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Please read current events from a variety of sources.

September 2019


 

Trump Stands Up for Religious Freedom

He champions the issue at the U.N. more vigorously than any of his predecessors.

Wall Street Journal Opinion/Commentary
By Kelsey Zorzi
Sept. 23, 2019 6:55 pm ET

President Trump isn’t known as a champion of human rights, but on Monday he became the first American president to convene a meeting at the United Nations on religious freedom. He kicked off the U.N. General Assembly’s annual session with a “Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom.”
Flanked by Secretary-General António Guterres and Vice President Mike Pence, the president declared: “No right is more fundamental to a peaceful, prosperous, flourishing society than religious freedom, yet it is rare around the world. As we speak, many people of faith are being jailed, murdered, often at the hands of their own government.” More than 80% of the world’s population lived in nations that restrict religious freedom as of 2009, and the situation hasn’t improved, according to Pew Research.
Mr. Trump is also scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with several world leaders, including Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Administration officials say he will speak to them about violations of the human rights of religious minorities, including Christians. Topics will likely include Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and Egypt’s Islamic extremist groups.
Mr. Trump’s call to action was the culmination of a series of advances on international religious freedom over the past two years. U.S. officials at the U.N. have repeatedly issued statements indicating that religious freedom is America’s top human-rights priority. In July the State Department hosted its second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington. Officials from more than 100 countries and more than 1,000 civil-society leaders gathered to discuss the subject. Mr. Trump played a pivotal role in several religious-freedom victories, including the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian accused of blasphemy, and the freeing of Pastor Andrew Brunson after two years in Turkish captivity. Mr. Brunson attended Monday’s event.
At the U.N., Mr. Trump announced that the U.S. is committing $25 million to religious-freedom efforts and launching a coalition of businesses for religious freedom. A few weeks ago the administration launched the International Religious Freedom Alliance, the first international body devoted to advancing religious freedom. The alliance is intended to “build on efforts to date and bring like-minded countries together to confront challenges of international religious freedom,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in his keynote address at the July ministerial.
After the U.S. pulled out from the U.N. Human Rights Council last year, some wondered if the U.S. would withdraw from the U.N. altogether. Mr. Trump has now made clear that he intends to engage the U.N. system where it has potential to make a positive impact on those suffering human-rights abuses, particularly abuses of the right to freedom of religion. As the president said, it’s an issue of “urgent moral duty” for all nations.

This article was found at https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-stands-up-for-religious-freedom-11569279353


Linda Sarsour Is Now Bernie Sander’s Campaign Surrogate

The Clarion Project
by Meira Svirsky
September 11, 2019

Bernie Sanders has teamed up with Linda Sarsour, who is now working as Sander’s campaign surrogate...

Linda Sarsour is an Islamist activist with ties to Muslim Brotherhood and terror-linked organizations, sharia-apologist and self-identified feminist (except, we might assume, when her feminist stances would conflict with sharia law – which we can assume is quite often).
Quite the personality for a candidate for the American president to be aligned with.
Yet for us, the voters, it’s nice to have such clarity about a candidate.
Click here to read the article in it's entirety at the Clarion Project.


Ilhan Omar Challenged in Minnesota by Muslim Reformers

The Clarion Project
September 8, 2019

Muslim reformers are challenging the Islamist narrative Congresswoman Ilhan Omar represents — and they’re taking this challenge straight to her district in Minnesota by holding a “Muslim town hall.”

The video is a dig at Omar who bashed Ani Zonneveld, president of Muslims for Progressive Values, for asking Omar a question about female genital mutilation (FGM). Zonneveld asked Omar to make a statement against FGM, to which Omar launched into a tirade against Zonneveld, calling her request an “appalling question.”
Please click here to read the full article including the video.


Hard to imagine a woman in the West making this defense, but then again...

Canadian Muslim Scholar Explains Why Pedophilia is Ok in Islam

April 18, 2017

Click here to view the you tube video.




What the Top Democrat 2020 Presidential Candidates  Believe About Israel In Their Own Words

Christian Broadcasting Network
07-17-2019
Emily Jones

This article lays out the beliefs of the (currently) to Democrat presidential candidates- Joe Biden, Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg regarding their stance of Israel.
Click here to read the article on the Christian Broadcasting Network.



Florida- Federal indictment: Suspect sent bomb threats to judges 'for cause of Islamic State'

Jeffrey Schweers
Tallahassee Democrat
Published 11:20 a.m. ET June 20, 2019 | Updated 12:24 p.m. ET June 20, 2019

A former inmate at Blackwater River Correctional Institution in Milton claimed he threatened to blow up the secretary of state and several judges around Florida "for the cause of the Islamic State," a federal indictment issued this week said.

Noah D. Stirn, 24, was indicted on 12 counts June 18 relating to letters to state and federal agencies he allegedly sent out while a state inmate between April and May. The letters threatened to use "C4" and "car bombs" to do harm to public officials, Lawrence Keefe, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, announced today.

He was originally charged by a criminal complaint sworn out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI affidavit said Stirn admitted to writing threatening letters to the Florida Secretary of State, the Social Security Administration, and several U.S. courts in Pensacola, Miami, Gainesville, Panama City and Tallahassee.

Please click here to read the article in its entirety.


Fake News?


“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”

                                                                                 -Thomas Jefferson

 

 

May 30, 2019 United States

It is pretty clear that a group of Somali teenagers were up to some intimidating mischief one May 17, 2019, Friday evening recently at a train station in Minneapolis. There were probably about 8-10 of them, some were "ring leaders" and some no doubt  hangers-on.  Several were identified and arrested, not much has been said partially because of their youth.  Looking at the following news and opinion links, you’ll be able to judge the editorial bias of the publishers.

 

Snopes, the long time bastion of liberal truth and fiction,  minimizes the event because it doesn’t help the liberal agenda when immigrant youths misbehave. Snopes was quick to note that there was no racial motivation- Snopes being the only source I found that mentioned “racial” anything.

 

As the ostrich with its head in the sand, some reporting veered far around the fact that young Muslim Somali immigrants were not assimilating into our peaceful culture. Other websites did note the facts. The “progressive” leftists were quick to note that the physical violence resulting from their "hammers" or "bars" may not have been as great as some (evidently fear-mongering islamaphobic) sources reported.

 

The local government and agencies seemed to minimize the event, the ostrich posture no doubt beneficial to their tourist and university treasuries’ interests.

 

If you have some time on your hands, visit these websites for a reminder or lesson in information and dis-information.

 

 

https://gellerreport.com/2019/05/minneapolis-somali-mob-with-hammers-descends-on-minneapolis-east-bank-train-station-patrons.html/

 

https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2019/05/21/8-10-somali-teens-armed-hammers-attack-bystanders-east-bank-rail-station-mn-media-oddly-quiet/

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/somali-teens-metal-pipe-attack-university-minnesota-university-light-rail-station

 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/05/21/the-media-is-silent-on-reported-gang-attack-in-the-land-of-ilhan-omar-n2546645

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/somali-teens-hammers/


Is "FAKE-NEWS" in the eye of beholder? Pray for wisdom and discernment, as we are bombarded with assaults of various kinds including  leftist controlled media.



Clarence Thomas: Abortion for eugenics 'not hypothetical'

 Posted By Bob Unruh
On 05/28/2019 @ 12:48 pm
at World Net Daily

Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday bluntly warned the other justices on the U.S. Supreme Court they need to start acting on various abortion-law cases because of the industry’s threat “to achieve eugenic goals.”

That, he warned in a concurring opinion, “is not merely hypothetical.”

The case centered on a law in Indiana that banned abortions based on sex or disability and required the state to ensure deceased unborn infants are provided a “proper burial.”

A lower court blocked the law, and the Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the requirement for “proper burial” but continued a block on the ban on eugenics in abortions.

Please click here to read the article in its entirety.




One nation faces brand-new terror dilemma in schools

World Net Daily
On 05/27/2019 @ 6:27 pm

The Netherlands now has two Islamic middle schools, and one has ties to terrorism, reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Terror expert Jelle van Buuren of Leiden University told IPT that when “we used to talk about jihad, we were always fixated on bombs and Kalashnikovs.”
“Now, we find ourselves looking more at intolerance, and the spread of ideologies. The problem is: if you arrest someone with a Kalashnikov, it’s basic. But what do you do with clubs that use democratic rights to undermine democratic values?”
Writing for IPT, Abigail Esman, author of “Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West,” said it was Dutch intelligence and counterterrorism agencies that determined in March that one of the schools has a tie to violent jihad.

Please click here to read the article in its entirety at wnd.com


The “Equality Act” Specifically Targets Religious Freedom

By Gregory S. Baylor
Alliance Defending Freedom
May 23, 2019

The badly misnamed “Equality Act” was introduced in both houses of Congress in March, and it was passed by the House of Representatives in May.
If passed by the Senate and signed into law, it would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes to existing laws banning discrimination in places of public accommodation (like hotels and restaurants), employment, housing, and by recipients of federal financial assistance (among other things).
But what many might not realize is that this legislation specifically targets our constitutional right to religious freedom.

Please click here to read article in its entirety at the Alliance Defending Freedom website.


Proponent of American Caliphate Encourages Voting

Jihad Watch
May 21, 2019 1:00 pm
By Daniel Greenfield

Imam Siraj Wahhaj has been in the news lately because of the family terrorist training camps. He’s also an unindicted co-onspirator in the World Trade Center bombing.

So, of course, the Philly Tribune runs an uncomplicated photo montage of him encouraging the “Muslim community” to go out there and vote.“Imam Siraj Wahhaj encourages members of the Muslim community to get out and vote.”

 But we know what kind of political system the Imam is in favor of and it’s not democracy.“Islam is better than democracy. Allah will cause his deen [Islam as a complete way of life], Islam, to prevail over every kind of system, and you know what? It will happen.

 Especially in America.

 “Wherever you came from, you came to America. And you came for one reason—for one reason only—to establish Allah’s deen [Islam as a complete way of life], as a servant of Allah.”

Wahhaj has long supported every facet of Sharia Law, including its call for brutal punishments like the removal of one’s hands as the penalty for theft, and death by stoning as the penalty for adultery. By Wahhaj’s reckoning, such harsh measures are wholly justified by Islamic scripture. As he proclaimed in a May 1992 sermon: “I would cut off the hands of my own daughter [if she stole] because Allah stands for Justice.” On another occasion, Wahhaj said: “If Allah says 100 strikes, 100 strikes it is. If Allah says cut off their hand, you cut off their hand. If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death, because it’s the obedience of Allah and his messenger—nothing personal.”

Imagine if the media actually reporting on Imams the way it reports on traditional Christian and Jewish clergy.


Click here to read the article at jihadwatch.org:

 https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/05/proponent-of-american-caliphate-encourages-voting




 See Muslim demonstrate proper way to beat wife

Link to a youtube video

Posted on World Net Daily
On 04/04/2019 @ 5:08 pm

Lest anyone think Islam is a “cruel religion,” a Qatari sociologist has uploaded a video to an Arabic YouTube channel in which he demonstrates the proper “Islamic” way to beat one’s wife.

Abd Al-Aziz Al-Khazraj Al-Ansari, who uploaded the video March 29 to the Al-Mojtama YouTube channel, explained husbands don’t need to beat their wives frequently, but occasionally it’s necessary “out of love” so that “life can move on,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, which translated the video from Arabic.

“How does a husband beat his wife? He gives her a disciplinary beating out of love. He loves her. The beating should be light, and must make the wife feel her femininity and her husband’s masculinity,” Al-Ansari said.

In the video, he demonstrates with a boy, Nayef, who presumably is his son.

He slaps the boy on the shoulders, grabs him and shakes him, and says loudly: “I told you not to leave the house! How many times do I have to tell you?”

Please click here to read the article in its entirety.



Nigerian Muslim Militants Kill 120 Christians in Three Weeks


breitbart.com

Thomas D Williams
March 16, 2019

  The recent death toll of Christians in Nigeria has reached 120 with this week’s slaughter of more than 50 by Fulani Muslim militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria, the Christian Post reported.

The Fulani jihadists, who have become a greater threat to Nigerian Christians than the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, stormed the villages of Inkirimi, Dogonnoma, and Ungwan Gora in the Kajuru Local Government Area last Monday, destroying 143 homes, killing 52 people, and wounding dozens more.

The assailants reportedly split into three groups, the first of which fired upon the people, the second set fire to buildings, and the third chased down people fleeing from the scene. Victims of the assault included women and children.
Monday’s incident followed an attack the day before in the Ungwan Barde village in Kajuru, where 17 Christians were killed and dozens of homes were burned.

In the first week of March, Muslim extremists massacred more than 30 Christians in Karamar village, setting fire to several houses and a church. The terrorists reportedly shot at families trying to escape the fire, killing 32.

The spate of recent attacks against communities has taken place within the predominantly Christian Adara chiefdom of southern Kaduna.

The governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai, has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the Kajuru Local Government Area to try to contain the violence.

In late February, militants attacked the Maro village, killing 38 Christians and torching homes as well as a Christian church.

The Christian Post reported that Fulani militants killed thousands of Christians in 2018 alone in what many are calling a Christian genocide in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.
Please read the entire article at:
https://www.breitbart.com/africa/2019/03/16/nigerian-muslim-militants-kill-120-christians-three-weeks/

A Clash Act: Dems Push LGBT Takeover

by FRC Action senior writers
frcaction.org
March 14, 2019

The original U.S. Constitution can survive a bomb, a massive fire -- even a nuclear blast. But can it survive the House majority’s agenda? Based on their latest bill, no one is quite sure.

Some reporters at yesterday’s Equality Act press conference wondered if they were at a party. And in retrospect, maybe they were -- the Left’s farewell to the First Amendment. Religious liberty and free speech have had a good run, but as far as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) concerned, they’ve stood in the Left’s way long enough. It’s time to get back to the business of controlling how every American thinks, speaks, and acts on issues of human sexuality. (How ironic that these same people accused Republicans of being fixated on America’s bedrooms!)

Most people were outraged by Barack Obama’s nationwide bathroom mandate, but that’s a conservative love pat compared to the boom Democrats are trying to lower on mainstream morality. If you can imagine a country without women’s sports, boys and girls restrooms, gender-specific pronouns, privacy, parental rights, workplace dress codes, business autonomy, Christian wedding vendors, and conscience protections -- you’ve got the Equality Act. It’s a world that hunts down and punishes anyone who thinks differently from the Left on gender or sexuality. And that includes schools, businesses, food banks, adoption agencies, homeless shelters, day cares, faith-based ministries, and government offices.
Picture walking into your child’s preschool for mandatory transgender story hour. Or think about your teenage daughter finishing gym class and being forced to shower and change with biological boys. Imagine being fired for calling someone “him.” ...

Please click here to read the entire article
https://www.frcaction.org/get.cfm?i=WA19C30&f=WU19C01

Here is reality based look from Democrat Sen. Manchin
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/03/18/senate-democrat-says-he-cant-support-equality-act-in-current-form/


11 Christians Killed Every Day for Their Decision to Follow Jesus

By Lindy Lowry
opendoorusa.org
March 13, 2019

The Christian persecution we read about in Scripture and history books is not a thing of the past. It still exists. Today, in the 21st century, we are living in a time when persecution against Christian believers is the highest in modern history. According to Open Doors’ 2019 World Watch List—an in-depth investigative report focusing on global Christian persecution—persecution is increasing at an alarming rate. Research for the List indicates that each day, a staggering 11 Christians are killed for their faith in the top 50 countries ranked on the World Watch List.

Below, we look at the world’s 10 most dangerous places to be a Christian—countries where saying “yes” to following Jesus is truly a life-or-death decision.
Please read the entire article at:
https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/11-christians-killed-every-day-for-their-decision-to-follow-jesus/

Charges Dropped Against Christian Pastor Arrested at Mall of America

By Anthony Gockowski
The Minnesota Sun
March 9, 2019

Ramin Parsa, a Christian pastor who was arrested at the Mall of America in August and charged with trespassing, was cleared of all charges during a court hearing Thursday.

“Praise the Lord! The prosecution is suspended, no more criminal charges, pleaded not guilty. Thank you so much for your prayers. We have resolved the criminal case and the city is not going to prosecute me further, so the city is out of it,” Parsa wrote on Facebook.

As The Minnesota Sun reported, Parsa runs Redemptive Love Ministries in Los Angeles, but visited Minnesota in August. While in the state, he took a trip to the Mall of America and ended up in what he has called a “random” conversation with two Somali women.

As an ex-Muslim, he spoke with the two about his conversion to the Christian faith, and was reported to mall security by a passersby. He was subsequently arrested, taken to the basement of the Mall of America, and charged with trespassing.
Please read the article in its entirety at:
http://theminnesotasun.com/2019/03/09/charges-dropped-against-christian-pastor-arrested-at-mall-of-america/

'Bouncers': CAIR leaders block reporter from Muslim congresswoman

 Hamas-founded group has new allies on Capitol Hill

March 9, 2019

WND.TV


  ...I reported on CAIR & Linda Sarsour anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, lobbying. CAIR reps & backers acted as bouncers to Rashida Tlaib’s office, blocking me from entry, then taunting me. Done, they returned to their base.
 —   Asra Q. Nomani, PI  March 7, 2019

 Video is circulating on social media showing far-left Muslim activist Linda Sarsour, a co-founder of the Women’s March, ordering accompanying leaders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to block a reporter from entering the office of freshmen Muslim Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism reported Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street journal reporter and a leader in the Muslim Reform Movement, documented her attempt to enter Tlaib’s office.
(See video here: https://twitter.com/AsraNomani/status/1103498928488697856/video/1)

Read article on WND in its entirety here:
https://www.wnd.com/2019/03/bouncers-cair-leaders-block-reporter-from-muslim-congresswoman/

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.”


We call on government and other security agencies to do whatever is possible in ensuring that Leah and many other Nigerians who are held captive by Boko Haram are set free. These are Nigerian citizens who do not deserve to be enslaved in their own country.

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.

 

Please click here to read the article at the World Net Daily website
https://www.wnd.com/2019/03/ups-stops-deliveries-to-muslim-no-go-zone/?cat_orig=world




Omar: Impeachment of 'dictator' Trump 'inevitable'

02/27/2019 @ 7:12 pm
World Net Daily

The freshman Muslim congresswoman who has been rebuked by her Democratic Party leaders for anti-Semitic comments said in an interview published Wednesday that President Trump has “the markings of a dictator” and his impeachment is “inevitable.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., told Rolling Stone magazine, however, she was terrified at the prospect of removing Trump because Vice President Mike Pence would take his place, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

“I believe that impeachment is inevitable. It also is a terrifying notion,” she said. “Pence is an ideologue, and the ideology he holds is more terrifying to me and my constituents. And we have not had a full impeachment that removes the president from office. Nations struggle any time [they] overthrow a dictator, and Trump really has the markings of a dictator.”

Omar’s Muslim colleague in the House, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., said last month vowed Democrats were going to “impeach the motherf–er.”

Omar was on the cover of Rolling Stone this month with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and fellow freshman Reps. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

After criticism from Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, Omar issued a qualified apology for evoking the old trope that congressional support for Israel is due to lawmakers being bought off by wealthy Jews. Two days later, she took a personal swipe at a Jewish diplomat during a congressional hearing.

President Trump called on her to resign or be barred from serving on congressional committees, saying, “Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress.”

Since then, it’s been reported she is scheduled to speak alongside a notorious, anti-Semitic Muslim leader.

In her apology for the anti-Semitic tweet, Omar said she was still concerned about “the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics.”

“Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” Omar wrote.

“My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be willing to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack me for my identity. This is why I unequivocally apologize,” she wrote

“At the same time, I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], the [National Rifle Association] or the fossil fuel industry. It’s gone on too long and we must be willing to address it.”

Click here to read the article at World Net Daily




Life Before Birth

Crossway, Wheaton IL

Conception: Life Begins!

 Life begins at conception as a single, separate, living cell. Nothing new is added except oxygen and nutrition. Fertilization occurs when a sperm and ovum join to form a single cell, full of life and bearing the unique genetic imprint of a person who has never existed before. The DNA in the 46 chromosomes of that small cell contain full instructions about that new individual’s sex, eye color, foot size, brain capacity, and other physical traits.

 

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

 Fingers are forming and the child’s mouth and lips are apparent. The child begins his or her first movements. At six weeks, the baby has brain waves that can be measured with and electroencephalogram.

 

10-11 WEEKS: Organ Systems in place

 The baby has eyelids, fingernails, and fingerprints, and can grasp and object. The kidneys begin to form urine. All body systems are in place and active: the baby has skeletal structure, nerves, and circulation.

 

12 Week: Movements and Characteristics

 Though too small to be felt by the mother, the baby reaches peak frequency of movement during the third month. The baby’s sex can be visually determined, and the child’s eyes, ears, and face begin to display distinctive characteristics.

 

14 Week: a Miracle of Development

 Eyebrows have formed, eye movements are seen. For a couple of weeks now, this baby has had all the body parts required to experience pain, including the nerves and spinal cord.

 

16 Weeks: Making His or Her Presence Known

 The baby become large and active enough for the mother to feel movement of turn, kicks, and somersaults that at some point even become visible to the outside.

 

20 Week: Hearing Mother’s Voice

 In the fifth and sixth months, the baby responds to music, sudden noises, and voices, especially that of his or her mother. Over the coming weeks, the baby will increase seven times in weight and nearly double in height

 

23 Weeks…. Or Earlier: Viability

 Viability is the time when the baby can survive outside the mother. Not long ago, viability was at 30 weeks, then 25. Today, babies at 22 or 23 weeks have been saved, and even some younger babies have survived. What will viability be tomorrow?*

 

What you Don’t know can hurt you

 Few women faced with an unwanted pregnancy are told of the marvelous development of the life growing within them. In the absence of information, abortion seems to be the right decision at the moment. But they are not warned of what will really happen to their baby or of the possible physical and psychological effects of abortion that may stay with them the rest of their lives. And they are rarely told of the alternatives to save the life of their child.

 Some doctors say that abortion is a routine operation to remove “ fetal tissue” But in truth, is the destruction of a living human being. One young woman, who later regretted an abortion stated. “ The doctor said, A little fluid out and some fluid injected, severe cramps, and then the fetus is expelled. That isn’t what it was. I felt my girl thrash around for an hour-and-a-half until she died a slow death.

 The mother is also exposed to long term complications. Incomplete abortions resulting in blood clotting, bleeding, hemorrhage, and infections are not uncommon.

 Menstrual disturbance, miscarriage, tubal pregnancies, and sterility are always risk and tend to multiply with successive abortions. RU-486 and other abortifacients can cause severe birth defects in any child that survives this self-induce abortion, and severe side effects for the mother. Several maternal deaths have been reported due to the use of this “miracle pill”

 Long-term psychological and spiritual effects include guilt, anxiety, depression, anger, sense of loss, nightmares, death scenes, deterioration of self-image, and even suicide. Cervical lacerations and uterine perforation can result from suction and D&C procedures. Convulsions, severe vomiting, and diarrhea are common with prostaglandin abortion. Cardiac arrest and maternal deaths have also been reported.

 

A Life-Giving Alternative

 But there is hope for both the mother and the child. If you have a problem pregnancy, we want you know that God cares for you and the unborn child growing within you. He knew about you before you were even born: “O Lord, you have searched me and know me…. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret… the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them” (from Psalm 139).

God wants to bring life- not death- out of your difficult situation. God has already provided lifelines to help you.

 






U.S. Muslim leaders silent about Turkey's threat to NBA star

World Net Daily
January 17, 2019

Major U.S. Islamic groups that condemned Saudi Arabia for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi have been silent about Turkey’s threat to NBA star Enes Kanter.

A native of Turkey, Kanter did not travel with his New York Knicks teammates to London, where they play the Washington Wizards on Thursday, fearing he could be assassinated by Turkish spies, Agence France-Press reported.

On Tuesday, a prosecutor in Istanbul drafted an extradition request and an international arrest warrant for Kanter.

The Knicks center is accused of financially supporting the global Islamist movement headed by Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Gulen for the 2016 coup attempt that was thwarted by the Turkish military.

If you support WND’s fight to expose CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, please consider a donation to the WND Legal Defense Fund for court fights like this one – which must be one if America is to remain free – and safe.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism noted Kanter’s plight has drawn no attention from American Islamic groups that expressed outrage at Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for the murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul of Saudi Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashogg.

Among the groups that protested Khashoggi’s death were the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America.

“The best form of jihad is a word of truth against a tyrant ruler,” former MAS President Esam Omeish, a board member at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque outside Washington, D.C., said at last month’s MAS-ICNA Convention in Chicago.

Omeish said that when Khashoggi “saw the best of Saudi Arabia and the best of his companions being jailed and tortured,” he “realized that he can’t live in a society where he can’t speak.”

Omeish has had nothing to say about Kanter, however, though he also is a Muslim U.S. resident who has drawn the ire of authoritarian rulers of Muslim-majority states because of his beliefs.

IPT noted CAIR touts itself as a Muslim civil rights organization.

But CAIR was founded by members of the terrorist organization Hamas in the United States, and Erdogan is a supporter of Hamas.
Senior Hamas leaders have found safe haven in Turkey, IPT pointed out. And last year, Israel’s Shin Bet accused a private military company run by a top Erdogan military adviser, SADAT International Defense Consulting, of funding Hamas.

Erdogan also supports the Muslim Brotherhood, which founded Hamas.

IPT said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad enjoys close relations with Erdogan’s regime. Days after the coup attempt, Awad offered prayers and thanksgiving for the soldiers and civilians who sacrificed their lives to defeat it at a rally outside the White House.
Kanter, meanwhile, posted in 2017 a video comparing Erdogan with Adolf Hitler.

