
the Jewish state from any of the people she relied on.
The negative, poisonous approach to Israel throughout
this email expose shows the atmosphere that she had
established around herself. These emails seem to
demonstrate that a huge segment of her close advisers
and confidantes were attacking Israel, condemning Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and strategizing how to
force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria at all
costs.
This was occurring against the backdrop of Israel’s
recent Gaza withdrawal, which led to the takeover of
Gaza by Hamas. There is almost zero mention of the huge
risks to Israel’s security in withdrawing as Clinton and
the Obama administration did everything they could to
pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.
Take a look at a sampling of the advice being sent to
Clinton from her many advisers that we have now become
privy to.
Sandy
Berger was Clinton’s foreign policy adviser during
her 2008 presidential campaign. In September of 2010 he
sent her ideas on how to pressure Israel to make
concessions for peace. Berger acknowledged “how fragile
is Abbas’s political position,” and how “Palestinians
are in disarray,” and that “failure is a real
possibility.” Berger was well aware of, and informed
Hillary of, the very real possibility that Israel would
be placing its national security at grave risk in a deal
that would very likely fail and lead to a Hamas
takeover.
But Berger felt the risks to Israeli lives were worth
it.
He advised the need to make Netanyahu feel “uneasy about
incurring our displeasure....”
Berger emphasizes the need “to convince the prime
minister – through various forms of overt persuasion and
implicit pressure – to make the necessary compromises”
and talks of the “possibility – to turn his position
against him.”
Astoundingly, Berger seems to accuse the Jews in America
of racism toward Obama. He writes, “At a political
level, the past year has clearly demonstrated the degree
to which the U.S. has been hamstrung by its low ratings
in Israel and among important segments of the domestic
Jewish constituency....” He then adds, “Domestically, he
faces a reservoir of skepticism on this issue which
reflects many factors, including inexcusable prejudice.”
Anne Marie Slaughter was Clinton’s director of policy
planning from 2009-2011. She wrote to Clinton in
September of 2010 and devised a scheme to encourage
wealthy philanthropists to pledge millions to the
Palestinians (which no doubt would have been embezzled
by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his
cronies as were other funds).
She wrote: “This may be a crazy idea.... Suppose we
launched a “Pledge for Palestine” campaign... Such a
campaign among billionaires/multi-millionaires around
the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in
the building of a Palestinian state....”
She adds: “There would also be a certain shaming effect
re Israelis who, would be building settlements in the
face of a pledge for peace.”
Clinton’s response to this email: “I am very interested-
pls flesh out. Thx.”
Robert
Russo, one of Clinton’s aides and currently her
campaign’s “director of correspondence and briefings”
sent an email in April of 2012 informing her of
Netanyahu’s father’s death and advising her to give him
a condolence call. Included with Russo’s
email is an extremely biased article attacking both
Netanyahu and his father, describing them as virulently
racist warmongers and calling the elder Netanyahu “a
behindthe- scenes adviser to his son, the most powerful
person in Israel.”
The article noted that “Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu repeatedly denied that his father was a
one-dimensional ideologue. He further emphasized that he
himself was a different person from his father.”
But then it goes on to say, without providing any proof
whatsoever, “Israelis seemed in the dark about the
extent of paternal influence on their leader,” and “To
understand Bibi, you have to understand the father.”
One might be forgiven for questioning Clinton’s sympathy
and sincerity when she later placed the call and gave
Netanyahu her condolences.
Thomas
Pickering, former US ambassador to Israel, wrote
to Clinton on December 18, 2011, and suggested a secret
plan to stir up major Palestinian protests in an attempt
to force the Israeli government into peace negotiations.
He stated that the protests “must be all and only women.
Why? On the Palestinian side the male culture is to use
force.”
Pickering’s goal was to ignite protests that would
engulf the West Bank, “just like Tahrir square.” He adds
that the Palestinian “leadership has shied away from
this idea because they can’t control it,” and they are
“afraid of being replaced.”
This idiotic reasoning that somehow only women would
participate and things would stay peaceful is obviously
absurd. As Pickering himself notes, “Palestinian men
will not for long patiently demonstrate – they will be
inclined over time and much too soon to be frustrated
and use force. Their male culture comes close to
requiring it.”
Regardless, Pickering writes that the protests could be
used against Israel “to influence the political
leadership.”
The idea was as dangerous for the Palestinians as it was
for Israel. As Pickering himself admits, widespread
protests could overthrow Abbas’ government, and if
Palestinian men joined in, widespread violence would
inevitably break out. It would obviously be impossible
to prevent men from participating in these
demonstrations.
Yet Pickering felt this extreme risk was worth taking,
even if it meant the replacement of Abbas with another
Hamas-led government. And even if meant violence
breaking out across the West Bank leading to a third
intifada and the murder of countless Jews. He also
emphasizes the need to hide all US involvement in this
plot. Clinton forwarded this email to Monica Hanley and
asked her to “pls print.”
Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests
in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its
best interests? Advice like this was par for the course
when it came to Clinton’s advisers.
In a follow-up column we’ll illuminate even more
anti-Israel advice that was given the then-secretary of
state. Sadly, there was just so much of it.
The author, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international
bestselling author of 30 books including his upcoming
The Israel Warrior’s Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @
RabbiShmuley.
In Colo.,
a look at life after marijuana legalization
Boston Globe
Joshua
Miller
Feb 22, 2016
DENVER —
Nestled between a 7-Eleven and a store selling
Broncos jerseys, the door to the generic-looking
retail establishment is easy to miss. But once
inside, the smell is unmistakable.
At Euflora, tables are filled
with glass containers of marijuana next to
interactive tablets describing each strain (“sweet
floral aroma,” “intoxicatingly potent”). An array
of marijuana-infused products beckon behind locked
cases: from energy shots to sour gummies, brownies
to bacon brittle. And if you’re 21 or older, it’s
all legal to buy.
This is Colorado,
where a billion-dollar-a-year legal marijuana
industry has emerged since January 2014. It offers
an early look at what Massachusetts
could face should voters greenlight an expected
ballot question and legalize the drug this fall.
So has legalization been a plus
or a minus?
“Yes,” Colorado Senate
President Bill Cadman replied with a laugh.
The consensus among several top
state officials — who emphasize that their job is
to carry out the will of the voters rather than
mull whether their constituents made the right
choice — is that there have been no widely felt
negative effects on the state since marijuana
became legal, and a crop of retail stores,
cultivation facilities, and manufacturers sprung
up from Aurora to Telluride.
Legalization has ushered in
thousands of new jobs in the burgeoning industry,
brought $135 million into state coffers last year,
and ended the prohibition of a widely used
substance.
But police say they struggle to
enforce a patchwork of laws covering marijuana,
including drugged driving. Officials fret about
the industry becoming like big tobacco, dodging
regulation and luring users with slick
advertising. And this state, long a leader in
cannabis use, has the highest
youth rate of marijuana use in the nation,
according to the most recent data available from a
federal drug-use survey.
Colorado
voters approved a constitutional amendment in
November 2012 legalizing the sale of recreational
marijuana, which began in 2014.
The drug is heavily regulated.
Each plant for sale must be tagged with a radio
frequency identification chip, from an early stage
of its life to sale, to help the state track it.
Marijuana, both in plant form and infused in
products, is required to be tested for potency and
contaminants, and sold in child-resistant
containers.
Tourists and locals alike can
buy recreational marijuana as long as they are at
least 21 and can possess up to 1 ounce. Only those
with a medical marijuana “red card,” issued by the
state on the recommendation of a physician, can
possess more at one time.
While the popular image of
marijuana use remains joints and vaporizers, a
significant percentage of marijuana sales in
Colorado — nearly half according to some estimates
— take the form of infused products, such as
edible treats, pills, drops, bath soak, and even
“sensual enhancement oil.”
More than two years into the
still-rapidly growing industry, how do top
officials and their constituents see legalization?
“There are a certain number of
folks, like myself, who were pretty reticent about
it to begin with,” said House Speaker Dickey Lee
Hullinghorst, a Democrat. But “the sky didn’t
fall. Everything seems to be working pretty well.”
That’s in line with the view of
Colorado
voters, according to a November 2015 survey. The
poll found 53 percent believe legalizing marijuana
has been good for the state, while 39 percent
believe it has been bad.
And Dr. Larry Wolk, the top
medical official in Colorado’s
public health department, said that since
legalization no large troubling public health
trends have cropped up yet. But he noted
sporadic reports of impaired driving and people
getting violently ill from ingesting too much
marijuana in edibles, such as candy bars.
He said this month new data
indicate that the biggest
increases in marijuana hospitalizations have
been seen among out-of-staters, who might be
naive about the drug’s effects.
All marijuana, including
medical, is subject to standard state and local
sales tax in Colorado.
But recreational marijuana is also subject to an
additional 10 percent special state tax, along
with additional local marijuana taxes. And there’s
also a 15 percent excise tax on wholesale
transfers of recreational marijuana, that ends up
raising retail prices.
For producers, the tax picture
is among the many complexities of running a
marijuana business.
Sally Vander Veer, president of
one of the state’s largest dispensaries and
cultivation operations, which has 70 employees and
a payroll of about $3.8 million a year, is bullish
on her rapidly expanding business. Medicine Man
has a 40 percent profit margin, she said. But her
company struggles with what she estimates to be an
effective tax rate of nearly 50 percent, as well
as having to deal almost exclusively in cash.
Because marijuana remains illegal under federal
law, access to banking services is severely
restricted.
The state saw $135 million in
tax and fee revenue last year from the
recreational and medical marijuana industry, money
that has gone to, among other efforts, education
for youth and law enforcement on the drug.
State Representative Jonathan
Singer, a leader on marijuana issues in the House,
said what legalization has done is “allowed
marijuana to pay its own way,” with the cost of
regulation paid for by dispensaries and consumers.
Yet law
enforcement officials offer a more negative,
chaotic view. They paint a picture of a quickly
evolving array of laws, regulations, and
ordinances that outpace their enforcement tools
for related issues, such as drugged driving.
For one, they say, there’s no
quick, reliable check to see whether drivers are
too high to operate a vehicle safely, as
there is for blood-alcohol level. And there’s no
easy way to determine whether food products in a
vehicle are infused with pot.
“You have no ability to test
the gummy bear laying there on the dashboard,”
said Chief John Jackson of the Greenwood Village,
Colo., Police Department said.
“Edibles pose a problem because
there is no way to tell the potency of it, there
is no way to test it in the field. And no law
enforcement officer is going to lick it and say,
‘Well, there’s marijuana, THC in that.’ ” (THC is
the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana.)
Jackson, former president of
the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, and
other police officials said legalization simply
moved much faster than law enforcement officers’
ability to keep up with it.
Jackson, who sounded
beleaguered in an interview, said a fallacy of
legalization is that it would give law enforcement
time back to focus on more serious, complicated
criminal issues and bigger drug problems.
Two years and two months into
full legalization, he said, “we’re not seeing
that.”
Another problem with edible
marijuana products, said Dr. Michael DiStefano,
who directs emergency medicine clinical operations
at Colorado’s
only top-level pediatric trauma center: the
inability of kids to distinguish between normal
products and those infused with THC.
When marijuana is “handled
responsibly, it’s not an issue for children’s
health. The problem is a lot of these edibles,” he
said. “They look like regular candy. . . . There’s
no way to discern what is an edible gummy bear
that has THC in it, versus a regular gummy bear.
In fact, you cannot distinguish them unless
they’re in the package.”
He said he’s seen an uptick in
kids admitted to the ER at Children’s Hospital Colorado
— to about 15 last year — ill from accidentally
ingesting edible marijuana-infused foods since the
drug became legal for recreational use in January
2014.
Indeed, the most grinding
concerns and the biggest question marks focus on
kids and young adults. But the effects of
legalization on children remain effectively
unknown with about two years of experience and
lagging statistics.
Opponents of legalization point
to a federal drug survey that estimates Colorado
had the highest level of any state of 12- to
17-year-olds reporting marijuana use in the last
30 days for 2013-2014. But the change in
Colorado’s youth use rate from 2012-2013 — before
full legalization— to 2013-2014 — partly after —
was not statistically significant. And federal
statisticians say the findings are not sufficient
to draw conclusions about changes in youth
marijuana use patterns as a result of
legalization.
Wolk, the top doctor at the
state’s public health department, said Colorado
marijuana use has always been high compared with
the rest of the country.
“No pun intended,” he said, “we
started high and stayed high — use hasn’t
increased in a statistically significant way since
legalization. Those that were using before are
still using now, among youths and adults.”
For some opponents, a big
concern isn’t just what has happened so far, but
what’s yet to come. They worry that the burgeoning
marijuana industry, like alcohol and tobacco
before it, could eventually use its profits to
gain clout and subvert attempts at regulation.
Jeffrey Zinsmeister, executive
vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a
national nonprofit group cofounded by former US
representative Patrick Kennedy that opposes
legalization and commercialization of marijuana,
said there have been several red flags.
“You’re seeing this headlong
rush into another addictive industry without
knowing what widespread marijuana use is going to
do to society,” he warned. “And the signs from Colorado
are not good.”
Officials say their primary
concerns include: adults being
able to legally consume the drug normalizes it
for kids; Joe
Camel-like ads that make pot smoking seem
appealing to kids; and legalization
increasing availability, thus making the barrier
to getting marijuana lower.
“I worry about normalization, I
worry about commercialization, and I worry about
availability,” said Andrew Freedman, who directs
Governor John Hickenlooper’s Office of Marijuana
Coordination.
“What happens to people over
the long term, especially kids over the long term,
as they see marijuana normalized, as they see
people advertising for marijuana, and as
accessibility becomes greater and greater?” he
asked. “Kids who are, right now, saying, ‘No
thanks,’ will that change over time?”
Freedman and other people
deeply involved in the day-to-day oversight of the
new market say it functions pretty smoothly. But they
emphasize the broader question of whether or not
legalization ends up a success will probably
take five or 10 years to answer fully.
Joshua Miller
can be reached at joshua.miller@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jm_bos. Click here to
subscribe to his weekday e-mail update on
politics.
File this Under U S Constitution or Religious
Freedom??
September 22, 2016
A 300 page report
issued by the United States Council on Civil Rights
(USCCR) on 7 September of 2016, has caused a righteous
outcry from many religious and other liberty loving
institutions. You may rightly question the authority
of a commission that blindly ignores the
fundamental liberty of individuals alluded to in the
first amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S.
Constitution. The commission, headed by chairman
Martin R Castro, appointed by President Obama in 2011,
suffers a serious blind spot of vision.
The USCCR recommends particular protections for people
who fall within a variety of groups designated by
particular labels adopted over the years, offering these
groups special privileges beyond that of
"regular" Americans, those generic citizens, whose basic
liberties were noted and codified in the founding
documents of our country to be protected from the
encroachment of the rules and restrictions and
regulations of an ever-growing totalitarian government which
has usurped some non-existent power to brand my conscience
and beliefs as "intolerant" or
discriminatory.
There is a blind spot on the part of the commission that
does not recognize the freedom of faith-abiding people
of conscience to live by the tenets of their respective
religions, that do not infringe upon health and welfare
of others.
There are a number of links to explore- first of all a
link to the report itself, followed by reactions and
comments of a variety of faith-based organizations, as
well as the watchdog groups that recognize the freedoms
that our Constitution attempted to protect.
U.S. Slams Israel for New West Bank Settlement
Expansion
Marcy Oster
September 1, 2016
(JTA) — The U.S. State Department condemned the
announcement that an Israeli planning committee
approved the construction of hundreds of housing units
in four West Bank settlements.
“We’re deeply concerned by the government’s
announcement to advance plans for these settlement
units in the West Bank,” State Department Spokesman
John Kirby said Wednesday, in answer to a reporter’s
question during a briefing, hours after reports of the
approval. “Since the Quartet report came out, we have
seen a very significant acceleration of Israeli
settlement activity that runs directly counter to the
conclusions of the report. So far this year, Israel
has promoted plans for over 2,500 units, including
over 700 units retroactively approved in the West
Bank.”
Kirby said that the State Department is “particularly
troubled by the policy of retroactively approving
unauthorized settlement units and outposts that are
themselves illegal under Israeli law. These policies
have effectively given the Israeli Government a green
light for the pervasive advancement of settlement
activity in a new and potentially unlimited way. This
significant expansion of the settlement enterprise
poses a very serious and growing threat to the
viability of the two-state solution.”
“Potentially unlimited” is a recent term used by the
State Department, and seems to indicate that State
believes Israel wants to annex the West Bank.
The Civil Administration’s High Planning Committee on
Wednesday approved construction of 234 living units in
Elkana in the northern West Bank, designated to be a
nursing home; 30 homes in Beit Arye in the northern
West Bank; and 20 homes in the Jerusalem ring
neighborhood of Givat Zeev.
The committee also retroactively legalized 179 housing
units built in the 1980s in Ofarim, part of the Beit
Arye municipality.
The approval comes less than a week after Nickolay
Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle
East peace process, criticized Israel for continuing
to build in West Bank settlements and neighborhoods in
eastern Jerusalem, going against the recommendations
issued in June by the Mideast Quartet. The Quartet,
made up of the United States, Russia, the European
Union and the U.N., called on Israel in June to stop
building in the settlements and on the Palestinians to
halt incitement.
In Saudi Arabia, signs of an effort to break the
Israel taboo
By Michael Wilner, Herb Keinon 08/30/2016 21:30
Saudi state-run media appears to be softening its
reporting on Israel, running unprecedented columns
floating the prospect of direct relations, quoting
Israeli officials and filling its news holes with fewer
negative stories on Israel’s relationship with the
Palestinians.
The public shift – from outlets such as al-Arabiya and
Riyadh newspaper, among other local or state-owned
outlets – reflects secret, under-the-table contact
between the Arab kingdom and the Jewish state that has
been a work in progress for years.
But media movement marks a new phase in that diplomatic
process, according to some experts on the kingdom, who
see signs of a monarchy effort to prepare Saudi society
for debate that had previously been off limits.
“The key here is that everybody understands this is not
going to turn around overnight, and its probably not
going to convince a lot of people. But that’s not really
the point,” said David Pollock, an expert on the region
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The
point is to establish this as a debatable proposition,
and to break the taboo of even debating about it – about
the prospect of normalizing relations.”
“Once you’ve done that, you’ve made it legitimate,”
Pollock added. “There are suddenly two sides.”
One column called for Saudis to “leave behind” their
“hatred of Jews,” and another said that talks between
the two nations should be direct, without
intermediaries, based on Saudi national interests.
Those national interests appear to align with Israel’s,
primarily on the issue of Iran, which has dominated the
Saudi news cycle in recent months– from Islamic Republic
activities in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
Saudi conservative Islamists view Iran, the Shi’ite and
Hezbollah as “much worse than the Jews,” Pollock
commented. “So that kind of takes the edge off – and
actually pushes them in the same direction.”
An official in the Foreign Ministry said there have been
some positive signals from Riyadh – such as an interview
that ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer gave recently
to the Saudi media, and one that Foreign Ministry
Director-General Dore Gold had last year with a Saudi
website – but that there is no sense this is part of an
organized campaign to prepare the ground for better
ties.
“These are positive signs, but I would not say they are
game changers,” the official said. “Good things are
happening.
But rather than seeing this as trying to prepare the
ground for something, I’d say it is a sign that there is
less enmity.”
A source in the Prime Minister’s Office concurred. He
acknowledged a few articles of late from “some pretty
big journalists” against hating Jews, but said that he
knows nothing about it coming from the top as part of an
organized campaign.
Quiet talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia began
leaking into public view in June, when a handshake
between Gold and former Saudi government adviser Anwar
Eshki raised eyebrows. Putting to rest any doubt that
the handshake was an isolated affair, Eshki led a Saudi
delegation to Jerusalem the following month that was
publicly acknowledged.
Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud also shared a
stage with Israel’s former military intelligence chief,
Amos Yadlin, in 2014.
A similar effort is under way in Egypt, Pollock said.
“I gather from talking to some of the people who are
directly involved with it that there are different camps
– different schools of thought in these countries,” said
Pollock. “There is definitely internal opposition, and
it’s very delicate, and fragile. But in both countries,
the government and the establishment media – and their
spin-offs and allies – are pursuing a deliberate
strategy to do this.”
