|
Please read current events from a
variety of sources.
September,
2021 What Does the U.S.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan Mean for Israel and the
Middle East?
|
Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan: The Israeli-Palestinian situation explained29 January 2020 The "deal of the century". The "last opportunity" for Palestinians. A "win win opportunity for both sides." That's how Donald Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu described the US President's Middle East peace plan which was revealed yesterday. Israel and Palestine have been in conflict for decades over various political issues such as borders, refugees and the control of Jerusalem. Under Mr Trump's new plan, Jerusalem will remain as Israel's capital but it has been rejected by Palestinian leaders. The conflict between Israel and Palestine has
been going on for more than 100 years, so
there's a lot to try and get your head around,
but we've broken it down for you here.
This youtube video from a 2010 panel discussion that includes Franklin Graham, also features Anjem Choudary a radical Islamist miscreant who just last year (2019) got out of jail after three years incarcerated in the U.K. As time passses a number of his toadies are also being released. Ten years have passed, and God Bless America!, the Islamic flag has not yet flown over the White House, or the British Parliament as Choudary predicted. But we must remain vigilant and know that this evil enemy does not rest. |
|
Leah Sharibu,
one year in captivity March 4, 2019 naijafox.com
On Tuesday, February 19, 2019,
Leah Sharibu was one year in the custody of
Boko Haram’s Islamic State of West Africa
Province (ISWAP) faction. The 16-year-old
student was abducted by the sect from
Government Girls Science and Technical
School in Dapchi, Yobe State along with
about 110 other schoolgirls.
Out of this number, Leah
Sharibu is the only schoolgirl ISWAP has
refused to let go because, according to
reports, she resisted an attempt to forcibly
convert her from Christian to Islamic faith.
In the last one year, the circumstances
surrounding her continued incarceration by
the terrorists have caused her predicament
to standout, in spite of the fact that many
other Chibok girls, women, children and men
are held in the sect’s enclave. Leah
Sharibu’s courage and loyalty to her
religious faith speak louder than other
arguments about the circumstances
surrounding her enslavement by ISWAP.
During the campaigns for the
presidential election, the young girl’s
predicament became an issue. Both President
Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi
Osinbajo spoke on government’s resolve to
ensure her release from the dreaded sect…. After Buhari’s victory at the
February 23 polls, Mrs Rebecca Sharibu, the
young lady’s mother, publicly congratulated
the president, ostensibly reminding Buhari
of the need to facilitate her daughter’s
freedom.
In a widely circulated
emotional appeal, the Mum said, “I am
grateful to all Nigerians who participated
in the election… We are also happy that the
President won the election. On behalf of myself and my
family, we congratulate President Muhammadu
Buhari and pray for God to give him the
desired wisdom to rule the country. I want
to remind the President that, as he
celebrates his victory, he should not forget
that Leah is still in the hands of Boko
Haram. As for me, my heart is heavy
because I have not seen my daughter for more
than one year now. I am calling on the
President to fulfill his promise of freeing
my daughter from the hands of Boko Haram. My
cry is still the same, today and tomorrow
until I see my daughter.”
There is no compulsion in
religion, therefore, their reasons for
taking Leah Sharibu and others captive are
not tenable in both religious and secular
worlds. We call on Boko Haram to release
these innocent persons unconditionally. On their grievances with the
Nigerian State, they should find a way of
engaging the authorities to find a peaceful
resolution, instead of abducting and killing
innocent Nigerians. Government has provided
several avenues for the resolution of the
conflict with the sect. Boko Haram should release Leah
Sharibu and other captives, and take
advantage of amnesty offers made by
government.