Kanter’s father was purged from a university in Istanbul last summer and faces up to 10 years in prison for belonging to the Gulenist movement. Kanter faced a domestic arrest warrant last year. Turkey also canceled his passport in 2017.

Kanter grew up in the Gulen movement, attending its schools since the second grade.

To read this article on World Net Daily, please click here.


Nebraska principal who banned all things Christmas resigns

By Samuel Smith
Christian Post Reporter
January 16, 2019

A Nebraska elementary school principal who sent an internal memo to teachers warning them not to use any Christmas-related messaging and activities in the classroom in December has resigned. 

Jennifer Sinclair, the principal at Manchester Elementary School in Elkhorn, has agreed to step down as school principal following her placement on administrative leave last month after she issued the guidance to teachers.

The internal memo outlined several holiday-related displays, objects, and activities that teachers were banned from using, handing out or assigning during the Christmas season.

Sinclair’s memo, which she signed as the “the (Unintentional) Grinch who stole Christmas,” listed many things that teachers should stay away from including the use of Christmas-related clip art on worksheets, placing Christmas trees in the classrooms, using Christmas-related books and singing Christmas carols with students.

The memo also warned teachers not to give candy canes to students. Sinclair claimed in the document that candy canes are shaped in a “J for Jesus” and that the red is for the “blood of Christ” and “white is a symbol of his resurrection.”

On Monday, the Elkhorn Public School Board unanimously accepted Sinclair’s resignation letter, according to an international social conservative legal group that opposed Sinclair’s memo.

“Due to the level of attention that Sinclair’s memo received, Sinclair and the district stand united that it is in the best interest of Manchester Elementary that she not resume the principal position,” Elkhorn Public Schools Superintendent Bary Habrock wrote in the email that was sent to parents and staff.

According to The Omaha World-Herald, Habrock said that Sinclair stepped down with a “heavy heart and sadness.”

“The district ... would like to thank her for the high level of professionalism during this publicly difficult time,” Habrock wrote in the letter. “We support Sinclair as a leader and educator.”

Sinclair has agreed to stay on with the school district and assume a curriculum position there, news station KMTV reports.

Sinclair’s internal memo drew the ire of the Florida-based conservative Christian legal group, Liberty Counsel, which sent a demand letter to Habrock calling for him to overrule Sinclair’s guidance.

The organization argued that Sinclair’s memo violated the academic rights of teachers as well as the First Amendment rights of students.

“The First Amendment simply does not require the elimination of all Christmas symbols — religious and secular — in a misguided attempt to be ‘inclusive’ by eliminating all traditional elements of a federally and state-recognized holiday,” the Liberty Counsel letter sent by attorney Richard Mast reads. “The effort to comprehensively eliminate Christmas symbols is Orwellian.”

Mast’s demand letter states that Liberty Counsel did not desire to see Sinclair’s removal as school principal but only wanted her “compliance with the law.”

Following the demand letter, a lawyer for Elkhorn Public Schools wrote a response letter explaining that Sinclair’s memo to teachers did not comply with school board policy and that the school district would “work with staff to correct any erroneous communications and clarify any misunderstandings.”

Please click here to read the entire article on the Christian Post web site.




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"

https://www.tapainfo.com/2018/11/22/major-muslim-leader-makes-this-message-to-all-americans-in-two-years-america-will-be-land-of-muslims-and-all-christians-will-be-our-slaves-video/?fbclid=IwAR1tHs2nnA6sCVkFpRVFFub5xtt89hIKkPaYalyUloDVPY-Is33VodnTOnM

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






Muslims reveal their plan for the United States: Convert their kids, and their families will follow.

"We can demonstrate it here, and then scale it up to the rest of the country."

Caldron Pool
December 7, 2018

Muslims in Belle Glade, Florida say they’re planning on acquiring a public school in order to “educate” children as young as six weeks old in the Quran.

“From six weeks old we will have them,” the men said. “From six weeks old, nap time, listening to the Quran. Sisters’ uniform, hijab… You start with the babies and then all the way up to high school. This is the intention for this facility here.”

“Bring your kids to Islamic schools,” they went on to say. “Their kids will convert, and the entire family will convert to Islam… We can demonstrate it here, and then scale it up to the rest of the country.”

Please click here to read and hear more about this.



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

(DAILY MAIL) — Sinead O’Connor has sparked outrage on Twitter by claiming she no longer wants to spend time with ‘disgusting white people’ after converting to Islam.

The Irish singer, who now refers to herself as Shuhada’ Davitt, apologised for her ‘racist’ tweet, but said said ‘I never wanna spend time with white people again.’

She branded ‘white people’ or ‘non-Muslims’ disgusting, before adding: ‘interesting to see if Twitter bans this.’

Click here to read it for yourself.

Muslim boys hang Christian woman in effigy

'Imagine what they're going to be like when they grow up'

World Net Daily

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch, who monitors Islamic violence around the world, describes the troop of children as “cute little tykes.”

And he speculates about “what they’re going to be like when they grow up.”

That’s because, in a video posted on Twitter, the children are seen hanging by the neck a doll representing a Christian woman who was cleared by the Pakistani Supreme Court of “blasphemy” against Muhammad, a capital offense there.

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


Supreme Court to Rule on 40-Foot War Memorial Cross at Center of Church-State Debate

A 2014 lawsuit said that the Peace Cross, which sits on state land in Bladensburg, Md., was an endorsement of Christianity.


By Adam Liptak
November 2, 2018
New York Times

·  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



Historians have long documented Islam's cruelty

Posted By Bill Federer
10/01/2018
In American Minute

Historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee, who died in 1975, provided foreign intelligence for the British during World Wars I and II, and served as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conferences following both wars. He was educated at Oxford “almost entirely in the Greek and Latin Classics.” Toynbee taught at King’s College of London, the London School of Economics, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Toynbee authored many history books, including “Greek Policy Since 1882” (1914), and “The Murderous Tyranny Of The Turks” (London, New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917), in which he wrote: “Turks … from Central Asia, ruled during the first two centuries of their conquests by … unscrupulous Sultans, who subjugated the Christian populations of Asia Minor and South-Eastern Europe, compelling part of these populations to embrace Mohammedanism, and supporting their own power by seizing the children of the rest, forcibly converting them to Islam, and making out of them an efficient standing army, the Janizaries, by whose valour and discipline the Turkish wars of conquest were carried on from early in the 15th down into the 19th century. …”

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.


Beware the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing:

George Soros and his 'rented evangelicals' outed by Christian leaders

By Cheryl K. Chumley
The Washington Times
Monday, October 22, 2018

A new video from the American Association of Evangelicals reveals how George Soros, through his many funding ventures, has been busily infiltrating the Christian base in America to divide, and ultimately conquer, the religious minded within the Republican Party.
Truly, with the left, political wars know no bounds. Nothing’s sacred- not when it comes to the leftists’ drive to succeed.
Here’s what AAE put out in a press release: “Democrat ministers Rev. Jim Wallis and allies are now touring many states on ‘Vote Common Good’ buses to … split the evangelical vote before the mid-term elections. The AAE video features the newly released voice recording of [Jim] Wallis of Sojourners as he publicly denied that he was a recipient of Soros funding.”
But guess what?
His denial’s proven a bit — um, wrong.
Please click here to read more of this article.


Islamist extremism caused 84,000 deaths worldwide in 2017, new report says

 By Olivia Gazis
September 13, 2018 / 6:24 PM
CBS News

A new report tracking the roots, spread and effects of violent Islamist extremism found that 121 groups that share elements from a common ideology are now operating worldwide. Their activities resulted in the deaths of 84,000 people – nearly 22,000 of them civilians – in 66 countries in 2017, the report found.
In remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday that Islamist extremism is "global and growing."
"It didn't begin with al Qaeda; nor will it end with the defeat of ISIS," Blair said.
The "Global Extremist Monitor," which was produced by Blair's eponymous non-profit, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, drew on hundreds of English-language news sources that reported on incidents of violent extremism in 2017. There were a total of 7,841 attacks – an average of 21 per day –in 48 countries, it said, with war-torn Syria topping the list of countries most affected by violent extremism. Overall, Muslims were the most frequent victims of deadly attacks.
Twenty-nine violent Islamist groups were actively engaged in conflict in Syria in 2017, the report said, with ISIS responsible for 44 percent of all attacks. Half of all civilian fatalities recorded globally were documented in Syria.
A separate, recent UN report said there are between 20,000 and 30,000 ISIS fighters still operating across Iraq and Syria, though its self-proclaimed physical caliphate has been all but eliminated.

Please click here to read the article in its entirety.
 
First published on September 13, 2018 / 6:24 PM
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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.


Leftism Is Not Liberalism


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

 

The Islamic State Threat Hasn’t Gone Away

Published: August 1, 2018

by  Michael P. Dempsey, originally in Axios

cfr.org

The bottom line: The events of the past few months serve as a sharp reminder that the Islamic State still poses a significant danger, that the conditions that fueled its rise have not been adequately addressed, and that in the absence of a sustained, multi-pronged strategy to confront this threat, the Islamic State will almost certainly regain its footing and force its way back to the top of America’s crowded security agenda.
Please click here to read the article in its entirety at cfr.org



Revolt grows over Islamization of U.S. schools

Group already in court over San Diego decision to let activists define curriculum

Published: July 11, 2018

Bob Unrah

World Net Daily

 

An organization fighting Islamic indoctrination in the San Diego Public schools – it’s already in court over the issue – is now insisting on access to communications between Seattle school officials and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

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.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2018/07/revolt-grows-over-islamization-of-u-s-schools/#Lzy6FUTXMxSD6grL.99




Ocala will move to vacate First Amendment violation ruling

By Katie Pohlman
Posted June 20, 2018
Ocala Star Banner

U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan ruled in May that the city of Ocala and Police Chief Greg Graham violated the clause by organizing, promoting and holding a prayer vigil in September 2014.
The Ocala City Council has voted to file a motion to vacate judgement in a federal case in which a judge ruled the city and its police chief violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
In a May decision, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan ruled that the city of Ocala and Ocala Police Chief Greg Graham violated the clause by organizing, promoting and holding a prayer vigil in September 2014 after a drive-by shooting in which several children were injured. The chief and city were ordered to pay $3 each in damages ($1 to each plaintiff) plus attorney fees and costs.
City Attorney Pat Gilligan said during an Ocala City Council meeting on Tuesday that the motion to vacate is based on other federal case law.
The city had the opportunity to appeal Corrigan’s ruling, but decided against that.
Attorneys who represent the city and Graham in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
A group of four Marion County residents originally filed the suit, claiming the prayer vigil violated the constitution by having uniformed police officers participate, having government officials plan the event and having the event promoted on OPD letterhead.
“Not only did they violate well-settled constitutional rights ... but they did so in the face of repeated actual warnings from counsel that their conduct was violating the Establishment Clause,” the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgement read.
The Establishment Clause refers to the first 10 words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

STOP RIGHT HERE.
What does a community's decision have to host a prayer vigil have to do with the fact that Congress is banned from making laws regarding established religions???!!
Does it bother you, too, that a Judge who is supposed to uphold the Constitution which is written to protect WE THE PEOPLE from an ever encroaching government, encroaches on a community's natural right to gather in a peaceful manner, whether they pray, or sing songs, or eat ice cream??? Isn't this judge overstepping??!!

Read the articles in its entirety here, and share it with organizations that are concerned with our preserving our Constitution and basic civil freedoms that it was meant to protect.

June 1, 2018
There has been a fair amount of buzz recently about the "morally straight" organization of the Boy Scouts and the attempt to move gender identity into the psychological realm, away from the realm of the physical way that God created people- man, and woman.
 God loves all his children and wants us to carry out loving-kindness for one another, and God is full of forgiveness for all of us; and who among us doesn't error in some behaviors and omissions? When we ask, God is ready to forgive us and point us to a healthier and happy direction, for that is what God wants all us children.  Wondering what the Scripture plainly says about sexual behavior and morality, a particular website came to notice. It's worth your time to read and ponder.  In case you need to save it to visit later, the website is: http://www.livingout.org/the-bible-and-ssa


Trump’s latest appeal to evangelicals: a new office to protect religious liberty

Trump will sign an executive order launching the new White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative today.

Published: May 3, 2018
Author: Tara Isabella Burton
Vox.com

...The institution of faith-based initiatives is not uncommon in the White House — Barack Obama launched the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and George W. Bush instituted an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Both programs were designed to provide faith-based charity organizations with a clear avenue to get federal funding for their work.

That said, Trump’s initiative seems to expand previous offices’ remit in a number of ways. For starters, the office isn’t just focusing on community-based or charitable initiatives. According to the Religion News Service, it’s also charged with informing the administration of “any failures of the executive branch to comply with religious liberty protections under law.” The Trump administration has consistently been a champion of religious liberty, particularly insofar as it pertains to evangelical Christian causes. ...
Please click here to read the entire article at Vox.com.


 England Moves Submarines Armed With Cruise Missiles Within Striking Range Of Syria Theresa May Convenes ‘War Cabinet’

Geoffrey Grider
Apr. 11, 2018
Nowthenedbegins.com

Theresa May was poised last night to defy calls for a Commons vote on military action in Syria. The Prime Minister summoned ministers back to London to seek their support for joining an American-led attack on the Assad regime within days.

EDITOR’S NOTE: British Prime Minister Theresa May is prepared to act with or without the consent of Parliament, sources are now saying. UK submarines armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles have already been positioned off the coast of Syria to support the United States just as soon as President Trump gives the go ahead to launch the missile strike. Kinda funny to think that a potential war of such Biblical proportions could be waged largely on Twitter and social media, yet it is. The end times clock is ticking, the only question is will it blink or go boom? 

Clearing the way for action, she declared the use of chemical weapons could not go unchallenged and said ‘all the indications’ suggested that Bashar Assad’s forces were responsible for Saturday’s atrocity near Damascus.

Please click here to read the article in its entirety.



At Last — A Military Religious Liberty Win

Jordan Candler
Apr. 4, 2018
Patriot Post

"Colonel Bohannon had the right to exercise his sincerely held religious beliefs and did not unlawfully discriminate."
Please click here to read the article in The Patriot Post in its entirety.



Islamic intimidation of the secular British school system

Click here to read an  interesting article from the Gatestone Institute about  intimidation of the secular British school system.
Islamist threats that would be unacceptable coming from other groups, are not prosecuted by law enforcement policies in Britain. Policies do not defend  school administrators, or the general public. But Brits do have a choice- they can be engulfed by the misogenist totalitarian rule of Sharia, or die. 
What will be the tipping point in America?



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:

  • Young children should not be taught about transgenderism or changing their gender.
  • Abortion is wrong, especially after the first trimester.
  • The right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

Despite their relative popularity, these views are repulsive to our elites, and in recent years, they have sought to shut down debate on all three topics by calling anti-gender ideology activists “transphobic”, anti-abortion activists “anti-women”, and defenders of the Constitution “gun nuts” who have “blood on their hands”. On the gender ideology issue, elites have been wildly successful in completely removing debate over transgenderism from the public square and even politics. On abortion, they have largely failed as pro-life sentiment among the people has proven too strong for elites to overcome. And on guns, the jury is still out, but elites are engaging in perhaps their most brazenly outrageous effort to silence opposing views to date. 

It’s About Tactics, Not Issues

The battle between elite opinion and popular opinion is as old as time, but the recent tactical change among elites seeking to stifle dissenting speech is a new, and frightening, development. In a departure from the normal give-and-take of American democracy, the elites have begun using their clout within every major institution of civil society to demonize and punish their opposition — through public shaming in the media, economic extortion and retaliation by big businesses, and even criminalization of certain protest activities. And given their entrenchment within these institutions, the elites face little or no consequences for their blatant illiberality.

A case in point of this change has been the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting. Despite the complexity of the issues involved and the diversity of views held by Americans as to the proper response, the elites have pursued a scorched earth campaign against those who do not hold their black-and-white views on guns. In the news media, a narrative emphasizing the immediate necessity of national gun control legislation has become a 24-hour rallying cry, with victims of the tragedy exploited to advance this narrative and brand those who disagree as somehow complicit in the violence. Meanwhile, corporations have begun to sever ties with the NRA, sending a message that only one side of the debate is socially acceptable while the other is deserving of punishment. 

A similar strategy has been playing out with the movement to normalize the Left’s gender ideology. Despite a lack of scientific evidence — and widespread parental skepticism — regarding the soundness of treating young, gender dysphoric children with highly experimental puberty blockers and hormonal treatments, elites have slowly co-opted influential medical associations in order to ensure that these treatments are not only widely adopted but also that alternative approaches to gender dysphoria are marginalized and even criminalized. Moreover, opponents of this takeover, no matter how well-grounded their opposition, are branded by the media and its self-appointed experts as “transphobes” and “bigots” while being denied any opportunity to make their arguments in a respected forum.

Most Americans Already Understand What’s Happening

Make no mistake: an America with total elite control over the population and where dissent from their views is vilified is not an America at all. The gun debate is simply another battle in the all-out war elites are waging on the American people’s right to even have an opinion, let alone speak out about it and not be punished for it. 

Fortunately, the American people are fully cognizant of what is taking place, which is why they voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Instead of looking at Trump and Clinton through the two lenses voters typically use, moral character and issue positions, voters applied a third lens: would their views be allowed to be articulated at all without dire consequences under a Clinton administration? 

We cannot keep pretending, like so many Never Trumpers do, that we are operating in an environment of normal political give-and-take on issues. That time has passed. We are instead operating in a country now where elites demonize the populist position with such ferocity that many are afraid to voice their opinion at all, which is, of course, the entire point of their strategy. Our fight is no longer just over political issues — it is a battle against the very tactics being used by elites to stifle debate and destroy the essence of what makes America great. 

Frank Cannon is the president at American Principles Project.



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

  • Islamists seem to be influencing the British school system with ease: there is simply no solid opposition to them. The government even stays silent about the harassment and intimidation.
  • Islamists in Britain seem to be intent on establishing regressive requirements, such as the hijab for young girls, wife beating, making homosexuality illegal, death for apostates, halala rituals in divorce, and exploitation of women and children through Sharia courts as part and parcel of British culture.
  • That St. Stephen's School allowed itself to be blackmailed in this way bodes ill for both Britain and its education system.


St. Stephen's School in East London recently imposed a ban on hijabs (Islamic headscarves), but reversed its decision after administrators received hundreds of threats from enraged Muslims.


...Four examples of threats and  intimidation follow- click link to read article in its entirety...

continuing....

"This is an important step in promoting religious extremism, mob rule and refusing to give #Muslim young girls equal gender equality rights.... So much for choice and individual liberty. Terribly sad day for a secular democracy."

While secular British values need to be upheld to provide equal opportunities to everyone, regardless of caste, creed, gender or color, Islamists seem to be influencing the British school system with ease: there is simply no solid opposition to them. The government even stays silent about the harassment and intimidation.

Was St. Stephen's forced to succumb to the pressure of ignorant zealots, who either do not know or choose to ignore that under Islamic law (Sharia), girls are not required to cover their heads until they reach puberty? Ignorance also seems not to have prevented them from accusing anyone who says or acts otherwise of "Islamophobia." It is a form of political blackmail used by Muslim extremists against the Western institutions, the values of which they abhor.


Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the School System, Lord Agnew of Oulton, pledged to support the schools that are trying to ban hijabs as well as obligatory fasting: in Islam, young children are not subject to either.

Lord Agnew said that the government should support head teachers in making difficult and "sensitive" decisions in the face of vitriolic opposition. We have yet to see the effects of his statement. Supporting head teachers is one thing, but there is also a dire need to confront these extremists on all levels, including law enforcement, if they try to harass or intimidate anyone.

Someone please needs to back up Lord Agnew: there are only a few such policy-makers left willing to offer rational help during such crises.


Islamists in Britain seem to be intent on establishing regressive requirements, such as the hijab for young girls, wife-beating, halala rituals in divorce, making homosexuality illegal, death for apostates, and the exploitation of women and children through Sharia courts as part and parcel with British culture.

Instead of making statements, the British government needs to take concrete steps to stop the further infiltration of these practices into Britain's social fabric, the warping of children's minds, and the harassment of whoever disagrees with those plans.


That St. Stephen's allowed itself to be blackmailed in this way bodes ill for both Britain and its education system.

Khadija Khan is a Pakistani journalist and commentator, currently based in Germany.

 




Under Islamic repression, 'Christianity has ignited like a flame'

By Bob Unrah
19 February 2018
World Net Daily

Hopeful news out of Iran....

Has Iran taken on a fight that it can never win?
Evidence suggests that might be the case, as the internationally renowned American Center for Law and Justice points out that the Islamic regime now is becoming desperate to extinguish a surging population of Christians inside its borders.

Iran, after all, is a nation that has exported terrorism for decades. It has the free world worried about its nuclear-weapons program. It routinely threatens to destroy Israel. It interferes with Middle East conflicts and engages in cyberwar against the West.

But the American Center for Law and Justice reports Christianity “has ignited like a flame across the country of Iran, making the Iranian government so nervous they’re desperate to extinguish it quickly.”

Iranians are converting to Christianity at a record-setting pace, with an estimated 360,000 to 800,000 Christians in the country.

There were fewer than 500 back in the 1980s.

“It’s difficult to take an accurate census because fears of retribution, arrest, and violence keep many Christian converts from self-identifying. Iranian authorities have been raiding the homes of suspected Christians, confiscating their books, computers, and other media and arresting the men,” ACLJ said.

The government has spent millions of dollars to fight the growing interest in Christianity, the mission group Elam Ministries told Mohabat News, a website that reports on Christians in Iran.

The money has gone toward Islamic propaganda, jailing church members, confiscation of Christian materials and more, the report said.

Ayatollah Alavi Boroujerdi, an official at an Islamic seminary, has confirmed that  “youth are becoming Christians in Qom and attending house churches.”

Christians are being forced to hide their faith to protect themselves and their families, because worshipping Jesus “will get you arrested, and very possibly get you killed,” a critic reported.

“This is something we at the ACLJ have witnessed first hand, advocating for a number of imprisoned Christians pastors in Iran – including Youcef Nadarkhani, who we successfully fought to free from multiple false imprisonments for his faith. In each of these cases, Iran has targeted pastors in an attempt to squelch the Christian church. It has failed each and every time. In fact, the attempts to silence the church has only made it louder as Christianity grows in Iran,” ACLJ said.

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



What 'peace' means to Muslims; just ask Jefferson
By Bill Federer
16 February 2018
World Net Daily

Bill Federer recounts brief history of American conflicts with brutality of Islam

“The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco,” stated President Obama in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009.
Morocco began recognizing American colonists in 1625. Governor William Bradford described the incident in the History of the Plymouth Settlement. In 1625, the Pilgrims sent two ships back to England carrying dried fish and 800 lbs of beaver skins to trade for much needed supplies.
What happened next?
Bradford related the fate of one ship: “They … were well within the England channel, almost in sight of Plymouth. But … there she was unhapply taken by a Turkish man-of-war and carried off to Morocco where the captain and crew were made slaves. … Now by the ship taken by the Turks … all trade was dead.”
...
When America became independent, it was no longer covered by the British extortion tribute payment to the Muslim pirates. Morocco “recognized” the United States in 1785 by capturing two American ships and holding the sailors for ransom. Thomas Jefferson worked to free them, writing to John Jay, 1787: “There is an order of priests called the Mathurins, the object of whose institution is to beg alms for the redemption of captives. They keep members always in Barbary, searching out the captives of their country, and redeem, I believe, on better terms than any other body, public or private. It occurred to me, that their agency might be obtained for the redemption of our prisoners at Algiers.”
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Carmichael regarding Tripoli’s demand for extortion tribute payment, 1786: “Mr. Adams and I had conferences with a Tripoline ambassador, named Abdrahaman. He asked us thirty thousand guineas for a peace with his court.”
When Jefferson asked the Muslim Ambassador what the new country of America had done to offend them, he reported to John Jay, March 28, 1786: “The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of the prophet, it was written in their Qur’an, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman (Muslim) who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.”
Jefferson read the Qur’an, not out of admiration but to understand why Muslims were attacking Americans unprovoked.

For a more complete history read this article at http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/what-peace-means-to-muslims-just-ask-jefferson/#lPxcsFtkvqdTezS1.99



Islam in the Public Square

Crisis Magazine
William Kilpatrick
January 2, 2018


Secularists like to advise Christians that, for the sake of social harmony, they ought to keep their religion to themselves. Religion, they argue, is a private affair between an individual and his designated deity, and ought not to be dragged into the public square. Moreover, they helpfully add, it’s an imposition on others to confront them with beliefs that they may find offensive.

 As for themselves, secularists have no qualms about imposing their own values on everyone within reach. They are convinced of the rightness of their beliefs, and consequently they don’t think twice about forcing Christian bakers, florists, and photographers to endorse gay weddings. They are also convinced that they know what’s best for your children. And what’s best for them, they are quite certain, is that they learn all the latest fashions in gender identity and marriage equality.
 
In his groundbreaking 1984 book, The Naked Public Square, Richard John Neuhaus argued that the public square can never be naked for long. In other words, it cannot be neutral about values: “If it is not clothed with the ‘meanings’ borne by religion, new ‘meanings’ will be imposed by virtue of the ambitions of the modern state.”
 
In short, the committed secularist won’t be satisfied with the removal of the crèche from the town square. He’ll insist that it be replaced with something that more accurately reflects American diversity—say, a monument to Margaret Sanger or a statue of James Obergefell. Of course, secular society’s reach extends well beyond the town green. The religion of secularism is constantly being advanced in a variety of venues—in courtrooms, school rooms, and in the newly remodeled bathrooms that accommodate the newly invented genders.
 