International org calls for federalization of U.S.
law enforcement to be 'beefed up,' cover all of
America
by Robert Romano | Updated 04 Aug 2016 at 10:04 AM
“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice
has provided oversight and recommendations for
improvement of police services in a number of cities
with consent decrees. This is one of the most effective
ways to reduce discrimination in law enforcement and it
needs to be beefed up and increased to cover as many of
the 18,000-plus local law enforcement jurisdictions.”
That was United Nations Rapporteur Maina Kai on July 27,
a representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council, who
on the tail-end of touring the U.S., endorsed a
little-known and yet highly controversial practice by
the Justice Department to effect a federal takeover of
local police and corrections departments.
The Obama administration has been
pursuing the federal takeover of local police right
under Congress' nose — and Republicans in Congress were
apparently unaware it was happening.
The consent decrees are already being implemented in
Newark, New Jersey; Miami, Florida; Los Angeles,
California; Ferguson, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; and
other municipalities.
Here's how it works: the Civil Rights Division at the
Department of Justice files a lawsuit in federal court
against a city, county, or state, alleging
constitutional and civil rights violations by the police
or at a corrections facility. It is done under 42 U.S.C.
§ 14141, a section of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and
Law Enforcement Act, granting the attorney general the
power to prosecute law enforcement misconduct. The
municipality then simply agrees to the judicial finding
— without contest — and the result is a wide-reaching
federal court order that imposes onerous regulations on
local police.
The federal court orders are designed to undo Rudy
Giuliani-style policing tactics that were effective at
reducing crime in big cities in the 1990s and 2000s.
In short, the much-feared nationalization of local
police departments is already being initiated by the
Obama administration's Justice Department. And somehow
nobody noticed.
Federal requirements include how searches are conducted,
what constitutes legitimate use of force, the mandatory
use of on-body cameras by the police, and so forth. The
agreements impose years-long compliance review regimes,
implementation deadlines, and regular reviews by federal
bureaucrats. This makes local police directly answerable
to the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ.
One example includes a 77-page March 30 consent decree
between the department and the City of Newark, New
Jersey, that resulted from a 2011 investigation, a 2014
series of findings by the Civil Rights Division, and
then finally a federal lawsuit alleging police
misconduct in the U.S. District Court in the District of
New Jersey.
The original complaint alleged that the Newark Police
Department (NPD) "has engaged in a pattern or practice
of constitutional violations in its stop and arrest
practices, responses to individuals' exercise of their
rights under the First Amendment, uses of force, and
theft by officers. The investigation also revealed that
the pattern or practice of constitutional violations
stems in part from deficiencies in NPD's systems that
are designed to prevent and detect misconduct, including
its systems for reviewing force and investigating
complaints regarding officer conduct."
The city of Newark, via the consent decree, agreed to
the allegations and to implement a "comprehensive and
agency-wide policies and procedures that are consistent
with and incorporate all substantive requirements of
this agreement," including rules on stops, searches, use
of force, etc. The city has two years to implement, with
the full agreement lasting five years. Meaning — even if
the political parties change power in the city of
Newark, the new mayor and city council would still be
required to implement the court order.
U.S. Cities with Active DOJ Consent Decrees
City State Police
Force
Chicago IL 11944
Los Angeles CA 10000
Miami FL 1259
Ferguson MO 54
Source: Americans for Limited Government
These consent decrees are in essence regulations. That,
is, without the niceties of administrative procedures
requirements, public comments, or even any congressional
oversight.
Remarkably, congressional offices contacted by this
author were generally unaware of the regulation of local
policing via DOJ consent decrees with cities — even
though the agreements have been implemented for years.
Not a single hearing or word of protest has occurred on
this topic.
The lack of oversight is pathetic enough — but to make
matters even worse, this could actually be the first
step in a new wide-ranging body of federal rules on
local police.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development
regulation "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing"
(AFFH) actually originated as a consent decree in 2009
against Westchester County, New York, requiring
affordable housing units to be built in the county.
Afterward, Republican Robert Astorino was elected county
executive and yet was still required to implement the
court order.
Westchester became the basis for AFFH, where every city
and county in the country that accepts any part of $3
billion of annual community development block grants to
1,200 recipient cities and counties now has to comply
with HUD's dictates on zoning along racial and income
guidelines.
DOJ may very well end up doing the same thing with the
local police — that is, if Congress does not wise up to
what's really happening and defund implementation of 42
U.S.C. § 14141. This is dangerous. What is most chilling
is how far along the Obama Justice Department is in this
process. The breadth of regulation here shatters any
notion of local governance or federalism. The Obama
administration has been pursuing the federal takeover of
local police right under Congress' nose — and
Republicans in Congress were apparently unaware it
was happening.
No doubt the practice would continue under a Hillary
Clinton administration too. Do you want a Clinton
Justice Department running your local police force? That
is how important the election in November suddenly
becomes — with law and order already hanging in the
balance and police being targeted by domestic terrorists
in the slayings in Dallas and Baton Rouge.
As Americans for Limited Government President Rick
Manning noted in a statement calling attention to the
U.N.'s interest in the DOJ program and urging Congress
to act, "The fact that the U.N. Human Rights Council —
which includes some of the worst abusers of human rights
in the world that hate the U.S. — is cheering for this
DOJ national takeover of the police should tell members
everything they need to know. It's time to support local
police, not render them impotent via federal
restrictions against maintaining law and order. No less
than the very existence of local government is at
stake."
Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for
Limited Government.
Panic Mode: Khizr Khan Deletes Law Firm
Website that Specialized in Muslim Immigration
by Matthew Boyle Breitbart August 2, 2016
Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that
Democrats and their allies media wide have been using
to hammer GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump,
has deleted his law firm’s website from the Internet.
This development is significant, as his website
proved—as Breitbart News and others have reported—that
he financially benefits from unfettered pay-to-play
Muslim migration into America.
A snapshot of his now deleted
website, as captured by the Wayback Machine which
takes snapshots archiving various websites on the
Internet, shows that as a lawyer he engages in
procurement of EB5 immigration visas and other
“Related Immigration Services.”
The website is completely removed
from the Internet, and instead directs visitors to the
URL at which it once was to a page parking the URL run
by GoDaddy.
The EB5 program, which helps
wealthy foreigners usually from the Middle East
essentially buy their way into America, is fraught
with corruption. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee
chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has detailed such
corruption over the past several months, and in
February issued a blistering statement about it.
Islamic State Answers Pope Francis: Ours Is a
Religious War, and We Hate You
breitbart.com Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. 2 Aug 2016
The Islamic State terror group
has come out publicly to reject Pope Francis’ claims
that the war being waged by Islamic terrorists is not
religious in nature, assuring the pontiff that their
sole motivation is religious and sanctioned by Allah
in the Qur’an.
In the most recent issue of Dabiq, the propaganda
magazine of the Islamic State, ISIS criticizes Pope
Francis for his naïveté in clinging to the conviction
that Muslims want peace and that acts of Islamic terror
are economically motivated.
“This is a divinely-warranted war between the Muslim
nation and the nations of disbelief,” the authors state
in an article titled “By the Sword.”
The Islamic State directly attacks Francis for claiming
that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the
Quran are opposed to every form of violence,” saying
that by doing this, “Francis continues to hide behind a
deceptive veil of ‘good will,’ covering his actual
intentions of pacifying the Muslim nation.”
Pope Francis “has struggled against reality” in his
efforts to portray Islam as a religion of peace, the
article insists, before going on to urge all Muslims to
take up the sword of jihad, the “greatest obligation” of
a true Muslim.
Despite the obviously religious nature of their attacks,
the article states, “many people in Crusader countries
express shock and even disgust that Islamic State
leadership ‘uses religion to justify violence.’”
“Indeed, waging jihad – spreading the rule of Allah by
the sword – is an obligation found in the Quran, the
word of our Lord,” it reads.
“The blood of the disbelievers is obligatory to spill by
default. The command is clear. Kill the disbelievers, as
Allah said, ‘Then kill the polytheists wherever you find
them.’”
The Islamic State also reacted to Pope Francis’s
description of recent acts of Islamic terror as
“senseless violence,” insisting that there is nothing
senseless about it.
“The gist of the matter is that there is indeed a rhyme
to our terrorism, warfare, ruthlessness, and brutality,”
they declare, adding that their hatred for the Christian
West is absolute and implacable.
The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us,
imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping
our lands, we would continue to hate you because our
primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist
until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah
[tax for infidels] and live under the authority of Islam
in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.
In a recent press conference, Pope Francis told
journalists that the world is at war. “But it’s a
real war, not a religious war,” he said.
“It’s a war of interests, a war for money. A war for
natural resources and for the dominion of the peoples.”
PM draws parallel to attacks
in Israel and across Middle East, says Islamic
terror driven by ‘fanatical hatred’
from Times of Israel by Raoul Wootliff June 16, 2016,
12:29 am
In an English language video
posted to Facebook on Wednesday, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said the casualties in Sunday’s
deadly nightclub shooting in Orlando were victims of
homophobia and intolerance and called on people not to
give in to “hate and fear.”
~>~>~>~>>~>~>~>~>
Here is the complete text of his statement:
"In Orlando, a terrorist walks
into a nightclub and murders nearly 50 human beings.
Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters cut down in
cold blood.
They did nothing wrong. They
were dancing with friends, they were enjoying music
with loved ones.
Why did the terrorist murder
them?
Because he was driven by a fanatical hatred.
He targeted the LGBT community
because he believed they were evil.
Now, the murderer wasn't
alone.
Regimes and terrorist
organizations around the world ruthlessly persecute
the LGBT community.
In Syria, ISIS throws gays off
rooftops.
In Iran, the regime hangs gays from cranes.
Too many people have remained
silent in the face of this awful persecution.
This week's shooting wasn't
merely an attack on the LGBT community. It was an
attack on all of us, on our common values of freedom
and diversity and choice.
Radical Islamist terror makes
no distinction between shades of infidel.
This week it was gays in
Orlando. A few days before that it was Jews in Tel
Aviv. Before that it was music fans in Paris;
Travelers in Brussels; Yazidis in Iraq; Community
workers in San Bernardino; Christians and
journalists in Syria.
All of us are targets.
We believe that all people are
created in the image of God.
ISIS, by contrast, believes
that all people who aren't just like them deserve to
die.
We will not be terrified into
submission. We will fight back. And we will triumph.
Today I ask you to reach out
to friends in the LGBT community. Comfort them. Tell
them you stand together, we stand together as one.
And that you will always remember the victims. Tell
them they will never be alone, that we are all one
family deserving of dignity, deserving of life.
I have no doubt that those who
seek to spread hate and fear will be defeated.
Working together we will
defeat them even faster.
We need to stand united,
resolute in the belief that all people regardless of
their sexual orientation, regardless of their race,
regardless of their ethnicity, all people deserve
respect, deserve dignity."
Continental
Chutzpah: EU Building on Israeli Land, Warning
Against Demolitions
the JewishPress.com by David Israel Published June 1, 2016
The European Union over the past few years has been
erecting illegal structures in Area C, which according
to the Oslo agreement is under Israeli control. After
several rightwing NGOs have complained, the IDF set out
to demolish some of those structures. By rights, they
should have taken all of them down, what with their
being built without a permit. Israeli media publicized
the demolition of those structures, some of which
actually flew the EU flag — like those mythical cat
burglars who leave their personal business card in the
open safe. But last week the EU chutzpah has reached
unprecedented highs when Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the
Danish diplomat who since 2013 has been the ambassador
of the European Union to Jerusalem, met with Coordinator
of Government Activities in the Territories Gen. Yoav
Mordechai, to warn him that if Israel keeps demolishing
those “Palestinian homes” it would damage relations with
Brussels.
According to a senior Israeli official who spoke to
Ha’aretz, the meeting was tense and loaded. The
ambassador accused Israel of hurting the “weakest
Palestinian populations.” What the senior official did
not share was that those structures are a means by which
the EU has been challenging Israel’s claim to
sovereignty in Area C (the PA is currently in charge in
Areas A and B). It has to do with the diametrically
opposed views of Israel and the EU of what constitutes
the “two-state solution.”
Essentially, the Israeli politicians who are now in
government, as well as more than a few in the
opposition, envision a future peace deal that turns
Areas A and B into an independent Palestinian entity,
either as a state or an autonomy. The same Israeli
leaders envision some permanent legal solution for the
upwards of 400 thousand Jews living in Judea and
Samaria, all of them in Area C, most likely with Israel
annexing the large settlement clusters and giving away
the rest of the land.
Virtually no one outside Israel supports this idea at
the moment. Even Israel’s best friends in the world
envision the ousting of the Jews from Area C, possibly
while allowing Israel to retain eastern Jerusalem. How
would that actually be done—no one cares to say, nor
where would Israel gather the tens of billions of
dollars required for such a move, never mind whether the
settler population would acquiesce or opt instead for
resistance that would make the traumatic evacuation of
8,000 Jews from Gaza’s Gush Katif look like a picnic.
Meanwhile, while Area C in Israel’s view is eventually
going to be annexed as part of a peace deal — to the
Europeans Area C is Palestinian land ready to be
redeemed.
Which is why the EU has been relentless at challenging
Israel’s claim to Area C. And it’s why they’ve come up
with the delusional notion that taking down 531 illegal
Arab structures in 2015, 75 of which had been built by
the EU, was damaging the two-state solution. Because the
two-state solution the Europeans envision is without any
Jews in Area C.
For the same reason, Ambassador Faaborg-Andersen was
complaining that Israel is quick to condemn and demolish
those illegal structures, but at the same time refuses
to give Arabs permits to build legally in Area C.
Because while the Arabs view Area C as soon to be part
of free Palestine, Israelis plan to keep most of it,
thank you very much.
There’s going to be another meeting with the EU envoy,
on June 15, this time at the Israeli foreign ministry.
The Europeans are going to demand a freeze on
demolishing Arab structures in Area C, while at the same
time also demanding a freeze on Jewish construction in
the same Area C. And at some point something will have
to give.
About the Author: David writes news at
JewishPress.com.
ISIS Kills Scores of Christians in Retaken Syrian
Town: Report
By Conor Gaffey Newsweek.com 4/11/16
The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) killed scores of
Christians when they captured a Syrian town recently
liberated by the government, a Syrian Christian leader
has said.
ISIS swept into the town of Al-Qaryatain in August 2015,
kidnapping at least 230 civilians including dozens of
Christians in the central Syrian town, which lies 104
kilometers (65 miles) southwest of Palmyra. The town had
a population of some 2,000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox
Christians prior to the outbreak of civil war in Syria
in 2011, but this had dropped to just 300 before ISIS
took control.
Al-Qaryatain was retaken by Syrian government forces
with the backing of Russian airstrikes earlier in April
and reports are just beginning to emerge of life under
the extremist group for civilians in the town. Patriarch
Ignatius Aphrem II, the head of the Syrian Orthodox
Church, told the BBC on Sunday that 21 Christians were
murdered when ISIS first captured the city.
Some died trying to escape while others were killed for
violating the terms of contracts they had signed
requiring them to submit to the extremists’
interpretation of Islamic law. Hundreds of Christians in
Al-Qaryatain were reportedly forced to sign so-called
dhimmi contracts, which enabled them to live under ISIS
rule in the town. The patriarch added that five other
Christians are missing and presumed dead, while ransoms
had been paid to ISIS to secure the release of the rest
of the Christians.
The civil war in Syria has had a devastating impact on
the country’s Christian contingent, which made up
approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population before
the outbreak of the conflict. The European Parliament
stated in October 2015 that about 40 percent of Syria’s
Christian population—or 700,000 people—had fled the
country.
NOTE: Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem, was dead
for three days, and rose from the dead, and walked among
us for forty days until his Ascension. After the
Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles,
they spread out to different areas of the land to spread
the good news, of our salvation. One of the first places
they went to was what is now Syria, which was the home
of Simon Peter. Not only does ISIS eradicate people who
do not bow down to their cult they attempt to erase the
ancient traces of preceding times like in Palmyra which
was a Roman outpost in Syria, from the first or second
century after the year of our Lord. Click
here to view more about that.
R.I.P. Justice Scalia
Feb. 18, 2016
It is hard to imagine a greater
loss to Liberty in America than has occurred in the
passing of Justice Antonin Scalia. His understanding
of the Constitution as a pact between free people
and government, and our protection from oppressive
government, was unparalleled.
The fact that 30% of Americans do not know who he
was, speaks volumes about the state of our Union and
our education system.
My words and thoughts are totally inadequate but you
can easily find more about the great man's life and
legacy. Click
here for a link to wikipedia. Or click
here to read the thoughts of the other
Justices on the Supreme Court about him.
R.I.P. Justice Scalia.
Shariah Law at work in the Obama Administration
Obama DHS scrubs records of hundreds of Muslim
terrorists
Published: 7 Feb 2016 World Net Daily Pamela Geller
Not only did the Obama
administration scrub counter-terror programs of jihad
and Islam, now we find out that his administration
scrubbed the records of Muslim terrorists. If the
enemedia were not aligned with the jihad force, this
would be front-page news across the nation.
An agent of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS,
for 15 years, Philip Haney, reported Friday that after
the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, tried to blow up a crowded passenger jet
over Detroit, “President Obama threw the intelligence
community under the bus for its failure to ‘connect the
dots.’ He said, ‘This was not a failure to collect
intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and
understand the intelligence that we already had.'”
Haney revealed: “Most Americans were unaware of the
enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland
Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His
words infuriated many of us because we knew his
administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort
to destroy the raw material – the actual intelligence we
had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots
constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans
safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be
wiped away.”
What Haney discloses is truly shocking: “Just before
that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was
ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland
Security to delete or modify several hundred records of
individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups
like Hamas from the important federal database, the
Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These
types of records are the basis for any ability to
‘connect dots.’ Every day, DHS Customs and Border
Protection officers watch entering and exiting many
individuals associated with known terrorist
affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a
political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly
affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going
forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from
entering pertinent information into the database.”
Who gave the order to scrub the records of Muslims with
ties to terror groups?
These new shocking revelations come fresh on the heels
of whistleblower testimony in the wake of the San
Bernardino jihad slaughter, revealing that the Obama
administration shut down investigations into jihadists
in America (and quite possible the San Bernardino
shooters) at the request of the Department of State and
the DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division.
Haney noted: “They claimed that since the Islamist
groups in question were not Specially Designated
Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals
related to these groups was a violation of the
travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost
exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted
the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?”
How is this not impeachable? When did foreign terrorists
get civil rights?
Haney described how he began investigating scores of
individuals with links to the traditionalist Islamic
Indo-Pakistani Deobandi movement, and its related
offshoots, prominently, Tablighi Jamaat.
I have reported on this infiltration for years. I
reported on it extensively in my book, “Stop the
Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the
Resistance.” Obama has partnered with terror-tied groups
such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the
Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American
Society and others. The stealth jihad in the information
battle-space has led to the vigorous enforcement of
blasphemy laws under the Shariah, as Obama ordered that
counter-terror training materials must avoid all
reference to Islam and jihad. Under Islamic law, it is
prohibited to criticize Islam.
The Obama administration is Shariah-compliant at all
costs. Its number one priority is to protect Islam, even
when it puts American lives at risk. The cold-blooded
slaughter of Americans in the homeland by Muslims has
not tempered Obama’s Shariah enthusiasm. On the
contrary, Garland, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, UCMED, San
Bernardino, etc., have accelerated it.
My civil liberties and your civil liberties are being
abridged in accordance with the blasphemy laws under
Shariah. My organization is engaged in 15 different
free-speech lawsuits against various cities. Our
free-speech lawsuit against Boston is heading to the
Supreme Court, because even though truthful, our ads
violate the laws of Shariah (“do not criticize Islam”).
We are being forced to adhere to Shariah mores, but
jihad murderers are given sanctuary and protection – to
slaughter Americans.
The moral, or in this case the immoral, of the story is
this: Jihad terror works.
Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and
the author of the WND Books title "Stop the
Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the
Resistance."
Wisconsin firm fires Muslims in prayer dispute
Religious breaks disrupted production at lawn mower,
snowblower manufacturer
Published: 02/04/2016 (ABC News) A civil liberties group said
Wednesday that it plans to file federal discrimination
and harassment complaints after a Wisconsin manufacturer
fired seven Muslim employees for violating a company
break policy that doesn’t provide extra time for prayer.