http://naijafox.com/national-news/leah-sharibu-one-year-in-captivity/ |
UPS stops deliveries to Muslim 'no-go zone''We will wait until it
feels safe for our drivers' March 3, 2019 World Net Daily
The international delivery
company UPS will no long deliver packages in
a Muslim-majority neighborhood in Malmo,
Sweden, for security reasons. The Swedish daily
newspaper Sydsvenskan reported a
customer in the Rosengard district of Malmo
received notice from UPS that the company no
longer delivers to private addresses
there because of the risk of being
exposed to robbery or other crimes. PostNord Sverige, the Swedish
postal company, does not deliver packages to
another area in Malmo, Seved. “We must think of our staff in
the first place,” said Mathias Krummel of
PostNord. A UPS employee said home
delivery in Rosengard was stopped two months
ago after drivers were attacked. Even in some areas in
Stockholm, UPS has stopped the delivery of
parcels, Sydsvenskan reported. “The stop will not be forever,
but we will wait until it feels safe for our
drivers,” the employee told the newspaper. Noting the delivery shutdown is
happening in “heavily Muslim Malmo,” Jihad
Watch director pointed out that anyone who
claims “no-go zones” exist is branded as a
racist, bigoted “Islamophobe.” The Rosengard district
of Malmo was one of 14 notorious “no-go
zones” visited
by author Raheem Kassam for
his book “No Go Zones: How Sharia Law Is
Coming to a Neighborhood Near You.” Kassam said daily reports
of attacks, often with knives or vehicles,
have been reported in Germany, France,
Belgium, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United
Kingdom. But such attacks are almost never
seen in Poland, Hungary and the Czech
Republic, which have barred Muslim
immigration. |
Omar: Impeachment of 'dictator' Trump
'inevitable'
|
Life Before BirthConception:
Life Begins! 1 WEEK: Implantation On about the sixth day, the growing baby attaches to the wall of the mother’s uterus. That rich nutrient lining welcomes the tiny tenant, and soon the child is sending out the chemical signal that can be detected in a home pregnancy test. Before the second week is over, the cells of the child’s body will have already begun segregating themselves into the various layers that will give rise to the brain, nervous system, skin, digestive system, muscles, bones and circulatory system. 3-4 Weeks: A
Beating Heart The Baby’s heart begins it first beats as early as 18 days after fertilization, often before the mother even suspects she is pregnant. Between the third and fourth weeks, the baby’s head and spinal column become easily distinguishable, and arm buds appear. Legs will begin to appear days later. The umbilical cord forms, transporting oxygen and nutrients to the child. 6 WEEK: Brain
Waves 10-11 WEEKS:
Organ Systems in place 12 Week:
Movements and Characteristics 14 Week: a
Miracle of Development 16 Weeks: Making His or
Her Presence Known 20 Week:
Hearing Mother’s Voice 23 Weeks…. Or
Earlier: Viability What you Don’t
know can hurt you A Life-Giving
Alternative
God wants to bring life- not
death- out of your difficult situation.
God has already provided lifelines to help
you.
|
December 13, 2018 MUSLIM
VOICES
Here are two links to several different Muslim
voices. Hear and contemplate the Religion of Peace,
operating in regards to our nation that is based
upon individual freedom, and tolerance.
An American Muslim woman speaks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAr6RGvECHg&feature=youtu.be
Now a message from "a major Muslim leader"
How do you respond to these attacks on your
God-given freedoms, and your way of life and
worship? How is your Christian voice heard? If you
are silent, do your actions speaking loud and clear?
And yet another Muslim voice- an AMERICAN imam,
about Christianity
https://free-speechfront.blogspot.com/2018/12/watch-american-imam-is-offended-by.html
Caldron Pool
December 7, 2018
Not sure if the following should be posted under
"Mental Illness" or "the 1st Amendment protects
Stupidity" but here goes:
THE STAR TREATMENT
Sinead
O'Connor: White people are 'disgusting'
'Interesting to see if Twitter
bans this'
Published: 11/07/2018 at 3:16 PM
World Net Daily
Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch, who monitors Islamic violence around the world, describes the troop of children as “cute little tykes.”The Twitter posting:
Shocking
video: Pakistani kids hang #AsiaBibi
doll for blasphemy.
Radical Muslims teach their children hatred against
other believers and non-believers from early on.
Despite the acquittal, extreme Muslims demand the
death penalty for the Christian #AsiaBibi
.#Islamism#Sharia
pic.twitter.com/NgcIsqtUtZ
— Darya Safai (@SafaiDarya) November 5, 2018
Commented Spencer: “The cute little tykes. Imagine what they’re going to be like when they grow up, and what will happen when they meet the children who have been trained to run to safe spaces at the sight of any ‘microaggression.'”
WND reported that after her acquittal by the nation’s
highest court, Asia Bibi was not allowed to leave
Pakistan because of a deal struck between Islamic
extremists and the Pakistani government.