Fr. Neuhaus was right in predicting that “a perverse notion of the disestablishment of religion leads to the establishment of the state as Church.” The secular state quickly moves to enshrine whatever values it currently smiles upon. And it defends them as though they were divinely revealed dogma. But, despite his prescience, Neuhaus did fail to anticipate another development—namely, that the Judeo-Christian tradition might be displaced from the public square not only by the state, but also by another religion.

 The possibility that Islam would one day be a contender for control of the public square probably didn’t enter his mind. That’s no surprise. Except for the blip caused by the Iranian Revolution, Islam wasn’t on anyone’s radar in the early eighties. Yet Islam is now well on its way to controlling the public square in parts of Europe. And, were it not for the election of Donald Trump and the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Clinton machine, the U.S. would now be playing catch-up.
 
As has often been observed, Islam is a political religion. Some, like Dutch MP Geert Wilders, contend that it is almost totally political with only a thin and deceptive veneer of religiosity. Whatever the exact proportion of politics to religion, it’s hard to deny that the political dimension looms large in Islam. Muhammad, after all, was a warlord. He conquered all of Arabia, and within a relatively short time after his death, his followers conquered an area larger than the Roman Empire. Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi, one of the most important twentieth-century Islamic theorists, wrote that “Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet.”

Please click here to read the article in its entirety at Crisis Magazine





ISIS Kills Scores of Christians in Retaken Syrian Town: Report

By Conor Gaffey
Newsweek.com
4/11/16

The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) killed scores of Christians when they captured a Syrian town recently liberated by the government, a Syrian Christian leader has said.

ISIS swept into the town of Al-Qaryatain in August 2015, kidnapping at least 230 civilians including dozens of Christians in the central Syrian town, which lies 104 kilometers (65 miles) southwest of Palmyra. The town had a population of some 2,000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox Christians prior to the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, but this had dropped to just 300 before ISIS took control.

Al-Qaryatain was retaken by Syrian government forces with the backing of Russian airstrikes earlier in April and reports are just beginning to emerge of life under the extremist group for civilians in the town. Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II, the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church, told the BBC on Sunday that 21 Christians were murdered when ISIS first captured the city.

Some died trying to escape while others were killed for violating the terms of contracts they had signed requiring them to submit to the extremists’ interpretation of Islamic law. Hundreds of Christians in Al-Qaryatain were reportedly forced to sign so-called dhimmi contracts, which enabled them to live under ISIS rule in the town. The patriarch added that five other Christians are missing and presumed dead, while ransoms had been paid to ISIS to secure the release of the rest of the Christians.

The civil war in Syria has had a devastating impact on the country’s Christian contingent, which made up approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population before the outbreak of the conflict. The European Parliament stated in October 2015 that about 40 percent of Syria’s Christian population—or 700,000 people—had fled the country.

Go to this website to read the original article http://www.newsweek.com/isis-killed-scores-christians-retaken-syrian-town-patriarch-446132

NOTE: Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem, was dead for three days, and rose from the dead, and walked among us for forty days until his Ascension. After the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles, they spread out to different areas of the land to spread the good news, of our salvation. One of the first places they went to was what is now Syria, which was the home of Simon Peter. Not only does ISIS eradicate people who do not bow down to their cult they attempt to erase the ancient traces of preceding times like in Palmyra which was a Roman outpost in Syria, from the first or second century after the year of our Lord. Click here to view more about that.

R.I.P. Justice Scalia

Feb. 18, 2016

It is hard to imagine a greater loss to Liberty in America than has occurred in the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia. His understanding of the Constitution as a pact between free people and government, and our protection from oppressive government, was unparalleled.

The fact that 30% of Americans do not know who he was, speaks volumes about the state of our Union and our education system.

My words and thoughts are totally inadequate but you can easily find more about the great man's life and legacy. Click here for a link to wikipedia. Or click here to read the thoughts of the other Justices on the Supreme Court about him.

R.I.P. Justice Scalia.


Shariah Law at work in the Obama Administration

Obama DHS scrubs records of hundreds of Muslim terrorists

Published: 7 Feb 2016
World Net Daily
Pamela Geller

       Not only did the Obama administration scrub counter-terror programs of jihad and Islam, now we find out that his administration scrubbed the records of Muslim terrorists. If the enemedia were not aligned with the jihad force, this would be front-page news across the nation.

An agent of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, for 15 years, Philip Haney, reported Friday that after the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to blow up a crowded passenger jet over Detroit, “President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to ‘connect the dots.’ He said, ‘This was not a failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.'”

Haney revealed: “Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material – the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.”

What Haney discloses is truly shocking: “Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to ‘connect dots.’ Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.”

Who gave the order to scrub the records of Muslims with ties to terror groups?

These new shocking revelations come fresh on the heels of whistleblower testimony in the wake of the San Bernardino jihad slaughter, revealing that the Obama administration shut down investigations into jihadists in America (and quite possible the San Bernardino shooters) at the request of the Department of State and the DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. Haney noted: “They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?”

How is this not impeachable? When did foreign terrorists get civil rights?

Haney described how he began investigating scores of individuals with links to the traditionalist Islamic Indo-Pakistani Deobandi movement, and its related offshoots, prominently, Tablighi Jamaat. 

I have reported on this infiltration for years. I reported on it extensively in my book, “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.” Obama has partnered with terror-tied groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American Society and others. The stealth jihad in the information battle-space has led to the vigorous enforcement of blasphemy laws under the Shariah, as Obama ordered that counter-terror training materials must avoid all reference to Islam and jihad. Under Islamic law, it is prohibited to criticize Islam.

The Obama administration is Shariah-compliant at all costs. Its number one priority is to protect Islam, even when it puts American lives at risk. The cold-blooded slaughter of Americans in the homeland by Muslims has not tempered Obama’s Shariah enthusiasm. On the contrary, Garland, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, UCMED, San Bernardino, etc., have accelerated it.

My civil liberties and your civil liberties are being abridged in accordance with the blasphemy laws under Shariah. My organization is engaged in 15 different free-speech lawsuits against various cities. Our free-speech lawsuit against Boston is heading to the Supreme Court, because even though truthful, our ads violate the laws of Shariah (“do not criticize Islam”). We are being forced to adhere to Shariah mores, but jihad murderers are given sanctuary and protection – to slaughter Americans.

The moral, or in this case the immoral, of the story is this: Jihad terror works.

Click here to read this article in its entirety, including links to more information.
 
Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of the WND Books title "Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance."



Wisconsin firm fires Muslims in prayer dispute

Religious breaks disrupted production at lawn mower, snowblower manufacturer

Published: 02/04/2016

(ABC News) A civil liberties group said Wednesday that it plans to file federal discrimination and harassment complaints after a Wisconsin manufacturer fired seven Muslim employees for violating a company break policy that doesn’t provide extra time for prayer.

Ariens Co. terminated the workers in a dispute that began last month when it moved to enforce an existing rule of two 10-minute breaks per work shift and dozens of Muslim staffers of Somali descent walked off the job in protest.

Of the 53 employees involved, 32 have abided with the policy, 14 resigned and seven were terminated Tuesday, according to Ariens spokeswoman Ann Stilp. The news of the terminations was first reported by WLUK-TV in Green Bay.

Please click here to read entire article at ABC News.
 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/wisconsin-firm-terminates-muslim-workers-prayer-dispute-36695435


Finland TV airs 'laughable' strategy to stop rape

If shouting 'No!' doesn't work, then swat attacker with purse

World Net Daily
Published: 02/03/2016
by Leo Hohmann

A public-service advertisement running on Finland TV instructs women in the Scandinavian country on how to fend off a rapist.
But rather than pull out a handgun or even pepper spray, the women of Finland are taught to confront their attackers with bare hands and a purse.
Rape epidemics have engulfed Finland, Sweden and Germany in a sea of fear since the mass influx of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa began two years ago.

 Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he found the video laughable.
Anti-Shariah activist and author Pamela Geller posted the video on her website earlier this week under the title "It just gets more absurd."

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/



 Netanyahu: Islamic terrorism is flooding the world from Jakarta to California

The prime minister says the struggle against terrorism will take time but that Israel is fighting hard.

 Jerusalem Post
by JPOST.COM STAFF
BEN HARTMAN
02/04/2016

Islamic terrorism is flooding the world and inciting millions from Jakarta to Africa and all the way to California, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip on Thursday to the Jerusalem hospital treating a Border Police officer who was injured in yesterday's attack at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City.

Netanyahu praised the courage of the security forces and the courage and strength the Border Police officer shown during Wednesday's attack. He also expressed his condolences to the family of Border Police officer Hadar Cohen who was killed in the combined shooting and stabbing attack.

Three Arab terrorists wielding machine guns, pipe bombs and knives carried out the attack on Wednesday killing Cohen, 19, who died of her wounds shortly after being rushed to the capital's Hadassa University Medical Center at Mt. Scopus. Her partner, Ravit, was seriously wounded and underwent emergency surgery at the hospital. As of Thursday morning she was considered to be in moderate condition.

"We are all saddened by the death of Hadar Cohen, a real hero. We all embrace the family," Netanyahu said.

The prime minister emphasized that a great effort is being put into the fight against terrorism, during the lengthy effort to defeat it.

"It will take time, it is a long struggle," Netanyahu said. "We are in this fight, it is not passing us by, but we are fighting it with great force and will continue to do so."

"Kabatiya has been closed off while the IDF and the Shin bet make widespread arrests of wanted suspects, we have cancelled many work permits and the attorney-general informed me yesterday that he has added a number of houses belonging to terrorists to be slated for demolition," Netanyahu said of the West Bank village, from where Wednesday's terrorists hailed.

Police Commissioner Inspector General Roni Alsheich paid a visit to the wounded Border Police officer on Wednesday night.

During his visit, Alsheich praised the two teenager Border Police officers who had recently drafted into the force for preventing a major terror attack.

Alsheich said “I have no doubt that a terror cell that comes with an arsenal like this has every intention of carrying out a massive attack.”

Ravit and Cohen were part of a three-man patrol along with their commander. They had only been drafted a couple months before and their deployment at Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem was part of their training.

Since the attack yesterday, police and the Border Police have drawn criticism for the fact that the two women were posted at one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the country so soon after they were drafted.

The three terrorists were responsible for the attack were identified as Ahmed Rajeh Zakarneh, Muhammad Ahmed Kmail, and Ahmed Najeh Abu al-Rub. All three were shot dead at the scene. Their explosives did not detonate and were later neutralized by a police bomb disposal team.

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.


A Glimpse of Clinton and her Advisors...


No holds barred: Torrent of anti-Israel advice found in Hillary’s emails


Jerusalem Post - Opinion
By Shmuley Boteach
02/01/2016

Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its best interests? Advice like this was par for the course with Clinton’s advisers.

It’s already been established that one of Hillary Clinton’s most trusted advisers, Sid Blumenthal, sent her anti-Israel articles, ideas and advice during her time as secretary of state. But the stream of anti-Israel advice received by Clinton was much more comprehensive.

In the entire forced dump of Clinton’s emails, you will be hard pressed to find a single one sympathetic toward the Jewish state from any of the people she relied on. The negative, poisonous approach to Israel throughout this email expose shows the atmosphere that she had established around herself. These emails seem to demonstrate that a huge segment of her close advisers and confidantes were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria at all costs.

This was occurring against the backdrop of Israel’s recent Gaza withdrawal, which led to the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. There is almost zero mention of the huge risks to Israel’s security in withdrawing as Clinton and the Obama administration did everything they could to pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.

Take a look at a sampling of the advice being sent to Clinton from her many advisers that we have now become privy to.

Sandy Berger was Clinton’s foreign policy adviser during her 2008 presidential campaign. In September of 2010 he sent her ideas on how to pressure Israel to make concessions for peace. Berger acknowledged “how fragile is Abbas’s political position,” and how “Palestinians are in disarray,” and that “failure is a real possibility.” Berger was well aware of, and informed Hillary of, the very real possibility that Israel would be placing its national security at grave risk in a deal that would very likely fail and lead to a Hamas takeover.

But Berger felt the risks to Israeli lives were worth it.

He advised the need to make Netanyahu feel “uneasy about incurring our displeasure....”

Berger emphasizes the need “to convince the prime minister – through various forms of overt persuasion and implicit pressure – to make the necessary compromises” and talks of the “possibility – to turn his position against him.”

Astoundingly, Berger seems to accuse the Jews in America of racism toward Obama. He writes, “At a political level, the past year has clearly demonstrated the degree to which the U.S. has been hamstrung by its low ratings in Israel and among important segments of the domestic Jewish constituency....” He then adds, “Domestically, he faces a reservoir of skepticism on this issue which reflects many factors, including inexcusable prejudice.”

Anne Marie Slaughter was Clinton’s director of policy planning from 2009-2011. She wrote to Clinton in September of 2010 and devised a scheme to encourage wealthy philanthropists to pledge millions to the Palestinians (which no doubt would have been embezzled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies as were other funds).

She wrote: “This may be a crazy idea.... Suppose we launched a “Pledge for Palestine” campaign... Such a campaign among billionaires/multi-millionaires around the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in the building of a Palestinian state....”

She adds: “There would also be a certain shaming effect re Israelis who, would be building settlements in the face of a pledge for peace.”

Clinton’s response to this email: “I am very interested- pls flesh out. Thx.”

Robert Russo, one of Clinton’s aides and currently her campaign’s “director of correspondence and briefings” sent an email in April of 2012 informing her of Netanyahu’s father’s death and advising her to give him a condolence call. Included with Russo’s email is an extremely biased article attacking both Netanyahu and his father, describing them as virulently racist warmongers and calling the elder Netanyahu “a behindthe- scenes adviser to his son, the most powerful person in Israel.”

The article noted that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly denied that his father was a one-dimensional ideologue. He further emphasized that he himself was a different person from his father.”

But then it goes on to say, without providing any proof whatsoever, “Israelis seemed in the dark about the extent of paternal influence on their leader,” and “To understand Bibi, you have to understand the father.”

One might be forgiven for questioning Clinton’s sympathy and sincerity when she later placed the call and gave Netanyahu her condolences.

Thomas Pickering, former US ambassador to Israel, wrote to Clinton on December 18, 2011, and suggested a secret plan to stir up major Palestinian protests in an attempt to force the Israeli government into peace negotiations.

He stated that the protests “must be all and only women. Why? On the Palestinian side the male culture is to use force.”

Pickering’s goal was to ignite protests that would engulf the West Bank, “just like Tahrir square.” He adds that the Palestinian “leadership has shied away from this idea because they can’t control it,” and they are “afraid of being replaced.”

This idiotic reasoning that somehow only women would participate and things would stay peaceful is obviously absurd. As Pickering himself notes, “Palestinian men will not for long patiently demonstrate – they will be inclined over time and much too soon to be frustrated and use force. Their male culture comes close to requiring it.”

Regardless, Pickering writes that the protests could be used against Israel “to influence the political leadership.”

The idea was as dangerous for the Palestinians as it was for Israel. As Pickering himself admits, widespread protests could overthrow Abbas’ government, and if Palestinian men joined in, widespread violence would inevitably break out. It would obviously be impossible to prevent men from participating in these demonstrations.

Yet Pickering felt this extreme risk was worth taking, even if it meant the replacement of Abbas with another Hamas-led government. And even if meant violence breaking out across the West Bank leading to a third intifada and the murder of countless Jews. He also emphasizes the need to hide all US involvement in this plot. Clinton forwarded this email to Monica Hanley and asked her to “pls print.”

Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its best interests? Advice like this was par for the course when it came to Clinton’s advisers.

In a follow-up column we’ll illuminate even more anti-Israel advice that was given the then-secretary of state. Sadly, there was just so much of it.

The author, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international bestselling author of 30 books including his upcoming The Israel Warrior’s Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @ RabbiShmuley.

(Links within this article are not from jp.com)

Click here to read the original article at the Jerusalem Post website and check for the follow up column if you have the stomach for it.



 In Colo., a look at life after marijuana legalization

Boston Globe

Joshua Miller

Feb 22, 2016

 

DENVER — Nestled between a 7-Eleven and a store selling Broncos jerseys, the door to the generic-looking retail establishment is easy to miss. But once inside, the smell is unmistakable.

 

At Euflora, tables are filled with glass containers of marijuana next to interactive tablets describing each strain (“sweet floral aroma,” “intoxicatingly potent”). An array of marijuana-infused products beckon behind locked cases: from energy shots to sour gummies, brownies to bacon brittle. And if you’re 21 or older, it’s all legal to buy.

 

This is Colorado, where a billion-dollar-a-year legal marijuana industry has emerged since January 2014. It offers an early look at what Massachusetts could face should voters greenlight an expected ballot question and legalize the drug this fall.

 

So has legalization been a plus or a minus?

 

“Yes,” Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman replied with a laugh.

 

The consensus among several top state officials — who emphasize that their job is to carry out the will of the voters rather than mull whether their constituents made the right choice — is that there have been no widely felt negative effects on the state since marijuana became legal, and a crop of retail stores, cultivation facilities, and manufacturers sprung up from Aurora to Telluride.

 

Legalization has ushered in thousands of new jobs in the burgeoning industry, brought $135 million into state coffers last year, and ended the prohibition of a widely used substance.

 

But police say they struggle to enforce a patchwork of laws covering marijuana, including drugged driving. Officials fret about the industry becoming like big tobacco, dodging regulation and luring users with slick advertising. And this state, long a leader in cannabis use, has the highest youth rate of marijuana use in the nation, according to the most recent data available from a federal drug-use survey.

 

Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment in November 2012 legalizing the sale of recreational marijuana, which began in 2014.

 

The drug is heavily regulated. Each plant for sale must be tagged with a radio frequency identification chip, from an early stage of its life to sale, to help the state track it. Marijuana, both in plant form and infused in products, is required to be tested for potency and contaminants, and sold in child-resistant containers.

 

 

Tourists and locals alike can buy recreational marijuana as long as they are at least 21 and can possess up to 1 ounce. Only those with a medical marijuana “red card,” issued by the state on the recommendation of a physician, can possess more at one time.

 

While the popular image of marijuana use remains joints and vaporizers, a significant percentage of marijuana sales in Colorado — nearly half according to some estimates — take the form of infused products, such as edible treats, pills, drops, bath soak, and even “sensual enhancement oil.”

 

More than two years into the still-rapidly growing industry, how do top officials and their constituents see legalization?

 

“There are a certain number of folks, like myself, who were pretty reticent about it to begin with,” said House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, a Democrat. But “the sky didn’t fall. Everything seems to be working pretty well.”

 

That’s in line with the view of Colorado voters, according to a November 2015 survey. The poll found 53 percent believe legalizing marijuana has been good for the state, while 39 percent believe it has been bad.

 

And Dr. Larry Wolk, the top medical official in Colorado’s public health department, said that since legalization no large troubling public health trends have cropped up yet. But he noted sporadic reports of impaired driving and people getting violently ill from ingesting too much marijuana in edibles, such as candy bars.

 

He said this month new data indicate that the biggest increases in marijuana hospitalizations have been seen among out-of-staters, who might be naive about the drug’s effects.

 

All marijuana, including medical, is subject to standard state and local sales tax in Colorado. But recreational marijuana is also subject to an additional 10 percent special state tax, along with additional local marijuana taxes. And there’s also a 15 percent excise tax on wholesale transfers of recreational marijuana, that ends up raising retail prices.

 

For producers, the tax picture is among the many complexities of running a marijuana business.

 

Sally Vander Veer, president of one of the state’s largest dispensaries and cultivation operations, which has 70 employees and a payroll of about $3.8 million a year, is bullish on her rapidly expanding business. Medicine Man has a 40 percent profit margin, she said. But her company struggles with what she estimates to be an effective tax rate of nearly 50 percent, as well as having to deal almost exclusively in cash. Because marijuana remains illegal under federal law, access to banking services is severely restricted.

 

The state saw $135 million in tax and fee revenue last year from the recreational and medical marijuana industry, money that has gone to, among other efforts, education for youth and law enforcement on the drug.

 

State Representative Jonathan Singer, a leader on marijuana issues in the House, said what legalization has done is “allowed marijuana to pay its own way,” with the cost of regulation paid for by dispensaries and consumers.

 

Yet law enforcement officials offer a more negative, chaotic view. They paint a picture of a quickly evolving array of laws, regulations, and ordinances that outpace their enforcement tools for related issues, such as drugged driving.

 

For one, they say, there’s no quick, reliable check to see whether drivers are too high to operate a vehicle safely, as there is for blood-alcohol level. And there’s no easy way to determine whether food products in a vehicle are infused with pot.

 

“You have no ability to test the gummy bear laying there on the dashboard,” said Chief John Jackson of the Greenwood Village, Colo., Police Department said.

 

“Edibles pose a problem because there is no way to tell the potency of it, there is no way to test it in the field. And no law enforcement officer is going to lick it and say, ‘Well, there’s marijuana, THC in that.’ ” (THC is the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana.)

 

Jackson, former president of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, and other police officials said legalization simply moved much faster than law enforcement officers’ ability to keep up with it.

 

Jackson, who sounded beleaguered in an interview, said a fallacy of legalization is that it would give law enforcement time back to focus on more serious, complicated criminal issues and bigger drug problems.

 

Two years and two months into full legalization, he said, “we’re not seeing that.”

 

Another problem with edible marijuana products, said Dr. Michael DiStefano, who directs emergency medicine clinical operations at Colorado’s only top-level pediatric trauma center: the inability of kids to distinguish between normal products and those infused with THC.

 

When marijuana is “handled responsibly, it’s not an issue for children’s health. The problem is a lot of these edibles,” he said. “They look like regular candy. . . . There’s no way to discern what is an edible gummy bear that has THC in it, versus a regular gummy bear. In fact, you cannot distinguish them unless they’re in the package.”

 

He said he’s seen an uptick in kids admitted to the ER at Children’s Hospital Colorado — to about 15 last year — ill from accidentally ingesting edible marijuana-infused foods since the drug became legal for recreational use in January 2014.

 

Indeed, the most grinding concerns and the biggest question marks focus on kids and young adults. But the effects of legalization on children remain effectively unknown with about two years of experience and lagging statistics.

 

Opponents of legalization point to a federal drug survey that estimates Colorado had the highest level of any state of 12- to 17-year-olds reporting marijuana use in the last 30 days for 2013-2014. But the change in Colorado’s youth use rate from 2012-2013 — before full legalization— to 2013-2014 — partly after — was not statistically significant. And federal statisticians say the findings are not sufficient to draw conclusions about changes in youth marijuana use patterns as a result of legalization.

 

Wolk, the top doctor at the state’s public health department, said Colorado marijuana use has always been high compared with the rest of the country.

 

“No pun intended,” he said, “we started high and stayed high — use hasn’t increased in a statistically significant way since legalization. Those that were using before are still using now, among youths and adults.”

 

For some opponents, a big concern isn’t just what has happened so far, but what’s yet to come. They worry that the burgeoning marijuana industry, like alcohol and tobacco before it, could eventually use its profits to gain clout and subvert attempts at regulation.

 

Jeffrey Zinsmeister, executive vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a national nonprofit group cofounded by former US representative Patrick Kennedy that opposes legalization and commercialization of marijuana, said there have been several red flags.

 

“You’re seeing this headlong rush into another addictive industry without knowing what widespread marijuana use is going to do to society,” he warned. “And the signs from Colorado are not good.”

 

Officials say their primary concerns include: adults being able to legally consume the drug normalizes it for kids; Joe Camel-like ads that make pot smoking seem appealing to kids; and legalization increasing availability, thus making the barrier to getting marijuana lower.

 

“I worry about normalization, I worry about commercialization, and I worry about availability,” said Andrew Freedman, who directs Governor John Hickenlooper’s Office of Marijuana Coordination.

 

“What happens to people over the long term, especially kids over the long term, as they see marijuana normalized, as they see people advertising for marijuana, and as accessibility becomes greater and greater?” he asked. “Kids who are, right now, saying, ‘No thanks,’ will that change over time?”

 

Freedman and other people deeply involved in the day-to-day oversight of the new market say it functions pretty smoothly. But they emphasize the broader question of whether or not legalization ends up a success will probably take five or 10 years to answer fully.

 

Joshua Miller can be reached at joshua.miller@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jm_bos. Click here to subscribe to his weekday e-mail update on politics.


File this Under U S Constitution or Religious Freedom??

September 22, 2016

  A 300 page report issued by the United States Council on Civil Rights (USCCR) on 7 September of 2016, has caused a righteous outcry from many religious and other liberty loving institutions. You may rightly question the authority of a commission that  blindly ignores the fundamental liberty of individuals alluded to in the first amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. The commission, headed by chairman Martin R Castro, appointed by President Obama in 2011, suffers a serious blind spot of vision.


The USCCR recommends particular protections for people who fall within a variety of groups designated by particular labels adopted over the years, offering these groups special privileges beyond that of "regular" Americans, those generic citizens, whose basic liberties were noted and codified in the founding documents of our country to be protected from the encroachment of the rules and restrictions and regulations of an ever-growing totalitarian government which has usurped some non-existent power to brand my conscience and beliefs as "intolerant" or discriminatory.

There is a blind spot on the part of the commission that does not recognize the freedom of faith-abiding people of conscience to live by the tenets of their respective religions, that do not infringe upon health and welfare of others.