Ariens Co. terminated the workers in a dispute that
began last month when it moved to enforce an existing
rule of two 10-minute breaks per work shift and dozens
of Muslim staffers of Somali descent walked off the job
in protest.
Of the 53 employees involved, 32 have abided with the
policy, 14 resigned and seven were terminated Tuesday,
according to Ariens spokeswoman Ann Stilp. The news of
the terminations was first reported by WLUK-TV in Green
Bay.
If shouting 'No!' doesn't work, then swat attacker
with purse
World Net Daily Published: 02/03/2016 by Leo Hohmann
A public-service advertisement running on Finland TV
instructs women in the Scandinavian country on how to
fend off a rapist.
But rather than pull out a handgun or even pepper
spray, the women of Finland are taught to confront
their attackers with bare hands and a purse.
Rape epidemics have engulfed Finland, Sweden and
Germany in a sea of fear since the mass influx of
migrants from the Middle East and North Africa began
two years ago.
Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president and
founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he
found the video laughable.
Anti-Shariah activist and author Pamela Geller posted
the video on her website earlier this week under the
title "It just gets more absurd."
Netanyahu: Islamic terrorism is flooding the
world from Jakarta to California
The prime minister says the struggle against
terrorism will take time but that Israel is fighting
hard.
Jerusalem Post by JPOST.COM STAFF BEN HARTMAN 02/04/2016
Islamic terrorism is flooding the world and inciting
millions from Jakarta to Africa and all the way to
California, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
during a trip on Thursday to the Jerusalem hospital
treating a Border Police officer who was injured in
yesterday's attack at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's
Old City.
Netanyahu praised the courage of the security forces
and the courage and strength the Border Police officer
shown during Wednesday's attack. He also expressed his
condolences to the family of Border Police officer
Hadar Cohen who was killed in the combined shooting
and stabbing attack.
Three Arab terrorists wielding machine guns, pipe
bombs and knives carried out the attack on Wednesday
killing Cohen, 19, who died of her wounds shortly
after being rushed to the capital's Hadassa University
Medical Center at Mt. Scopus. Her partner, Ravit, was
seriously wounded and underwent emergency surgery at
the hospital. As of Thursday morning she was
considered to be in moderate condition.
"We are all saddened by the death of Hadar Cohen, a
real hero. We all embrace the family," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister emphasized that a great effort is
being put into the fight against terrorism, during the
lengthy effort to defeat it.
"It will take time, it is a long struggle," Netanyahu
said. "We are in this fight, it is not passing us by,
but we are fighting it with great force and will
continue to do so."
"Kabatiya has been closed off while the IDF and the
Shin bet make widespread arrests of wanted suspects,
we have cancelled many work permits and the
attorney-general informed me yesterday that he has
added a number of houses belonging to terrorists to be
slated for demolition," Netanyahu said of the West
Bank village, from where Wednesday's terrorists
hailed.
Police Commissioner Inspector General Roni Alsheich
paid a visit to the wounded Border Police officer on
Wednesday night.
During his visit, Alsheich praised the two teenager
Border Police officers who had recently drafted into
the force for preventing a major terror attack.
Alsheich said “I have no doubt that a terror cell that
comes with an arsenal like this has every intention of
carrying out a massive attack.”
Ravit and Cohen were part of a three-man patrol along
with their commander. They had only been drafted a
couple months before and their deployment at Damascus
Gate in East Jerusalem was part of their training.
Since the attack yesterday, police and the Border
Police have drawn criticism for the fact that the two
women were posted at one of the most dangerous
flashpoints in the country so soon after they were
drafted.
The three terrorists were responsible for the attack
were identified as Ahmed Rajeh Zakarneh, Muhammad
Ahmed Kmail, and Ahmed Najeh Abu al-Rub. All three
were shot dead at the scene. Their explosives did not
detonate and were later neutralized by a police bomb
disposal team.
No holds barred: Torrent of anti-Israel advice found
in Hillary’s emails
Jerusalem Post - Opinion By Shmuley Boteach 02/01/2016
Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests
in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its
best interests? Advice like this was par for the course
with Clinton’s advisers.
It’s already been established that one of Hillary
Clinton’s most trusted advisers, Sid
Blumenthal, sent her anti-Israel articles, ideas
and advice during her time as secretary of state. But
the stream of anti-Israel advice received by Clinton was
much more comprehensive.
In the entire forced dump of Clinton’s emails, you will
be hard pressed to find a single one sympathetic toward
the Jewish state from any of the people she relied on.
The negative, poisonous approach to Israel throughout
this email expose shows the atmosphere that she had
established around herself. These emails seem to
demonstrate that a huge segment of her close advisers
and confidantes were attacking Israel, condemning Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and strategizing how to
force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria at all
costs.
This was occurring against the backdrop of Israel’s
recent Gaza withdrawal, which led to the takeover of
Gaza by Hamas. There is almost zero mention of the huge
risks to Israel’s security in withdrawing as Clinton and
the Obama administration did everything they could to
pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.
Take a look at a sampling of the advice being sent to
Clinton from her many advisers that we have now become
privy to.
Sandy
Berger was Clinton’s foreign policy adviser during
her 2008 presidential campaign. In September of 2010 he
sent her ideas on how to pressure Israel to make
concessions for peace. Berger acknowledged “how fragile
is Abbas’s political position,” and how “Palestinians
are in disarray,” and that “failure is a real
possibility.” Berger was well aware of, and informed
Hillary of, the very real possibility that Israel would
be placing its national security at grave risk in a deal
that would very likely fail and lead to a Hamas
takeover.
But Berger felt the risks to Israeli lives were worth
it.
He advised the need to make Netanyahu feel “uneasy about
incurring our displeasure....”
Berger emphasizes the need “to convince the prime
minister – through various forms of overt persuasion and
implicit pressure – to make the necessary compromises”
and talks of the “possibility – to turn his position
against him.”
Astoundingly, Berger seems to accuse the Jews in America
of racism toward Obama. He writes, “At a political
level, the past year has clearly demonstrated the degree
to which the U.S. has been hamstrung by its low ratings
in Israel and among important segments of the domestic
Jewish constituency....” He then adds, “Domestically, he
faces a reservoir of skepticism on this issue which
reflects many factors, including inexcusable prejudice.”
Anne Marie Slaughter was Clinton’s director of policy
planning from 2009-2011. She wrote to Clinton in
September of 2010 and devised a scheme to encourage
wealthy philanthropists to pledge millions to the
Palestinians (which no doubt would have been embezzled
by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his
cronies as were other funds).
She wrote: “This may be a crazy idea.... Suppose we
launched a “Pledge for Palestine” campaign... Such a
campaign among billionaires/multi-millionaires around
the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in
the building of a Palestinian state....”
She adds: “There would also be a certain shaming effect
re Israelis who, would be building settlements in the
face of a pledge for peace.”
Clinton’s response to this email: “I am very interested-
pls flesh out. Thx.”
Robert
Russo, one of Clinton’s aides and currently her
campaign’s “director of correspondence and briefings”
sent an email in April of 2012 informing her of
Netanyahu’s father’s death and advising her to give him
a condolence call. Included with Russo’s
email is an extremely biased article attacking both
Netanyahu and his father, describing them as virulently
racist warmongers and calling the elder Netanyahu “a
behindthe- scenes adviser to his son, the most powerful
person in Israel.”
The article noted that “Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu repeatedly denied that his father was a
one-dimensional ideologue. He further emphasized that he
himself was a different person from his father.”
But then it goes on to say, without providing any proof
whatsoever, “Israelis seemed in the dark about the
extent of paternal influence on their leader,” and “To
understand Bibi, you have to understand the father.”
One might be forgiven for questioning Clinton’s sympathy
and sincerity when she later placed the call and gave
Netanyahu her condolences.
Thomas
Pickering, former US ambassador to Israel, wrote
to Clinton on December 18, 2011, and suggested a secret
plan to stir up major Palestinian protests in an attempt
to force the Israeli government into peace negotiations.
He stated that the protests “must be all and only women.
Why? On the Palestinian side the male culture is to use
force.”
Pickering’s goal was to ignite protests that would
engulf the West Bank, “just like Tahrir square.” He adds
that the Palestinian “leadership has shied away from
this idea because they can’t control it,” and they are
“afraid of being replaced.”
This idiotic reasoning that somehow only women would
participate and things would stay peaceful is obviously
absurd. As Pickering himself notes, “Palestinian men
will not for long patiently demonstrate – they will be
inclined over time and much too soon to be frustrated
and use force. Their male culture comes close to
requiring it.”
Regardless, Pickering writes that the protests could be
used against Israel “to influence the political
leadership.”
The idea was as dangerous for the Palestinians as it was
for Israel. As Pickering himself admits, widespread
protests could overthrow Abbas’ government, and if
Palestinian men joined in, widespread violence would
inevitably break out. It would obviously be impossible
to prevent men from participating in these
demonstrations.
Yet Pickering felt this extreme risk was worth taking,
even if it meant the replacement of Abbas with another
Hamas-led government. And even if meant violence
breaking out across the West Bank leading to a third
intifada and the murder of countless Jews. He also
emphasizes the need to hide all US involvement in this
plot. Clinton forwarded this email to Monica Hanley and
asked her to “pls print.”
Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests
in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its
best interests? Advice like this was par for the course
when it came to Clinton’s advisers.
In a follow-up column we’ll illuminate even more
anti-Israel advice that was given the then-secretary of
state. Sadly, there was just so much of it.
The author, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international
bestselling author of 30 books including his upcoming
The Israel Warrior’s Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @
RabbiShmuley.
Senate resolution calls for a US constitutional
convention
Posted: February 3, 2016 at 10:37 am
KFQD Radio Anchorage, Alaska
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – An Alaska Senate committee is
set to consider a resolution calling for a convention
of the states to propose a countermand, or veto,
amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The measure calls on legislators in the other 49
states to apply for a convention as well.
In his sponsor statement, Chugiak Republican Senator
Bill Stoltze says the resolution is meant to restore
the balance of power between the states and the
federal government.
The resolution calls for a convention of states to
amend the U.S. Constitution and provide states with
the power to vote on nullifying federal laws.
Click here to realize that Alaska is not the
only state that has called for a Constitutional
Convention.
Turkish Court Rules Government Failed to Protect
Christians Killed in Malatya
Civil suit results in order to pay damages to
relatives of victims.
January 27, 2016
By Our Middle East Correspondent
Morning Star News
ISTANBUL, Turkey (Morning Star News) – A Turkish court
ruled on Tuesday (Jan. 26) that the government was
negligent in its duty to protect three Christians who
were tortured and killed in 2007 and ordered it
to pay damages to the victims’ families.
The Malatya Administrative Court ruled that, nearly nine
years ago, the Interior Ministry and the Malatya
Governor’s Office ignored reliable intelligence that
Turkish nationalists were targeting the three Christians
days prior to the April 2007 killings.
At the present rate, it is doubtful what year money
might actually change hands
Man with Quran, guns arrested near Disneyland Paris
Manhunt underway for female companion
CNN by Laura Akhoun and Jason Hanna Published: 01/28/2016
(CNN) French police are looking for a woman who was with
the Paris man who was arrested with guns Thursday at a
Disney hotel near Disneyland Paris, police official
Michael Le Provost told CNN.
When security guards discovered the firearms, they
noticed the woman was with him, but she eluded arrest,
Le Provost said.
Bomb disposal experts are inspecting the man’s car, Le
Provost said.
Posted By David Barton On 01/27/2016 @ 10:32 pm In Education,Faith,Front
Page,Politics,U.S.,World World Net Daily
Democrats have long heralded Thomas Jefferson (along
with Andrew Jackson) as the founder of their Party.
They traditionally hold annual Jefferson-Jackson Day
fundraising dinners, and President Obama is one of
their most sought after speakers. But this past year,
Democrats began to remove any mention of Jefferson’s
name from their functions. They claim that this
is because Jefferson was a bigoted racist, iii but
this excuse is historically inaccurate, based on an
errant modern portrayal.
If you doubt this, ask yourself why black civil rights
leaders over the past two centuries (such as Frederick
Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Benjamin
Banneker, Francis Grimke, Henry Highland Garnett, and
so many others) openly praised Jefferson as a racial
civil rights pioneer and champion, as did
abolitionists such as John Quincy Adams, Abraham
Lincoln, and others They recognized that Jefferson led
a vocal lifelong campaign to emancipate all slaves in
the United States, but that the laws of Virginia
prevented him from freeing his own slaves. (All of
this is covered in my new book, “The Jefferson
Lies.”)
The real reason that Democrats should discard
Jefferson is that he held nearly no policy position
similar to those Democrats hold today. Consider
fifteen major categories where the policies of
Presidents Jefferson and Obama are opposite.
Posted By Jeff Knox On 01/27/2016 @ 7:42 pm
In Commentary,Opinion
World Net Daily
The occupation of a remote wildlife refuge
turned violent yesterday when federal agents stopped
two vehicles carrying protesters to a town hall
meeting in John Day, Oregon. Victoria Sharp, a
passenger in one of those vehicles, has reported that
federal agents opened fire on the group without
provocation after conflicting and confusing demands
for the protesters to surrender. Sharp reported that
shots were first fired at Ryan Payne as he complied
with orders to show his hands out of the window of the
vehicle in which she was riding, but that the shots
missed. Payne was calling for police to not shoot, as
there were women in the vehicle, and exited the
vehicle, asking that the women be allowed out.
At this point, LaVoy Finicum, one of the spokesmen for
the occupiers, who was driving the vehicle in which
Ms. Sharp was riding, yelled out the window that they
were going to go talk to the sheriff (at the meeting
in John Day), or that agents could just shoot him. He
told the passengers to get down, and drove forward,
precipitating heavy gunfire from the agents, and
crashing the vehicle into a snowbank.
Sharp said that Finicum then exited the vehicle, hands
in the air, yelling, “Just shoot me then!” A volley of
shots rang out, and Finicum fell to his back, hands
still over his head, and was shot several more times
on the ground, Sharp said.
According to Sharp, agents continued shooting at the
car, striking Ryan Bundy in the shoulder as he
shielded her on the floorboard, and deploying tear gas
before finally taking the rest of the group into
custody. She also claims that none of the protesters
fired a shot or even touched a gun during the
encounter.
The full audio of Victoria Sharp’s account is posted
on YouTube, and comes across as very credible.
Listen to Victoria Sharp’s testimony:
Another report suggested that Finicum "charged" at
police after exiting the vehicle but does not dispute
the claim that his hands were in the air. Cliven
Bundy, father of Ammon and Ryan Bundy, leaders of the
occupation who were both taken into custody during the
incident, has further charged that, not only were
Finicum's hands in the air, but he was not armed at
the time.
In interviews during the occupation protest, Finicum,
a soft-spoken rancher and father of 11 from Arizona,
had insisted that he would rather be killed than "put
in a cement box" prison. He said that some things were
more important than life, and that freedom was one of
those things.
The occupation was initiated in protest of the
re-incarceration of a pair of Oregon ranchers who had
been convicted of terrorism for starting two
controlled burns on their graze lands back in 2001 and
2005. The ranchers, father and son Dwight and Steven
Hammond, were initially sentenced to, and served short
sentences and fined $400,000 for their actions, but a
federal appeals court later concluded that the judge
in the case had improperly waived a five-year minimum
sentence for the charges, and the two were resentenced
to that minimum and ordered to return to prison.
I reported on the Hammond case and the resulting
protests a few weeks ago in this column, pointing out
that the stated objective of the protest was being
lost in the news coverage of the protest itself. Ammon
Bundy and his compatriots appeared to be more
interested in generating a confrontation with federal
authorities than in drawing attention to the Hammonds
and the abusive practices of federal agencies that led
to their plight.
The death of LaVoy Finicum is a needless tragedy.
Federal authorities had wisely been taking a hands-off
approach to the occupation, denying Bundy and his
friends the opportunity for the tense stand-off they
seemed to be seeking. Unfortunately, politicians like
Oregon's Democrat Gov. Kate Brown, took the occupation
as a personal affront and were calling for law
enforcement to take more aggressive action to put a
stop to the flagrant defiance of federal authority.
The result is a martyr for the fringe and escalation
of the situation from a nuisance to a volatile and
dangerous level. The strategy was clearly to "remove
the head of the snake" by capturing the leaders of the
occupation, but what if those leaders were the cooler
heads that were keeping the protest calm and peaceful?
With the death of Finicum, in circumstances that some
are calling murder, a fuse has been lit, and unless
authorities can and do quickly produce evidence that
their actions were clearly justified, this could blow
up in a very ugly way. And it all could have been
easily avoided.
Realistically, what harm were the protesters doing?
They were occupying buildings of a remote wildlife
refuge in a sparsely populated area of the country in
the dead of winter. They were making no threats,
harming no one, and getting less and less attention
from an unsympathetic media. They were not supported
by any national or state militia organizations, and
their whole agenda had pretty well fizzled.
I wish Ammon Bundy had taken my advice, negotiated a
peaceful end to the situation and sent his supporters
home to their families weeks ago. That didn't happen,
and what happens next is anyone's guess. The remaining
occupiers must be concerned about what might happen to
them if they try to leave, especially in light of the
death of Finicum, and by setting up roadblocks and
checkpoints, authorities have now committed manpower
and resources to potentially long, cold, uncomfortable
duty that can't help but engender deeper frustration
and resentment between police and occupiers. Any trust
that might have developed is completely out the
window. Worse, the bloodshed may provoke other groups
to step in and escalate the mess even further.
Perhaps this week's arrests will bring this whole
thing to a close, but I fear that it is more likely
signaling the beginning of something much worse than
protesters occupying a wilderness outpost.
Christian persecution reached record high in 2015,
report says
By William J. Cadigan, CNN Sun January 17, 2016
Christians flee persecution in the middle east
(CNN)Last year was the most violent for Christians in
modern history, rising to "a level akin to ethnic
cleansing," according to a new report by Open Doors
USA, a watchdog group that advocates for Christians.
In total, the survey found that more than 7,100
Christians were killed in 2015 for "faith-related
reasons," up 3,000 from the previous year, according
to the group's analysis of media reports and other
public information as well as external experts. Open
Door's report is independently audited by the
International Institute of Religious Freedom. Open
Doors USA is an organization that works with
Christians worldwide to "equip and encourage" those
living under persecution while also helping churches
in America advocate for the persecuted around the
world.
The group's report defines Christian persecution "as
any hostility experienced as a result of one's
identification with Christ." Open Doors found this
persecution ranged from imprisonment, torture,
beheadings and rape to the loss of home and assets,
the loss of a job, or even rejection from a community.
Speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday,
David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors,
introduced the annual ranking of countries based on
their severity of Christian persecution, evaluating
levels of violence worldwide to formulate the global
top 50. The list, now in its 25th year, is topped by
North Korea for the 14th consecutive time. Curry says
that "pariah states" like North Korea are especially
hostile toward Christians.
According to the report, however, much of the
persecution faced by Christians occurs in
predominantly Muslim nations, many of which are
"failed states" that fail to protect any of their
citizens' religious liberty.
The presence of Islamic extremist factions across the
world in 2015 brought religious persecution for not
only Christians, but also Muslims, Yazidis and other
religious minorities, the report found. Notably, Iraq
(No. 2) and Syria (No. 5) are the epicenter of ISIS'
so called "caliphate," while Afghanistan (4), Pakistan
(6), Iran (9) and Libya (10) all have elements of
Islamic extremism.
Curry said that while "Islamic extremism is one of the
driving forces" of Christian persecution,
"peace-loving Muslims can make an impact on that part
of their culture."
ISIS and other extremist groups are spreading, the
report highlights, not just in the Middle East but
around the world. Curry said he hoped the list would
bring attention to the plight of Christians across the
globe as they face a "total lack of religious
freedom," forced migration and even genocide.
In fact, part of the reason for the annual list,
according to Curry, is to highlight for U.S.
policymakers the continued persecution of Christians
by our "geopolitical allies." Countries such as Saudi
Arabia and India are key global partners for the
United States, yet Open Doors ranks both in its top 50
of persecutors of Christians.
"We believe in religious freedom for all," Curry said,
"and that does not happen in countries that we do
business with every day."