As WND reported that after nine years of incarceration, she had her conviction and death sentence for allegedly blaspheming the Islamic prophet Muhammad overturned. The ruling provoked violent protests led by the radical Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party, whose leaders called for the judges responsible for the verdict to be killed along with Bibi.
On Friday, TLP leaders agreed to stop the protests in exchange for putting Bibi on an “exit control list,” which normally is used to prevent flight by wanted terrorists and criminals, CNS News reported. The government also agreed not to oppose efforts to appeal the Supreme Court’s verdict.
The TLP leaders called the prime minister and head of the military enemies of Islam.
TLP was founded from a movement supporting a bodyguard who assassinated a provincial government for advocating for Bibi in 2011. A federal official also was killed after calling for the Christian woman’s release.
While no one has been executed by the government for blasphemy, at least 65 people accused of the “crime” have been murdered by Muslim vigilantes since 1990.
Bibi’s problems began when Muslim co-workers refused to drink water from a cup from which she had taken a sip and demanded she convert to Islam. Her refusal prompted a mob to later allege she had insulted Muhammad. She was convicted in 2010 under section 295-C of Pakistan’s penal code that punishes blasphemy against Islam’s prophet with the death penalty. She was sentenced to execution by hanging.
The Supreme Court ruled, however, that the basis of the blasphemy charge was a “concocted” story.
Appeal to the West
The government’s agreement was a retreat from the prime minister’s televised statement warning the protesters “the state will fulfill its duty [to] protect people’s property and lives.”
Bibi is still in prison in Punjab province, even though the Supreme Court ordered she be “released from the jail forthwith if not required to be detained in connection with any other case.”
Bibi’s lawyer Saif Mulook told Reuters he has left the country, fearing for his life. He said he would return to help Bibi if the state provided him protection.
CNS News reported Bibi’s husband, Ashiq Masih, is in Britain with their daughters.
He posted a video appealing to the leaders of Britain, the United States and Canada to help his wife and other family members to leave Pakistan safely.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said Monday, according to the U.S. that the mission “continues to follow the case closely.”
Click here to read article at World Net Daily
· WASHINGTON
— The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide
whether a 40-foot cross on state property in
suburban Maryland violates the First Amendment’s ban
on government establishment of religion.
The
case will give the court an opportunity to clarify
its famously confused jurisprudence on government
entanglement with religion. It will also allow the
justices to continue a discussion about the meaning
of crosses used in war memorials.
The
cross at issue sits at a busy intersection in
Bladensburg, Md., and commemorates 49 soldiers from
Prince George’s County who died in World War I. It
was built in 1925 using contributions from local
families and the American Legion.
The
state took over the monument and the land under it
in 1961. Since then, the state has spent more than
$117,000 to maintain and repair the memorial.
Several
area
residents and the American Humanist Association sued
to remove the cross in 2014, saying they were
offended by what they said was its endorsement of
Christianity.
Last
year, a divided three-judge panel of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in
Richmond, Va., ruled that the cross sent an
unconstitutional message of government approval of a
particular religion, breaching the wall between
church and state. The full Fourth Circuit declined
to rehear the case by an 8-to-6 vote.
In
urging the Supreme Court to hear the case, the
American Legion and other supporters of the cross
said the logic of the Fourth Circuit’s decision
could imperil hundreds of war memorials that use
crosses to honor the fallen, including the 24-foot
Canadian Cross of Sacrifice and the 13-foot Argonne
Cross, both in Arlington National Cemetery.
“No
other court,” their petition seeking review said,
“has gone so far as to hold that a longstanding,
historical war memorial that was built to be a war
memorial and has only ever been a war memorial was
unconstitutional merely because its private builders
chose to use a cross to honor their fallen loved
ones.”
Please
click
here to read the article in its entirety
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. …”
Please
click here to read the short article about Turkish
history. You will gain a clearer understanding
of the tyranny of Islamic control emanating from that
part of the world.
By Olivia Gazis
September 13, 2018 / 6:24 PM
CBS News
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."
Please
click here to read the article in its entirety.
September
3, 2018 Dennis Prager published another informative
youtube 6 minutevideo called Left or Liberal.
Listen to it if you have a chance at
https://www.prageru.com/videos/left-or-liberal
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.
Click
here to read the article at National Review
Published:
August 1, 2018
by
Michael P. Dempsey, originally in Axios
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.