There are a number of links to explore- first of all a link to the report itself, followed by reactions and comments of a variety of faith-based organizations, as well as the watchdog groups that recognize the freedoms that our Constitution attempted to protect.

http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/Peaceful-Coexistence-09-07-16.PDF

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/obama-crony-religious-liberty-code-discrimination-intolerance

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/09/16/the-deeply-troubling-federal-report-highlighting-religious-freedom/

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2016/09/14/archbishop-blasts-claim-religious-freedom-code-discrimination/

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/bill-donohue/federal-agency-trashes-religious-liberty

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865662326/US-Civil-Rights-Commission-chairman-says-religious-freedoms-stand-for-nothing-except-hypocrisy.html?pg=all

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/are-religious-freedom-advocates-christian-supremacists

http://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/discriminatory-overreach-civil-rights-commission-attacks-religious-freedom

http://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=8CEC1C14-EA39-40FC-97A8-51BB6408C91C

http://libertycounsel.com/breaking-obama-administration-declares-war-on-religious-liberty-liberty-counsel/


U.S. Slams Israel for New West Bank Settlement Expansion

Marcy Oster
September 1, 2016

(JTA) — The U.S. State Department condemned the announcement that an Israeli planning committee approved the construction of hundreds of housing units in four West Bank settlements.

“We’re deeply concerned by the government’s announcement to advance plans for these settlement units in the West Bank,” State Department Spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, in answer to a reporter’s question during a briefing, hours after reports of the approval. “Since the Quartet report came out, we have seen a very significant acceleration of Israeli settlement activity that runs directly counter to the conclusions of the report. So far this year, Israel has promoted plans for over 2,500 units, including over 700 units retroactively approved in the West Bank.”

Kirby said that the State Department is “particularly troubled by the policy of retroactively approving unauthorized settlement units and outposts that are themselves illegal under Israeli law. These policies have effectively given the Israeli Government a green light for the pervasive advancement of settlement activity in a new and potentially unlimited way. This significant expansion of the settlement enterprise poses a very serious and growing threat to the viability of the two-state solution.”

“Potentially unlimited” is a recent term used by the State Department, and seems to indicate that State believes Israel wants to annex the West Bank.

The Civil Administration’s High Planning Committee on Wednesday approved construction of 234 living units in Elkana in the northern West Bank, designated to be a nursing home; 30 homes in Beit Arye in the northern West Bank; and 20 homes in the Jerusalem ring neighborhood of Givat Zeev.

The committee also retroactively legalized 179 housing units built in the 1980s in Ofarim, part of the Beit Arye municipality.

The approval comes less than a week after Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, criticized Israel for continuing to build in West Bank settlements and neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem, going against the recommendations issued in June by the Mideast Quartet. The Quartet, made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the U.N., called on Israel in June to stop building in the settlements and on the Palestinians to halt incitement.

Click here to read the above article on the forward.com web site



In Saudi Arabia, signs of an effort to break the Israel taboo

By Michael Wilner, Herb Keinon
08/30/2016 21:30

Saudi state-run media appears to be softening its reporting on Israel, running unprecedented columns floating the prospect of direct relations, quoting Israeli officials and filling its news holes with fewer negative stories on Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians.

The public shift – from outlets such as al-Arabiya and Riyadh newspaper, among other local or state-owned outlets – reflects secret, under-the-table contact between the Arab kingdom and the Jewish state that has been a work in progress for years.

But media movement marks a new phase in that diplomatic process, according to some experts on the kingdom, who see signs of a monarchy effort to prepare Saudi society for debate that had previously been off limits.

“The key here is that everybody understands this is not going to turn around overnight, and its probably not going to convince a lot of people. But that’s not really the point,” said David Pollock, an expert on the region at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The point is to establish this as a debatable proposition, and to break the taboo of even debating about it – about the prospect of normalizing relations.”

“Once you’ve done that, you’ve made it legitimate,” Pollock added. “There are suddenly two sides.”

One column called for Saudis to “leave behind” their “hatred of Jews,” and another said that talks between the two nations should be direct, without intermediaries, based on Saudi national interests.

Those national interests appear to align with Israel’s, primarily on the issue of Iran, which has dominated the Saudi news cycle in recent months– from Islamic Republic activities in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Saudi conservative Islamists view Iran, the Shi’ite and Hezbollah as “much worse than the Jews,” Pollock commented. “So that kind of takes the edge off – and actually pushes them in the same direction.”

An official in the Foreign Ministry said there have been some positive signals from Riyadh – such as an interview that ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer gave recently to the Saudi media, and one that Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold had last year with a Saudi website – but that there is no sense this is part of an organized campaign to prepare the ground for better ties.

“These are positive signs, but I would not say they are game changers,” the official said. “Good things are happening.

But rather than seeing this as trying to prepare the ground for something, I’d say it is a sign that there is less enmity.”

A source in the Prime Minister’s Office concurred. He acknowledged a few articles of late from “some pretty big journalists” against hating Jews, but said that he knows nothing about it coming from the top as part of an organized campaign.

Quiet talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia began leaking into public view in June, when a handshake between Gold and former Saudi government adviser Anwar Eshki raised eyebrows. Putting to rest any doubt that the handshake was an isolated affair, Eshki led a Saudi delegation to Jerusalem the following month that was publicly acknowledged.

Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud also shared a stage with Israel’s former military intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, in 2014.

A similar effort is under way in Egypt, Pollock said.

“I gather from talking to some of the people who are directly involved with it that there are different camps – different schools of thought in these countries,” said Pollock. “There is definitely internal opposition, and it’s very delicate, and fragile. But in both countries, the government and the establishment media – and their spin-offs and allies – are pursuing a deliberate strategy to do this.”

Click here to read the entire article on the Jerusalem Post web site.



UN Backs Secret Obama Takeover of Police

International org calls for federalization of U.S. law enforcement to be 'beefed up,' cover all of America

by Robert Romano | Updated 04 Aug 2016 at 10:04 AM

“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has provided oversight and recommendations for improvement of police services in a number of cities with consent decrees. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce discrimination in law enforcement and it needs to be beefed up and increased to cover as many of the 18,000-plus local law enforcement jurisdictions.”

That was United Nations Rapporteur Maina Kai on July 27, a representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council, who on the tail-end of touring the U.S., endorsed a little-known and yet highly controversial practice by the Justice Department to effect a federal takeover of local police and corrections departments.

    The Obama administration has been pursuing the federal takeover of local police right under Congress' nose — and Republicans in Congress were apparently unaware it was happening.

The consent decrees are already being implemented in Newark, New Jersey; Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California; Ferguson, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; and other municipalities.

Here's how it works: the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice files a lawsuit in federal court against a city, county, or state, alleging constitutional and civil rights violations by the police or at a corrections facility. It is done under 42 U.S.C. § 14141, a section of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, granting the attorney general the power to prosecute law enforcement misconduct. The municipality then simply agrees to the judicial finding — without contest — and the result is a wide-reaching federal court order that imposes onerous regulations on local police.

The federal court orders are designed to undo Rudy Giuliani-style policing tactics that were effective at reducing crime in big cities in the 1990s and 2000s.

In short, the much-feared nationalization of local police departments is already being initiated by the Obama administration's Justice Department. And somehow nobody noticed.

Federal requirements include how searches are conducted, what constitutes legitimate use of force, the mandatory use of on-body cameras by the police, and so forth. The agreements impose years-long compliance review regimes, implementation deadlines, and regular reviews by federal bureaucrats. This makes local police directly answerable to the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ.

One example includes a 77-page March 30 consent decree between the department and the City of Newark, New Jersey, that resulted from a 2011 investigation, a 2014 series of findings by the Civil Rights Division, and then finally a federal lawsuit alleging police misconduct in the U.S. District Court in the District of New Jersey.

The original complaint alleged that the Newark Police Department (NPD) "has engaged in a pattern or practice of constitutional violations in its stop and arrest practices, responses to individuals' exercise of their rights under the First Amendment, uses of force, and theft by officers. The investigation also revealed that the pattern or practice of constitutional violations stems in part from deficiencies in NPD's systems that are designed to prevent and detect misconduct, including its systems for reviewing force and investigating complaints regarding officer conduct."

The city of Newark, via the consent decree, agreed to the allegations and to implement a "comprehensive and agency-wide policies and procedures that are consistent with and incorporate all substantive requirements of this agreement," including rules on stops, searches, use of force, etc. The city has two years to implement, with the full agreement lasting five years. Meaning — even if the political parties change power in the city of Newark, the new mayor and city council would still be required to implement the court order.
U.S. Cities with Active DOJ Consent Decrees
City    State    Police Force
Chicago    IL    11944
Los Angeles    CA    10000
Miami    FL    1259
Ferguson    MO    54
Source: Americans for Limited Government

These consent decrees are in essence regulations. That, is, without the niceties of administrative procedures requirements, public comments, or even any congressional oversight.

Remarkably, congressional offices contacted by this author were generally unaware of the regulation of local policing via DOJ consent decrees with cities — even though the agreements have been implemented for years. Not a single hearing or word of protest has occurred on this topic.

The lack of oversight is pathetic enough — but to make matters even worse, this could actually be the first step in a new wide-ranging body of federal rules on local police.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" (AFFH) actually originated as a consent decree in 2009 against Westchester County, New York, requiring affordable housing units to be built in the county. Afterward, Republican Robert Astorino was elected county executive and yet was still required to implement the court order.

Westchester became the basis for AFFH, where every city and county in the country that accepts any part of $3 billion of annual community development block grants to 1,200 recipient cities and counties now has to comply with HUD's dictates on zoning along racial and income guidelines.

DOJ may very well end up doing the same thing with the local police — that is, if Congress does not wise up to what's really happening and defund implementation of 42 U.S.C. § 14141. This is dangerous. What is most chilling is how far along the Obama Justice Department is in this process. The breadth of regulation here shatters any notion of local governance or federalism. The Obama administration has been pursuing the federal takeover of local police right under Congress' nose — and Republicans  in Congress were apparently unaware it was happening.

No doubt the practice would continue under a Hillary Clinton administration too. Do you want a Clinton Justice Department running your local police force? That is how important the election in November suddenly becomes — with law and order already hanging in the balance and police being targeted by domestic terrorists in the slayings in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

As Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning noted in a statement calling attention to the U.N.'s interest in the DOJ program and urging Congress to act, "The fact that the U.N. Human Rights Council — which includes some of the worst abusers of human rights in the world that hate the U.S. — is cheering for this DOJ national takeover of the police should tell members everything they need to know. It's time to support local police, not render them impotent via federal restrictions against maintaining law and order. No less than the very existence of local government is at stake."

Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.


Panic Mode: Khizr Khan Deletes Law Firm Website that Specialized in Muslim Immigration

by Matthew Boyle
Breitbart
August 2, 2016

  Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that Democrats and their allies media wide have been using to hammer GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, has deleted his law firm’s website from the Internet. This development is significant, as his website proved—as Breitbart News and others have reported—that he financially benefits from unfettered pay-to-play Muslim migration into America.

    A snapshot of his now deleted website, as captured by the Wayback Machine which takes snapshots archiving various websites on the Internet, shows that as a lawyer he engages in procurement of EB5 immigration visas and other “Related Immigration Services.”

    The website is completely removed from the Internet, and instead directs visitors to the URL at which it once was to a page parking the URL run by GoDaddy.

    The EB5 program, which helps wealthy foreigners usually from the Middle East essentially buy their way into America, is fraught with corruption. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has detailed such corruption over the past several months, and in February issued a blistering statement about it.

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.


Islamic State Answers Pope Francis: Ours Is a Religious War, and We Hate You

breitbart.com
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.
2 Aug 2016

The Islamic State terror group has come out publicly to reject Pope Francis’ claims that the war being waged by Islamic terrorists is not religious in nature, assuring the pontiff that their sole motivation is religious and sanctioned by Allah in the Qur’an.

In the most recent issue of Dabiq, the propaganda magazine of the Islamic State, ISIS criticizes Pope Francis for his naïveté in clinging to the conviction that Muslims want peace and that acts of Islamic terror are economically motivated.

“This is a divinely-warranted war between the Muslim nation and the nations of disbelief,” the authors state in an article titled “By the Sword.”

The Islamic State directly attacks Francis for claiming that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence,” saying that by doing this, “Francis continues to hide behind a deceptive veil of ‘good will,’ covering his actual intentions of pacifying the Muslim nation.”

Pope Francis “has struggled against reality” in his efforts to portray Islam as a religion of peace, the article insists, before going on to urge all Muslims to take up the sword of jihad, the “greatest obligation” of a true Muslim.

Despite the obviously religious nature of their attacks, the article states, “many people in Crusader countries express shock and even disgust that Islamic State leadership ‘uses religion to justify violence.’”

“Indeed, waging jihad – spreading the rule of Allah by the sword – is an obligation found in the Quran, the word of our Lord,” it reads.

“The blood of the disbelievers is obligatory to spill by default. The command is clear. Kill the disbelievers, as Allah said, ‘Then kill the polytheists wherever you find them.’”

The Islamic State also reacted to Pope Francis’s description of recent acts of Islamic terror as “senseless violence,” insisting that there is nothing senseless about it.

“The gist of the matter is that there is indeed a rhyme to our terrorism, warfare, ruthlessness, and brutality,” they declare, adding that their hatred for the Christian West is absolute and implacable.

The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah [tax for infidels] and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.

In a recent press conference, Pope Francis told journalists  that the world is at war. “But it’s a real war, not a religious war,” he said.

“It’s a war of interests, a war for money. A war for natural resources and for the dominion of the peoples.”

“Every religion wants peace,” he said.

Read this article, and related others at breitbart.com


Netanyahu reaches out to Orlando victims in video

PM draws parallel to attacks in Israel and across Middle East, says Islamic terror driven by ‘fanatical hatred’

from Times of Israel
 
by Raoul Wootliff
June 16, 2016, 12:29 am

In an English language video posted to Facebook on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the casualties in Sunday’s deadly nightclub shooting in Orlando were victims of homophobia and intolerance and called on people not to give in to “hate and fear.”
~>~>~>~>>~>~>~>~>

Here is the complete text of his statement:

"In Orlando, a terrorist walks into a nightclub and murders nearly 50 human beings. Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters cut down in cold blood.

They did nothing wrong. They were dancing with friends, they were enjoying music with loved ones.

Why did the terrorist murder them?
Because he was driven by a fanatical hatred.

He targeted the LGBT community because he believed they were evil.

Now, the murderer wasn't alone.

Regimes and terrorist organizations around the world ruthlessly persecute the LGBT community.

In Syria, ISIS throws gays off rooftops.
In Iran, the regime hangs gays from cranes.

Too many people have remained silent in the face of this awful persecution.

This week's shooting wasn't merely an attack on the LGBT community. It was an attack on all of us, on our common values of freedom and diversity and choice.

Radical Islamist terror makes no distinction between shades of infidel.

This week it was gays in Orlando. A few days before that it was Jews in Tel Aviv. Before that it was music fans in Paris; Travelers in Brussels; Yazidis in Iraq; Community workers in San Bernardino; Christians and journalists in Syria.

All of us are targets.

We believe that all people are created in the image of God.

ISIS, by contrast, believes that all people who aren't just like them deserve to die.

We will not be terrified into submission. We will fight back. And we will triumph.

Today I ask you to reach out to friends in the LGBT community. Comfort them. Tell them you stand together, we stand together as one. And that you will always remember the victims. Tell them they will never be alone, that we are all one family deserving of dignity, deserving of life.

I have no doubt that those who seek to spread hate and fear will be defeated.

Working together we will defeat them even faster.

We need to stand united, resolute in the belief that all people regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of their race, regardless of their ethnicity, all people deserve respect, deserve dignity."


This was posted on the Prime Minister's Facebook page if you wish to log in and READ and/or WATCH his statement at https://www.facebook.com/IsraeliPM/?fref=nf

or you can WATCH his statement at
http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reaches-out-to-orlando-victims-in-video-after-attack/

PM Netanyahu is not afraid to speak the Truth.

Continental Chutzpah: EU Building on Israeli Land, Warning Against Demolitions

the JewishPress.com
by David Israel
Published June 1, 2016

The European Union over the past few years has been erecting illegal structures in Area C, which according to the Oslo agreement is under Israeli control. After several rightwing NGOs have complained, the IDF set out to demolish some of those structures. By rights, they should have taken all of them down, what with their being built without a permit. Israeli media publicized the demolition of those structures, some of which actually flew the EU flag — like those mythical cat burglars who leave their personal business card in the open safe. But last week the EU chutzpah has reached unprecedented highs when Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the Danish diplomat who since 2013 has been the ambassador of the European Union to Jerusalem, met with Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Gen. Yoav Mordechai, to warn him that if Israel keeps demolishing those “Palestinian homes” it would damage relations with Brussels.

According to a senior Israeli official who spoke to Ha’aretz, the meeting was tense and loaded. The ambassador accused Israel of hurting the “weakest Palestinian populations.” What the senior official did not share was that those structures are a means by which the EU has been challenging Israel’s claim to sovereignty in Area C (the PA is currently in charge in Areas A and B). It has to do with the diametrically opposed views of Israel and the EU of what constitutes the “two-state solution.”

Essentially, the Israeli politicians who are now in government, as well as more than a few in the opposition, envision a future peace deal that turns Areas A and B into an independent Palestinian entity, either as a state or an autonomy. The same Israeli leaders envision some permanent legal solution for the upwards of 400 thousand Jews living in Judea and Samaria, all of them in Area C, most likely with Israel annexing the large settlement clusters and giving away the rest of the land.

Virtually no one outside Israel supports this idea at the moment. Even Israel’s best friends in the world envision the ousting of the Jews from Area C, possibly while allowing Israel to retain eastern Jerusalem. How would that actually be done—no one cares to say, nor where would Israel gather the tens of billions of dollars required for such a move, never mind whether the settler population would acquiesce or opt instead for resistance that would make the traumatic evacuation of 8,000 Jews from Gaza’s Gush Katif look like a picnic. Meanwhile, while Area C in Israel’s view is eventually going to be annexed as part of a peace deal — to the Europeans Area C is Palestinian land ready to be redeemed.

Which is why the EU has been relentless at challenging Israel’s claim to Area C. And it’s why they’ve come up with the delusional notion that taking down 531 illegal Arab structures in 2015, 75 of which had been built by the EU, was damaging the two-state solution. Because the two-state solution the Europeans envision is without any Jews in Area C.

For the same reason, Ambassador Faaborg-Andersen was complaining that Israel is quick to condemn and demolish those illegal structures, but at the same time refuses to give Arabs permits to build legally in Area C. Because while the Arabs view Area C as soon to be part of free Palestine, Israelis plan to keep most of it, thank you very much.

There’s going to be another meeting with the EU envoy, on June 15, this time at the Israeli foreign ministry. The Europeans are going to demand a freeze on demolishing Arab structures in Area C, while at the same time also demanding a freeze on Jewish construction in the same Area C. And at some point something will have to give.
 
About the Author: David writes news at JewishPress.com.

Click here to read the article in its entirety at JewishPress.com
 http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/continental-chutzpah-eu-building-on-israeli-land-warning-against-demolitions/2016/06/01/




ISIS Kills Scores of Christians in Retaken Syrian Town: Report

By Conor Gaffey
Newsweek.com
4/11/16

The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) killed scores of Christians when they captured a Syrian town recently liberated by the government, a Syrian Christian leader has said.

ISIS swept into the town of Al-Qaryatain in August 2015, kidnapping at least 230 civilians including dozens of Christians in the central Syrian town, which lies 104 kilometers (65 miles) southwest of Palmyra. The town had a population of some 2,000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox Christians prior to the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, but this had dropped to just 300 before ISIS took control.

Al-Qaryatain was retaken by Syrian government forces with the backing of Russian airstrikes earlier in April and reports are just beginning to emerge of life under the extremist group for civilians in the town. Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II, the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church, told the BBC on Sunday that 21 Christians were murdered when ISIS first captured the city.

Some died trying to escape while others were killed for violating the terms of contracts they had signed requiring them to submit to the extremists’ interpretation of Islamic law. Hundreds of Christians in Al-Qaryatain were reportedly forced to sign so-called dhimmi contracts, which enabled them to live under ISIS rule in the town. The patriarch added that five other Christians are missing and presumed dead, while ransoms had been paid to ISIS to secure the release of the rest of the Christians.

The civil war in Syria has had a devastating impact on the country’s Christian contingent, which made up approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population before the outbreak of the conflict. The European Parliament stated in October 2015 that about 40 percent of Syria’s Christian population—or 700,000 people—had fled the country.

Go to this website to read the original article http://www.newsweek.com/isis-killed-scores-christians-retaken-syrian-town-patriarch-446132

NOTE: Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem, was dead for three days, and rose from the dead, and walked among us for forty days until his Ascension. After the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles, they spread out to different areas of the land to spread the good news, of our salvation. One of the first places they went to was what is now Syria, which was the home of Simon Peter. Not only does ISIS eradicate people who do not bow down to their cult they attempt to erase the ancient traces of preceding times like in Palmyra which was a Roman outpost in Syria, from the first or second century after the year of our Lord. Click here to view more about that.

R.I.P. Justice Scalia

Feb. 18, 2016

It is hard to imagine a greater loss to Liberty in America than has occurred in the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia. His understanding of the Constitution as a pact between free people and government, and our protection from oppressive government, was unparalleled.

The fact that 30% of Americans do not know who he was, speaks volumes about the state of our Union and our education system.

My words and thoughts are totally inadequate but you can easily find more about the great man's life and legacy. Click here for a link to wikipedia. Or click here to read the thoughts of the other Justices on the Supreme Court about him.

R.I.P. Justice Scalia.


Shariah Law at work in the Obama Administration

Obama DHS scrubs records of hundreds of Muslim terrorists

Published: 7 Feb 2016
World Net Daily
Pamela Geller

       Not only did the Obama administration scrub counter-terror programs of jihad and Islam, now we find out that his administration scrubbed the records of Muslim terrorists. If the enemedia were not aligned with the jihad force, this would be front-page news across the nation.

An agent of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, for 15 years, Philip Haney, reported Friday that after the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to blow up a crowded passenger jet over Detroit, “President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to ‘connect the dots.’ He said, ‘This was not a failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.'”

Haney revealed: “Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material – the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.”

What Haney discloses is truly shocking: “Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to ‘connect dots.’ Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.”

Who gave the order to scrub the records of Muslims with ties to terror groups?

These new shocking revelations come fresh on the heels of whistleblower testimony in the wake of the San Bernardino jihad slaughter, revealing that the Obama administration shut down investigations into jihadists in America (and quite possible the San Bernardino shooters) at the request of the Department of State and the DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. Haney noted: “They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?”

How is this not impeachable? When did foreign terrorists get civil rights?

Haney described how he began investigating scores of individuals with links to the traditionalist Islamic Indo-Pakistani Deobandi movement, and its related offshoots, prominently, Tablighi Jamaat. 

I have reported on this infiltration for years. I reported on it extensively in my book, “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.” Obama has partnered with terror-tied groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American Society and others. The stealth jihad in the information battle-space has led to the vigorous enforcement of blasphemy laws under the Shariah, as Obama ordered that counter-terror training materials must avoid all reference to Islam and jihad. Under Islamic law, it is prohibited to criticize Islam.

The Obama administration is Shariah-compliant at all costs. Its number one priority is to protect Islam, even when it puts American lives at risk. The cold-blooded slaughter of Americans in the homeland by Muslims has not tempered Obama’s Shariah enthusiasm. On the contrary, Garland, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, UCMED, San Bernardino, etc., have accelerated it.

My civil liberties and your civil liberties are being abridged in accordance with the blasphemy laws under Shariah. My organization is engaged in 15 different free-speech lawsuits against various cities. Our free-speech lawsuit against Boston is heading to the Supreme Court, because even though truthful, our ads violate the laws of Shariah (“do not criticize Islam”). We are being forced to adhere to Shariah mores, but jihad murderers are given sanctuary and protection – to slaughter Americans.

The moral, or in this case the immoral, of the story is this: Jihad terror works.

Click here to read this article in its entirety, including links to more information.
 
Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of the WND Books title "Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance."



Wisconsin firm fires Muslims in prayer dispute

Religious breaks disrupted production at lawn mower, snowblower manufacturer

Published: 02/04/2016

(ABC News) A civil liberties group said Wednesday that it plans to file federal discrimination and harassment complaints after a Wisconsin manufacturer fired seven Muslim employees for violating a company break policy that doesn’t provide extra time for prayer.

Ariens Co. terminated the workers in a dispute that began last month when it moved to enforce an existing rule of two 10-minute breaks per work shift and dozens of Muslim staffers of Somali descent walked off the job in protest.

Of the 53 employees involved, 32 have abided with the policy, 14 resigned and seven were terminated Tuesday, according to Ariens spokeswoman Ann Stilp. The news of the terminations was first reported by WLUK-TV in Green Bay.

Please click here to read entire article at ABC News.
 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/wisconsin-firm-terminates-muslim-workers-prayer-dispute-36695435


Finland TV airs 'laughable' strategy to stop rape

If shouting 'No!' doesn't work, then swat attacker with purse

World Net Daily
Published: 02/03/2016
by Leo Hohmann

A public-service advertisement running on Finland TV instructs women in the Scandinavian country on how to fend off a rapist.
But rather than pull out a handgun or even pepper spray, the women of Finland are taught to confront their attackers with bare hands and a purse.
Rape epidemics have engulfed Finland, Sweden and Germany in a sea of fear since the mass influx of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa began two years ago.

 Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he found the video laughable.
Anti-Shariah activist and author Pamela Geller posted the video on her website earlier this week under the title "It just gets more absurd."

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/



 Netanyahu: Islamic terrorism is flooding the world from Jakarta to California

The prime minister says the struggle against terrorism will take time but that Israel is fighting hard.