Open Doors also seeks to inspire and inform Christians
in America, using the annual watch list "as a clarion
call to pray, advocate and remember their persecuted
fellow Christians."
Ethics Complaint Says Big Clinton Donors Got
State Dept Access
The Daily Caller Richard Pollock, Reporter 01/10/2016
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton violated
federal ethics statutes by giving “preferential
treatment” to wealthy political campaign donors and
financial supporters of the Clinton Foundation,
according to a formal complaint filed Friday by the
Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.
The non-profit government watchdog group filed the
complaint with the Office of Government Ethics, asking
it to conduct a “full investigation” into Clinton’s
“apparent breach of ethics rules.” A copy of the
complaint was exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller
News Foundation.
The organization charged Clinton gave “preferential
treatment to individuals with which she had financial
ties” and “regularly granted access” to rich donors,
celebrities, and even powerful foreign nationals.
The FACT complaint follows the State Department’s latest
release of thousands of Clinton emails that she turned
over to the government more than two years after leaving
the office in 2013. She used a private email address and
a home-brew server in her private New York residence to
conduct official government business throughout her
tenure.
Number of Muslim-Americans born to Middle Eastern
migrants 'off the charts'
Leo Hohmann Published: 1/06/2016
So-called “home-grown” terrorists such as Syed
Farook, who slaughtered 14 people last month in San
Bernardino, or Muhammad Abdulazeez, who gunned down
five U.S. servicemen in Chattanooga last summer, were
both second-generation Muslim-Americans whose parents
emigrated to the U.S.
Most of the terrorists who attacked Paris in November,
killing 130 people with guns and bombs, were also
described by the media as “home grown jihadists” when
in reality they still represented a foreign culture,
born of Middle Eastern parents who migrated to Europe
and never fully assimilated. And now there is fresh
evidence that this segment of the U.S. population is
growing exponentially.
Buried in the Social Security data is a count of
babies born with the name Muhammad. While offering a
small sample, the Social Security database is able to
shed light on the growth of second-generation Muslims
in America. It is highly reliable and accurate. It
shows a huge growth pattern.
“A boy named Mohammed born here is likely to grow up
in a Muslim environment and, at the same time, be a
U.S. citizen,” North writes. “So we can get a rough
proxy of the growth of the population of
second-generation Muslim immigrants by noting how many
of them carry these names. (Third-generation babies
are also included.)”
The figures show the huge growth in this population
over the last 50 years, starting in 1964 when only 29
baby boys were named after the Islamic prophet who
lived in the seventh century. By 2014 the number had
soared to 2,931, a more than 100-to-one ratio.
Alabama 2nd state to sue feds over refugee
resettlement
Suit claims program too secretive
Leo Hohmann Published: 01/07/2016
Alabama has become the second state to sue the
federal government alleging that it has failed to
“consult” with state officials while secretly placing
foreign refugees into communities. The suit claims the
Obama administration has violated the terms of the
Refugee Act of 1980, which says the federal government
“shall consult regularly” with states before
placing refugees.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Robert Bentley told the
Associated Press the lawsuit was filed Thursday,
following a similar suit by Texas a month ago.
But an expert on the 1980 law governing refugee
resettlement told WND that neither suit stands a
chance of stopping the flow of refugees into Texas or
Alabama. Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel
of the Thomas More Law Center, said his organization
is not involved in either the Texas or the Alabama
cases because he believes there is a stronger case to
be made on the grounds of the 10th Amendment.
“They filed a suit on the grounds that the feds have
failed to consult with the state on the location of
refugees in the state, and failure to consult is a
term that has no real definition to it. Texas has
filed a similar suit that thus far has not gone
anywhere,” Thompson said. “Thomas More Law Center’s
position is that there is a constitutional claim and
that claim is based on the 10th Amendment.”
Bentley is one of more than two-dozen Republican
governors who opposed the settlement of Syrian
refugees in their states after the Nov. 13 jihadist
attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.
About 80 GOP congressmen have also signed on to
co-sponsor a bill by Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, which
would halt all refugee resettlement until the program
can undergo a full investigation into its costs and
its risks to national security.
But the U.S. State Department has continued
distributing Muslim refugees into more than 180 U.S.
cities and towns. They come not only from Syria and
Iraq, but from Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Burma and other countries with
active jihadist movements.
A stronger response is ready and waiting for a taker.
The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center
has been working since June to prepare a case that
would challenge the constitutionality of federal
authority over the refugee program. The program is
administered by the U.S. State Department along with
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Expanding special rights
to the 2% who choose the LGBT lifestyle in
Jacksonville FL
with excerpts from Christopher Hong Jan 13, 2016 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union
"Jacksonville residents crowded Tuesday’s City Council
meeting to voice their stance on the longstanding
question of whether to expand discrimination
protections to the LGBT community...
Tuesday’s meeting saw the formal introduction of two
bills on the issue. Councilman Tommy Hazouri
introduced a bill to expand the discrimination
protections, while Councilman Bill Gulliford
introduced a bill to let voters decide.
Next month, the council will begin debating those two
bills.... the council defeated similar legislation in
2012. Tuesday’s discussion mostly remained civil, with
council members hearing many of the same arguments
voiced years ago and in a series of community meetings
that (Mayor) Curry hosted late last year.
Supporters of expanding the law said the LGBT
community deserves the same rights and protections
afforded to other minority groups and urged the
council to vote on it.
Opponents, many citing their religious beliefs that
homosexuality is morally wrong, said expanded
protections amounted to a special privilege that would
interfere with small business and could allow men into
women’s restrooms. Many urged council members to let
voters decide the issue.
The full council will debate Hazouri’s and Gulliford’s
bills during special meetings scheduled for Feb. 4,
Feb. 18 and March 3."
Has your voice been heard about this expansion of
Special Rights in Jacksonville FL? Contact
your Mayor and your Council Representatives:
The powers not delegated to the United States by
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or
to the people.
Alabama chief justice tells judges to halt same-sex
'marriages'
Posted By Bob Unruh On 01/06/2016
World Net Daily
Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court on
Wednesday ordered the state’s probate judges, the only
ones in the state who are allowed to issue marriage
licenses, to follow the state’s Sanctity of Marriage
Amendment and its Marriage Protection Act until the full
state Supreme Court rules on the issue.
Please click here to read the article in its entirety
January 7, 2016
Subject: URGENT: Stop the LGBT Law
Dear
Jacksonville
Family,
This is URGENT. Please forward this
email to others.
Unless we do something
about it, just 10
City Council members will force a LGBT
favoritism law upon Jacksonville, Duval County,
Florida – a law which will restrict Free
Speech and religious liberties and which will
allow men, claiming to be women, to enter women’s
and children’s dormitories, and dressing, locker
and rest rooms – to view them in all stages of
undress.
And, much more harm will
occur. Get more details at DefendJaxFamilies.
But, you
can help prevent this. How? LET THE PEOPLE
DECIDE this issue.
●Show your support for
the Public Referendum proposed by
Councilman Gulliford. Complete and return the Petition
found here,
where there are instructions. The Petition
form can be filled out on your computer and returned
by email.
●Forward this letter.
Email it to as many people as possible.
●Collect Petition
signatures. Download the Petition
form, print copies and distribute them at
churches and other venues.
●Help fund the campaign.
And please urge friends to donate
here . They will understand that it
takes funding to fight this battle.
●Attend key City
Council meetings. The next City
Council meeting is January 12, 2016 at 5:00 P.M.
Followed by the Finance Committee meeting on Jan 19
at 9:30 A.M. Click
here to view regularly scheduled City Council
meetings and plan accordingly.
Please act quickly.
Time is short. Please act now to complete the forms
and return.
Thanks for all your help,
and for your support in the past.
Non-Muslims encouraged to wear Islamic head scarf at
school
Click
here to read a thoughtful piece posted by Leo
Hohmann on WND 12/14/2015.This news occurred
courtesy of American educational systems and Muslim
Student Associations (M.S.A.), a known front group for
the Muslim Brotherhood and an unindicted co-conspirator
in the largest terror-financing trial ever held on U.S.
soil.
(The above may more be correctly filed under
"How Political Correctness is destroying our nation")
If your blood
pressure is not high enough yet, click
here to read about the Virginia high school
Geography class that passed around the Koran and
included a lesson practicing Arabic calligraphy, or
the California School with the Muslim fight song.
Wonder when is the last time they sang "Onward,
Christian Soldiers" and passed around a Bible.
(Thanks again to wnd.com)
Facebook censors Michael Savage post of Muslims
protesting
Photos show demonstrators warning 'Behead those who
insult Islam'
Published: 12/10/2015 at 3:38 PM World Net Daily
When Muslims held a demonstration in London in 2006 in
protest of cartoons depicting their founder, Muhammad,
many bore signs warning of beheading and death for
“those who insult Islam.”
Talk-radio host Michael Savage thought that amid a
fierce national debate on whether or not to allow
Muslims to immigrate to the United States, it would be
worth considering what has been happening in Europe.
So, he posted on his Facebook page photographs of the
Feb. 3, 2006, demonstration outside the Embassy of
Denmark in London. The focus of protest was the
publication of editorial cartoons depicting Muhammad in
the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Snopes.com
verified that the photographs were taken at the London
demonstration, with the exception of one, which was from
a protest in the English city of Luton (which is 33
miles away).
Wednesday night, Facebook removed Savage’s post,
explaining the social media site “determined that it
violated Facebook community standards.”
After Muslim Truckers Refuse
to Deliver Beer… Obama Does the Unbelievable
From Top Right News on October
27, 2015
by Bill Callen | Top Right News
Barack Obama just sided with Muslims to enforce
Islamic Sharia Law on an American business, leaving
many outraged and two FoxNews anchors absolutely
stunned.
Two Muslim truck drivers — former Somali “refugees”
— refused to make deliveries of beer to stores
for their employer. So they were understandably fired.
They claimed it was a violation of their religious
beliefs — even though Islam bars only the consumption
of alcohol. And, as the employer pointed out, the
workers knew they would have to deliver
alcohol before they took the job.
So guess what Barack Obama did.
He SUED the employers it on behalf of the pair,
Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale,
claiming religious discrimination.
Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
represented them in the case, providing tens of
thousands of taxpayer dollars in legal support,
judicial filings and court appearances against the
employer who was hopelessly outgunned by the Federal
government.
And this week the Muslims were awarded a stunning
$240,000 by a jury, presided over by an Obama
appointee who stunned analysts by allowing the case to
go forward at all.
Hard to believe, isn't it? Why would someone accept a
job knowing he is unable to perform the work?? This
has been fact checked
at this link and it is, sadly, true.
It is hard to know where to catalogue the following
... under Politics? Religious Liberties? Islamic
Threat? Christian or Cult? Perhaps "Know They Enemy"?
You be the judge.
40 Mind-Blowing Quotes From
Barack Hussein Obama On Islam And Christianity
by Geoffrey Grider nowtheendbegins.com
Oct 2, 2013
When someone shows you who
they are, believe them
Since 2009, NOW THE END BEGINS has
brought you story after story in detailed accounts of
exactly how Obama feels about Islam, and how he views
Christianity and the Bible. So today, in light of
recent events in Washington, we feel it important that
you know exactly where your president stands in
regards to his faith and his god. Below are 20 quotes
he has made about Islam, and 20 quotes he has made
about Christianity. Nothing edited or mashed up, just
exactly in the context he originally spoke them in
with fully-sourced links so you can see where they
come from.
Police Confiscate Mohammed Cartoons At Dutch
Anti-Islam Rally
by Nick Hallett 9 Nov 2015
Police seized “offensive” Mohammed cartoons during a
demonstration by the Dutch branch of the Patriotic
European Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA)
movement in the city of Utrecht this weekend.
The rally, which attracted around 150 supporters,
criticised the “Islamisation” of the Netherlands, with
demonstrators also expressing their support for the
Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, a noted critic of
Islamism.
DutchNews reports that police arrested 32 people at the
demonstration for a variety of offences including
failing to carry IDs, not following police orders and
displaying “insulting banners”.
One such banner said the “Koran is poison”, while
another claimed “Islamisation is EU-thanasia”.
Video footage emerged of police removing Mohammed
cartoons, although their ultimate fate is unknown.
Utrecht City Council had banned the demonstrators from
marching through the city so they gathered instead in a
park on the outskirts of the city.
The PEGIDA marches started in Dresden, Germany last year
as “evening strolls” through the streets every Monday to
protest against militant and political Islam. The
marches soon grew and spread across the country, but
died down again at the start of this year to point where
most commentators assumed the movement had petered out.
However, as the migrant crisis intensifies in Europe,
especially thanks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
relaxed border policies, the marches have started again
and are growing.
Authorities have hit back, however, charging founder
Lutz Bachmann with hate speech for comments he made in
Facebook posts back in 2014. State prosecutors in Saxony
claim private posts in which Mr Bachmann uses terms such
as “livestock” and “scum” to refer to migrants risked
causing disturbances.
This weekend in the German capital Berlin, supporters of
the anti-mass migration Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD)
party also held a rally criticising Mrs Merkel’s
immigration policy and calling for her to resign.
The rally passed off largely peacefully, although
violent scuffles broke out between police and
pro-migrant counter-demonstrators.
Thousands Of German
People Chant ‘Merkel Must Go’ At Anti-Mass Muslim
Migration Rally
by Geoffrey Grider
November 7, 2015
The AFD has seen its popularity surge as Germany
struggles to deal with the huge influx of Muslim
migrants, and is currently campaigning in local
elections in the Saxony-Anhalt region that will be seen
as an indicator of public sentiment on the issue.
The anti-mass Muslim migration Alternativ für
Deutschland (AfD) party held a rally in the German
capital Berlin this afternoon, demanding the resignation
of Chancellor Angela Merkel and calling for the country
to adopt a strong policy on immigration.
German paper Handelsblatt estimates that 5,000 people
joined the rally this afternoon, calling for the
immediate closure of Germany’s borders and introduction
of visa requirements from migrants from the Balkan
states, including Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Montenegro.
Angry demonstrators chanted “Merkel must go” and
“traitor to the people” under the banner “Asylum has its
limits – red card for Merkel”.
Addressing the crowd, Beatrix von Storch, member of the
European Parliament, accused the German chancellor of
causing "asylum chaos” in Germany.
This was a rally in German from about two weeks ago, as
the German people are being forced to rise up and do
what their government refuses to do.
Although the main protest was largely peaceful, several
counter-protests by pro-migrant activists descended into
violence, with around 40 arrests. Around 800
counter-demonstrators showed up, far lower than
organisers had hoped.
Yesterday, it was reported that the German government
had agreed the downgrade the status of Syrian migrants,
reducing the amount of time they could stay in the
country and banning them from bringing their families.
Today, however, the government did a U-turn on the
plans.
Court rules against
Little Sisters of the Poor in Contraceptive Coverage
Case
By Nigel Duara
L.A. Times
July 14, 2015
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that there is a
limit to how far the government must bend to
accommodate religious objections to the federal
healthcare exchange.
The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that if
the Colorado-based Little Sisters of the Poor want to
refuse contraceptive coverage to their employees, they
must sign a waiver to be exempted, and that such a
waiver is not a substantial burden on the nuns'
religious freedom.
The 2-1 decision is one of the few victories the U.S.
government can claim in defense of the healthcare law
in the contraceptive mandate debate.
Hobby Lobby, a business run by evangelical
Christians, successfully argued before the U.S.
Supreme Court last year that a mandate to provide
contraception to female employees violated their
belief that life begins at conception.
The high court agreed that for-profit organizations
like Hobby Lobby required protection, but did not say
how far such protections would go.
In response, on Aug. 27, 2014, Affordable Care
Act administrators created a waiver for religious
nonprofits that would grant them an exemption from
contraceptive coverage.
But the Little Sisters of the Poor, who run the
Mullen Home for the Aged in Denver, argued before a
three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit that the waiver
itself both crosses the nuns’ moral boundary by
endorsing contraceptives and gives control of their
healthcare program to the government.
“Most religious liberty claimants allege that a
generally applicable law or policy without a religious
exception burdens religious exercise,” according to
the decision, noting that most cases begin with
prisoners demanding a religious right.
But in the Little Sisters of the Poor case and
accompanying suits by self-insured religious objectors
and religious universities, the government made clear
attempts to offer a religious exemption, the judges
wrote.
“Although plaintiffs allege the administrative tasks
required to opt out of the mandate make them complicit
in the overall delivery scheme, opting out instead
relieves them from complicity,” according to the
opinion.
The judges said the difference between Hobby Lobby
and the Little Sisters of the Poor is that Hobby Lobby
faced fines for every day of noncompliance. Ihe Little
Sisters of the Poor faced no such burden, the judges
ruled.
10th Circuit Judge Bobby R. Baldock, the lone
dissenter, agreed with the decision on the Little
Sisters of the Poor but said other self-insured groups
were indeed substantially burdened when they faced
fines for refusing to provide contraceptives because
of their religious belief.
May 9, 2015
Dr. Gene A. Youngblood, Pastor
First Conservative Baptist Church
12021 Old St Augustine Rd
Jacksonville, Florida 32258
TO: All news media outlets
It has come to my attention that there are
some in our community, as well as, a few media that
have expressed questions or concerns relating to our
Church-Ministry campus/outdoor marquee, changeable
copy sign and its current message. This marquee
generally has a message change each week. Generally
the message relates in some fashion to those things
and events taking place in our city or nation. As a
pastor and ministry we feel it needful to keep our
citizens informed and at the same time be relevant
through the Word of GOD.
FIRST: Let me state
my deep love and concern for our great city, state,
and nation. I am a Bible believing patriot
with a deep concern over the moral declension. I am
deeply saddened to see the morals and family values
under attack on a national basis. I have invested
the past 50 years of my life in the defense of the
WORD of GOD through religious-theological studies,
pastoral, pulpit, and classroom academic
instructional responsibilities.
SECOND: We are profoundly committed to the
preaching-teaching of God’s Word. God’s Word
commands that I “Preach the WORD” (11Tim 4:1-3)
which in the text includes confronting sin. I do not
have the authority OR permission to change any text
of GOD’S Word-THE BIBLE.
THIRD: Our ministry marquee has been used as a tool
to educate, inspire, and caution for over 30 years.
We have dealt with multiple Biblical-Theological
issues that caution and confront sin of whatever
kind. Our prayer is that in our small way we may
make a difference in the lives of all those who pass
by. We do realize that any scriptural absolute may
cause conviction resulting in the attack on the
messenger as well as the message.
FORMALLY: The present message (caution) comes from
the WORD of GOD, The BIBLE as found in a multitude
of Scripture references:
• Romans 1:24-32, deals with
several kinds of Sin, with the focus on those
believing that they are wise and God says that they
are unwise. God then deals with the specific sin of
homosexuality and firmly condemns it.
• I Corinthians 6:9-10, warns that
all (including homosexuals) that commit sin and DO
NOT REPENT will die and go to HELL.
• OTHER text include and is NOT
limited to: Leviticus 20:13, Leviticus 18:22,
Deuteronomy 23:17-18, Galatians 5:19-21, Revelation
21:8, Revelation 22:15
Needless to say, the Scriptures are replete with
GOD’S warnings to all of us that SIN must be
confessed and repented of or HELL is GOD’S judgment
upon sin. The wonder of it all is that God through
Jesus Christ will forgive “ANY” confessed sin that
is repented of.
BECAUSE we love people (yet, as directed in
Scripture to hate the sin), we therefore want to
warn them of the coming Judgment of God on the sin
of Homosexuality (and any other sin that is NOT
repented of). ALL SIN that is not confessed and
repented will cause a person to GO TO HELL (God says
it, I did not originate the Word), God did. In fact,
according to several of the heretofore mentioned
Biblical text remind us of other sin specifically
mentioned in Scripture including; “All Liars,
Prostitutes, Sexually Promiscuous, Idolaters,
Adulterers, Homosexuals, Revilers, Extortioners,
WILL GO TO HELL unless they repent and seek God’s
forgiveness.
It is my sincere prayer that perhaps “ONE”
practicing Homosexual will have read our sign and
will REPENT before it is too late and they are cast
into HELL. HELL is a real place and anyone not
believing in the reality of HELL will not change the
temperature of the FLAMES a single degree.