WND has reported on the
dispute between the Freedom of Conscience Defense
Fund and the San Diego school
district.
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.
Published: May 3, 2018
Author: Tara Isabella Burton
Vox.com
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.
Please
click here to read the article in its entirety.
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?
Click
here to watch a short youtube video that shed
more light on the mentality and judgement of the
Broward County Florida Sheriff Scott Israel.
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:
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.
Britain: The
Hijab as the Entry Point for Islam
by
Khadija Khan
February 21, 2018 at 5:00 am
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11884/britain-hijab-schools
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.
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.
Please
read this article in its entirety at
http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/under-islamic-repression-christianity-has-ignited-like-a-flame/#eHlmy0mhC3TsZ3ep.99
Crisis Magazine
William Kilpatrick
January 2, 2018
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.
Published: 7 Feb 2016
World Net Daily
Pamela Geller
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."
Click
here to read this article in its entirety at World
Net Daily.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/finland-tv-airs-laughable-strategy-to-stop-rape/
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.
Cohen was due to be buried on Thursday afternoon.
Khaled Abu Toameh contributed to this report.
Click
here to read the article at the Jerusalem Post web
site.
Joshua
Miller
Feb 22, 2016
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
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.
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
And Dr. Larry Wolk, the top
medical official in
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
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
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
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
Wolk, the top doctor at the
state’s public health department, said
“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
“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
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.
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.
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.
Click
here to read the above article on the forward.com
web site
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.
Please
click here to read the article in its entirety.
Or
click here to read how Captain Khan's father is
being used by the leftist media and political
establishment.
"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."
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.
Published: 7 Feb 2016
World Net Daily
Pamela Geller
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."
Click
here to read this article in its entirety at World
Net Daily.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/finland-tv-airs-laughable-strategy-to-stop-rape/
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.
Cohen was due to be buried on Thursday afternoon.
Khaled Abu Toameh contributed to this report.
Click
here to read the article at the Jerusalem Post web
site.
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 read at the KFQD Radio Page.
Click here to realize that Alaska is not the
only state that has called for a Constitutional
Convention.
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.
Click
here to read the entire article of David Barton and
increase your knowledge of American History.
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.
Click
here to read this article in its entirety at World
Net Daily.
(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."
Click
here to read the article in its entirety at CNN
The Daily Caller
Richard Pollock, Reporter
01/10/2016
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.
Please
click here to read entire article at World Net Daily
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.
Please
click here to read the article in it's entirety.
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:
Fax: (904)
630-2391
Email: MayorLennyCurry@coj.net
Or your
representatives on the City Council. Click their
names for direct email, or telephone their
offices:
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.
Dear
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.
From Top Right News on October 27, 2015
by Bill Callen | Top Right News
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.
View this copyrighted article in it's entirety at the Los Angeles Times
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
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."
The above article can be read in its entirety on World Net Daily at http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/muslim-congressmen-try-to-boot-islam-critic-geert-wilders/
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.
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.
to
see the full article in the Washington Post, please
follow this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/22/killing-jews-is-worship-posters-will-soon-appear-on-nyc-subways-and-buses/
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)
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.
Click
here to read the article and associated links on the
BBC News Middle East page
ISIS beheading of Coptic Christians on Libyan beach brings Islamists to the doorstep of Europe
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
Click here to read the article in its entirety with maps and links at The Dailymail.co.uk
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.
Please
click here to see the article in the Jerusalem
Post
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.
Copyright: For copyright information, please check
with the distributor of this item, Religion News
Service LLC. Visit http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/14/houston-subpoenas-pastors-sermons-equal-rights-ordinance-case-prompting-outcry/
the source of the above article by Sarah Pulliam
Bailey, and updates and comments regarding this
attempted overstep by Houston government.
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.
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
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
Under similar circumstances, would the outcome the
The
There have evidently been some tactical successes
in
In the latter instance, the
Naturally, neither
The United Nations this week decided to investigate
“acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale” by
Meanwhile, there has been considerable concern
across several nations in Europe as well as in the
This is hardly a novel trend — it can be traced
back at least to
The
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
Article in full at Kaleej Times
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."
Click
here to view this article at cns news where we
found this affirmation of God's truth.
From CatholicCulture.org
By Dr. 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
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
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.
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=1173