 Jerusalem Post
by JPOST.COM STAFF
BEN HARTMAN
02/04/2016

Islamic terrorism is flooding the world and inciting millions from Jakarta to Africa and all the way to California, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip on Thursday to the Jerusalem hospital treating a Border Police officer who was injured in yesterday's attack at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City.

Netanyahu praised the courage of the security forces and the courage and strength the Border Police officer shown during Wednesday's attack. He also expressed his condolences to the family of Border Police officer Hadar Cohen who was killed in the combined shooting and stabbing attack.

Three Arab terrorists wielding machine guns, pipe bombs and knives carried out the attack on Wednesday killing Cohen, 19, who died of her wounds shortly after being rushed to the capital's Hadassa University Medical Center at Mt. Scopus. Her partner, Ravit, was seriously wounded and underwent emergency surgery at the hospital. As of Thursday morning she was considered to be in moderate condition.

"We are all saddened by the death of Hadar Cohen, a real hero. We all embrace the family," Netanyahu said.

The prime minister emphasized that a great effort is being put into the fight against terrorism, during the lengthy effort to defeat it.

"It will take time, it is a long struggle," Netanyahu said. "We are in this fight, it is not passing us by, but we are fighting it with great force and will continue to do so."

"Kabatiya has been closed off while the IDF and the Shin bet make widespread arrests of wanted suspects, we have cancelled many work permits and the attorney-general informed me yesterday that he has added a number of houses belonging to terrorists to be slated for demolition," Netanyahu said of the West Bank village, from where Wednesday's terrorists hailed.

Police Commissioner Inspector General Roni Alsheich paid a visit to the wounded Border Police officer on Wednesday night.

During his visit, Alsheich praised the two teenager Border Police officers who had recently drafted into the force for preventing a major terror attack.

Alsheich said “I have no doubt that a terror cell that comes with an arsenal like this has every intention of carrying out a massive attack.”

Ravit and Cohen were part of a three-man patrol along with their commander. They had only been drafted a couple months before and their deployment at Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem was part of their training.

Since the attack yesterday, police and the Border Police have drawn criticism for the fact that the two women were posted at one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the country so soon after they were drafted.

The three terrorists were responsible for the attack were identified as Ahmed Rajeh Zakarneh, Muhammad Ahmed Kmail, and Ahmed Najeh Abu al-Rub. All three were shot dead at the scene. Their explosives did not detonate and were later neutralized by a police bomb disposal team.

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.


A Glimpse of Clinton and her Advisors...


No holds barred: Torrent of anti-Israel advice found in Hillary’s emails


Jerusalem Post - Opinion
By Shmuley Boteach
02/01/2016

Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its best interests? Advice like this was par for the course with Clinton’s advisers.

It’s already been established that one of Hillary Clinton’s most trusted advisers, Sid Blumenthal, sent her anti-Israel articles, ideas and advice during her time as secretary of state. But the stream of anti-Israel advice received by Clinton was much more comprehensive.

In the entire forced dump of Clinton’s emails, you will be hard pressed to find a single one sympathetic toward the Jewish state from any of the people she relied on. The negative, poisonous approach to Israel throughout this email expose shows the atmosphere that she had established around herself. These emails seem to demonstrate that a huge segment of her close advisers and confidantes were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria at all costs.

This was occurring against the backdrop of Israel’s recent Gaza withdrawal, which led to the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. There is almost zero mention of the huge risks to Israel’s security in withdrawing as Clinton and the Obama administration did everything they could to pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.

Take a look at a sampling of the advice being sent to Clinton from her many advisers that we have now become privy to.

Sandy Berger was Clinton’s foreign policy adviser during her 2008 presidential campaign. In September of 2010 he sent her ideas on how to pressure Israel to make concessions for peace. Berger acknowledged “how fragile is Abbas’s political position,” and how “Palestinians are in disarray,” and that “failure is a real possibility.” Berger was well aware of, and informed Hillary of, the very real possibility that Israel would be placing its national security at grave risk in a deal that would very likely fail and lead to a Hamas takeover.

But Berger felt the risks to Israeli lives were worth it.

He advised the need to make Netanyahu feel “uneasy about incurring our displeasure....”

Berger emphasizes the need “to convince the prime minister – through various forms of overt persuasion and implicit pressure – to make the necessary compromises” and talks of the “possibility – to turn his position against him.”

Astoundingly, Berger seems to accuse the Jews in America of racism toward Obama. He writes, “At a political level, the past year has clearly demonstrated the degree to which the U.S. has been hamstrung by its low ratings in Israel and among important segments of the domestic Jewish constituency....” He then adds, “Domestically, he faces a reservoir of skepticism on this issue which reflects many factors, including inexcusable prejudice.”

Anne Marie Slaughter was Clinton’s director of policy planning from 2009-2011. She wrote to Clinton in September of 2010 and devised a scheme to encourage wealthy philanthropists to pledge millions to the Palestinians (which no doubt would have been embezzled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies as were other funds).

She wrote: “This may be a crazy idea.... Suppose we launched a “Pledge for Palestine” campaign... Such a campaign among billionaires/multi-millionaires around the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in the building of a Palestinian state....”

She adds: “There would also be a certain shaming effect re Israelis who, would be building settlements in the face of a pledge for peace.”

Clinton’s response to this email: “I am very interested- pls flesh out. Thx.”

Robert Russo, one of Clinton’s aides and currently her campaign’s “director of correspondence and briefings” sent an email in April of 2012 informing her of Netanyahu’s father’s death and advising her to give him a condolence call. Included with Russo’s email is an extremely biased article attacking both Netanyahu and his father, describing them as virulently racist warmongers and calling the elder Netanyahu “a behindthe- scenes adviser to his son, the most powerful person in Israel.”

The article noted that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly denied that his father was a one-dimensional ideologue. He further emphasized that he himself was a different person from his father.”

But then it goes on to say, without providing any proof whatsoever, “Israelis seemed in the dark about the extent of paternal influence on their leader,” and “To understand Bibi, you have to understand the father.”

One might be forgiven for questioning Clinton’s sympathy and sincerity when she later placed the call and gave Netanyahu her condolences.

Thomas Pickering, former US ambassador to Israel, wrote to Clinton on December 18, 2011, and suggested a secret plan to stir up major Palestinian protests in an attempt to force the Israeli government into peace negotiations.

He stated that the protests “must be all and only women. Why? On the Palestinian side the male culture is to use force.”

Pickering’s goal was to ignite protests that would engulf the West Bank, “just like Tahrir square.” He adds that the Palestinian “leadership has shied away from this idea because they can’t control it,” and they are “afraid of being replaced.”

This idiotic reasoning that somehow only women would participate and things would stay peaceful is obviously absurd. As Pickering himself notes, “Palestinian men will not for long patiently demonstrate – they will be inclined over time and much too soon to be frustrated and use force. Their male culture comes close to requiring it.”

Regardless, Pickering writes that the protests could be used against Israel “to influence the political leadership.”

The idea was as dangerous for the Palestinians as it was for Israel. As Pickering himself admits, widespread protests could overthrow Abbas’ government, and if Palestinian men joined in, widespread violence would inevitably break out. It would obviously be impossible to prevent men from participating in these demonstrations.

Yet Pickering felt this extreme risk was worth taking, even if it meant the replacement of Abbas with another Hamas-led government. And even if meant violence breaking out across the West Bank leading to a third intifada and the murder of countless Jews. He also emphasizes the need to hide all US involvement in this plot. Clinton forwarded this email to Monica Hanley and asked her to “pls print.”

Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its best interests? Advice like this was par for the course when it came to Clinton’s advisers.

In a follow-up column we’ll illuminate even more anti-Israel advice that was given the then-secretary of state. Sadly, there was just so much of it.

The author, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international bestselling author of 30 books including his upcoming The Israel Warrior’s Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @ RabbiShmuley.

(Links within this article are not from jp.com)

Click here to read the original article at the Jerusalem Post website and check for the follow up column if you have the stomach for it.



Another State Is Heard From.......

Senate resolution calls for a US constitutional convention

  Posted: February 3, 2016 at 10:37 am
 KFQD Radio Anchorage, Alaska

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – An Alaska Senate committee is set to consider a resolution calling for a convention of the states to propose a countermand, or veto, amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The measure calls on legislators in the other 49 states to apply for a convention as well.
In his sponsor statement, Chugiak Republican Senator Bill Stoltze says the resolution is meant to restore the balance of power between the states and the federal government.
The resolution calls for a convention of states to amend the U.S. Constitution and provide states with the power to vote on nullifying federal laws.

Click here to read at the KFQD Radio Page.

 Click here to realize that Alaska is not the only state that has called for a Constitutional Convention.


Turkish Court Rules Government Failed to Protect Christians Killed in Malatya

 Civil suit results in order to pay damages to relatives of victims.


January 27, 2016
By Our Middle East Correspondent
Morning Star News
 
ISTANBUL, Turkey (Morning Star News) – A Turkish court ruled on Tuesday (Jan. 26) that the government was negligent in its duty to protect three Christians who were tortured and killed in 2007 and ordered it to pay damages to the victims’ families.

The Malatya Administrative Court ruled that, nearly nine years ago, the Interior Ministry and the Malatya Governor’s Office ignored reliable intelligence that Turkish nationalists were targeting the three Christians days prior to the April 2007 killings.

At the present rate, it is doubtful what year money might actually change hands

Please click here to read entire article at Morning Star News



Man with Quran, guns arrested near Disneyland Paris

Manhunt underway for female companion

CNN
by Laura Akhoun and Jason Hanna
Published: 01/28/2016

(CNN) French police are looking for a woman who was with the Paris man who was arrested with guns Thursday at a Disney hotel near Disneyland Paris, police official Michael Le Provost told CNN.

When security guards discovered the firearms, they noticed the woman was with him, but she eluded arrest, Le Provost said.

Bomb disposal experts are inspecting the man’s car, Le Provost said.

Please click here to read the full story at CNN.


Obama vs. Jefferson on Islamic Terror

Posted By David Barton On 01/27/2016 @ 10:32 pm
 In Education,Faith,Front Page,Politics,U.S.,World
World Net Daily

Democrats have long heralded Thomas Jefferson (along with Andrew Jackson) as the founder of their Party. They traditionally hold annual Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraising dinners, and President Obama is one of their most sought after speakers. But this past year, Democrats began to remove any mention of Jefferson’s name from their functions.  They claim that this is because Jefferson was a bigoted racist, iii but this excuse is historically inaccurate, based on an errant modern portrayal.

If you doubt this, ask yourself why black civil rights leaders over the past two centuries (such as Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Benjamin Banneker, Francis Grimke, Henry Highland Garnett, and so many others) openly praised Jefferson as a racial civil rights pioneer and champion, as did abolitionists such as John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and others They recognized that Jefferson led a vocal lifelong campaign to emancipate all slaves in the United States, but that the laws of Virginia prevented him from freeing his own slaves. (All of this is covered in my new book, “The Jefferson Lies.)

The real reason that Democrats should discard Jefferson is that he held nearly no policy position similar to those Democrats hold today. Consider fifteen major categories where the policies of Presidents Jefferson and Obama are opposite.

Click here to read the entire article of David Barton and increase your knowledge of American History.



Hands up, just shoot!

 
Posted By Jeff Knox On 01/27/2016 @ 7:42 pm
In Commentary,Opinion
World Net Daily

 The occupation of a remote wildlife refuge turned violent yesterday when federal agents stopped two vehicles carrying protesters to a town hall meeting in John Day, Oregon. Victoria Sharp, a passenger in one of those vehicles, has reported that federal agents opened fire on the group without provocation after conflicting and confusing demands for the protesters to surrender. Sharp reported that shots were first fired at Ryan Payne as he complied with orders to show his hands out of the window of the vehicle in which she was riding, but that the shots missed. Payne was calling for police to not shoot, as there were women in the vehicle, and exited the vehicle, asking that the women be allowed out.

At this point, LaVoy Finicum, one of the spokesmen for the occupiers, who was driving the vehicle in which Ms. Sharp was riding, yelled out the window that they were going to go talk to the sheriff (at the meeting in John Day), or that agents could just shoot him. He told the passengers to get down, and drove forward, precipitating heavy gunfire from the agents, and crashing the vehicle into a snowbank.

Sharp said that Finicum then exited the vehicle, hands in the air, yelling, “Just shoot me then!” A volley of shots rang out, and Finicum fell to his back, hands still over his head, and was shot several more times on the ground, Sharp said.

According to Sharp, agents continued shooting at the car, striking Ryan Bundy in the shoulder as he shielded her on the floorboard, and deploying tear gas before finally taking the rest of the group into custody. She also claims that none of the protesters fired a shot or even touched a gun during the encounter.

The full audio of Victoria Sharp’s account is posted on YouTube, and comes across as very credible.

Listen to Victoria Sharp’s testimony:

Another report suggested that Finicum "charged" at police after exiting the vehicle but does not dispute the claim that his hands were in the air. Cliven Bundy, father of Ammon and Ryan Bundy, leaders of the occupation who were both taken into custody during the incident, has further charged that, not only were Finicum's hands in the air, but he was not armed at the time.

In interviews during the occupation protest, Finicum, a soft-spoken rancher and father of 11 from Arizona, had insisted that he would rather be killed than "put in a cement box" prison. He said that some things were more important than life, and that freedom was one of those things.

The occupation was initiated in protest of the re-incarceration of a pair of Oregon ranchers who had been convicted of terrorism for starting two controlled burns on their graze lands back in 2001 and 2005. The ranchers, father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond, were initially sentenced to, and served short sentences and fined $400,000 for their actions, but a federal appeals court later concluded that the judge in the case had improperly waived a five-year minimum sentence for the charges, and the two were resentenced to that minimum and ordered to return to prison.

I reported on the Hammond case and the resulting protests a few weeks ago in this column, pointing out that the stated objective of the protest was being lost in the news coverage of the protest itself. Ammon Bundy and his compatriots appeared to be more interested in generating a confrontation with federal authorities than in drawing attention to the Hammonds and the abusive practices of federal agencies that led to their plight.

The death of LaVoy Finicum is a needless tragedy.

Federal authorities had wisely been taking a hands-off approach to the occupation, denying Bundy and his friends the opportunity for the tense stand-off they seemed to be seeking. Unfortunately, politicians like Oregon's Democrat Gov. Kate Brown, took the occupation as a personal affront and were calling for law enforcement to take more aggressive action to put a stop to the flagrant defiance of federal authority. The result is a martyr for the fringe and escalation of the situation from a nuisance to a volatile and dangerous level. The strategy was clearly to "remove the head of the snake" by capturing the leaders of the occupation, but what if those leaders were the cooler heads that were keeping the protest calm and peaceful?

With the death of Finicum, in circumstances that some are calling murder, a fuse has been lit, and unless authorities can and do quickly produce evidence that their actions were clearly justified, this could blow up in a very ugly way. And it all could have been easily avoided.

Realistically, what harm were the protesters doing? They were occupying buildings of a remote wildlife refuge in a sparsely populated area of the country in the dead of winter. They were making no threats, harming no one, and getting less and less attention from an unsympathetic media. They were not supported by any national or state militia organizations, and their whole agenda had pretty well fizzled.

I wish Ammon Bundy had taken my advice, negotiated a peaceful end to the situation and sent his supporters home to their families weeks ago. That didn't happen, and what happens next is anyone's guess. The remaining occupiers must be concerned about what might happen to them if they try to leave, especially in light of the death of Finicum, and by setting up roadblocks and checkpoints, authorities have now committed manpower and resources to potentially long, cold, uncomfortable duty that can't help but engender deeper frustration and resentment between police and occupiers. Any trust that might have developed is completely out the window. Worse, the bloodshed may provoke other groups to step in and escalate the mess even further.

Perhaps this week's arrests will bring this whole thing to a close, but I fear that it is more likely signaling the beginning of something much worse than protesters occupying a wilderness outpost.

 Click here to read this article in its entirety at World Net Daily.



Christian persecution reached record high in 2015, report says

By William J. Cadigan, CNN
 Sun January 17, 2016

Christians flee persecution in the middle east

(CNN)Last year was the most violent for Christians in modern history, rising to "a level akin to ethnic cleansing," according to a new report by Open Doors USA, a watchdog group that advocates for Christians.

In total, the survey found that more than 7,100 Christians were killed in 2015 for "faith-related reasons," up 3,000 from the previous year, according to the group's analysis of media reports and other public information as well as external experts. Open Door's report is independently audited by the International Institute of Religious Freedom. Open Doors USA is an organization that works with Christians worldwide to "equip and encourage" those living under persecution while also helping churches in America advocate for the persecuted around the world.

The group's report defines Christian persecution "as any hostility experienced as a result of one's identification with Christ." Open Doors found this persecution ranged from imprisonment, torture, beheadings and rape to the loss of home and assets, the loss of a job, or even rejection from a community.

Speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday, David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors, introduced the annual ranking of countries based on their severity of Christian persecution, evaluating levels of violence worldwide to formulate the global top 50. The list, now in its 25th year, is topped by North Korea for the 14th consecutive time. Curry says that "pariah states" like North Korea are especially hostile toward Christians.

According to the report, however, much of the persecution faced by Christians occurs in predominantly Muslim nations, many of which are "failed states" that fail to protect any of their citizens' religious liberty.

The presence of Islamic extremist factions across the world in 2015 brought religious persecution for not only Christians, but also Muslims, Yazidis and other religious minorities, the report found. Notably, Iraq (No. 2) and Syria (No. 5) are the epicenter of ISIS' so called "caliphate," while Afghanistan (4), Pakistan (6), Iran (9) and Libya (10) all have elements of Islamic extremism.

Curry said that while "Islamic extremism is one of the driving forces" of Christian persecution, "peace-loving Muslims can make an impact on that part of their culture."

ISIS and other extremist groups are spreading, the report highlights, not just in the Middle East but around the world. Curry said he hoped the list would bring attention to the plight of Christians across the globe as they face a "total lack of religious freedom," forced migration and even genocide.

In fact, part of the reason for the annual list, according to Curry, is to highlight for U.S. policymakers the continued persecution of Christians by our "geopolitical allies." Countries such as Saudi Arabia and India are key global partners for the United States, yet Open Doors ranks both in its top 50 of persecutors of Christians.

"We believe in religious freedom for all," Curry said, "and that does not happen in countries that we do business with every day."

Open Doors also seeks to inspire and inform Christians in America, using the annual watch list "as a clarion call to pray, advocate and remember their persecuted fellow Christians."

Click here to read the article in its entirety at CNN



Ethics Complaint Says Big Clinton Donors Got State Dept Access

The Daily Caller
Richard Pollock, Reporter
01/10/2016

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton violated federal ethics statutes by giving “preferential treatment” to wealthy political campaign donors and financial supporters of the Clinton Foundation, according to a formal complaint filed Friday by the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.

The non-profit government watchdog group filed the complaint with the Office of Government Ethics, asking it to conduct a “full investigation” into Clinton’s “apparent breach of ethics rules.” A copy of the complaint was exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The organization charged Clinton gave “preferential treatment to individuals with which she had financial ties” and “regularly granted access” to rich donors, celebrities, and even powerful foreign nationals.

The FACT complaint follows the State Department’s latest release of thousands of Clinton emails that she turned over to the government more than two years after leaving the office in 2013. She used a private email address and a home-brew server in her private New York residence to conduct official government business throughout her tenure.
 
This article can be read in its entirety at
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/10/hillary-clinton-foundation-donors-ethics/



WND Exclusive

U.S. in grip of 'Muhammad' baby boom

Number of Muslim-Americans born to Middle Eastern migrants 'off the charts'

Leo Hohmann
Published: 1/06/2016

So-called “home-grown” terrorists such as Syed Farook, who slaughtered 14 people last month in San Bernardino, or Muhammad Abdulazeez, who gunned down five U.S. servicemen in Chattanooga last summer, were both second-generation Muslim-Americans whose parents emigrated to the U.S.

Most of the terrorists who attacked Paris in November, killing 130 people with guns and bombs, were also described by the media as “home grown jihadists” when in reality they still represented a foreign culture, born of Middle Eastern parents who migrated to Europe and never fully assimilated. And now there is fresh evidence that this segment of the U.S. population is growing exponentially.

Buried in the Social Security data is a count of babies born with the name Muhammad. While offering a small sample, the Social Security database is able to shed light on the growth of second-generation Muslims in America. It is highly reliable and accurate. It shows a huge growth pattern.

“A boy named Mohammed born here is likely to grow up in a Muslim environment and, at the same time, be a U.S. citizen,” North writes. “So we can get a rough proxy of the growth of the population of second-generation Muslim immigrants by noting how many of them carry these names. (Third-generation babies are also included.)”

The figures show the huge growth in this population over the last 50 years, starting in 1964 when only 29 baby boys were named after the Islamic prophet who lived in the seventh century. By 2014 the number had soared to 2,931, a more than 100-to-one ratio.

Please click here to read entire article at World Net Daily


World Net Daily

Alabama 2nd state to sue feds over refugee resettlement

Suit claims program too secretive

 Leo Hohmann
Published: 01/07/2016
 
 Alabama has become the second state to sue the federal government alleging that it has failed to “consult” with state officials while secretly placing foreign refugees into communities. The suit claims the Obama administration has violated the terms of the Refugee Act of 1980, which says the federal government “shall consult regularly”  with states before placing refugees.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Robert Bentley told the Associated Press the lawsuit was filed Thursday, following a similar suit by Texas a month ago.

But an expert on the 1980 law governing refugee resettlement told WND that neither suit stands a chance of stopping the flow of refugees into Texas or Alabama. Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, said his organization is not involved in either the Texas or the Alabama cases because he believes there is a stronger case to be made on the grounds of the 10th Amendment.

“They filed a suit on the grounds that the feds have failed to consult with the state on the location of refugees in the state, and failure to consult is a term that has no real definition to it. Texas has filed a similar suit that thus far has not gone anywhere,” Thompson said. “Thomas More Law Center’s position is that there is a constitutional claim and that claim is based on the 10th Amendment.”

Bentley is one of more than two-dozen Republican governors who opposed the settlement of Syrian refugees in their states after the Nov. 13 jihadist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.

About 80 GOP congressmen have also signed on to co-sponsor a bill by Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, which would halt all refugee resettlement until the program can undergo a full investigation into its costs and its risks to national security.

But the U.S. State Department has continued distributing Muslim refugees into more than 180 U.S. cities and towns. They come not only from Syria and Iraq, but from Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and other countries with active jihadist movements.

A stronger response is ready and waiting for a taker. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center has been working since June to prepare a case that would challenge the constitutionality of federal authority over the refugee program. The program is administered by the U.S. State Department along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Please click here to read the article in it's entirety.


 Expanding special rights to the 2% who choose the LGBT lifestyle in Jacksonville FL

 with excerpts from
Christopher Hong
Jan 13, 2016 
Jacksonville Florida Times-Union

"Jacksonville residents crowded Tuesday’s City Council meeting to voice their stance on the longstanding question of whether to expand discrimination protections to the LGBT community...
Tuesday’s meeting saw the formal introduction of two bills on the issue. Councilman Tommy Hazouri introduced a bill to expand the discrimination protections, while Councilman Bill Gulliford introduced a bill to let voters decide.

Next month, the council will begin debating those two bills.... the council defeated similar legislation in 2012. Tuesday’s discussion mostly remained civil, with council members hearing many of the same arguments voiced years ago and in a series of community meetings that (Mayor) Curry hosted late last year.

Supporters of expanding the law said the LGBT community deserves the same rights and protections afforded to other minority groups and urged the council to vote on it.

Opponents, many citing their religious beliefs that homosexuality is morally wrong, said expanded protections amounted to a special privilege that would interfere with small business and could allow men into women’s restrooms. Many urged council members to let voters decide the issue.

The full council will debate Hazouri’s and Gulliford’s bills during special meetings scheduled for Feb. 4, Feb. 18 and March 3."


Has your voice been heard about this expansion of Special Rights in Jacksonville FL?  Contact your  Mayor and your Council Representatives:

Mayor Curry

Phone: (904) 630-1776

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:


District 1: Joyce Morgan         (904) 630-1389
District 2: Al Ferraro                (904) 630-1392
District 3 Aaron L. Bowman   (904) 630-1386
District 4 Scott Wilson             (904) 630-1394
District 5 Lori N. Boyer             (904) 630-1382
District 6  Matt Schellenberg   (904) 630-1388
District 7  Reggie Gaffney       (904) 630-1384
District 8   Katrina Brown         (904) 630-1385
District 9    Garrett L Dennis    (904) 630-1395
District 10 Reginald L Brown   (904) 630-1684
District 11  Danny Becton         (904) 630-1383
District 12  Doyle Carter           (904) 630-1380
District 13  Bill Gulliford            (904) 630-1397
District 14  Jim Love                 (904) 630-1390
Group 1    Anna Lopez Brosche   (904) 630-1393
Group 2    John R Crescimbeni   (904) 630-1381
Group 3    Tommy Hazouri           (904)630-1396
Group 4   Greg Anderson          (904)630-1398
Group 5   Samuel Newby         (904) 630-1387

10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Alabama chief justice tells judges to halt same-sex 'marriages'

Posted By Bob Unruh On 01/06/2016
World Net Daily

Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the state’s probate judges, the only ones in the state who are allowed to issue marriage licenses, to follow the state’s Sanctity of Marriage Amendment and its Marriage Protection Act until the full state Supreme Court rules on the issue.

Please click here to read the article in its entirety




 January 7, 2016
Subject:
URGENT: Stop the LGBT Law

 

Dear Jacksonville Family,

This is URGENTPlease 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.