I am eternally grateful to God for allowing me to
preach HIS WORD at a time when our Religious
FREEDOMS are being challenged and FREEDOM of speech
is being challenged, as well as, our (all of us)
Constitutional Liberties are under ATTACK.
Notwithstanding all of the above, I do understand
and sympathize with SOME that are not well
instructed or versed in the BIBLE and thus will
consider our marquee’s message to be incorrect or
un-spiritual. PLEASE allow me to state forthrightly;
we stand on SOLID Biblical TRUTH, therefore we pray
for each person that reads our message (changes
weekly), and prayerfully considers its TRUTH and
Caution.
FURTHERMORE, I pray that the media will NOT attempt
to thwart or interfere with our FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS
SPEECH. We also pray that the media will be
cautioned NOT to in any way interfere with or
disrupt ANY worship or other programs or services
conducted in and through FIRST CONSERVATIVE BAPTIST
CHURCH.
May God bless and use all in the MEDIA as an
instrument to preserve society and help protect
AMERICA and our great document THE CONSTITUTION.
Signed;
DR. GENE A. YOUNGBLOOD
Pastor
Obama blocks Iraqi nun from describing Christian
persecution
Posted By Leo Hohmann World Net Daily 05/01/2015 @ 11:52 am In Faith,Front Page,U.S.,World
Sister Diana Momeka is a Dominican Catholic nun
who fled her home in Iraq last August along with 50,000
other Christians and religious minorities escaping ISIS.
A leading conservative is asking why the Obama State
Department is barring a persecuted Iraqi nun from entry
into the United States to share her message about the
brutal treatment of Christians in her country.
Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious
Freedom, writes in a National Review op-ed that Sister
Diana Momeka is “an internationally respected and
leading representative of the Nineveh Christians who
have been killed and deported by ISIS.”
Yet this nun is being “barred from coming to Washington
to testify about this catastrophe?”
Sister Diana was the only Christian in the delegation
and the only member blocked from the trip, the
Washington Times reported, leading some of her American
supporters to question why she was singled out.
Shea, in her op-ed titled “With Malice Toward Nun,”
exposed the real reason why Obama denied the visa for
Sister Diana.
“Sister Diana Momeka of the Dominican
Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena was informed on
Tuesday by the U.S. consulate in Erbil that her
non-immigrant-visa application has been rejected.
“The reason given in the denial
letter, a copy of which I have obtained, is:
‘You were not able to demonstrate
that your intended activities in the United States would
be consistent with the classification of the visa.’”
Shea further explains:
“She told me in a phone conversation
that, to her face, consular officer Christopher Patch
told her she was denied because she is an ‘IDP’ or
Internally Displaced Person. ‘That really hurt,’ she
said. Essentially, the State Department was calling her
a deceiver.”
Shea states that the State Department officials made the
determination that the Catholic nun “could be falsely
asserting that she intends to visit Washington when
secretly she could be intending to stay. That would
constitute illegal immigration, and that, of course, is
strictly forbidden. Once here, she could also be at risk
for claiming political asylum, and the U.S. seems
determined to deny ISIS’s Christian victims that
status.”
Shea then outlined Sister Diana’s reasons for her visit
and the endorsements she received from two politicians –
one Republican and one Democrat — among others:
“In reality, Sister Diana wanted to
visit for one week in mid-May. She has meetings set up
with the Senate and House foreign-relations committees,
the State Department, USAID, and various NGOs. In
support of her application, Sister Diana had multiple
documents vouching for her and the temporary nature of
her visit. She submitted a letter from her prioress,
Sister Maria Hana. It attested that the nun has been
gainfully employed since last February with the Babel
College of Philosophy and Theology in Erbil, Kurdistan,
and is contracted to teach there in the 2015–16 academic
year.”
Sister Diana also submitted an invitation from her
sponsors, two respected Washington-area think tanks, the
Institute for Global Engagement and former congressman
Frank Wolf’s (R., Va.) 21st Century Wilberforce
Initiative.
None of this was good enough for the Obama State
Department.
Yet, as Matthew Balan points out in an article for News
Busters, even as the administration denies a visa to a
persecuted Christian nun, it has created a “special
envoy for the human rights of LGBT persons.”
“One wonders if any of the major news media outlets will
pick up the story of Sister Diana,” Balan muses. Just
over a month ago, on 60 Minutes, CBS’s Lara Logan
refreshingly brought new attention to ISIS’s genocidal
campaign against the ancient Christian communities in
Iraq. But since then, there has been scant coverage of
the Islamic extremist group’s persecution of the
religious minority. ”
Sister Diana, along with the town’s 50,000 other, mostly
Christian, residents, were forced out of their homes by
ISIS in the second week of August and fled for their
lives to Kurdish-controlled areas.
“Since then, the 30-something religious woman has served
as a spokesperson for this community, as well as for the
over 100,000 other Christians driven into Kurdistan
under the ISIS ‘convert or die’ policy,” Shea writes.
“Mr. Wolf, who met her in Kurdistan a few months ago,
explained, ‘We had hoped to facilitate her trip to the
States so that she could speak with great candor, as is
her custom, to policymakers. Perhaps just as
significantly, we viewed her as a critical voice to
awaken the church in the West to the suffering of
Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq.’”
Muslim
congressmen try to boot Islam critic Geert Wilders
Posted By Art Moore On
04/30/2015 @ 7:38 pm In Front Page,Politics,U.S.
Reps. Andre Carson,
D-Ind., Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., and Keith Ellison,
D-Minn., in Washington, D.C., protesting Geert
Wilders visit to the U.S. (Twitter
@RepAndreCarson)
As one of the world’s most prominent critics of
Islam, Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders doesn’t go
anywhere without his security detail of as many as
six plainclothes police officers, and he rarely
crosses international borders without causing
political uproar, having already been banned in
Britain at one time.
So it was of little surprise that three U.S.
congressmen urged Secretary of State John Kerry and
Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to deny
him a visa ahead of his planned visit to the U.S.
this week, due to his alleged ongoing “participation
in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence.”
Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and André Carson,
D-Ind., who both are Muslim, along with Rep. Joe
Crowley, D-N.Y., wrote a letter April 23 citing “the
International Religious Freedom Act which allows the
Department of State to deny entry to a foreign
leader who is responsible for severe violations of
religious freedom.”
Nevertheless, Wilders – who insists he doesn’t hate
Muslims but believes Western civilization is
threatened by adherents of the Islamic supremacy
taught in the Quran – showed up on Capitol Hill
Wednesday and spoke at two events at the invitation
of Reps. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and Steve
King, R-Iowa
King’s communications director, Sarah Stevens, told
WND the congressman invited Wilders a month or so
ago to speak at the weekly Conservative Opportunity
Society breakfast he chairs. Wilders spoke Wednesday
on his latest book, “Marked for Death: Islam’s War
Against the West and Me,” and also attended an
evening reception with Congress members and staff
along with representatives of foreign-policy groups
on Capitol Hill.
Ellison, Carson and Crowley showed up Thursday at a
news conference King and Gohmert held for Wilders in
front of the U.S. Capitol and voiced their
opposition to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf in a
video interview.
“Personally, I find it disturbing, but mostly sad,
because, you know, the people of the Netherlands are
a good people, and this is absolutely true, with a
great history of tolerance, great history of giving
art to the world and great gifts,” Ellison said.
“And it’s unfortunate,” the Minnesota congressman
continued, “that someone such as this would come
over here and sort of represent himself as a member
of that society.”
Wilders, for his part, would contend that Ellison
actually is drawing attention to the central issue:
It’s the intolerance of Muslim immigrants and their
refusal to assimilate, Wilders argues, that
threatens the historic Judeo-Christian Dutch culture
that forms the basis of a tolerant, pluralistic
society capable of “giving art to the world and
great gifts.”
As for whether or not Wilders represents his
country, in 2009 he remarked: “Half of Holland loves
me and half of Holland hates me. There is no
in-between.”
King was unable to speak to WND due to schedule
constraints, but he was interviewed by the De
Telegraaf reporter in front of the Capitol Thursday,
who asked him for his view of Wilders.
“I think he’s solid and courageous. I introduced
him yesterday as a man who will stand up and speak
the truth – even if he’s under death threats, speak
the truth,” King said in the video interview.
“He’s done that consistently for a decade.”
Wilders is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at
an event Sunday in the Dallas area called the
“Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest.” Held at the
venue where Muslims hosted a “Stand with the Prophet
in Honor and Respect” conference one week after the
Paris Charlie Hebdo massacre in January, the event’s
organizers, the American Freedom Defense Initiative,
see Wilders as representative of their aggressive
defense of freedom of speech.
ADI is run by author and Atlas Shrugs blogger
Pamela Geller, and author and Jihad Watch Director
Robert Spencer, who themselves have been branded by
Ellison, Carson and their allies as “Islamophobes.”
Geller and Spencer argue their work amounts to
citing the justifications from the Quran and other
Islamic texts used by Muslims who employ violent
acts and other means to assert Islamic supremacy.
Comparing cultures
Summarizing their complaint, the three protesting
congressmen told Kerry and Johnson that Wilders’
“policy agenda is centered on the principle that
Christian culture is superior to other cultures.”
“He justifies his desire to ban the Quran and Islam
from the Netherlands with depraved comments like,
‘Islam is not a religion, it’s an ideology, the
ideology of a retarded culture.’ We should not be
importing hate speech,” they write.
Wilders’ defenders point out that the Dutch word he
used to describe Islamic culture can be translated
as “backward” rather than “retarded,” insisting that
while Wilders doesn’t mince words, he is no hater of
people.
“I don’t hate Muslims, I hate Islam,” explains
Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom, the
fourth-largest party in the Dutch parliament.
That sentiment apparently is of little consolation
to many of the more than 1 billion people who
identify as Muslim, but Wilders contends the
orthodox teaching of Islam derived from Muhammad is
an existential threat to Western civilization.
While he puts the percentage of Islamic extremists
at about 5 to 15 percent of Muslims, he contends
“moderate Islam” doesn’t exist and notes the Quran
itself states that Muslims who accept the Islam’s
holy book in part are “apostates.”
As evidence of the failure to assimilate, in a
speech to parliament last year he cited a study
showing that nearly three-quarters of ethnic Turks
and Moroccans in the Netherlands regard those who
leave the European nation to join jihadists in Syria
as “heroes.” Wilders pointed out that the same
percentage of Dutch Muslims condoned the 9/11
attacks.
Wilders has been under constant security protection
since November 2004, when two North African Muslims
were accused of planning to murder him and another
outspoken critic of Islam in the parliament, Ayaan
Hirsi Ali. The attack at the Hague came shortly
after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by
a Moroccan national.
Wilders was banned from the U.K. as an “undesirable
person” under Prime Minister Gordon Brown in
February 2009, two days before he was scheduled to
show his short film “Fitna” at the invitation of two
members of the House of Lords. Wilders appealed the
ban to Britain’s Asylum and Immigration Tribunal,
which overturned it in October 2009.
Wilders writings and film “Fitna” warning of the
“Islamization” of the Netherlands and Europe
prompted Turkish, Moroccan and Antillean
organizations in the country to bring charges
against him of criminally insulting religious and
ethnic groups and inciting hatred and
discrimination.
In June 2011, he was acquitted of all charges.
Judge Marcel van Oosten called Wilders’ statements
about Islam “gross and denigrating” but ruled they
didn’t constitute hatred against Muslims and,
therefore, were “acceptable within the context of
public debate.”
Limiting free speech
In their letter, Ellison, Carson and Crowley assert
Wilders’ right to speak freely in the U.S. under the
First Amendment is limited because he allegedly
incites violence and “prejudicial action” against
protected groups.
They write:
In the U.S., freedom of speech is a bedrock
principle that distinguishes free societies from
ones living under oppressive regimes. Freedom of
speech, however, is not absolute. It is limited by
the legal and moral understanding that speech that
causes the incitement of violence or prejudicial
action against protected groups is wrong. As Mr.
Wilders continues his pursuit of political power,
granting him entry will embolden him to engage in
further incitement of violence and discrimination
against Muslims.
Legal analyst Eugene Volokh noted the incitement
exception to free speech, according to Supreme Court
precedent, is “limited to speech intended to and
likely to produce imminent lawless conduct — conduct
in the coming hours or maybe few days.”
Wilders’ statements, Volokh wrote in a Washington
Post blogpost, appear to be constitutionally
protected, he said, because they “don’t urge any
imminent conduct (or even any criminal conduct, as
opposed to long-term changes in the law). Such
statements’ are “incitement” in the Congressmen’s
opinion only because the Congressmen apparently view
constitutionally unprotected “incitement” (or, as
they term it earlier, “hate speech”) much more
broadly."
It's hard to say if the following somewhat
abbreviated article should be filed under the truthsthatfree.com
category of Freedom of Speech, Islamic Threat, Israel
and the Land, Religious Liberty or perhaps Politics.
So it is place in our monthly archive.
‘Killing Jews is Worship’ posters will soon
appear on NYC subways and buses
Washington Post
Michael Miller
April 22, 2015
‘Killing Jews is Worship’ posters will soon appear on
NYC subways and buses
New Yorkers are used to aggressive advertising.
Banners for breast implants. Billboards for condoms.
But a federal judge’s ruling has opened the door for
far more controversial posters on buses and subways
across the city.
“Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to
Allah,” reads one such ad next to the image of a young
man in a checkered headscarf. “That’s His Jihad.
What’s yours?”
The poster is at the center of heated legal debate
over public safety and free speech. On Tuesday, U.S.
District Judge John Koeltl ruled that New York’s
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) cannot
stop the controversial ad from running on scores of
subway cars and buses.
The MTA has argued that the ad could incite violence
against Jews, but Koeltl rejected that idea.
MTA officials “underestimate the tolerant quality of
New Yorkers and overestimate the potential impact of
these fleeting advertisements,” he ruled. “Moreover,
there is no evidence that seeing one of these
advertisements on the back of a bus would be
sufficient to trigger a violent reaction. Therefore,
these ads — offensive as they may be — are still
entitled to First Amendment protection.”
Making the case all the stranger is that the posters
are not the work of an Islamist group, but rather a
pro-Israel organization.
“This is a triumph for liberty and free speech,”
tweeted Pamela Geller, the president of the American
Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), the group that
purchased the ads and sued the MTA to run them.
New Yorkers are used to aggressive advertising.
Banners for breast implants. Billboards for condoms.
But a federal judge’s ruling has opened the door for
far more controversial posters on buses and subways
across the city.
“Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to
Allah,” reads one such ad next to the image of a young
man in a checkered headscarf. “That’s His Jihad.
What’s yours?”
The poster is at the center of heated legal debate
over public safety and free speech. On Tuesday, U.S.
District Judge John Koeltl ruled that New York’s
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) cannot
stop the controversial ad from running on scores of
subway cars and buses.
The MTA has argued that the ad could incite violence
against Jews, but Koeltl rejected that idea.
MTA officials “underestimate the tolerant quality of
New Yorkers and overestimate the potential impact of
these fleeting advertisements,” he ruled. “Moreover,
there is no evidence that seeing one of these
advertisements on the back of a bus would be
sufficient to trigger a violent reaction. Therefore,
these ads — offensive as they may be — are still
entitled to First Amendment protection.”
Making the case all the stranger is that the posters
are not the work of an Islamist group, but rather a
pro-Israel organization.
“This is a triumph for liberty and free speech,”
tweeted Pamela Geller, the president of the American
Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), the group that
purchased the ads and sued the MTA to run them.
AFDI is not your traditional free speech organization,
however. The “about” section on its Web site starts
out pretty straightforward, then takes a very hard
turn.
Whatever you make of the group, AFDI has been
remarkably successful in bringing its message to
America. AFDI has filed at least nine lawsuits across
the country, often against cities or their contractors
that refuse to display their messages.
Those messages include a poster depicting Adolf Hitler
meeting with “the leader of the Muslim world” and
demanding that the United States cut off all aid to
Islamic countries. “In any war between the civilized
man and the savage, support the civilized man,” reads
another AFDI poster. “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”
AFDI’s ads have also drawn objections from Muslims.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a
civil liberties group that promotes the rights of
Muslims and better relations between Muslims and
non-Muslims, launched its own public relations
campaign to combat AFDI. In 2012 and 2013, CAIR ran
posters in several U.S. cities promoting peaceful
versions of Islam. “‘#MyJihad is to build friendships
across the aisle.’ What’s yours?” But the ads never
ran in New York due to a disagreement between CAIR and
MTA.
The poster attributes the “Killing Jews” quote to
“Hamas MTV,” apparently a reference to the Palestinian
group’s odd blend of violence and music videos. The ad
also has a disclaimer at the bottom noting that it is
“a paid advertisement sponsored by” AFDI and “does not
imply MTA’s endorsement.”
But MTA Security Director Raymond Diaz worried that
the poster would nonetheless incite violence,
primarily against Jews. “What matters is not AFDI’s
intent, but how the ad would be interpreted,” he
wrote. The line “What is yours?” could be considered a
“call to violence,” particularly because the CAIR
posters it was mocking never appeared in New York.
When AFDI pointed out that the exact same poster had
not caused any problems in Chicago or San Francisco,
Diaz argued that New York was different because it is
“the prime terror target” and that the “terrorist
security threat” had grown worse since 2013.
On Tuesday, however, Judge Koeltl tossed out those
arguments and sided with AFDI. The ads could not
reasonably be considered an incitement to violence,
even if someone didn’t understand them.
“The defendants admit that the actual intention of the
advertisement is not to advocate the use of force, but
to parody the CAIR ‘My Jihad’ campaign and to
criticize Hamas and radical Islam. However, they argue
that a reasonable New Yorker would not read the
advertisement this way, but would instead read it as
advocating the killing of Jewish people,” Koeltl
wrote. “The defendants’ theory is thoroughly
unpersuasive.”
After AFDI’s victory, Geller posed for photos outside
the federal courthouse while holding the “Killing
Jews” advertisement.
“With our NY win, our ads will make their debut on New
York buses in the coming weeks,” AFDI’s Web site
promises above a “donate” button. “We want to run 100.
Help us make that happen.”
But even if the ads don’t incite violence in New York
City, they could overseas. Earlier this month, Egypt’s
top religious authority called AFDI’s posters “racist”
and issued a fatwa, or official edict, against them.
“This hazardous campaign will leave the gate of
confrontation and clashes wide open instead of
exerting efforts towards peaceful coexistence and
harmony,” according to the edict.
Hamas, the group cited on the ads, has not said
whether it approves of the message.
Navy
Official Bans Chaplain From Ministering To
Bereaved Families And Sailors
GOOSE CREEK, S.C.,
March 24, 2015
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Liberty
Institute announces that Chaplain Modder's commanding
officer, Captain Jon R. Fahs, issued a "no contact"
order to Chaplain Wes Modder (the military version of
a restraining order), forbidding him from counseling
or ministering to members of his unit. The order comes
on the heels of a tragic death in Modder's unit,
banning him from ministering to grieving sailors and
the deceased sailor's family members.
After a sailor in his unit unexpectedly passed away,
Chaplain Modder immediately sprung into action to
fulfill his usual chaplain duties of providing comfort
and support to the deceased sailor's grieving family.
But just as Chaplain Modder was about to perform those
duties, the Navy informed him of the "no contact"
order, banning him from having any contact with any
personnel from his unit, depriving him of the ability
to comfort them during a time of grief and mourning.
Captain Fahs also banished Chaplain Modder from the
Naval base where Modder is stationed on the day of the
memorial service for the fallen sailor. The order also
comes just days after Captain Fahs denied Chaplain
Modder's request for a religious accommodation to
provide pastoral counseling in accordance with his
faith. (See Captain Fahs' denial letter at
https://www.libertyinstitute.org/ModderFacts)
"This Navy official is using the 'no contact' order
as a weapon to punish and humiliate a decorated
military chaplain," said Mike Berry, Liberty Institute
Senior Counsel and Director of Military Affairs. "I am
stunned that he would deny Chaplain Modder the ability
to minister to a grieving family and other sailors."
Liberty Institute President and CEO Kelly Shackelford
said, "Of the most critical times for chaplains, the
death of a colleague is near the top of the list. For
this Navy official to bar a chaplain from comforting
and ministering to sailors and families is a
reprehensible violation of religious freedom and
common human decency."