                             Defend Jax Families




Non-Muslims encouraged to wear Islamic head scarf at school

Click here to read a thoughtful piece posted by Leo Hohmann on WND  12/14/2015.This news occurred courtesy of American educational systems and Muslim Student Associations (M.S.A.), a known front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing trial ever held on U.S. soil.

Click here to fact check on Wikipedia

  (The above may more be correctly filed under "How Political Correctness is destroying our nation")

If your blood pressure is not high enough yet, click here to read about the Virginia high school Geography class that passed around the Koran and included a lesson practicing Arabic calligraphy, or the California School with the Muslim fight song. Wonder when is the last time they sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and passed around a Bible.  (Thanks again to wnd.com)

Facebook censors Michael Savage post of Muslims protesting

Photos show demonstrators warning 'Behead those who insult Islam'

Published: 12/10/2015 at 3:38 PM
World Net Daily


When Muslims held a demonstration in London in 2006 in protest of cartoons depicting their founder, Muhammad, many bore signs warning of beheading and death for “those who insult Islam.”

Talk-radio host Michael Savage thought that amid a fierce national debate on whether or not to allow Muslims to immigrate to the United States, it would be worth considering what has been happening in Europe.

So, he posted on his Facebook page photographs of the Feb. 3, 2006, demonstration outside the Embassy of Denmark in London. The focus of protest was the publication of editorial cartoons depicting Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Snopes.com verified that the photographs were taken at the London demonstration, with the exception of one, which was from a protest in the English city of Luton (which is 33 miles away).

Wednesday night, Facebook removed Savage’s post, explaining the social media site “determined that it violated Facebook community standards.”

Read more and see the picture at http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/facebook-censors-michael-savage-post-of-muslims-protesting/#TU3MPU7fYsr0uGyf.99


After Muslim Truckers Refuse to Deliver Beer… Obama Does the Unbelievable

From Top Right News on October 27, 2015

by Bill Callen | Top Right News


Barack Obama just sided with Muslims to enforce Islamic Sharia Law on an American business, leaving many outraged and two FoxNews anchors absolutely stunned.

Two Muslim truck drivers — former Somali “refugees” —  refused to make deliveries of beer to stores for their employer. So they were understandably fired.

They claimed it was a violation of their religious beliefs — even though Islam bars only the consumption of alcohol. And, as the employer pointed out, the workers knew they would have to deliver alcohol before they took the job.

So guess what Barack Obama did.

He SUED the employers it on behalf of the pair, Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale, claiming religious discrimination.

Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) represented them in the case, providing tens of thousands of  taxpayer dollars in legal support, judicial filings and court appearances against the employer who was hopelessly outgunned by the Federal government.

And this week the Muslims were awarded a stunning $240,000 by a jury, presided over by an Obama appointee who stunned analysts by allowing the case to go forward at all.

Click here to view the article in its entirety at Top Right News.

Hard to believe, isn't it? Why would someone accept a job knowing he is unable to perform the work?? This has been fact checked  at this link and it is, sadly, true.






It is hard to know where to catalogue the following ... under Politics? Religious Liberties? Islamic Threat? Christian or Cult? Perhaps "Know They Enemy"? You be the judge.

40 Mind-Blowing Quotes From Barack Hussein Obama On Islam And Christianity

by Geoffrey Grider
nowtheendbegins.com
Oct 2, 2013

When someone shows you who they are, believe them

Since 2009, NOW THE END BEGINS has brought you story after story in detailed accounts of exactly how Obama feels about Islam, and how he views Christianity and the Bible. So today, in light of recent events in Washington, we feel it important that you know exactly where your president stands in regards to his faith and his god. Below are 20 quotes he has made about Islam, and 20 quotes he has made about Christianity. Nothing edited or mashed up, just exactly in the context he originally spoke them in with fully-sourced links so you can see where they come from.

Please click here to read article in its entirety


Police Confiscate Mohammed Cartoons At Dutch Anti-Islam Rally


by Nick Hallett
9 Nov 2015

Police seized “offensive” Mohammed cartoons during a demonstration by the Dutch branch of the Patriotic European Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) movement in the city of Utrecht this weekend.

The rally, which attracted around 150 supporters, criticised the “Islamisation” of the Netherlands, with demonstrators also expressing their support for the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, a noted critic of Islamism.

DutchNews reports that police arrested 32 people at the demonstration for a variety of offences including failing to carry IDs, not following police orders and displaying “insulting banners”.

One such banner said the “Koran is poison”, while another claimed “Islamisation is EU-thanasia”.

Video footage emerged of police removing Mohammed cartoons, although their ultimate fate is unknown.

Utrecht City Council had banned the demonstrators from marching through the city so they gathered instead in a park on the outskirts of the city.

The PEGIDA marches started in Dresden, Germany last year as “evening strolls” through the streets every Monday to protest against militant and political Islam. The marches soon grew and spread across the country, but died down again at the start of this year to point where most commentators assumed the movement had petered out.

However, as the migrant crisis intensifies in Europe, especially thanks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s relaxed border policies, the marches have started again and are growing.

Authorities have hit back, however, charging founder Lutz Bachmann with hate speech for comments he made in Facebook posts back in 2014. State prosecutors in Saxony claim private posts in which Mr Bachmann uses terms such as “livestock” and “scum” to refer to migrants risked causing disturbances.

This weekend in the German capital Berlin, supporters of the anti-mass migration Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party also held a rally criticising Mrs Merkel’s immigration policy and calling for her to resign.

The rally passed off largely peacefully, although violent scuffles broke out between police and pro-migrant counter-demonstrators.

This article is from World Net Daily





Thousands Of German People Chant ‘Merkel Must Go’ At Anti-Mass Muslim Migration Rally

by Geoffrey Grider
November 7, 2015

The AFD has seen its popularity surge as Germany struggles to deal with the huge influx of Muslim migrants, and is currently campaigning in local elections in the Saxony-Anhalt region that will be seen as an indicator of public sentiment on the issue.

The anti-mass Muslim migration Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party held a rally in the German capital Berlin this afternoon, demanding the resignation of Chancellor Angela Merkel and calling for the country to adopt a strong policy on immigration.

German paper Handelsblatt estimates that 5,000 people joined the rally this afternoon, calling for the immediate closure of Germany’s borders and introduction of visa requirements from migrants from the Balkan states, including Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.
Angry demonstrators chanted “Merkel must go” and “traitor to the people” under the banner “Asylum has its limits – red card for Merkel”.

Addressing the crowd, Beatrix von Storch, member of the European Parliament, accused the German chancellor of causing "asylum chaos” in Germany.

This was a rally in German from about two weeks ago, as the German people are being forced to rise up and do what their government refuses to do.

Although the main protest was largely peaceful, several counter-protests by pro-migrant activists descended into violence, with around 40 arrests. Around 800 counter-demonstrators showed up, far lower than organisers had hoped.

Yesterday, it was reported that the German government had agreed the downgrade the status of Syrian migrants, reducing the amount of time they could stay in the country and banning them from bringing their families. Today, however, the government did a U-turn on the plans.

Please visit
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/thousands-german-people-chant-merkel-must-go-at-anti-mass-muslim-migration-rally/

to see the original article, videos, and links to sources and related information.



Court rules against Little Sisters of the Poor in Contraceptive Coverage Case

 By Nigel Duara
L.A. Times
 July 14, 2015

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that there is a limit to how far the government must bend to accommodate religious objections to the federal healthcare exchange.

The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that if the Colorado-based Little Sisters of the Poor want to refuse contraceptive coverage to their employees, they must sign a waiver to be exempted, and that such a waiver is not a substantial burden on the nuns' religious freedom.

The 2-1 decision is one of the few victories the U.S. government can claim in defense of the healthcare law in the contraceptive mandate debate.

Hobby Lobby, a business run by evangelical Christians, successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last year that a mandate to provide contraception to female employees violated their belief that life begins at conception.

The high court agreed that for-profit organizations like Hobby Lobby required protection, but did not say how far such protections would go.

 In response, on Aug. 27, 2014, Affordable Care Act administrators created a waiver for religious nonprofits that would grant them an exemption from contraceptive coverage.

But the Little Sisters of the Poor, who run the Mullen Home for the Aged in Denver, argued before a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit that the waiver itself both crosses the nuns’ moral boundary by endorsing contraceptives and gives control of their healthcare program to the government.

 “Most religious liberty claimants allege that a generally applicable law or policy without a religious exception burdens religious exercise,” according to the decision, noting that most cases begin with prisoners demanding a religious right.

But in the Little Sisters of the Poor case and accompanying suits by self-insured religious objectors and religious universities, the government made clear attempts to offer a religious exemption, the judges wrote.

“Although plaintiffs allege the administrative tasks required to opt out of the mandate make them complicit in the overall delivery scheme, opting out instead relieves them from complicity,” according to the opinion.

The judges said the difference between Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor is that Hobby Lobby faced fines for every day of noncompliance. Ihe Little Sisters of the Poor faced no such burden, the judges ruled.

10th Circuit Judge Bobby R. Baldock, the lone dissenter, agreed with the decision on the Little Sisters of the Poor but said other self-insured groups were indeed substantially burdened when they faced fines for refusing to provide contraceptives because of their religious belief.

View this copyrighted article in it's entirety at the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-little-sisters-of-the-poor-20150714-story.html




PRESS RELEASE

May 9, 2015
Dr. Gene A. Youngblood, Pastor
First Conservative Baptist Church
12021 Old St Augustine Rd
Jacksonville, Florida 32258

TO: All news media outlets

It has come to my attention that there are some in our community, as well as, a few media that have expressed questions or concerns relating to our Church-Ministry campus/outdoor marquee, changeable copy sign and its current message. This marquee generally has a message change each week. Generally the message relates in some fashion to those things and events taking place in our city or nation. As a pastor and ministry we feel it needful to keep our citizens informed and at the same time be relevant through the Word of GOD.

FIRST: Let me state my deep love and concern for our great city, state, and nation.  I am a Bible believing patriot with a deep concern over the moral declension. I am deeply saddened to see the morals and family values under attack on a national basis. I have invested the past 50 years of my life in the defense of the WORD of GOD through religious-theological studies, pastoral, pulpit, and classroom academic instructional responsibilities.
SECOND: We are profoundly committed to the preaching-teaching of God’s Word. God’s Word commands that I “Preach the WORD” (11Tim 4:1-3) which in the text includes confronting sin. I do not have the authority OR permission to change any text of GOD’S Word-THE BIBLE.
THIRD: Our ministry marquee has been used as a tool to educate, inspire, and caution for over 30 years. We have dealt with multiple Biblical-Theological issues that caution and confront sin of whatever kind. Our prayer is that in our small way we may make a difference in the lives of all those who pass by. We do realize that any scriptural absolute may cause conviction resulting in the attack on the messenger as well as the message.
FORMALLY: The present message (caution) comes from the WORD of GOD, The BIBLE as found in a multitude of Scripture references:
•    Romans 1:24-32, deals with several kinds of Sin, with the focus on those believing that they are wise and God says that they are unwise. God then deals with the specific sin of homosexuality and firmly condemns it.
•    I Corinthians 6:9-10, warns that all (including homosexuals) that commit sin and DO NOT REPENT will die and go to HELL.
•    OTHER text include and is NOT limited to: Leviticus 20:13, Leviticus 18:22, Deuteronomy 23:17-18, Galatians 5:19-21, Revelation 21:8, Revelation 22:15
Needless to say, the Scriptures are replete with GOD’S warnings to all of us that SIN must be confessed and repented of or HELL is GOD’S judgment upon sin. The wonder of it all is that God through Jesus Christ will forgive “ANY” confessed sin that is repented of.
BECAUSE we love people (yet, as directed in Scripture to hate the sin), we therefore want to warn them of the coming Judgment of God on the sin of Homosexuality (and any other sin that is NOT repented of). ALL SIN that is not confessed and repented will cause a person to GO TO HELL (God says it, I did not originate the Word), God did. In fact, according to several of the heretofore mentioned Biblical text remind us of other sin specifically mentioned in Scripture including; “All Liars, Prostitutes, Sexually Promiscuous, Idolaters, Adulterers, Homosexuals, Revilers, Extortioners, WILL GO TO HELL unless they repent and seek God’s forgiveness.
It is my sincere prayer that perhaps “ONE” practicing Homosexual will have read our sign and will REPENT before it is too late and they are cast into HELL. HELL is a real place and anyone not believing in the reality of HELL will not change the temperature of the FLAMES a single degree.
I am eternally grateful to God for allowing me to preach HIS WORD at a time when our Religious FREEDOMS are being challenged and FREEDOM of speech is being challenged, as well as, our (all of us) Constitutional Liberties are under ATTACK.
Notwithstanding all of the above, I do understand and sympathize with SOME that are not well instructed or versed in the BIBLE and thus will consider our marquee’s message to be incorrect or un-spiritual. PLEASE allow me to state forthrightly; we stand on SOLID Biblical TRUTH, therefore we pray for each person that reads our message (changes weekly), and prayerfully considers its TRUTH and Caution.
FURTHERMORE, I pray that the media will NOT attempt to thwart or interfere with our FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS SPEECH. We also pray that the media will be cautioned NOT to in any way interfere with or disrupt ANY worship or other programs or services conducted in and through FIRST CONSERVATIVE BAPTIST CHURCH.

May God bless and use all in the MEDIA as an instrument to preserve society and help protect AMERICA and our great document THE CONSTITUTION.

Signed;

DR. GENE A. YOUNGBLOOD
Pastor



Obama blocks Iraqi nun from describing Christian persecution


Posted By Leo Hohmann
World Net Daily
05/01/2015 @ 11:52 am
In Faith,Front Page,U.S.,World 

 Sister Diana Momeka is a Dominican Catholic nun who fled her home in Iraq last August along with 50,000 other Christians and religious minorities escaping ISIS.

A leading conservative is asking why the Obama State Department is barring a persecuted Iraqi nun from entry into the United States to share her message about the brutal treatment of Christians in her country.

Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, writes in a National Review op-ed that Sister Diana Momeka is “an internationally respected and leading representative of the Nineveh Christians who have been killed and deported by ISIS.”

Yet this nun is being “barred from coming to Washington to testify about this catastrophe?”

Sister Diana was the only Christian in the delegation and the only member blocked from the trip, the Washington Times reported, leading some of her American supporters to question why she was singled out.

Shea, in her op-ed titled “With Malice Toward Nun,” exposed the real reason why Obama denied the visa for Sister Diana.

    “Sister Diana Momeka of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena was informed on Tuesday by the U.S. consulate in Erbil that her non-immigrant-visa application has been rejected.

    “The reason given in the denial letter, a copy of which I have obtained, is:
    ‘You were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the United States would be consistent with the classification of the visa.’”

Shea further explains:

    “She told me in a phone conversation that, to her face, consular officer Christopher Patch told her she was denied because she is an ‘IDP’ or Internally Displaced Person. ‘That really hurt,’ she said. Essentially, the State Department was calling her a deceiver.”

Shea states that the State Department officials made the determination that the Catholic nun “could be falsely asserting that she intends to visit Washington when secretly she could be intending to stay. That would constitute illegal immigration, and that, of course, is strictly forbidden. Once here, she could also be at risk for claiming political asylum, and the U.S. seems determined to deny ISIS’s Christian victims that status.”

Shea then outlined Sister Diana’s reasons for her visit and the endorsements she received from two politicians – one Republican and one Democrat — among others:

    “In reality, Sister Diana wanted to visit for one week in mid-May. She has meetings set up with the Senate and House foreign-relations committees, the State Department, USAID, and various NGOs. In support of her application, Sister Diana had multiple documents vouching for her and the temporary nature of her visit. She submitted a letter from her prioress, Sister Maria Hana. It attested that the nun has been gainfully employed since last February with the Babel College of Philosophy and Theology in Erbil, Kurdistan, and is contracted to teach there in the 2015–16 academic year.”

Sister Diana also submitted an invitation from her sponsors, two respected Washington-area think tanks, the Institute for Global Engagement and former congressman Frank Wolf’s (R., Va.) 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative.

None of this was good enough for the Obama State Department.

Yet, as Matthew Balan points out in an article for News Busters, even as the administration denies a visa to a persecuted Christian nun, it has created a “special envoy for the human rights of LGBT persons.”

“One wonders if any of the major news media outlets will pick up the story of Sister Diana,” Balan muses. Just over a month ago, on 60 Minutes, CBS’s Lara Logan refreshingly brought new attention to ISIS’s genocidal campaign against the ancient Christian communities in Iraq. But since then, there has been scant coverage of the Islamic extremist group’s persecution of the religious minority. ”

Sister Diana, along with the town’s 50,000 other, mostly Christian, residents, were forced out of their homes by ISIS in the second week of August and fled for their lives to Kurdish-controlled areas.

“Since then, the 30-something religious woman has served as a spokesperson for this community, as well as for the over 100,000 other Christians driven into Kurdistan under the ISIS ‘convert or die’ policy,” Shea writes.

“Mr. Wolf, who met her in Kurdistan a few months ago, explained, ‘We had hoped to facilitate her trip to the States so that she could speak with great candor, as is her custom, to policymakers. Perhaps just as significantly, we viewed her as a critical voice to awaken the church in the West to the suffering of Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq.’”

This article may be read in its entirety at http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/obama-blocks-iraqi-nun-from-describing-christian-persecution/




Muslim congressmen try to boot Islam critic Geert Wilders

Posted By Art Moore On 04/30/2015 @ 7:38 pm In Front Page,Politics,U.S. 

Reps. Andre Carson, D-Ind., Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., and Keith Ellison, D-Minn., in Washington, D.C., protesting Geert Wilders visit to the U.S. (Twitter @RepAndreCarson)

As one of the world’s most prominent critics of Islam, Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders doesn’t go anywhere without his security detail of as many as six plainclothes police officers, and he rarely crosses international borders without causing political uproar, having already been banned in Britain at one time.

So it was of little surprise that three U.S. congressmen urged Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to deny him a visa ahead of his planned visit to the U.S. this week, due to his alleged ongoing “participation in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence.”

Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and André Carson, D-Ind., who both are Muslim, along with Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., wrote a letter April 23 citing “the International Religious Freedom Act which allows the Department of State to deny entry to a foreign leader who is responsible for severe violations of religious freedom.”

Nevertheless, Wilders – who insists he doesn’t hate Muslims but believes Western civilization is threatened by adherents of the Islamic supremacy taught in the Quran – showed up on Capitol Hill Wednesday and spoke at two events at the invitation of Reps. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and  Steve King, R-Iowa

King’s communications director, Sarah Stevens, told WND the congressman invited Wilders a month or so ago to speak at the weekly Conservative Opportunity Society breakfast he chairs. Wilders spoke Wednesday on his latest book, “Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me,” and also attended an evening reception with Congress members and staff along with representatives of foreign-policy groups on Capitol Hill.

Ellison, Carson and Crowley showed up Thursday at a news conference King and Gohmert held for Wilders in front of the U.S. Capitol and voiced their opposition to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf in a video interview.

“Personally, I find it disturbing, but mostly sad, because, you know, the people of the Netherlands are a good people, and this is absolutely true, with a great history of tolerance, great history of giving art to the world and great gifts,” Ellison said.

“And it’s unfortunate,” the Minnesota congressman continued, “that someone such as this would come over here and sort of represent himself as a member of that society.”

Wilders, for his part, would contend that Ellison actually is drawing attention to the central issue: It’s the intolerance of Muslim immigrants and their refusal to assimilate, Wilders argues, that threatens the historic Judeo-Christian Dutch culture that forms the basis of a tolerant, pluralistic society capable of “giving art to the world and great gifts.”

As for whether or not Wilders represents his country, in 2009 he remarked: “Half of Holland loves me and half of Holland hates me. There is no in-between.”

King was unable to speak to WND due to schedule constraints, but he  was interviewed by the De Telegraaf reporter in front of the Capitol Thursday, who asked him for his view of Wilders.

“I think he’s solid and courageous. I introduced him yesterday as a man who will stand up and speak the truth – even if he’s under death threats, speak the truth,” King said in the video interview.

“He’s done that consistently for a decade.”

Wilders is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at an event Sunday in the Dallas area called the “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest.” Held at the venue where Muslims hosted a “Stand with the Prophet in Honor and Respect” conference one week after the Paris Charlie Hebdo massacre in January, the event’s organizers, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, see Wilders as representative of their aggressive defense of freedom of speech.

ADI is run by author and Atlas Shrugs blogger Pamela Geller, and author and Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer, who themselves have been branded by Ellison, Carson and their allies as “Islamophobes.” Geller and Spencer argue their work amounts to citing the justifications from the Quran and other Islamic texts used by Muslims who employ violent acts and other means to assert Islamic supremacy.

Comparing cultures

Summarizing their complaint, the three protesting congressmen told Kerry and Johnson that Wilders’ “policy agenda is centered on the principle that Christian culture is superior to other cultures.”

“He justifies his desire to ban the Quran and Islam from the Netherlands with depraved comments like, ‘Islam is not a religion, it’s an ideology, the ideology of a retarded culture.’ We should not be importing hate speech,” they write.

Wilders’ defenders point out that the Dutch word he used to describe Islamic culture can be translated as “backward” rather than “retarded,” insisting that while Wilders doesn’t mince words, he is no hater of people.

“I don’t hate Muslims, I hate Islam,” explains Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom, the fourth-largest party in the Dutch parliament.

That sentiment apparently is of little consolation to many of the more than 1 billion people who identify as Muslim, but Wilders contends the orthodox teaching of Islam derived from Muhammad is an existential threat to Western civilization.

While he puts the percentage of Islamic extremists at about 5 to 15 percent of Muslims, he contends “moderate Islam” doesn’t exist and notes the Quran itself states that Muslims who accept the Islam’s holy book in part are “apostates.”

As evidence of the failure to assimilate, in a speech to parliament last year he cited a study showing that nearly three-quarters of ethnic Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands regard those who leave the European nation to join jihadists in Syria as “heroes.” Wilders pointed out that the same percentage of Dutch Muslims condoned the 9/11 attacks.

Wilders has been under constant security protection since November 2004, when two North African Muslims were accused of planning to murder him and another outspoken critic of Islam in the parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The attack at the Hague came shortly after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Moroccan national.

Wilders was banned from the U.K. as an “undesirable person” under Prime Minister Gordon Brown in February 2009, two days before he was scheduled to show his short film “Fitna” at the invitation of two members of the House of Lords. Wilders appealed the ban to Britain’s Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, which overturned it in October 2009.

Wilders writings and film “Fitna” warning of the “Islamization” of the Netherlands and Europe prompted Turkish, Moroccan and Antillean organizations in the country to bring charges against him of criminally insulting religious and ethnic groups and inciting hatred and discrimination.

In June 2011, he was acquitted of all charges. Judge Marcel van Oosten called Wilders’ statements about Islam “gross and denigrating” but ruled they didn’t constitute hatred against Muslims and, therefore, were “acceptable within the context of public debate.”

Limiting free speech

In their letter, Ellison, Carson and Crowley assert Wilders’ right to speak freely in the U.S. under the First Amendment is limited because he allegedly incites violence and “prejudicial action” against protected groups.

They write:

In the U.S., freedom of speech is a bedrock principle that distinguishes free societies from ones living under oppressive regimes. Freedom of speech, however, is not absolute. It is limited by the legal and moral understanding that speech that causes the incitement of violence or prejudicial action against protected groups is wrong. As Mr. Wilders continues his pursuit of political power, granting him entry will embolden him to engage in further incitement of violence and discrimination against Muslims.

Legal analyst Eugene Volokh noted the incitement exception to free speech, according to Supreme Court precedent, is “limited to speech intended to and likely to produce imminent lawless conduct — conduct in the coming hours or maybe few days.”

Wilders’ statements, Volokh wrote in a Washington Post blogpost, appear to be constitutionally protected, he said, because they “don’t urge any imminent conduct (or even any criminal conduct, as opposed to long-term changes in the law). Such statements’ are “incitement” in the Congressmen’s opinion only because the Congressmen apparently view constitutionally unprotected “incitement” (or, as they term it earlier, “hate speech”) much more broadly."

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.

‘Killing Jews is Worship’ posters will soon appear on NYC subways and buses

Washington Post
Michael Miller
April 22, 2015

‘Killing Jews is Worship’ posters will soon appear on NYC subways and buses

New Yorkers are used to aggressive advertising. Banners for breast implants. Billboards for condoms. But a federal judge’s ruling has opened the door for far more controversial posters on buses and subways across the city.

“Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” reads one such ad next to the image of a young man in a checkered headscarf. “That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?”

The poster is at the center of heated legal debate over public safety and free speech. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl ruled that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) cannot stop the controversial ad from running on scores of subway cars and buses.

The MTA has argued that the ad could incite violence against Jews, but Koeltl rejected that idea.

MTA officials “underestimate the tolerant quality of New Yorkers and overestimate the potential impact of these fleeting advertisements,” he ruled. “Moreover, there is no evidence that seeing one of these advertisements on the back of a bus would be sufficient to trigger a violent reaction. Therefore, these ads — offensive as they may be — are still entitled to First Amendment protection.”

Making the case all the stranger is that the posters are not the work of an Islamist group, but rather a pro-Israel organization.

“This is a triumph for liberty and free speech,” tweeted Pamela Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), the group that purchased the ads and sued the MTA to run them.

New Yorkers are used to aggressive advertising. Banners for breast implants. Billboards for condoms. But a federal judge’s ruling has opened the door for far more controversial posters on buses and subways across the city.

“Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” reads one such ad next to the image of a young man in a checkered headscarf. “That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?”