Case Background: Chaplain Wes Modder is a Navy
chaplain and former Marine who previously served as
the Force chaplain for Naval Special Warfare Command.
He has deployed overseas multiple times during the War
on Terror, including in support of Navy SEAL Teams. In
October 2014, Chaplain Modder's commander called him a
"consummate professional leader," "the best of the
best," and said he sets the "clear benchmark" for
chaplain professionalism. Now, the Navy is threatening
Chaplain Modder with career-ending punishment because,
when asked, he expressed faith-based views on marriage
and human sexuality in private counseling sessions.
Liberty Institute is defending Chaplain Modder and
asserts that censoring his religious expression is
unconstitutional religious discrimination. The "no
contact" order comes only days after the Navy
officially denied Chaplain Modder's request for
religious accommodation, in violation of federal law
and Department of Defense (DoD) regulations. (Read
more about Modder's case at https://www.libertyinstitute.org/ModderFacts)
About Liberty Institute
Liberty Institute is the largest nonprofit legal
organization in the nation dedicated solely to
defending religious liberty in America. Liberty
Institute protects freedom of religious expression in
our military, schools, churches, and throughout the
public arena. For more information, visit
www.LibertyInstitute.org.
March 12, 2015 In mid February of this year Navy Chaplain
Wesley Modder received a "detachment for
cause" letter after commanders concluded he was
"intolerant" and "unable to function in the diverse and
pluralistic environment" of his current assignment. Lt
Cmdr. Modder has served more than 19 years with
commendations as "best of the best" and a "talented and
inspirational leader. Click
here to read the March 11 article in the Military
Times.
Muslim Brotherhood
princess' used Clinton email server
03/11/2015 @ 9:10 pm WND.com In Front Page,Politics,U.S.
Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin
At least three of Hillary Clinton’s top aides –
including one with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – used
emails hosted on Clinton’s private server while she was
secretary of state, according to several reports.
At a news conference Tuesday at the U.N., Clinton
directly addressed media about the revelation that she
conducted her business as secretary of state using a
private email account instead of the secure and archived
government system.
She acknowledged she deleted thousands of personal
emails and said she turned over hard copies of messages
to the State Department that she deemed to be work
related.
But Clinton apparently wasn’t the only one at the State
Department using private email.
Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen Hayes told Fox
News, “Two of Hillary Clinton’s top aides used personal
email while they were employed at the State Department.”
Hayes specifically named Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl
Mills and Huma Abedin, who served as Clinton’s longtime
deputy chief of staff. Abedin and Clinton worked closely
together for nearly 20 years.
“The State Department has evidence of this,” he said.
In another report, the gossip website Gawker claimed
both Abedin and Phillippe Reines, Clinton’s
communications strategist, used the private email
addresses.
The London Daily Mail confirmed one of Abedin’s email
addresses was listed as Huma@clintonemail.com.
Abedin’s emails would be of particular interest because
she has known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – a group
that’s bent on “destroying Western civilization from
within” – and other Islamic supremacists.
Hayes said, “The question, I think becomes: Were they
emailing with Hillary Clinton from their personal email
addresses to her personal email address about State
Department business, about Benghazi, including sensitive
classified information?
“Those are questions that I think (Rep.) Trey Gowdy and
the House Benghazi Committee is going to want to look at
very carefully.”
What do YOU think? Will Hillary’s email troubles delete
her run for president? Sound off in today’s WND poll
Government watchdog Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit
against the State Department seeking all emails from
2009 to 2013 between Clinton, Abedin and Nagla Mahmoud,
wife of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi.
“Now we know why the State Department didn’t want to
respond to our specific request for Hillary Clinton’s
and Huma Abedin’s communications,” Judicial Watch
President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The State
Department violated FOIA law rather than admit that it
couldn’t and wouldn’t search the secret accounts that
the agency has known about for years. This lawsuit shows
how the latest Obama administration cover-up isn’t just
about domestic politics but has significant foreign
policy implications.”
Get the details about what really happened in one of
America’s biggest foreign operations failures, in “The
REAL Benghazi Story.”
Transforming America
Abedin and Clinton worked closely together for nearly 20
years. As WND has extensively reported, the Muslim
Brotherhood and Islamic supremacist connections not only
extend to Abedin’s mother and father, who are both
deeply tied to al-Qaida fronts, but to Abedin herself.
Major news media profiles of Abedin report she was born
of Pakistani and Indian parents, without delving much
further into her family’s history.
As WND reported, a manifesto commissioned by the ruling
Saudi Arabian monarchy places the work of an institute
that employed Abedin at the forefront of a grand plan to
mobilize U.S. Muslim minorities to transform America
into a Saudi-style Islamic state, according to
Arabic-language researcher Walid Shoebat.
Abedin was an assistant editor for a dozen years for the
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs for the Institute for
Muslim Minority Affairs. The institute – founded by her
late father and currently directed by her mother – is
backed by the Muslim World League, an Islamic
organization in the Saudi holy city of Mecca that was
founded by Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
The 2002 Saudi manifesto shows that “Muslim Minority
Affairs” – the mobilizing of Muslim communities in the
U.S. to spread Islam instead of assimilating into the
population – is a key strategy in an ongoing effort to
establish Islamic rule in America and a global Shariah,
or Islamic law, “in our modern times.”
WND reported Abedin also was a member of the executive
board of the Muslim Student Association, which was
identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group in a 1991
document introduced into evidence during the
terror-financing trial of the Texas-based Holy Land
Foundation.
At her father’s Saudi-financed Islamic think tank, WND
reported, Abedin worked alongside Abdullah Omar Naseef,
who is accused of financing al-Qaida fronts.
Naseef is deeply connected to the Abedin family.
WND was first to report Huma’s mother, Saleha Abedin,
was the official representative of Naseef’s
terror-stained Muslim World League in the 1990s.
Shoebat previously reported that as one of 63 leaders of
the Muslim Sisterhood, the de facto female version of
the Muslim Brotherhood, Saleha Abedin served alongside
Nagla Ali Mahmoud, the wife of Muslim Brotherhood figure
Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s now ousted president.
Saleha Abedin and Morsi’s wife both were members of the
Sisterhood’s Guidance Bureau, Shoebat found.
Huma worked with al-Qaida front man
Abdullah Omar Naseef is secretary-general of the Muslim
World League, an Islamic charity known to have spawned
terrorist groups, including one declared by the U.S.
government to be an official al-Qaida front.
The institute founded by Huma Abedin’s father reportedly
was a quiet, but active, supporter of Naseef.
The institute bills itself as “the only scholarly
institution dedicated to the systematic study of Muslim
communities in non-Muslim societies around the world.”
Huma served on the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs’s
editorial board from 2002 to 2008.
Documents obtained by Shoebat revealed that Naseef
served on the board with Huma from at least December
2002 to December 2003.
Naseef’s sudden departure from the board in December
2003 coincides with the time at which various charities
led by Naseef’s Muslim World League were declared
illegal terrorism fronts worldwide, including by the
U.S. and U.N.
The MWL, founded in Mecca in 1962, bills itself as one
of the largest Islamic non-governmental organizations.
But according to U.S. government documents and testimony
from the charity’s own officials, it is heavily financed
by the Saudi government.
The MWL has been accused of terrorist ties, as have its
various offshoots, including the International Islamic
Relief Organization, or IIRO, and Al Haramain, which was
declared by the U.S. and U.N. as a terror financing
front.
Indeed, the Treasury Department, in a September 2004
press release, alleged Al Haramain had “direct links”
with Osama bin Laden. The group is now banned worldwide
by U.N. Security Council Committee resolution 1267.
There long have been accusations that the IIRO and MWL
also repeatedly funded al-Qaida.
In 1993, bin Laden reportedly told an associate that the
MWL was one of his three most important charity fronts.
An Anti-Defamation League profile of the MWL accuses the
group of promulgating a “fundamentalist interpretation
of Islam around the world through a large network of
charities and affiliated organizations.”
“Its ideological backbone is based on an extremist
interpretation of Islam,” the profile states, “and
several of its affiliated groups and individuals have
been linked to terror-related activity.”
In 2003, U.S. News and World Report documented that
accompanying the MWL’s donations, invariably, are “a
blizzard of Wahhabist literature.”
“Critics argue that Wahhabism’s more extreme preachings
– mistrust of infidels, branding of rival sects as
apostates and emphasis on violent jihad –laid the
groundwork for terrorist groups around the world,” the
report continued.
An Egyptian-American cab driver, Ihab Mohamed Ali
Nawawi, was arrested in Florida in 1990 on accusations
he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent and a former personal
pilot to bin Laden. At the time he was accused of
serving bin Laden, he also reportedly worked for the
Pakistani branch of the MWL.
The MWL in 1988 founded the Al Haramain Islamic
Foundation, developing chapters in about 50 countries,
including for a time in Oregon until it was designated a
terrorist organization.
In the early 1990s, evidence began to grow that the
foundation was funding Islamist militants in Somalia and
Bosnia, and a 1996 CIA report detailed its Bosnian
militant ties.
The U.S. Treasury designated Al Haramain’s offices in
Kenya and Tanzania as sponsors of terrorism for their
role in planning and funding the 1998 bombings of two
American embassies in East Africa. The Comoros Islands
office was also designated because it “was used as a
staging area and exfiltration route for the perpetrators
of the 1998 bombings.”
The New York Times reported in 2003 that Al Haramain had
provided funds to the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah
Islamiyah, which was responsible for the 2002 Bali
bombings that killed 202 people. The Indonesia office
was later designated a terrorist entity by the Treasury.
In February 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department froze all
Al Haramain’s financial assets pending an investigation,
leading the Saudi government to disband the charity and
fold it into another group, the Saudi National
Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad.
In September 2004, the U.S. designated Al-Haramain a
terrorist organization.
In June 2008, the Treasury Department applied the
terrorist designation to the entire Al-Haramain
organization worldwide
Bin Laden’s brother-in-law
In August 2006, the Treasury Department also designated
the Philippine and Indonesian branch offices of the
MWL-founded IIRO as terrorist entities “for facilitating
fundraising for al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist
groups.”
The Treasury Department added: “Abd Al Hamid Sulaiman
Al-Mujil, a high-ranking IIRO official [executive
director of its Eastern Province Branch] in Saudi
Arabia, has used his position to bankroll the al-Qaida
network in Southeast Asia. Al-Mujil has a long record of
supporting Islamic militant groups, and he has
maintained a cell of regular financial donors in the
Middle East who support extremist causes.”
In the 1980s, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s
brother-in-law, ran the Philippines offices of the IIRO.
Khalifa has been linked to Manila-based plots to target
the pope and U.S. airlines.
The IIRO has also been accused of funding Hamas,
Algerian radicals, Afghanistan militant bases and the
Egyptian terror group Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya.
The New York Post reported the families of the 9/11
victims filed a lawsuit against IIRO and other Muslim
organizations for having “played key roles in laundering
of funds to the terrorists in the 1998 African embassy
bombings” and for having been involved in the “financing
and ‘aiding and abetting’ of terrorists in the 1993
World Trade Center bombing.”
‘Saudi government front’
In a court case in Canada, Arafat El-Asahi, the Canadian
director of both the IIRO and the MWL, admitted the
charities are near entities of the Saudi government.
Stated El-Asahi: “The Muslim World League, which is the
mother of IIRO, is a fully government-funded
organization. In other words, I work for the government
of Saudi Arabia. I am an employee of that government.
“Second, the IIRO is the relief branch of that
organization, which means that we are controlled in all
our activities and plans by the government of Saudi
Arabia. Keep that in mind, please,” he said.
Despite its offshoots being implicated in terror
financing, the U.S. government never designated the MWL
itself as a terror-financing charity. Many have
speculated the U.S. has been trying to not embarrass the
Saudi government.
Huma’s mother represented Muslim World League
Saleha Abedin has been quoted in numerous press accounts
as both representing the MWL and serving as a delegate
for the charity.
In 1995, for example, the Washington Times reported on a
United Nations-arranged women’s conference in Beijing
that called on governments throughout the world to give
women statistical equality with men in the workplace.
The report quoted Saleha Abedin, who attended the
conference as a delegate, as “also representing the
Muslim World League based in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim
NGO Caucus.”
The U.N.’s website references a report in the run-up to
the Beijing conference that also lists Abedin as
representing the MWL at the event.
The website posted an article from the now defunct
United States Information Agency quoting Abedin and
reporting she attended the Beijing conference as “a
delegate of the Muslim World League and member of the
Muslim Women’s NGO caucus.”
In the article, Abedin was listed under a shorter name,
“Dr. Saleha Mahmoud, director of the Institute of Muslim
Minority Affairs.”
WND confirmed the individual listed is Huma Abedin’s
mother. The reports misspelled part of Abedin’s name.
Her full professional name is at times listed as Saleha
Mahmood Abedin S.
Hillary praise
Saleha Mahmood formerly directed the Institute of Muslim
Minority Affairs in the U.K. and served as a delegate
for the Muslim World League, an Islamic fundamentalist
group Osama bin Laden reportedly told an associate was
one of his most important charity fronts.
In February 2010, Clinton spoke at Dar Al-Hekma College
in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Abedin was an associate
professor of sociology at the time.
Clinton, after she was introduced by Abedin, praised the
work of the terror-tied professor.
“I have to say a special word about Dr. Saleha Abedin,”
Clinton said. “You heard her present the very exciting
partnerships that have been pioneered between colleges
and universities in the United States and this college.
And it is pioneering work to create these kinds of
relationships.
“But I have to confess something that Dr. Abedin did
not,” Clinton continued, “and that is that I have almost
a familial bond with this college. Dr. Abedin’s
daughter, one of her three daughters, is my deputy chief
of staff, Huma Abedin, who started to work for me when
she was a student at George Washington University in
Washington, D.C.”
The Clarion Project was founded in 2006
by Raphael Shore. It is dedicated to "exposing the
dangers of Islamic extremism while providing a
platform for the voices of moderation and promoting
grassroots activism." Shore produced the 2008
documentary The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's
Vision For America.. (View
at this link.)
The main web page of the Clarion Project is www.clarionproject.org.
They are currently sponsoring an email campaign to
your elected officials "No Nukes For Iran".
As Prime Minister Netanyahu stated in his speech to
the U.S. Congress on March 3, 2015, "for over a
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"Unintended Consequences"
Side effects of a Nuclear Deal with Iran: A Middle East Arms Race?:
According to two FCC commissioners, those new
regulations are bad all around
By Brad Matthews
Watchdog.org
March 4, 2015
The Obama administration and proponents of the
FCC’s version of net neutrality may be ecstatic
at the passing of regulations that make the
Internet a public utility on Feb. 26th, but not
all FCC members are so sunny in their outlook
for the future.
TechFreedom held a fireside chat on Feb. 27th
with two FCC commissioners, Ajit Pai and Mike
O’Rielly, and the two of them concurred that the
new regulations are far-reaching, largely
unchecked and pose a threat to consumer bills
and to innovation in the industry.
Ajit Pai openly questioned what the problem was,
saying, “There’s never been a systemic analysis
of what the problem with the Internet is. In
this order, you see scattered niche examples
[Comcast and BitTorrent, Apple and FaceTime,
others] all of which were resolved, mind you,
through private sector initiatives.” He
continued, saying that the FCC’s net neutrality
regulatory regime is a solution that won’t work
in search of a problem that doesn’t
exist.” Essentially, this is, contrary to
the assertion of activists and others, a vaguely
justified power grab by a government agency.
Mike O’Rielly added, in a bit of humor that
“there is a problem, and it’s the document we
adopted [Feb. 26].” Neither of them were
reticent in explaining exactly how and why the
document was the problem. For one, the document
was, as Commissioner Pai pointed out, written to
solve a problem that wasn’t readily apparent.
O’Rielly said the document is “guilt by
imagination, trying to guess what will go wrong
in the future”; instead of tackling a readily
apparent and current issue, the FCC proposal is
instead stumbling forward, trying to find
future, hypothetical transgressions to
retroactively justify its own regulations.
This conspiratorial and wide-ranging thinking on
the part of FCC is not a bug, but rather a
feature. O’Rielly openly said that “it’s
intended to catch everybody”. Pai noted that the
FCC was going to centralize powers over what
infrastructure was deployed and where through
the use of statutes and other laws; O’Rielly
mentioned specifically that the FCC was going to
“use Section 201 [of the Communications Act] to
do it’s dirty work.”
Pai continued, saying that the FCC was largely
focused on the ends of Internet regulation
rather than the means, and that “a lot of these
promises of regulatory restraint are pretty
ephemeral.” O’Rielly mentioned that mobile data
policies were likely to be subsumed by the new
regulations into policies on the wider Internet
as a whole. This one-size-fits-all approach
ignores the differences in how mobile data is
used versus the way the Internet is used by a
normal computer or other devices. Many features
of mobile service, the two said, could be
construed as a company favoring one app or one
site over another in terms of data, which would
violate the FCC’s standards.
The consumer will inherit many of these new
costs and burdens. O’Rielly outright told the
audience that “Rates are going to go up because
of this.” The new regulations also fail to
recognize the burden of local telecommunications
taxes, especially in major cities where tax
rates on mobile service are often incredibly
high. The new regulations, combined with the
laws of local governments, stand to impose even
more costs onto consumers.
The outlook the two gave was anything but
bright–the worries of small government advocates
seem justified. The new FCC regulations will, in
concert with other laws and under the directive
of an organization looking for future problems
rather than current problems, give more power to
government, more restrictions to innovators, and
more costs to the people.
Commissioner Pai summed it up best: “This issue
has been largely fact-free for the better part
of a decade, and I think it’s frankly shocking
that decision-making on something as important
as this has been thrown by the wayside in favor
of what I consider to be an ideological agenda.”
The net may be “neutral” but the FCC is most
certainly not.
Islamic
state: Fears Grow For Abducted Syrian
Christians United Kingdom BBC Wednesday 25 Feb 2015
There are fears that more members of an Assyrian
Christian community in north-eastern Syria were
abducted by Islamic State militants than at first
thought. Initial reports had put the number of missing
at 90, but one activist said as many as 285 people had
been seized on Monday in Hassakeh province. Efforts to
try to negotiate their release are reported to be
under way.
Some 1,000 local Assyrian families are believed to
have fled their homes in the wake of the abductions.
Kurdish and Christian militia are battling IS in the
area, amid reports of churches and homes having been
set ablaze.
Thousands of Christians in Syria have been forced from
their homes by the threat from IS militants.
In areas under their control, Christians have been
ordered to convert to Islam, pay jizya (a religious
levy), or face death. IS militants in Libya also
recently beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians.
The Assyrians were seized by the militants as they
swept into 12 villages along the southern bank of the
Khabur river near the town of Tal Tamr before dawn on
Monday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based
activist group, said at least 90 people had been
abducted, most of them women, children and the
elderly.
However, the Syriac National Council of Syria put the
figure as high as 150, while Afram Yakoub of the
Assyrian Federation of Sweden said sources on the
ground had told him that up to 285 people were
missing, including 156 from the village of Tal Shamran
and 90 from Tal al-Jazira.
"These were peaceful villages that had nothing to do
with the battles," Nasir Haj Mahmoud, a Kurdish
official in the YPG militia in north-eastern Syria,
told the Reuters news agency.
There are conflicting reports as to where the families
have been taken.
Kino Gabriel, a spokesman for the Syriac Military
Council - a Christian militia fighting alongside the
Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) - told the BBC
that it believed the captives had been taken to Abdul
Aziz mountain.
Osama Edward of the Sweden-based Assyrian Human Rights
Network told the AFP news agency that the captives had
been taken to the IS stronghold of Shaddadi, as did
Syria's state news agency, Sana.
Another report said they were in Raqqa, 145km (90
miles) to the west, the de facto capital of the
"caliphate" declared by IS last June.
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Beirut says the motive for
the seizure of so many Assyrians is not yet clear. Our
correspondent says it may be that the captives are to
be used as part of a swap with the Kurdish forces.
Hundreds of Assyrians who were living in villages on
the north bank of the Khabur river and elsewhere are
reported to have fled following the attack to the
largely Kurdish-controlled provincial capital of
Hassakeh, to the south-east, and Qamishli, another
city to the north-east.
Mr Edward said two historic churches had been burned
down in captured villages - one in Tal Hurmiz and the
other in Qaber Shamiya. The Syrian Observatory also
reported that a church in Tal Shamran had also been
damaged.
Mr Gabriel said IS had moved a big force into the area
and were trying to take control of Tal Tamr.
The Syriac Military Council had about 400 fighters in
the area and at least four had been killed in clashes
with the jihadists, he added. The YPG has deployed
between 1,000 and 1,500 fighters.
The YPG is also continuing a major offensive launched
on Sunday against IS some 100km (60 miles) to the
east, near the border with Iraq - an area of vital
importance to the jihadists.
ISIS
beheading of Coptic Christians on Libyan beach
brings Islamists to the doorstep of Europe
United Kingdom The Independent, Thursday 19 Feb 2015
The beheading of 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in
Libya has brought ISIS to the doorstep of Europe.
The mass murder, which provoked a volley of Egyptian air
strikes on the group’s Libyan stronghold of Derna,
realised long-held fears of militants reaching the
Mediterranean coast.
ISIS started in Iraq and now controls swathes of
adjoining Syria, including along the Turkish border, as
part of its so-called Islamic State.
Its ideology has spread much further, with pledges of
allegiance from terrorist groups in Egypt, Gaza, Jordan,
Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen and now Libya.
Days before ISIS released its gory video depicting the
Egyptians’ beheadings, Libya’s former Prime Minister
warned that the group would soon reach the Mediterranean
and even Europe if order was not restored in the
country.
Ali Zeidan said Libya’s fractured government and easy
access to weapons seized during the fall of Colonel
Gaddafi made it more susceptible to the activities of
jihadists, according to The Times.
“(ISIS) are growing. They are everywhere,” he added.
“In Libya, the situation is still under control. If we
leave it one month or two months more I don’t think you
can control it.
“It will be a big war in the country and it will be here
in Europe as well.”
Libya has seen fierce fighting between rival militias
since Gaddafi was overthrown during the 2011 Arab
Spring.
Mr Zeidan, who fled to Europe after losing a
parliamentary vote of confidence, reported that ISIS had
a growing presence in some of the bigger cities and was
trying to recruit fighters from rival Islamist groups.
Libya's former Prime Minister Ali Zeidan warned that
Isis would reach the Mediterranean Aref Ali Nayed,
Libya’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, also
said Isis’s presence in Libya was increasing
“exponentially”.
Its military gains last summer sparked a rush by other
Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa to
ally themselves with the group by pledging allegiance
and changing their names.
The jihadists behind the beheadings in Libya call
themselves the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State.
As the turmoil in Libya continued last year, they gained
control of the port city of Derna and nearby Sirte,
where Isis seized the murdered Coptic hostages in
December and January.
The location of their murders could not be confirmed but
footage showed them dressed in orange jumpsuits kneeling
on a beach. Behind each of them were masked militants
who wielded their knives to kill the bound hostages
simultaneously.
ISIS affiliates have also claimed responsibility for
attacks on the Egyptian military and police in the Sinai
Peninsula, further along the Mediterranean coast between
Egypt and Gaza.
England and Europe's greater concern than the United
States is evident in this article, due to their
proximity to the menacing Radical Islamic peril. Learn
more about this with accompanying links at the UK's INDEPENDENT
website by clicking here.
ISIS burn 45 people to
death in captured Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi as
Islamists attack the homes of security forces'
families
United Kingdom's Daily Mail
Dailymail.com
Karen Pickles for Mailonline
February 17, 2015
ISIS burn 45 people to death in captured Iraqi
town of al-Baghdadi as Islamists attack the homes
of security forces' families
Western town al-Baghdadi
captured by ISIS fighters last week
Victims thought to be members
of security forces and their families
Follows barbaric video of
Jordanian pilot Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh
Attack is only five miles from
air base with 320 US Marines
Militants from Islamic State have burned 45 people to
death in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi,
according to the local police chief.
Col. Qasim al-Obeidi said the motive was unknown but he
believed some of the victims were members of the
security forces.
He has pleaded for help from the government and
international community and said the compound, which
houses the families of security personnel and local
officials, was now under attack.
It follows the capture of al-Baghdadi, near Ain al-Asad
air base, by ISIS fighters last week.
The unconfirmed reports have haunting similarities to
the video published earlier this month, showing
militants burning alive a Jordanian air force pilot,
whose plane crashed in Syria in December.
Al-Baghdadi had been besieged for months by Islamic
State fighters before its fall. It had been one of the
few towns to still be controlled by the Iraqi government
in Anbar province, where IS and allied Sunni Arab
tribesmen launched an offensive in January 2014.
On Friday, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby,
played down its capture, telling reporters it was the
first time in the last couple of months that the
jihadist group had taken new ground.
But with 320 US Marines stationed just five miles away
at the Ain al-Asad air base, training members of the
Iraqi army's 7th Division, it will cause concern.
The base was attacked by several suicide bombers, on
Friday with the militant repelled by Iraqi troops backed
by US-led coalition aircraft.
In a separate development on Tuesday, the influential
Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr announced he was withdrawing
his forces from an umbrella group of Shia militia
fighting IS alongside the Iraqi army.
He cited what he called the bad behaviour of other
militia within the Popular Mobilisation Forces, whom he
accused of 'wreaking havoc through murdering, kidnapping
and violating sanctuaries'.
Shia militia have been accused of kidnapping and killing
scores of Sunni civilians since Islamic State launched
an offensive in northern Iraq last June that saw it
seize large swathes of the country.
Elsewhere, there are reports at least 35 more
Egyptian Christians are feared to have been kidnapped by
jihadists in retaliation for air strikes on targets in
Libya.
Militants from the Islamic State and Ansar Al-Sharia are
understood to have rounded up dozens of farm workers in
the wake of bombings by Cairo, it was reported by local
media.
The move is believed to be a direct response to strikes
by Egyptian warplanes yesterday which came after
fanatics released a horrific video showing the beheading
of 21 Christians on a beach.
Netanyahu: Israel is standing by Europe,
Europe must stand by Israel
January 8, 2015
The Jerusalem Post
By HERB KEINON
In meeting with Norwegian FM, Netanyahu says radical
Islam is a "threat to our common
civilization."
Israel is being attacked by the same forces
attacking Europe, and just as Israel stands with
Europe, so too Europe must stand with Israel, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday.
Netanyahu, speaking following a meeting with
visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende,
said that Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Paris
“clearly demonstrates the disdain of radical Islam
for the values we hold dear. We cherish freedom and
tolerance; they worship tyranny and terror. And
through this terror they seek to impose a new dark
age on humanity.”
Netanyahu said the terrorists were “part of a global
movement and this necessitates a global response. I
believe that with the strength of our resolve and
the unity of our action, we can defeat this threat
to our common civilization. And what the battle
against terror requires is courage, clarity and
consistency.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said in an
Israel Radio interview that precisely that type of
determination has been missing up until now in
France and elsewhere in Europe in the battle against
terrorism.
Hanegbi said the French in the past tried to delude
themselves regarding the true nature of threat,
saying “maybe it was only sporadic incidents, maybe
it is only anti-Semitism, maybe it is only against
the Jews.”
He said that the French at times tried to understand
the terrorists motivations, and at other times tried
to downplay their ties to Islam. The sheer brutality
of Wednesday attack, especially the murder of the
policeman on the sidewalk, will compel the French
government to “look at the reality square in the
face” and realize there is a serious danger at their
gates, he said.
Hanegbi predicted that France will be forced, like
the US was after the September 11, 2001 attacks, to
empower the security establishment with tools to
effectively deal with the threats.
“France must deal with the threat coming from
within,” he said. Hanegbi added that Israel,
unfortunately, has quite a deal of experience
dealing with terrorism, and that “anyone who
cooperates with a county as experienced [in dealing
with terrorism] as Israel, only benefits.”
He said that Israel has the capability to help
France a lot more than the French have requested in
the past. Now, he said, France “ will have an
interest in being helped by anyone who can help
them, including israel.”
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, meanwhile, took
the Paris attack and used it to prove a point
regarding domestic Israeli policies.
If there was an important lesson to be learned from
the attack, he said, it is that extremist movements
must be dealt with early, and that there are only
small legal and semantic differences separating
those organizations from terrorist groups.
Those who demonstrate tolerance toward those
organizations, he said, will ultimately pay a high
price in blood, as well as in threats to their very
democracies that allows those organizations to work.
Israel's lesson, he said, must be not to tarry and
to stop the activities of Raed Salah and the
northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.
Liberman said Salah's organization was an
inseparable link in the chain of terrorist
organizations that includes Hamas, Islamic Jihad,
al-Qaida and the Islamic State. He said the
organization “shares exactly the same values of the
perpetrators of the massacre in Paris and its
intolerance of criticism and of anything
inconsistent with its extreme world view.”
Liberman said the the northern branch is a threat to
Israeli democracy and the country's citizens, and
that it needed to be outlawed.
Houston Subpoenas Pastors’ Sermons in Gay Rights
Ordinance Case
By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
Religion News Service
October 15, 2014
Evangelical leaders are
angry after city officials in Houston subpoenaed
sermons given by local pastors who oppose an equal
rights ordinance that provides protections to the
LGBT community.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who drew headlines for
becoming the first openly lesbian mayor of a major
American city, led support for the ordinance. The
measure bans anti-gay discrimination among
businesses that serve the public, private employers,
in housing and in city employment and city
contracting.
Under one of the hotly contested parts of the
ordinance, transgender people barred access to a
restroom would be able to file a discrimination
complaint.
The ordinance, which exempted religious
institutions, was passed in May, though its
implementation has been delayed due to legal
complaints.
Opponents were hoping to repeal the ordinance
through a ballot measure and claimed the city’s
attorney incorrectly determined they had not
gathered enough signatures to qualify for a ballot.
Supporters of the repeal reportedly gathered 50,000
signatures, well over the 17,269 needed for
inclusion on the November ballot. Opponents of the
repeal have questioned the validity of the
signatures.
A group of Christians sued the city. In response,
city attorneys issued subpoenas to five local
pastors during the case’s discovery phase, though
the five pastors were not involved in the lawsuit.
The subpoenas sought “all speeches, presentations,
or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor
Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity
prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved
by you or in your possession,” according to the
Houston Chronicle.
“The subpoenas were issued to pastors who have been
involved in the political campaign to organize a
repeal of Houston’s new equal rights ordinance,”
said Janice Evans, chief policy officer to the
mayor, in a statement. “It is part of the discovery
process in a lawsuit brought by opponents of the
ordinance, a group that is tied to the pastors who
have received the subpoenas.”
An Arizona-based religious liberty group, Alliance
Defending Freedom, has filed a motion on behalf of
the pastors seeking to halt the subpoenas. The
ministers call the subpoenas “overbroad, unduly
burdensome, harassing, and vexatious.”
“The pastors made their sermons relevant to the case
by using the pulpit to do political organizing,”
Evans said in her statement. “This included
encouraging congregation members to sign petitions
and help gather signatures for equal rights
ordinance foes. The issue is whether they were
speaking from the pulpit for the purpose of
politics. If so, it is not protected speech.”
The lawsuit is scheduled for trial in January.
“It’s procedural — it’s common to ask for a wide
range of documents — but the mayor is playing real
hardball,” said David Skeel, professor of law at the
University of Pennsylvania. “The fact that she’s
subpoenaing pastors seems quite unusual in a case
that’s mostly about politics, and the fact that
she’s going inside the church is even more radical.
It would be easy enough to get sermons, of course,
but asking for them is clearly meant to send a
signal.”
City Attorney David Feldman argues the subpoenas are
justified because the churches are where opponents
of the ordinance met to organize.
“We’re certainly entitled to inquire about the
communications that took place in the churches
regarding the ordinance and the petitions because
that’s where they chose to do it,” Feldman told KTRH
News. “It’s relevant to know what representations
and instructions were given regarding these
petitions.”
The issue has angered evangelicals nationwide,
prompting outcry from people such as Russell Moore,
president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and
Religious Liberty Commission.
“The separation of church and state means that we
will render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and
we will,” Moore wrote. “But the preaching of the
church of God does not belong to Caesar, and we will
not hand it over to him. Not now. Not ever.”
More than 1,800 pastors participated in ADF’s
seventh annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday event on Oct.
5, daring the Internal Revenue Service to prosecute
them for endorsing political candidates. Under IRS
regulations, tax-exempt churches are not allowed to
engage in partisan politics.
The Khaleej Times
- a daily U.S. language newspaper published in United Arab Emirates.It is the
second most popular English language newspapers
published in the UAE.
Armageddon
Can Wait
Mahir Ali
Kaleej Times
3 September 2014
Global
threat is used to deflect attention from
domestic woes
Barack Obama’s recent confession that his country
did not so far have a strategy as far as the
so-called ISIS is
concerned has been pilloried as a gaffe. It could,
however, also be seen as the plain truth.
The United States did not really have a strategy a
decade or so ago either, when the administration of
George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq, evidently
expecting that the various pieces would magically
fall into place once Saddam Hussein was toppled. The
tactic represented a disastrous combination of
hubris and ignorance.
The extent to which the subsequent implosions and
explosions in the region are a direct consequence of
that particular debacle is arguable, but there can
be little doubt that the big picture would have been
decidedly different, and in all probability
considerably less unpleasant, in the absence of that
monumental neoconservative folly.
Of course, what’s done cannot be undone, and the
present crisis demands a resolute response. It’s by
no means undesirable, however, for that response to
take account of all that has gone wrong in the
recent past.
Obama has come under attack, for instance, for
hesitating to strike Syria
in the early days of the revolt against the Bashar
Al Assad dictatorship, and thereby purportedly
facilitating the expansion of Islamist outfits such
as ISIS and Jabhat Al Nusra. Too many of the critics
are inclined, however, to ignore in this context the
consequences of NATO’s role in Libya.
Washington allowed
itself to be catapulted into that conflict, partly
on the basis of Paris
and London’s
aggressive
enthusiasm, and NATO’s mission was a success in
terms of achieving the overthrow of Muammar
Gaddafi’s regime. But Libya
today is being torn apart by rival militias, many of
them distinguishable not so much by ideology as by
tribal affiliations.
Under similar circumstances, would the outcome the
Syria
have been remarkably different? Who can claim with
any confidence that Assad’s early overthrow would
have prevented Islamist forces from sooner or later
gaining the upper hand?
The US
has lately been thinking aloud about launching
airstrikes in Syria
with the ostensible aim of undermining ISIS rather
than Assad, based on the assumption that Abu Bakr Al
Baghdadi’s troops cannot be quelled by focusing on Iraq
alone. That may be so, but there is the wider
question of whether they can effectively be tackled
at all mainly through air assaults.
There have evidently been some tactical successes
in Iraq
in this respect, beginning with the besieged Yazidis
stranded on SinjarMountain —
most of whom appear to have made it to relative
safety in Iraqi Kurdistan, although the reported
numbers are open to question. Then there was the
recapture of Mosul Dam, and most recently the
apparent rescue of Amerli.
In the latter instance, the US airstrikes were
effectively in aid of Shia militias spearheading the
assault against ISIS — the same militias, with links
to Iran,
that not many years ago were dedicated to
undermining the American occupation of Iraq.
“Should such military actions continue,” The New
York Times noted on Monday, “they could signal a
dramatic shift for the United States and Iran, which have
long vied for control in Iraq.”
Naturally, neither Washington
nor Tehran
is keen to emphasise this aspect of the emerging
situation. Matters are further complicated by the
fact that some of the militias betray a penchant for
sectarian brutality that, although no match for the
revolting atrocities that ISIS
is so keen to broadcast, nonetheless provides cause
for concern.
The United Nations this week decided to investigate
“acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale” by ISIS, as well as atrocities
by Iraqi government forces. Whether or not such an
investigation serves any practical purpose in the
murkily unfolding circumstances, the ostensible
even-handedness of the approach is interesting.
Meanwhile, there has been considerable concern
across several nations in Europe as well as in the US and Australia over
young Muslim citizens’ tendency towards jihadist
adventurism, with thousands — the numbers are again
uncertain — travelling to Syria or Iraq
as Islamist volunteers.
This is hardly a novel trend — it can be traced
back at least to Afghanistan
in the 1980s. The worries over it are
understandable, although there is thus far no clear
evidence of returnees planning domestic acts of
terrorism. It is at the same time difficult to
altogether dispense with the notion that projecting
ISIS as an
unprecedented global threat helps some Western
governments to deflect attention from domestic woes.
The ISIS threat
should not be underestimated, but exaggerations can
have the perverse effect of increasing its cachet
both within and outside the region. Nobody has a
clear idea of precisely how this story will unfold,
let alone end. But there’s not much value in
pretending it portends some kind of Armageddon.
The Western insistence on “no boots on the ground”
is open to interpretation as insufficient commitment
or even cowardice. But in fact it’s a welcome
augury, not least in the light of recent experience.
When, since the Second World War, have Western boots
on the ground produced positive consequences in the
Middle East (or,
for that matter, anywhere else)?
The ideal response to the
regional dilemmas of the moment would be an
unprecedented level of cooperation, coordination and
collaboration between Middle Eastern states,
notwithstanding longstanding rivalries in some
cases. That, unfortunately, cannot be described as
an imminent prospect, despite the tentative
emergence of intriguing alliances. But there’s never
been a better time for it.
by Martin Chulov
at theguardian.com
Thursday 7 August 2014
Thousands of Yazidi and Christian people flee to Erbil
after the latest wave of Isis advances. Photograph:
Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Iraq's largest Christian city was all but abandoned on
Thursday as the jihadist advance through minority
communities in the country's north-west rampaged towards
the Kurdish stronghold of Erbil.
UN officials said an estimated 200,000 new refugees were
seeking sanctuary in the Kurdish north from Islamic
extremists who had pursued them since the weekend. The
city of Qaraqosh, south-east of Mosul, home to around
50,000 Christians was the latest to fall, with most
residents fleeing before dawn as convoys of extremists
drew near.
Other Christian towns near Mosul, including Tel Askof,
Tel Keif and Qaramless have also largely been emptied.
Those who remained behind have reportedly been given the
same stark choice given to other minorities, including
Yazidis: flee, convert to Islam, or be killed.
Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen have been at the
frontlines of Iraq's war with the Islamic State (Isis)
ever since the jihadist group stormed into Mosul and
Tikrit and mid-June. The Iraqi army capitulated within
hours, with at least 60,000 officers and soldiers
fleeing on the first day of the assault alone.
Ever since, the jihadists have continued to make
advances, while Iraqi troops have concentrated on
defending Baghdad and the Shia south, leaving the
defence of minorities in the north to the Kurdish
peshmurga.
However, even the much vaunted Kurdish forces were no
match for the heavy weapons wielded by the jihadists as
they advanced in recent days. Peshmurga officers ordered
troops to withdraw to areas administered by the Kurdish
regional government – a clear sign of priorities and of
where the battle lines are being drawn.
Without any protection, Yazidis, Christians and Turkmen
are being uprooted from communities they have lived in
for millennia and the geo-social fabric of Iraq is being
rapidly shredded.
While those who have managed to flee the Christian areas
have so far had a relatively safe passage to Erbil, tens
of thousands of Yazidis remain besieged on a mountain
top near Sinjar, with little food or water.
The UN said on Thursday it was able to get some supplies
overland to the stranded hordes – avoiding Isis fighters
who have surrounded most of Mount Sinjar. Turkish
foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that Turkish
helicopters had dropped food and water on the mountain
top. Iraqi helicopters have also made food drops, but
stranded Yazidis say they do not have enough to survive.
The Chaldean archbishop of
Kirkuk, Joseph Thomas, described the situation in
northern Iraq as "catastrophic, a crisis beyond
imagination". He demanded urgent intervention to save
what remained of the area's Christian heritage.
Kurdish officials on Thursday demanded more help in
catering for refugees. The Kurdish administered areas
have seen staggering numbers cross their notional border
since the original Isis onslaught two months ago. In the
first week alone, some 500,000 people are thought to
have fled towards Erbil.
The capital of the Kurdish north is already home to a
new Chaldean Christian community, which fled Baghdad in
the wake of an Isis-led massacre inside a cathedral in
October 2010. Many fleeing Christians have headed for
the Ainkawa neighbourhood, which is home to Baghdad's
Christian exiles.