The poster is at the center of heated legal debate over public safety and free speech. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl ruled that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) cannot stop the controversial ad from running on scores of subway cars and buses.

The MTA has argued that the ad could incite violence against Jews, but Koeltl rejected that idea.

MTA officials “underestimate the tolerant quality of New Yorkers and overestimate the potential impact of these fleeting advertisements,” he ruled. “Moreover, there is no evidence that seeing one of these advertisements on the back of a bus would be sufficient to trigger a violent reaction. Therefore, these ads — offensive as they may be — are still entitled to First Amendment protection.”

Making the case all the stranger is that the posters are not the work of an Islamist group, but rather a pro-Israel organization.

“This is a triumph for liberty and free speech,” tweeted Pamela Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), the group that purchased the ads and sued the MTA to run them.

AFDI is not your traditional free speech organization, however. The “about” section on its Web site starts out pretty straightforward, then takes a very hard turn.

Whatever you make of the group, AFDI has been remarkably successful in bringing its message to America. AFDI has filed at least nine lawsuits across the country, often against cities or their contractors that refuse to display their messages.

Those messages include a poster depicting Adolf Hitler meeting with “the leader of the Muslim world” and demanding that the United States cut off all aid to Islamic countries. “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” reads another AFDI poster. “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

AFDI’s ads have also drawn objections from Muslims. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil liberties group that promotes the rights of Muslims and better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, launched its own public relations campaign to combat AFDI. In 2012 and 2013, CAIR ran posters in several U.S. cities promoting peaceful versions of Islam. “‘#MyJihad is to build friendships across the aisle.’ What’s yours?” But the ads never ran in New York due to a disagreement between CAIR and MTA.

The poster attributes the “Killing Jews” quote to “Hamas MTV,” apparently a reference to the Palestinian group’s odd blend of violence and music videos. The ad also has a disclaimer at the bottom noting that it is “a paid advertisement sponsored by” AFDI and “does not imply MTA’s endorsement.”

But MTA Security Director Raymond Diaz worried that the poster would nonetheless incite violence, primarily against Jews. “What matters is not AFDI’s intent, but how the ad would be interpreted,” he wrote. The line “What is yours?” could be considered a “call to violence,” particularly because the CAIR posters it was mocking never appeared in New York. When AFDI pointed out that the exact same poster had not caused any problems in Chicago or San Francisco, Diaz argued that New York was different because it is “the prime terror target” and that the “terrorist security threat” had grown worse since 2013.

On Tuesday, however, Judge Koeltl tossed out those arguments and sided with AFDI. The ads could not reasonably be considered an incitement to violence, even if someone didn’t understand them.

“The defendants admit that the actual intention of the advertisement is not to advocate the use of force, but to parody the CAIR ‘My Jihad’ campaign and to criticize Hamas and radical Islam. However, they argue that a reasonable New Yorker would not read the advertisement this way, but would instead read it as advocating the killing of Jewish people,” Koeltl wrote. “The defendants’ theory is thoroughly unpersuasive.”

After AFDI’s victory, Geller posed for photos outside the federal courthouse while holding the “Killing Jews” advertisement.

“With our NY win, our ads will make their debut on New York buses in the coming weeks,” AFDI’s Web site promises above a “donate” button. “We want to run 100. Help us make that happen.”

But even if the ads don’t incite violence in New York City, they could overseas. Earlier this month, Egypt’s top religious authority called AFDI’s posters “racist” and issued a fatwa, or official edict, against them. “This hazardous campaign will leave the gate of confrontation and clashes wide open instead of exerting efforts towards peaceful coexistence and harmony,” according to the edict.

Hamas, the group cited on the ads, has not said whether it approves of the message.

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/




  Navy Official Bans Chaplain From Ministering To Bereaved Families And Sailors


GOOSE CREEK, S.C.,
March 24, 2015
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
Today, Liberty Institute announces that Chaplain Modder's commanding officer, Captain Jon R. Fahs, issued a "no contact" order to Chaplain Wes Modder (the military version of a restraining order), forbidding him from counseling or ministering to members of his unit. The order comes on the heels of a tragic death in Modder's unit, banning him from ministering to grieving sailors and the deceased sailor's family members.

After a sailor in his unit unexpectedly passed away, Chaplain Modder immediately sprung into action to fulfill his usual chaplain duties of providing comfort and support to the deceased sailor's grieving family. But just as Chaplain Modder was about to perform those duties, the Navy informed him of the "no contact" order, banning him from having any contact with any personnel from his unit, depriving him of the ability to comfort them during a time of grief and mourning. Captain Fahs also banished Chaplain Modder from the Naval base where Modder is stationed on the day of the memorial service for the fallen sailor. The order also comes just days after Captain Fahs denied Chaplain Modder's request for a religious accommodation to provide pastoral counseling in accordance with his faith. (See Captain Fahs' denial letter at https://www.libertyinstitute.org/ModderFacts)

"This Navy official is using the 'no contact' order as a weapon to punish and humiliate a decorated military chaplain," said Mike Berry, Liberty Institute Senior Counsel and Director of Military Affairs. "I am stunned that he would deny Chaplain Modder the ability to minister to a grieving family and other sailors."

Liberty Institute President and CEO Kelly Shackelford said, "Of the most critical times for chaplains, the death of a colleague is near the top of the list. For this Navy official to bar a chaplain from comforting and ministering to sailors and families is a reprehensible violation of religious freedom and common human decency."

Case Background: Chaplain Wes Modder is a Navy chaplain and former Marine who previously served as the Force chaplain for Naval Special Warfare Command. He has deployed overseas multiple times during the War on Terror, including in support of Navy SEAL Teams. In October 2014, Chaplain Modder's commander called him a "consummate professional leader," "the best of the best," and said he sets the "clear benchmark" for chaplain professionalism. Now, the Navy is threatening Chaplain Modder with career-ending punishment because, when asked, he expressed faith-based views on marriage and human sexuality in private counseling sessions. Liberty Institute is defending Chaplain Modder and asserts that censoring his religious expression is unconstitutional religious discrimination. The "no contact" order comes only days after the Navy officially denied Chaplain Modder's request for religious accommodation, in violation of federal law and Department of Defense (DoD) regulations. (Read more about Modder's case at https://www.libertyinstitute.org/ModderFacts)


About Liberty Institute
Liberty Institute is the largest nonprofit legal organization in the nation dedicated solely to defending religious liberty in America. Liberty Institute protects freedom of religious expression in our military, schools, churches, and throughout the public arena. For more information, visit www.LibertyInstitute.org.


March 12, 2015

In mid February of this year Navy Chaplain Wesley Modder received a "detachment for cause" letter after commanders concluded he was "intolerant" and "unable to function in the diverse and pluralistic environment" of his current assignment. Lt Cmdr. Modder has served more than 19 years  with commendations as "best of the best" and a "talented and inspirational leader. Click here to read the March 11 article in the Military Times.

To take concrete action, here is a link to urge your congressional representatives to get personally involved to protect the religious rights (and responsibilities) of this chaplain (and all Americans):
http://www.afa.net/action-alerts/decorated-chaplain-threatened-by-navy-take-action/

Muslim Brotherhood princess' used Clinton email server


03/11/2015 @ 9:10 pm
WND.com In Front Page,Politics,U.S.

Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin

At least three of Hillary Clinton’s top aides – including one with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – used emails hosted on Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state, according to several reports.

At a news conference Tuesday at the U.N., Clinton directly addressed media about the revelation that she conducted her business as secretary of state using a private email account instead of the secure and archived government system.

She acknowledged she deleted thousands of personal emails and said she turned over hard copies of messages to the State Department that she deemed to be work related.

But Clinton apparently wasn’t the only one at the State Department using private email.

Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen Hayes told Fox News, “Two of Hillary Clinton’s top aides used personal email while they were employed at the State Department.”

Hayes specifically named Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, who served as Clinton’s longtime deputy chief of staff. Abedin and Clinton worked closely together for nearly 20 years.

“The State Department has evidence of this,” he said.

In another report, the gossip website Gawker claimed both Abedin and Phillippe Reines, Clinton’s communications strategist, used the private email addresses.

The London Daily Mail confirmed one of Abedin’s email addresses was listed as Huma@clintonemail.com.

Abedin’s emails would be of particular interest because she has known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – a group that’s bent on “destroying Western civilization from within” – and other Islamic supremacists.

Hayes said, “The question, I think becomes: Were they emailing with Hillary Clinton from their personal email addresses to her personal email address about State Department business, about Benghazi, including sensitive classified information?

“Those are questions that I think (Rep.) Trey Gowdy and the House Benghazi Committee is going to want to look at very carefully.”

What do YOU think? Will Hillary’s email troubles delete her run for president? Sound off in today’s WND poll

Government watchdog Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit against the State Department seeking all emails from 2009 to 2013 between Clinton, Abedin and Nagla Mahmoud, wife of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi.

“Now we know why the State Department didn’t want to respond to our specific request for Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s communications,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The State Department violated FOIA law rather than admit that it couldn’t and wouldn’t search the secret accounts that the agency has known about for years. This lawsuit shows how the latest Obama administration cover-up isn’t just about domestic politics but has significant foreign policy implications.”

Get the details about what really happened in one of America’s biggest foreign operations failures, in “The REAL Benghazi Story.”

Transforming America

Abedin and Clinton worked closely together for nearly 20 years. As WND has extensively reported, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic supremacist connections not only extend to Abedin’s mother and father, who are both deeply tied to al-Qaida fronts, but to Abedin herself.

Major news media profiles of Abedin report she was born of Pakistani and Indian parents, without delving much further into her family’s history.

As WND reported, a manifesto commissioned by the ruling Saudi Arabian monarchy places the work of an institute that employed Abedin at the forefront of a grand plan to mobilize U.S. Muslim minorities to transform America into a Saudi-style Islamic state, according to Arabic-language researcher Walid Shoebat.

Abedin was an assistant editor for a dozen years for the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs for the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs. The institute – founded by her late father and currently directed by her mother – is backed by the Muslim World League, an Islamic organization in the Saudi holy city of Mecca that was founded by Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

The 2002 Saudi manifesto shows that “Muslim Minority Affairs” – the mobilizing of Muslim communities in the U.S. to spread Islam instead of assimilating into the population – is a key strategy in an ongoing effort to establish Islamic rule in America and a global Shariah, or Islamic law, “in our modern times.”

WND reported Abedin also was a member of the executive board of the Muslim Student Association, which was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group in a 1991 document introduced into evidence during the terror-financing trial of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation.

At her father’s Saudi-financed Islamic think tank, WND reported, Abedin worked alongside Abdullah Omar Naseef, who is accused of financing al-Qaida fronts.

Naseef is deeply connected to the Abedin family.

WND was first to report Huma’s mother, Saleha Abedin, was the official representative of Naseef’s terror-stained Muslim World League in the 1990s.

Shoebat previously reported that as one of 63 leaders of the Muslim Sisterhood, the de facto female version of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saleha Abedin served alongside Nagla Ali Mahmoud, the wife of Muslim Brotherhood figure Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s now ousted president.

Saleha Abedin and Morsi’s wife both were members of the Sisterhood’s Guidance Bureau, Shoebat found.

Huma worked with al-Qaida front man

Abdullah Omar Naseef is secretary-general of the Muslim World League, an Islamic charity known to have spawned terrorist groups, including one declared by the U.S. government to be an official al-Qaida front.

The institute founded by Huma Abedin’s father reportedly was a quiet, but active, supporter of Naseef.

The institute bills itself as “the only scholarly institution dedicated to the systematic study of Muslim communities in non-Muslim societies around the world.”

Huma served on the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs’s editorial board from 2002 to 2008.

Documents obtained by Shoebat revealed that Naseef served on the board with Huma from at least December 2002 to December 2003.

Naseef’s sudden departure from the board in December 2003 coincides with the time at which various charities led by Naseef’s Muslim World League were declared illegal terrorism fronts worldwide, including by the U.S. and U.N.

The MWL, founded in Mecca in 1962, bills itself as one of the largest Islamic non-governmental organizations.

But according to U.S. government documents and testimony from the charity’s own officials, it is heavily financed by the Saudi government.

The MWL has been accused of terrorist ties, as have its various offshoots, including the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO, and Al Haramain, which was declared by the U.S. and U.N. as a terror financing front.

Indeed, the Treasury Department, in a September 2004 press release, alleged Al Haramain had “direct links” with Osama bin Laden. The group is now banned worldwide by U.N. Security Council Committee resolution 1267.

There long have been accusations that the IIRO and MWL also repeatedly funded al-Qaida.

In 1993, bin Laden reportedly told an associate that the MWL was one of his three most important charity fronts.

An Anti-Defamation League profile of the MWL accuses the group of promulgating a “fundamentalist interpretation of Islam around the world through a large network of charities and affiliated organizations.”

“Its ideological backbone is based on an extremist interpretation of Islam,” the profile states, “and several of its affiliated groups and individuals have been linked to terror-related activity.”

In 2003, U.S. News and World Report documented that accompanying the MWL’s donations, invariably, are “a blizzard of Wahhabist literature.”

“Critics argue that Wahhabism’s more extreme preachings – mistrust of infidels, branding of rival sects as apostates and emphasis on violent jihad –laid the groundwork for terrorist groups around the world,” the report continued.

An Egyptian-American cab driver, Ihab Mohamed Ali Nawawi, was arrested in Florida in 1990 on accusations he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent and a former personal pilot to bin Laden. At the time he was accused of serving bin Laden, he also reportedly worked for the Pakistani branch of the MWL.

The MWL in 1988 founded the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, developing chapters in about 50 countries, including for a time in Oregon until it was designated a terrorist organization.

In the early 1990s, evidence began to grow that the foundation was funding Islamist militants in Somalia and Bosnia, and a 1996 CIA report detailed its Bosnian militant ties.

The U.S. Treasury designated Al Haramain’s offices in Kenya and Tanzania as sponsors of terrorism for their role in planning and funding the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. The Comoros Islands office was also designated because it “was used as a staging area and exfiltration route for the perpetrators of the 1998 bombings.”

The New York Times reported in 2003 that Al Haramain had provided funds to the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. The Indonesia office was later designated a terrorist entity by the Treasury.

In February 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department froze all Al Haramain’s financial assets pending an investigation, leading the Saudi government to disband the charity and fold it into another group, the Saudi National Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad.

In September 2004, the U.S. designated Al-Haramain a terrorist organization.

In June 2008, the Treasury Department applied the terrorist designation to the entire Al-Haramain organization worldwide

Bin Laden’s brother-in-law

In August 2006, the Treasury Department also designated the Philippine and Indonesian branch offices of the MWL-founded IIRO as terrorist entities “for facilitating fundraising for al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups.”

The Treasury Department added: “Abd Al Hamid Sulaiman Al-Mujil, a high-ranking IIRO official [executive director of its Eastern Province Branch] in Saudi Arabia, has used his position to bankroll the al-Qaida network in Southeast Asia. Al-Mujil has a long record of supporting Islamic militant groups, and he has maintained a cell of regular financial donors in the Middle East who support extremist causes.”

In the 1980s, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, ran the Philippines offices of the IIRO. Khalifa has been linked to Manila-based plots to target the pope and U.S. airlines.

The IIRO has also been accused of funding Hamas, Algerian radicals, Afghanistan militant bases and the Egyptian terror group Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya.

The New York Post reported the families of the 9/11 victims filed a lawsuit against IIRO and other Muslim organizations for having “played key roles in laundering of funds to the terrorists in the 1998 African embassy bombings” and for having been involved in the “financing and ‘aiding and abetting’ of terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”

‘Saudi government front’

In a court case in Canada, Arafat El-Asahi, the Canadian director of both the IIRO and the MWL, admitted the charities are near entities of the Saudi government.

Stated El-Asahi: “The Muslim World League, which is the mother of IIRO, is a fully government-funded organization. In other words, I work for the government of Saudi Arabia. I am an employee of that government.

“Second, the IIRO is the relief branch of that organization, which means that we are controlled in all our activities and plans by the government of Saudi Arabia. Keep that in mind, please,” he said.

Despite its offshoots being implicated in terror financing, the U.S. government never designated the MWL itself as a terror-financing charity. Many have speculated the U.S. has been trying to not embarrass the Saudi government.

Huma’s mother represented Muslim World League

Saleha Abedin has been quoted in numerous press accounts as both representing the MWL and serving as a delegate for the charity.

In 1995, for example, the Washington Times reported on a United Nations-arranged women’s conference in Beijing that called on governments throughout the world to give women statistical equality with men in the workplace.

The report quoted Saleha Abedin, who attended the conference as a delegate, as “also representing the Muslim World League based in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim NGO Caucus.”

The U.N.’s website references a report in the run-up to the Beijing conference that also lists Abedin as representing the MWL at the event.

The website posted an article from the now defunct United States Information Agency quoting Abedin and reporting she attended the Beijing conference as “a delegate of the Muslim World League and member of the Muslim Women’s NGO caucus.”

In the article, Abedin was listed under a shorter name, “Dr. Saleha Mahmoud, director of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.”

WND confirmed the individual listed is Huma Abedin’s mother. The reports misspelled part of Abedin’s name. Her full professional name is at times listed as Saleha Mahmood Abedin S.

Hillary praise

Saleha Mahmood formerly directed the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in the U.K. and served as a delegate for the Muslim World League, an Islamic fundamentalist group Osama bin Laden reportedly told an associate was one of his most important charity fronts.

In February 2010, Clinton spoke at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Abedin was an associate professor of sociology at the time.

Clinton, after she was introduced by Abedin, praised the work of the terror-tied professor.

“I have to say a special word about Dr. Saleha Abedin,” Clinton said. “You heard her present the very exciting partnerships that have been pioneered between colleges and universities in the United States and this college. And it is pioneering work to create these kinds of relationships.

“But I have to confess something that Dr. Abedin did not,” Clinton continued, “and that is that I have almost a familial bond with this college. Dr. Abedin’s daughter, one of her three daughters, is my deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, who started to work for me when she was a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.”

Article was originally posted on wnd.com at http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/muslim-brotherhood-princess-used-clinton-email-server/print/



NUKES FOR IRAN??

The Clarion Project was founded in 2006 by Raphael Shore. It is dedicated to "exposing the dangers of Islamic extremism while providing a platform for the voices of moderation and promoting grassroots activism." Shore produced the 2008 documentary The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America.. (View at this link.)
The main web page of the Clarion Project is www.clarionproject.org. They are currently sponsoring an email campaign to your elected officials "No Nukes For Iran".
As Prime Minister Netanyahu stated in his speech to the U.S. Congress on March 3, 2015,  "for over a year, we've been told that no deal is better than a bad deal (with Iran). Well, this is a bad deal. It's a very bad deal. We're better off without it."    Visit this link to quickly send an email  to your elected officials in Washington  www.acttoimpact.com.

~>~>~>~>~>~>~>~>

File Under the category of "Unintended Consequences"

Side effects of a Nuclear Deal with Iran:

A Middle East Arms Race?:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/saudi-nuclear-deal-raises-stakes-for-iran-talks-2015-03-11-21103596



  According to two FCC commissioners, those new regulations are bad all around

By Brad Matthews
Watchdog.org
March 4, 2015

The Obama administration and proponents of the FCC’s version of net neutrality may be ecstatic at the passing of regulations that make the Internet a public utility on Feb. 26th, but not all FCC members are so sunny in their outlook for the future.

TechFreedom held a fireside chat on Feb. 27th with two FCC commissioners, Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly, and the two of them concurred that the new regulations are far-reaching, largely unchecked and pose a threat to consumer bills and to innovation in the industry.

Ajit Pai openly questioned what the problem was, saying, “There’s never been a systemic analysis of what the problem with the Internet is. In this order, you see scattered niche examples [Comcast and BitTorrent, Apple and FaceTime, others] all of which were resolved, mind you, through private sector initiatives.” He continued, saying that the FCC’s net neutrality regulatory regime is a solution that won’t work in search of a problem that doesn’t exist.”  Essentially, this is, contrary to the assertion of activists and others, a vaguely justified power grab by a government agency.

Mike O’Rielly added, in a bit of humor that “there is a problem, and it’s the document we adopted [Feb. 26].” Neither of them were reticent in explaining exactly how and why the document was the problem. For one, the document was, as Commissioner Pai pointed out, written to solve a problem that wasn’t readily apparent. O’Rielly said the document is “guilt by imagination, trying to guess what will go wrong in the future”; instead of tackling a readily apparent and current issue, the FCC proposal is instead stumbling forward, trying to find future, hypothetical transgressions to retroactively justify its own regulations.

This conspiratorial and wide-ranging thinking on the part of FCC is not a bug, but rather a feature. O’Rielly openly said that “it’s intended to catch everybody”. Pai noted that the FCC was going to centralize powers over what infrastructure was deployed and where through the use of statutes and other laws; O’Rielly mentioned specifically that the FCC was going to “use Section 201 [of the Communications Act] to do it’s dirty work.”

Pai continued, saying that the FCC was largely focused on the ends of Internet regulation rather than the means, and that “a lot of these promises of regulatory restraint are pretty ephemeral.” O’Rielly mentioned that mobile data policies were likely to be subsumed by the new regulations into policies on the wider Internet as a whole. This one-size-fits-all approach ignores the differences in how mobile data is used versus the way the Internet is used by a normal computer or other devices. Many features of mobile service, the two said, could be construed as a company favoring one app or one site over another in terms of data, which would violate the FCC’s standards.

The consumer will inherit many of these new costs and burdens. O’Rielly outright told the audience that “Rates are going to go up because of this.” The new regulations also fail to recognize the burden of local telecommunications taxes, especially in major cities where tax rates on mobile service are often incredibly high. The new regulations, combined with the laws of local governments, stand to impose even more costs onto consumers.

The outlook the two gave was anything but bright–the worries of small government advocates seem justified. The new FCC regulations will, in concert with other laws and under the directive of an organization looking for future problems rather than current problems, give more power to government, more restrictions to innovators, and more costs to the people.

Commissioner Pai summed it up best: “This issue has been largely fact-free for the better part of a decade, and I think it’s frankly shocking that decision-making on something as important as this has been thrown by the wayside in favor of what I consider to be an ideological agenda.”

The net may be “neutral” but the FCC is most certainly not.

This article was written by a contributor of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.
Click here to view the article at http://watchdog.org/203631/fcc-commissioners-regulations/



 Islamic state: Fears Grow For Abducted Syrian Christians

United Kingdom
BBC
Wednesday 25 Feb 2015

There are fears that more members of an Assyrian Christian community in north-eastern Syria were abducted by Islamic State militants than at first thought. Initial reports had put the number of missing at 90, but one activist said as many as 285 people had been seized on Monday in Hassakeh province. Efforts to try to negotiate their release are reported to be under way.

Some 1,000 local Assyrian families are believed to have fled their homes in the wake of the abductions.

Kurdish and Christian militia are battling IS in the area, amid reports of churches and homes having been set ablaze.

Thousands of Christians in Syria have been forced from their homes by the threat from IS militants.

In areas under their control, Christians have been ordered to convert to Islam, pay jizya (a religious levy), or face death. IS militants in Libya also recently beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians.

The Assyrians were seized by the militants as they swept into 12 villages along the southern bank of the Khabur river near the town of Tal Tamr before dawn on Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, said at least 90 people had been abducted, most of them women, children and the elderly.

However, the Syriac National Council of Syria put the figure as high as 150, while Afram Yakoub of the Assyrian Federation of Sweden said sources on the ground had told him that up to 285 people were missing, including 156 from the village of Tal Shamran and 90 from Tal al-Jazira.
 
"These were peaceful villages that had nothing to do with the battles," Nasir Haj Mahmoud, a Kurdish official in the YPG militia in north-eastern Syria, told the Reuters news agency.

There are conflicting reports as to where the families have been taken.

Kino Gabriel, a spokesman for the Syriac Military Council - a Christian militia fighting alongside the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) - told the BBC that it believed the captives had been taken to Abdul Aziz mountain.

Osama Edward of the Sweden-based Assyrian Human Rights Network told the AFP news agency that the captives had been taken to the IS stronghold of Shaddadi, as did Syria's state news agency, Sana.

Another report said they were in Raqqa, 145km (90 miles) to the west, the de facto capital of the "caliphate" declared by IS last June.
 
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Beirut says the motive for the seizure of so many Assyrians is not yet clear. Our correspondent says it may be that the captives are to be used as part of a swap with the Kurdish forces.

Hundreds of Assyrians who were living in villages on the north bank of the Khabur river and elsewhere are reported to have fled following the attack to the largely Kurdish-controlled provincial capital of Hassakeh, to the south-east, and Qamishli, another city to the north-east.
 
Mr Edward said two historic churches had been burned down in captured villages - one in Tal Hurmiz and the other in Qaber Shamiya. The Syrian Observatory also reported that a church in Tal Shamran had also been damaged.

Mr Gabriel said IS had moved a big force into the area and were trying to take control of Tal Tamr.

The Syriac Military Council had about 400 fighters in the area and at least four had been killed in clashes with the jihadists, he added. The YPG has deployed between 1,000 and 1,500 fighters.

The YPG is also continuing a major offensive launched on Sunday against IS some 100km (60 miles) to the east, near the border with Iraq - an area of vital importance to the jihadists.

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
The Independent,
Thursday 19 Feb 2015

The beheading of 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya has brought ISIS to the doorstep of Europe.

The mass murder, which provoked a volley of Egyptian air strikes on the group’s Libyan stronghold of Derna, realised long-held fears of militants reaching the Mediterranean coast.

ISIS started in Iraq and now controls swathes of adjoining Syria, including along the Turkish border, as part of its so-called Islamic State.