The past 11 years of war and insurrection since the US
invasion have led to most of Iraq's Christians fleeing.
Numbers have plummeted starkly from an estimated one
million before 2003 to around 150,000 now. A large
number of those who remain are now displaced.
Miriam Dagher, 53, from Qaraqosh, said churches in the
city had already been torched and religious insignia
smashed. "We stayed as long as we could," she said. "But
nothing could save us. This is the end of our community.
If the federal government were a person, if Congress
were subject to the laws they create, they would face
fines, prison or both for many of their actions. The
ENLIST Act, being touted as a “pathway” to citizenship
for illegal aliens may be one of those actions. It could
be argued that the very act itself violates federal law.
Consider this:
Immigration law, 8 US Code 1324 states that it is a
crime to, either knowingly or recklessly, “conceal,
harbor, or shield from detection, or attempt to conceal,
harbor, or shield from detection… transport, or move or
attempt to transport or move” or to even “encourage or
induce” an illegal alien “to come to, enter, or reside
in the United States, knowingly or in reckless disregard
of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is
or will be in violation of law.”
It is not only a crime to actually commit these
offenses, but it is a crime to even attempt to do so.
Anyone found guilty of violating 8 US Code 1324 is
subject to fines, prison or both. However, if it can be
proven that this person has committed this act for
personal gain, the fines go up and the prison sentence
can be as much as ten years.
By David Boaz From The Cato Institute May 8, 2014 2:19PM
In the Washington Post, Paul Kane reports that
recent experiences with ultra-conservative Senate
candidates have made Republican leaders fearful of
candidates like Rep. Paul Broun in Georgia. There
may be reasons for party leaders or voters to have
doubts about Broun, but I hope they aren’t actually
concerned about the purported problem that Kane
identifies:
Broun is prone to fiery speeches invoking the
Founding Fathers and applying those 1789 principles
to issues 225 years later.
Seriously? He thinks the Constitution is still the
law of the land? And that the framework it
established for individual rights and limited
government is still relevant today? Do
Republican leaders really think that’s a bad
message? Or does the Washington Post?
Thomas Jefferson and his followers hailed “the
principles of ‘76” or “the spirit of ‘76” in their
battles with Federalists. As historian Joseph Ellis
put it, “Jefferson’s core conviction was that what
might be called ‘the spirit of ‘76’ had repudiated
all energetic expressions of government power, most
especially power exercised from faraway places,
which included London, Philadelphia or Washington.”
Good thing there isn’t an actual Jeffersonian
running!
But the principles of 1789, or actually of 1787,
also protect freedom from government power and are
just as essential today as they were at the
Founding. The Framers knew their history. They knew
that people with power tend to abuse it and to
restrict freedom. In his last letter, 50 years after
the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote:
All eyes are opened, or opening,
to the rights of man. The general spread of the
light of science has already laid open to every view
the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not
been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored
few booted and spurred, ready to ride them
legitimately, by the grace of God.
Because they feared the exercise of power, the
Framers wrote a Constitution that established a
government of delegated, enumerated, and thus
limited powers. Then the people insisted on a Bill
of Rights to further protect their rights even from
the very limited federal government established in
the Constitution. Then, after identifying specific
rights that individuals retained, they also added,
“for greater caution,” as James Madison put it, the
Ninth Amendment to clarify that “The enumeration in
the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by
the people.”
One would hope that all members of Congress – and
voters, and political reporters – believe that those
principles and those constitutional rules should be
applied to issues of today. Surely the First
Amendment remains relevant. And the Fourth. And the
limits on unconstrained power in the basic structure
of the Constitution. The merits of any particular
candidate aside, support of the Constitution and the
principles it embodies seems like a good, even
minimal, qualification for public office.
"Thus saith the LORD,
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old
paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye
shall find rest for your souls." Jeremiah 6:16
Dr. Robert G Lee was the pastor of Bellevue Baptist
Church in Memphis, Tennessee for thirty-two years.
During his lifetime he was a strong leader in the
Southern Baptist Convention, known as a preacher’s
preacher, and was highly respected among his peers. This
sermon has been accepted as a classic by all that have
heard and read it, and through its message, the Lord
still speaks to mankind.
Dr. Lee originally published the following message in
1926. It is said that he developed it following the
suggestion of a deacon at a prayer meeting in 1919 and
that he preached it at least once a year at his home
church. All total, it is related that he preached the
messsage over 1,000 times. Like many Baptists, Lee was
known more as a preacher than a theologian but his
doctrine was sound to the core. Lee believed in and
preached a doctrine often overlooked in our day, that of
the necessity of regeneration.
Ala. Supreme Court:
'Unborn Child Has Inalienable Right to Life From
its Earliest Stages
By Michael
W Chapman
CNSNews.com
| Apr 23, 2014
In a case
about a pregnant woman who used cocaine and
endangered her unborn child, the Alabama Supreme
Court affirmed (8-1) that the word "child" includes
"an unborn child," and that the law therefore
"furthers the State's interest in protecting the
life of children from the earliest stages of their
development."
In his concurring opinion, Alabama Chief Justice Roy
S. Moore wrote that "an unborn child has an
inalienable right to life from its earliest stages
of development," and added, "I write separately to
emphasize that the inalienable right to life is a
gift of God that civil government must secure for
all persons - born and unborn."
The court decision on April 18 was in reference to
Sarah Janie Hicks v. State of Alabama. Hicks had
been charged in 2009 with violating Alabama's
chemical-endangerment statute, which in part says
that a "person commits the crime of chemical
endangerment" by "knowingly, recklessly, or
intentionally causes or permits a child to be
exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact
with a controlled substance, chemical substance, or
drug paraphernalia," a felony.
In Hicks' case, she was charged with using cocaine
while pregnant. Her child, "J.D.," tested positive
for cocaine "at the time of his birth," reads the
court document.
In January 2010, Hicks pleaded guilty to the crime
but also "reserved the right to appeal the issues"
she and her attorneys had presented earlier in
trying to get the charges dismissed. Hicks got a
three year suspended prison sentence and was placed
on probation.
Hicks appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals in
Alabama, arguing that because the
chemical-endangerment statute did not specifically
use the words "unborn children" or "fetuses," the
law was ambiguous and could not have applied to her
unborn child.
The Appeals Court ruled against Hicks, stating that
"the plain language of 26-15-3.2
[chemical-endangerment statute] was clear and
unambiguous and that the plain meaning of the term
'child' in [the statute] included an unborn child or
viable fetus.'"
Hicks then petitioned the Alabama Supreme Court in
2012 to review the Appeals Court decision.
Last Friday's ruling affirmed the judgment of the
Court of Criminal Appeals.
In their conclusion, eight of the nine Alabama
Supreme Court justices said: "Consistent with this
Court's opinion in Ankrom [a similar
chemical-endangerment case], by its plain meaning,
the word 'child' in the chemical-endangerment
statute includes an unborn child, and, therefore,
the statute furthers the State's interest in
protecting the life of children from the earliest
stages of their development."
The law to protect the life of unborn children "is
consistent with many statutes and decisions
throughout our nation that recognize unborn children
as persons with legally enforceable rights in many
areas of the law," said the justices.
In his own concurring opinion, Chief Justice Moore
argued that natural rights come from God, not from
the government. He cited the Declaration of
Independence that there is a "self-evident" truth
that "all Men are created equal, [and] that they are
endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
rights," particularly "life."
The Declaration of Independence "acknowledges
as 'self-evident' the truth that all human
beings are endowed with inherent dignity and the
right to life as a direct result of having been
created by God," said Chief Justice Moore.
He also cited Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries
on the Laws of England, which says, "This law of
nature, being co-eval [beginning at the same time]
with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of
course superior in obligation to any other. It is
binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at
all times: no human laws are of any validity, if
contrary to this."
Chief Justice Moore went on to explain how at the
Nuremburg Trials at the end of World War II, Nazi
criminals could not argue that they were only
following orders or just following the laws of the
German government because there is a higher law, the
"very law of nature."
"Although the Nuremberg defendants were following
orders and the laws of their own officials and
country, they were guilty of violating a higher law
to which all nations are equally subject: the laws
of nature and of nature's God," wrote Justice Moore.
That law binds all nations, including the State of
Alabama, said Justice Moore. "In 2006, the
AlabamaLegislature amended the homicide statute to
define 'person' to include 'an unborn child in utero
at any stage of development, regardless of
viability," he wrote, "thus recognizing under the
statute that, when an 'unborn child' is killed, a
'person' is killed."
In conclusion, he wrote, "The Equal Protection
Clause of the 14th Amendment provides that a state
may not 'deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws. Unborn children
are a class of persons entitled to equal protection
of the laws."
"States have an obligation to provide to unborn
children at any stage of their development the same
legal protection from injury and death they provide
to persons already born," wrote Justice Moore.
"Because a human life with a full genetic endowment
comes into existence at the moment of conception,
the self-evident truth that 'all men are created
equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights' encompasses the moment of
conception."
"Legal recognition of the unborn as members of the
human family derives ultimately from the laws of
nature and of nature's God, Who created human life
in His image and protected it with the commandment:
'Thou shalt not kill,'" wrote Chief Justice
Moore. "Therefore, the interpretation of the
word 'child' in Alabama's chemical-endangerment
statute, § 26-15- 3.2, Ala. Code 1975, to include
all human beings from the moment of conception is
fully consistent with these first principles
regarding life and law."
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
gave a landmark speech yesterday calling on the world
to unite against Islamism.
Tony Blair, the Former British Prime Minister,
delivered a keynote speech at Bloomberg HQ in London
entitled 'Why the Middle East Still Matters.' In it he
described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing
the world today.He argued "there are four reasons why
the Middle East remains of central importance and
cannot be relegated to the second order."
Blair rapidly moved on to the fourth and most
important reason: Islamic extremism also known as
Islamism.
He identifies the conflict in the Middle East as one
between an open and tolerant viewpoint and a
fundamentalist Islamist ideology. He said "wherever
you look – from Iraq to Libya to Egypt to Yemen to
Lebanon to Syria and then further afield to Iran,
Pakistan and Afghanistan – this is the essential
battle."
Addressing those who regard these conflicts as
distinct he said "there is something frankly odd about
the reluctance to accept what is so utterly plain:
that they have in common a struggle around the issue
of the rightful place of religion, and in particular
Islam, in politics." It is this central point that he
hammered home again and again over the course of his
40 minute speech.
He argued that this struggle does not end at the
borders of the region. Rather, "The reason this
matters so much is that this ideology is exported
around the world."
More
Attacks on the Freedom of Speech, In the Form of Religious
Persecution
Of our Air Force Cadets
From The Traditional
Values Coalition:
Earlier
this month, an Air Force Academy cadet was forced to
remove a Bible verse on his personal white board
after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
claimed offense.
"I
have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer
live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in
the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20
MRFF
President Michael "Mikey" Weinstein, self proclaimed
"undisputed leader of the national movement to
restore the obliterated all separating church and
state" in the military, described the student's
white board quoting of scripture as pouring
"fundamentalist Christian gasoline on an already
raging out-of-control conflagration of
fundamentalist Christian tyranny, exceptionalism,
and supremacy."
The
Air Force Academy complied with Weinstein's demands,
having the scripture removed. But that's not enough
-- Weinstein is demanding that not only should the
cadet be punished, but that their entire chain of
command should be as well.
At
least a dozen cadets responded in support of
religious freedom, posting Bible verses on their
personal white boards. Please join me and thousands
of others in standing with our cadets for their
right to express their religious beliefs without
fear of persecution <http://capwiz.com/traditional/utr/1/KTQOTSLPVY/KFTWTSLUWE/10253908236>
.
No
one, especially those who volunteer to risk their
lives to defend our freedoms, should be denied their
constitutional rights and religious freedoms. Groups
like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation are
seeking to silence those who profess their faith,
stripping them of their religious liberties in the
name of political correctness.
Our
Constitution protects the free exercise of religion.
Yet that doesn't seem to be enough for some groups.
The Clash of
Law: Parsing the Modern War against Catholics,
Catholicism and the Church
FromCatholicCulture.org
ByDr. Jeff Mirus
Date March 25,
2014
Opposition to Catholicism in the modern West is
brought to a head almost universally through the
pressure of today’s legal systems. .... what bother
us are the increasing restrictions on the exercise
of our Christian duties by bureaucratic laws and
regulations, administered by people who otherwise do
not care much about our religious identity one way
or another.
This is the result of a utopian vision of the
future implemented at the highest levels of the
social order. It is not the cruel and
unthinking persecution of those who have simply been
raised, in their local enclaves and neighborhoods,
to hate Catholics. It is rather a relatively high
brow and carefully orchestrated process of civic
improvement. As such, the anti-Catholic prejudice
today wears a mantle of utter reasonableness and
courtesy. Whatever is done is portrayed as necessary
for the noblest of reasons, to serve an exalted
vision of human good. As we will see shortly, this
is a deception which even its proponents probably do
not understand.
Consider how varied are the pressure points which
have been attacked in exactly this way. There is the
progressive public pressure for Catholic social
service agencies to conform to the values of our
secular elites. There is the growing impossibility
of running Catholic organizations as a part of
student life on college campuses. There are the
battles over freedom of conscience in an
ever-widening array of professions, beginning with
doctors, nurses and pharmacists and extending now to
anyone who might provide business services to
same-sex couples. There are escalating battles over
religious liberty. There is the HHS Mandate in the United States
and similar rules in other Western nations which
force even private individuals to actively
participate in mandated actions which they find
deeply immoral.
Meanwhile, in another part of the world, there is
the unending pressure against Catholic life imposed
by the theocratic laws of Islamic states, called
Shari’a law. This alternative form of coercion is in
the process of entering the West through Europe, where the presence
of high percentages of Islamic immigrants raises the
question of alternative legal systems for different
communities and regions. Almost nowhere can we any
longer find a legal system which is not
essentially hostile to Catholicism, with its own
transcendent source of moral knowledge.
A Striking Parallel
Interestingly, in his Regensburg Address in 2006,
Pope Benedict XVI drew a close parallel between the
habits of thought which underlie Islamic law and
those that lie at the basis of contemporary European
(or Western) law. Benedict saw that neither
Islam nor the contemporary West (any longer) assigns
to reason the role of identifying natural moral
principles which can allow people of different
beliefs and cultural backgrounds to share a common
good and a common polity. Islam believes Shari’a Law
covers all of life and is rooted purely in the will
of God, completely unbound by any rational
characteristic of consistency or fairness.
Similarly, the old natural law tradition of the
West—in which rational consistency and fairness were
perhaps the most easily-grasped components—has given
way to the sovereignty of the human will to remake
reality according to whatever happens to be desired
by those who have political, social and cultural
power.
One of the greatest Christian gifts to the world
has been the distinction between two fonts of
law which arise without any possible contradiction
from the same profoundly rational Divine source. On
the one hand, there is the natural law, which is
accessible to human reason and which opens to the
human community a common ground of morality as the
basis for human flourishing in the social order. On
the other hand, there is the law derived from
Revelation, equally rational but containing
mysteries which are accessible only by faith. While
in no way conflicting with the natural law—and in
fact presupposing it in the created order—this
Revelation enables the believer to rise to greater
perfection through grace, in a direct relationship
with God Himself, expressed in voluntary service to
others.
.......
Fortunately, reading through the material has at
least enabled me grasp the central issue more
clearly, and to stress three important principles
which might be used to guide our thinking and our
response to the characteristic anti-Catholic
pressures of our time. First, the practical points
of serious clash and conflict are now primarily
creations of law. Second, when it comes to law, the
primary problem is not an attack on Faith but an
attack on reason—the presumption that law derives
its authority from the specific will of those in
power, and is not limited by clear and consistent
natural or supernatural principles. Third, and
precisely because rational consistency is
lacking, it will take great creativity to
navigate this increasingly repressive legal
landscape.
In closing, I should emphasize one even deeper
truth: The will darkens the intellect by ordering it
to cease its independent explorations in order to
serve what the will desires. This is not something
that we can expect to counteract naturally; it is in
fact the mechanism which human nature uses to refuse
cooperation with grace. Yet paradoxically the
pandemic loss of the recognition of reason, and
even of nature itself, must be remedied by grace.
And so, in the midst of growing suffering and
sacrifice for Catholics, it is not only arguments
and creativity that we need, but prayer.
From The Canada Free Press
By Jim Yardley
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Checking to make sure that there was an easily
understandable definition of the word, the dictionary
defines Constitution as “the fundamental political
principles on which a nation-state is governed,
especially when considered as embodying the rights of
the subjects of that nation-state and the statute
embodying such principles.”
One would think that the President of the first nation
to create that very thing, a legal statute that embodied
the fundamental political principles, and who also was a
college level lecturer on the topic of the Constitution,
would have absolutely no problem in dealing with the
concept.
Unfortunately for us, and for several other nations, Mr.
Obama seems to view constitution to be infinitely
malleable, and are subject to change upon a change in
his whims of the day.
As far back as 2001, Barack Obama said in a radio
interview with Public Radio station WBEZ-FM that the
U.S. Supreme Court (under Chief Justice Earl Warren)
“…didn’t break free from the
essential constraints that were placed by the founding
fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been
interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same
way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of
negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to
you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you,
but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State
government must do on your behalf…”
So even at that time, the President announced clearly
that he disagreed with the judgments of the Founding
Fathers and two centuries of successfully working within
the framework of the U.S. Constitution. He had a
different view of how the Constitution should have been
written, and that had he been alive in 1789, he would
have made sure it was different.
Of course he would have been limited to having only a
pen at that time, since his Blackberry wasn’t even a
science fiction fantasy at that time.
Apparently Obama’s disdain for Constitutions is not
limited to only home grown ones, or limited to only with
regard to “negative liberties.” Fast forward to
June 2009 and look at Honduras.
Manuel Zelaya, who was then in his second term as
president of Honduras, violated that country’s
Constitution (specifically Article 239) which bans
presidents from holding office if they even propose to
alter the constitutional term limits for presidents.
Apparently Mr. Zelaya really liked being president of
Honduras, and wanted to change his country’s
Constitution so that he could continue in the job.
Note again that any president of Honduras loses the
right to serve as president if he even proposes a change
like that. The Honduran Supreme Court, expressly
had the right to remove the president for seeking to
alter the constitutional term limit, under Article 272
of the Honduran Constitution.
But apparently this made Obama upset, so he declared the
Constitutional crisis in Honduras to have been a
“coup”. It wasn’t, of course. Sadly, for Obama, if
he were to snivel that he didn’t like that part of the
Honduran Constitution it probably would have been a
public relations nightmare for him.
One might infer that Obama personally wanted that
presidential term limit article to be ignored by the
citizens of Honduras because it might set a bad
precedent if he wanted to run for a third term
himself. Then Senator (and now Secretary of State)
John Kerry agreed with Obama’s idea that the removal of
a president who had acted contrary to the clear language
of his nation’s Constitution must have been a
“coup.” This view was vocally supported by the
then Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton who
lusts after the idea of being Obama’s replacement.
Mr. Obama’s disdain for the U.S. Constitution has been
demonstrated on a continuing basis over the five years
that he has been in office, with “recess appointments”
to the NLRB when the Senate was not in recess, the
innumerable delays, waivers, interpretations and so on
related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act, and so on.
Given Obama’s disdain for any constitutional limits on
doing whatever pops into his head at any time, his
reaction to the situation in Ukraine becomes almost
comical. Sadly, even the always irreverent magazine The
Onion couldn’t have seen the idea that Obama would leap
to the defense of Ukraine by saying that the Crimean
referendum was illegitimate and (wait for it)
unconstitutional. Even Nancy Pelosi was probably
tempted to ask “Are you serious?”
The idea that Barack Obama would demand deference to any
nation’s constitution is on a par with, well, nothing
readily comes to mind.
Well perhaps it would be like seeing Dr. Jack Kervorkian
leading a Right-to-Life rally, or perhaps seeing Willy
Sutton doing an infomercial telling people how safe
banks are.
It’s possible I suppose that Obama’s defense of
Ukraine’s constitutional authority would be equivalent
to listening to Bill Clinton lecturing on the benefits
of sexual abstinence.
But given his history on the subject of adherence to
constitutional principles, is it any wonder that no one,
anywhere in the world, believes one word of what the man
is saying?
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