Its ideology has spread much further, with pledges of allegiance from terrorist groups in Egypt, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen and now Libya.

Days before ISIS released its gory video depicting the Egyptians’ beheadings, Libya’s former Prime Minister warned that the group would soon reach the Mediterranean and even Europe if order was not restored in the country.

Ali Zeidan said Libya’s fractured government and easy access to weapons seized during the fall of Colonel Gaddafi made it more susceptible to the activities of jihadists, according to The Times.

“(ISIS) are growing. They are everywhere,” he added.

“In Libya, the situation is still under control. If we leave it one month or two months more I don’t think you can control it.

“It will be a big war in the country and it will be here in Europe as well.”

Libya has seen fierce fighting between rival militias since Gaddafi was overthrown during the 2011 Arab Spring.

Mr Zeidan, who fled to Europe after losing a parliamentary vote of confidence, reported that ISIS had a growing presence in some of the bigger cities and was trying to recruit fighters from rival Islamist groups.

Libya's former Prime Minister Ali Zeidan warned that Isis would reach the Mediterranean Aref Ali Nayed, Libya’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, also said Isis’s presence in Libya was increasing “exponentially”.

Its military gains last summer sparked a rush by other Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa to ally themselves with the group by pledging allegiance and changing their names.

The jihadists behind the beheadings in Libya call themselves the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State.

As the turmoil in Libya continued last year, they gained control of the port city of Derna and nearby Sirte, where Isis seized the murdered Coptic hostages in December and January.

The location of their murders could not be confirmed but footage showed them dressed in orange jumpsuits kneeling on a beach. Behind each of them were masked militants who wielded their knives to kill the bound hostages simultaneously.

ISIS affiliates have also claimed responsibility for attacks on the Egyptian military and police in the Sinai Peninsula, further along the Mediterranean coast between Egypt and Gaza.

England and Europe's greater concern than the United States is evident in this article, due to their proximity to the menacing Radical Islamic peril. Learn more about this with accompanying links at the UK's INDEPENDENT website by clicking here.


ISIS burn 45 people to death in captured Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi as Islamists attack the homes of security forces' families


United Kingdom's Daily Mail
Dailymail.com
Karen Pickles for Mailonline
February 17, 2015

ISIS burn 45 people to death in captured Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi as Islamists attack the homes of security forces' families
    Western town al-Baghdadi captured by ISIS fighters last week
    Victims thought to be members of security forces and their families
    Follows barbaric video of Jordanian pilot Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh
    Attack is only five miles from air base with 320 US Marines

Militants from Islamic State have burned 45 people to death in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, according to the local police chief.

Col. Qasim al-Obeidi said the motive was unknown but he believed some of the victims were members of the security forces.

He has pleaded for help from the government and international community and said the compound, which houses the families of security personnel and local officials, was now under attack.

It follows the capture of al-Baghdadi, near Ain al-Asad air base, by ISIS fighters last week.

The unconfirmed reports have haunting similarities to the video published earlier this month, showing militants burning alive a Jordanian air force pilot, whose plane crashed in Syria in December.

Al-Baghdadi had been besieged for months by Islamic State fighters before its fall. It had been one of the few towns to still be controlled by the Iraqi government in Anbar province, where IS and allied Sunni Arab tribesmen launched an offensive in January 2014.

On Friday, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby, played down its capture, telling reporters it was the first time in the last couple of months that the jihadist group had taken new ground.

But with 320 US Marines stationed just five miles away at the Ain al-Asad air base, training members of the Iraqi army's 7th Division, it will cause concern.

The base was attacked by several suicide bombers, on Friday with the militant repelled by Iraqi troops backed by US-led coalition aircraft.

In a separate development on Tuesday, the influential Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr announced he was withdrawing his forces from an umbrella group of Shia militia fighting IS alongside the Iraqi army.

He cited what he called the bad behaviour of other militia within the Popular Mobilisation Forces, whom he accused of 'wreaking havoc through murdering, kidnapping and violating sanctuaries'.

Shia militia have been accused of kidnapping and killing scores of Sunni civilians since Islamic State launched an offensive in northern Iraq last June that saw it seize large swathes of the country.

 Elsewhere, there are reports at least 35 more Egyptian Christians are feared to have been kidnapped by jihadists in retaliation for air strikes on targets in Libya.

Militants from the Islamic State and Ansar Al-Sharia are understood to have rounded up dozens of farm workers in the wake of bombings by Cairo, it was reported by local media.

The move is believed to be a direct response to strikes by Egyptian warplanes yesterday which came after fanatics released a horrific video showing the beheading of 21 Christians on a beach.

Click here to read the article in its entirety with maps and links at The Dailymail.co.uk




Netanyahu: Israel is standing by Europe, Europe must stand by Israel


January 8, 2015
The Jerusalem Post
By HERB KEINON

In meeting with Norwegian FM, Netanyahu says radical Islam is a "threat to our common civilization." 


Israel is being attacked by the same forces attacking Europe, and just as Israel stands with Europe, so too Europe must stand with Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday.

Netanyahu, speaking following a meeting with visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende, said that Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Paris “clearly demonstrates the disdain of radical Islam for the values we hold dear. We cherish freedom and tolerance; they worship tyranny and terror. And through this terror they seek to impose a new dark age on humanity.”

Netanyahu said the terrorists were “part of a global movement and this necessitates a global response. I believe that with the strength of our resolve and the unity of our action, we can defeat this threat to our common civilization. And what the battle against terror requires is courage, clarity and consistency.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said in an Israel Radio interview that precisely that type of determination has been missing up until now in France and elsewhere in Europe in the battle against terrorism.


Hanegbi said the French in the past tried to delude themselves regarding the true nature of threat, saying “maybe it was only sporadic incidents, maybe it is only anti-Semitism, maybe it is only against the Jews.”

He said that the French at times tried to understand the terrorists motivations, and at other times tried to downplay their ties to Islam. The sheer brutality of Wednesday attack, especially the murder of the policeman on the sidewalk, will compel the French government to “look at the reality square in the face” and realize there is a serious danger at their gates, he said.

Hanegbi predicted that France will be forced, like the US was after the September 11, 2001 attacks, to empower the security establishment with tools to effectively deal with the threats.

“France must deal with the threat coming from within,” he said. Hanegbi added that Israel,  unfortunately, has quite a deal of experience dealing with terrorism, and that “anyone who cooperates with a county as experienced [in dealing with terrorism] as Israel, only benefits.”

He said that Israel has the capability to help France a lot more than the French have requested in the past. Now, he said, France “ will have an interest in being helped by anyone who can help them, including israel.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, meanwhile, took the Paris attack and used it to prove a point regarding domestic Israeli policies.

If there was an important lesson to be learned from the attack, he said, it is that extremist movements must be dealt with early, and that there are only small legal and semantic differences separating those organizations from terrorist groups.

Those who demonstrate tolerance toward those organizations, he said, will ultimately pay a high price in blood, as well as in threats to their very democracies that allows those organizations to work.

Israel's lesson, he said, must be not to tarry and to stop the activities of Raed Salah and the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

Liberman said Salah's organization was an inseparable link in the chain of terrorist organizations that includes Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida and the Islamic State. He said the organization “shares exactly the same values of the perpetrators of the massacre in Paris and its intolerance of criticism and of anything inconsistent with its extreme world view.”

Liberman said the the northern branch is a threat to Israeli democracy and the country's citizens, and that it needed to be outlawed.

Please click here to see the article in the Jerusalem Post


http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Netanyahu-Israel-is-standing-by-Europe-Europe-must-stand-by-Israel-387083




Houston Subpoenas Pastors’ Sermons in Gay Rights Ordinance Case


By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
Religion News Service
October 15, 2014

Evangelical leaders are angry after city officials in Houston subpoenaed sermons given by local pastors who oppose an equal rights ordinance that provides protections to the LGBT community.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who drew headlines for becoming the first openly lesbian mayor of a major American city, led support for the ordinance. The measure bans anti-gay discrimination among businesses that serve the public, private employers, in housing and in city employment and city contracting.

Under one of the hotly contested parts of the ordinance, transgender people barred access to a restroom would be able to file a discrimination complaint.

The ordinance, which exempted religious institutions, was passed in May, though its implementation has been delayed due to legal complaints.

Opponents were hoping to repeal the ordinance through a ballot measure and claimed the city’s attorney incorrectly determined they had not gathered enough signatures to qualify for a ballot. Supporters of the repeal reportedly gathered 50,000 signatures, well over the 17,269 needed for inclusion on the November ballot. Opponents of the repeal have questioned the validity of the signatures.

A group of Christians sued the city. In response, city attorneys issued subpoenas to five local pastors during the case’s discovery phase, though the five pastors were not involved in the lawsuit.

The subpoenas sought “all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession,” according to the Houston Chronicle.

“The subpoenas were issued to pastors who have been involved in the political campaign to organize a repeal of Houston’s new equal rights ordinance,” said Janice Evans, chief policy officer to the mayor, in a statement. “It is part of the discovery process in a lawsuit brought by opponents of the ordinance, a group that is tied to the pastors who have received the subpoenas.”

An Arizona-based religious liberty group, Alliance Defending Freedom, has filed a motion on behalf of the pastors seeking to halt the subpoenas. The ministers call the subpoenas “overbroad, unduly burdensome, harassing, and vexatious.”

“The pastors made their sermons relevant to the case by using the pulpit to do political organizing,” Evans said in her statement. “This included encouraging congregation members to sign petitions and help gather signatures for equal rights ordinance foes. The issue is whether they were speaking from the pulpit for the purpose of politics. If so, it is not protected speech.”

The lawsuit is scheduled for trial in January.

“It’s procedural — it’s common to ask for a wide range of documents — but the mayor is playing real hardball,” said David Skeel, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. “The fact that she’s subpoenaing pastors seems quite unusual in a case that’s mostly about politics, and the fact that she’s going inside the church is even more radical. It would be easy enough to get sermons, of course, but asking for them is clearly meant to send a signal.”

City Attorney David Feldman argues the subpoenas are justified because the churches are where opponents of the ordinance met to organize.

“We’re certainly entitled to inquire about the communications that took place in the churches regarding the ordinance and the petitions because that’s where they chose to do it,” Feldman told KTRH News. “It’s relevant to know what representations and instructions were given regarding these petitions.”

The issue has angered evangelicals nationwide, prompting outcry from people such as Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“The separation of church and state means that we will render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and we will,” Moore wrote. “But the preaching of the church of God does not belong to Caesar, and we will not hand it over to him. Not now. Not ever.”

More than 1,800 pastors participated in ADF’s seventh annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday event on Oct. 5, daring the Internal Revenue Service to prosecute them for endorsing political candidates. Under IRS regulations, tax-exempt churches are not allowed to engage in partisan politics.

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.




Food for thought from-

The Khaleej Times - a daily U.S. language newspaper published in United Arab Emirates.  It is the second most popular English language newspapers published in the UAE.

Armageddon Can Wait


Mahir Ali

Kaleej Times

3 September 2014

Global threat is used to deflect attention from domestic woes

Barack Obama’s recent confession that his country did not so far have a strategy as far as the so-called ISIS is concerned has been pilloried as a gaffe. It could, however, also be seen as the plain truth.

The United States did not really have a strategy a decade or so ago either, when the administration of George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq, evidently expecting that the various pieces would magically fall into place once Saddam Hussein was toppled. The tactic represented a disastrous combination of hubris and ignorance.

The extent to which the subsequent implosions and explosions in the region are a direct consequence of that particular debacle is arguable, but there can be little doubt that the big picture would have been decidedly different, and in all probability considerably less unpleasant, in the absence of that monumental neoconservative folly.

Of course, what’s done cannot be undone, and the present crisis demands a resolute response. It’s by no means undesirable, however, for that response to take account of all that has gone wrong in the recent past.

Obama has come under attack, for instance, for hesitating to strike Syria in the early days of the revolt against the Bashar Al Assad dictatorship, and thereby purportedly facilitating the expansion of Islamist outfits such as ISIS and Jabhat Al Nusra. Too many of the critics are inclined, however, to ignore in this context the consequences of NATO’s role in Libya.

Washington allowed itself to be catapulted into that conflict, partly on the basis of Paris and London’s aggressive enthusiasm, and NATO’s mission was a success in terms of achieving the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. But Libya today is being torn apart by rival militias, many of them distinguishable not so much by ideology as by tribal affiliations.

Under similar circumstances, would the outcome the Syria have been remarkably different? Who can claim with any confidence that Assad’s early overthrow would have prevented Islamist forces from sooner or later gaining the upper hand?

The US has lately been thinking aloud about launching airstrikes in Syria with the ostensible aim of undermining ISIS rather than Assad, based on the assumption that Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi’s troops cannot be quelled by focusing on Iraq alone. That may be so, but there is the wider question of whether they can effectively be tackled at all mainly through air assaults.

There have evidently been some tactical successes in Iraq in this respect, beginning with the besieged Yazidis stranded on Sinjar Mountain — most of whom appear to have made it to relative safety in Iraqi Kurdistan, although the reported numbers are open to question. Then there was the recapture of Mosul Dam, and most recently the apparent rescue of Amerli.

In the latter instance, the US airstrikes were effectively in aid of Shia militias spearheading the assault against ISIS — the same militias, with links to Iran, that not many years ago were dedicated to undermining the American occupation of Iraq. “Should such military actions continue,” The New York Times noted on Monday, “they could signal a dramatic shift for the United States and Iran, which have long vied for control in Iraq.”

Naturally, neither Washington nor Tehran is keen to emphasise this aspect of the emerging situation. Matters are further complicated by the fact that some of the militias betray a penchant for sectarian brutality that, although no match for the revolting atrocities that ISIS is so keen to broadcast, nonetheless provides cause for concern.

The United Nations this week decided to investigate “acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale” by ISIS, as well as atrocities by Iraqi government forces. Whether or not such an investigation serves any practical purpose in the murkily unfolding circumstances, the ostensible even-handedness of the approach is interesting.

Meanwhile, there has been considerable concern across several nations in Europe as well as in the US and Australia over young Muslim citizens’ tendency towards jihadist adventurism, with thousands — the numbers are again uncertain — travelling to Syria or Iraq as Islamist volunteers.

This is hardly a novel trend — it can be traced back at least to Afghanistan in the 1980s. The worries over it are understandable, although there is thus far no clear evidence of returnees planning domestic acts of terrorism. It is at the same time difficult to altogether dispense with the notion that projecting ISIS as an unprecedented global threat helps some Western governments to deflect attention from domestic woes.

The ISIS threat should not be underestimated, but exaggerations can have the perverse effect of increasing its cachet both within and outside the region. Nobody has a clear idea of precisely how this story will unfold, let alone end. But there’s not much value in pretending it portends some kind of Armageddon.

The Western insistence on “no boots on the ground” is open to interpretation as insufficient commitment or even cowardice. But in fact it’s a welcome augury, not least in the light of recent experience. When, since the Second World War, have Western boots on the ground produced positive consequences in the Middle East (or, for that matter, anywhere else)?

The ideal response to the regional dilemmas of the moment would be an unprecedented level of cooperation, coordination and collaboration between Middle Eastern states, notwithstanding longstanding rivalries in some cases. That, unfortunately, cannot be described as an imminent prospect, despite the tentative emergence of intriguing alliances. But there’s never been a better time for it.

Article in full at Kaleej Times


Iraq's largest Christian town abandoned as Isis advance continues

UN officials say an estimated 200,000 new refugees are seeking sanctuary in the Kurdish north from Islamic extremists

US considering humanitarian relief to Iraqis trapped by Isis
    by Martin Chulov  
    at theguardian.com
    Thursday 7 August 2014

Thousands of Yazidi and Christian people flee to Erbil after the latest wave of Isis advances. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Iraq's largest Christian city was all but abandoned on Thursday as the jihadist advance through minority communities in the country's north-west rampaged towards the Kurdish stronghold of Erbil.

UN officials said an estimated 200,000 new refugees were seeking sanctuary in the Kurdish north from Islamic extremists who had pursued them since the weekend. The city of Qaraqosh, south-east of Mosul, home to around 50,000 Christians was the latest to fall, with most residents fleeing before dawn as convoys of extremists drew near.

Other Christian towns near Mosul, including Tel Askof, Tel Keif and Qaramless have also largely been emptied. Those who remained behind have reportedly been given the same stark choice given to other minorities, including Yazidis: flee, convert to Islam, or be killed.

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen have been at the frontlines of Iraq's war with the Islamic State (Isis) ever since the jihadist group stormed into Mosul and Tikrit and mid-June. The Iraqi army capitulated within hours, with at least 60,000 officers and soldiers fleeing on the first day of the assault alone.

Ever since, the jihadists have continued to make advances, while Iraqi troops have concentrated on defending Baghdad and the Shia south, leaving the defence of minorities in the north to the Kurdish peshmurga.

However, even the much vaunted Kurdish forces were no match for the heavy weapons wielded by the jihadists as they advanced in recent days. Peshmurga officers ordered troops to withdraw to areas administered by the Kurdish regional government – a clear sign of priorities and of where the battle lines are being drawn.

Without any protection, Yazidis, Christians and Turkmen are being uprooted from communities they have lived in for millennia and the geo-social fabric of Iraq is being rapidly shredded.

While those who have managed to flee the Christian areas have so far had a relatively safe passage to Erbil, tens of thousands of Yazidis remain besieged on a mountain top near Sinjar, with little food or water.

The UN said on Thursday it was able to get some supplies overland to the stranded hordes – avoiding Isis fighters who have surrounded most of Mount Sinjar. Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that Turkish helicopters had dropped food and water on the mountain top. Iraqi helicopters have also made food drops, but stranded Yazidis say they do not have enough to survive.

The Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk, Joseph Thomas, described the situation in northern Iraq as "catastrophic, a crisis beyond imagination". He demanded urgent intervention to save what remained of the area's Christian heritage.

Kurdish officials on Thursday demanded more help in catering for refugees. The Kurdish administered areas have seen staggering numbers cross their notional border since the original Isis onslaught two months ago. In the first week alone, some 500,000 people are thought to have fled towards Erbil.

The capital of the Kurdish north is already home to a new Chaldean Christian community, which fled Baghdad in the wake of an Isis-led massacre inside a cathedral in October 2010. Many fleeing Christians have headed for the Ainkawa neighbourhood, which is home to Baghdad's Christian exiles.

The past 11 years of war and insurrection since the US invasion have led to most of Iraq's Christians fleeing. Numbers have plummeted starkly from an estimated one million before 2003 to around 150,000 now. A large number of those who remain are now displaced.

Miriam Dagher, 53, from Qaraqosh, said churches in the city had already been torched and religious insignia smashed. "We stayed as long as we could," she said. "But nothing could save us. This is the end of our community.

Click here to read the article at the Guardian





Amnesty On Trial


May 28, 2014
By KrisAnne Hall

If the federal government were a person, if Congress were subject to the laws they create, they would face fines, prison or both for many of their actions. The ENLIST Act, being touted as a “pathway” to citizenship for illegal aliens may be one of those actions. It could be argued that the very act itself violates federal law. Consider this:

Immigration law, 8 US Code 1324 states that it is a crime to, either knowingly or recklessly, “conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, or attempt to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection… transport, or move or attempt to transport or move” or to even “encourage or induce” an illegal alien “to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowingly or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.”

It is not only a crime to actually commit these offenses, but it is a crime to even attempt to do so. Anyone found guilty of violating 8 US Code 1324 is subject to fines, prison or both. However, if it can be proven that this person has committed this act for personal gain, the fines go up and the prison sentence can be as much as ten years.

The Act also appears to violate 8 US Code 1611 which sets forth specific federal benefits that cannot be given to illegal aliens.
- See more at: http://krisannehall.com/amnesty-trial/#sthash.9AOkP6WK.dpuf
 







 May 8, 2014 2:19PM

Is the Constitution Relevant Today?

By David Boaz
From The Cato Institute

  May 8, 2014 2:19PM
 
In the Washington Post, Paul Kane reports that recent experiences with ultra-conservative Senate candidates have made Republican leaders fearful of candidates like Rep. Paul Broun in Georgia. There may be reasons for party leaders or voters to have doubts about Broun, but I hope they aren’t actually concerned about the purported problem that Kane identifies:

Broun is prone to fiery speeches invoking the Founding Fathers and applying those 1789 principles to issues 225 years later.

Seriously? He thinks the Constitution is still the law of the land? And that the framework it established for individual rights and limited government is still relevant today? Do Republican leaders really think that’s a bad message? Or does the Washington Post?

Thomas Jefferson and his followers hailed “the principles of ‘76” or “the spirit of ‘76” in their battles with Federalists. As historian Joseph Ellis put it, “Jefferson’s core conviction was that what might be called ‘the spirit of ‘76’ had repudiated all energetic expressions of government power, most especially power exercised from faraway places, which included London, Philadelphia or Washington.” Good thing there isn’t an actual Jeffersonian running!

But the principles of 1789, or actually of 1787, also protect freedom from government power and are just as essential today as they were at the Founding. The Framers knew their history. They knew that people with power tend to abuse it and to restrict freedom. In his last letter, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote:

    All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Because they feared the exercise of power, the Framers wrote a Constitution that established a government of delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers. Then the people insisted on a Bill of Rights to further protect their rights even from the very limited federal government established in the Constitution. Then, after identifying specific rights that individuals retained, they also added, “for greater caution,” as James Madison put it, the Ninth Amendment to clarify that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

One would hope that all members of Congress – and voters, and political reporters – believe that those principles and those constitutional rules should be applied to issues of today. Surely the First Amendment remains relevant. And the Fourth. And the limits on unconstrained power in the basic structure of the Constitution. The merits of any particular candidate aside, support of the Constitution and the principles it embodies seems like a good, even minimal, qualification for public office.

Click here to read the article in its entirety at The Cato Institute



 

A Timeless Message
PAYDAY - SOMEDAY

 
"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."
Jeremiah 6:16

Dr. Robert G Lee was the pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee for thirty-two years. During his lifetime he was a strong leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, known as a preacher’s preacher, and was highly respected among his peers. This sermon has been accepted as a classic by all that have heard and read it, and through its message, the Lord still speaks to mankind.

Dr. Lee originally published the following message in 1926. It is said that he developed it following the suggestion of a deacon at a prayer meeting in 1919 and that he preached it at least once a year at his home church. All total, it is related that he preached the messsage over 1,000 times. Like many Baptists, Lee was known more as a preacher than a theologian but his doctrine was sound to the core. Lee believed in and preached a doctrine often overlooked in our day, that of the necessity of regeneration.

If you have 60 minutes to listen to Dr Lee's sermon "PAYDAY- SOMEDAY", Click here.

Or if you're a reader with time to read 17 pages, Click here.



Ala. Supreme Court: 'Unborn Child Has Inalienable Right to Life From its Earliest Stages

CNSNews.com | Apr 23, 2014

   In a case about a pregnant woman who used cocaine and endangered her unborn child, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed (8-1) that the word "child" includes "an unborn child," and that the law therefore "furthers the State's interest in protecting the life of children from the earliest stages of their development."
In his concurring opinion, Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore wrote that "an unborn child has an inalienable right to life from its earliest stages of development," and added, "I write separately to emphasize that the inalienable right to life is a gift of God that civil government must secure for all persons - born and unborn."
The court decision on April 18 was in reference to Sarah Janie Hicks v. State of Alabama. Hicks had been charged in 2009 with violating Alabama's chemical-endangerment statute, which in part says that a "person commits the crime of chemical endangerment" by "knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally causes or permits a child to be exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact with a controlled substance, chemical substance, or drug paraphernalia," a felony.
In Hicks' case, she was charged with using cocaine while pregnant. Her child, "J.D.," tested positive for cocaine "at the time of his birth," reads the court document. 
In January 2010, Hicks pleaded guilty to the crime but also "reserved the right to appeal the issues" she and her attorneys had presented earlier in trying to get the charges dismissed. Hicks got a three year suspended prison sentence and was placed on probation.
Hicks appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals in Alabama, arguing that because the chemical-endangerment statute did not specifically use the words "unborn children" or "fetuses," the law was ambiguous and could not have applied to her unborn child.
The Appeals Court ruled against Hicks, stating that "the plain language of 26-15-3.2 [chemical-endangerment statute] was clear and unambiguous and that the plain meaning of the term 'child' in [the statute] included an unborn child or viable fetus.'"
Hicks then petitioned the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012 to review the Appeals Court decision.  Last Friday's ruling affirmed the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.
In their conclusion, eight of the nine Alabama Supreme Court justices said: "Consistent with this Court's opinion in Ankrom [a similar chemical-endangerment case], by its plain meaning, the word 'child' in the chemical-endangerment statute includes an unborn child, and, therefore, the statute furthers the State's interest in protecting the life of children from the earliest stages of their development."
The law to protect the life of unborn children "is consistent with many statutes and decisions throughout our nation that recognize unborn children as persons with legally enforceable rights in many areas of the law," said the justices.
In his own concurring opinion, Chief Justice Moore argued that natural rights come from God, not from the government. He cited the Declaration of Independence that there is a "self-evident" truth that "all Men are created equal, [and] that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," particularly "life."
The Declaration of Independence "acknowledges as  'self-evident' the truth that all human beings are endowed with inherent dignity and the right to life as a direct result of having been created by God," said Chief Justice Moore.
He also cited Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, which says, "This law of nature, being co-eval [beginning at the same time] with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this."
Chief Justice Moore went on to explain how at the Nuremburg Trials at the end of World War II, Nazi criminals could not argue that they were only following orders or just following the laws of the German government because there is a higher law, the "very law of nature."
"Although the Nuremberg defendants were following orders and the laws of their own officials and country, they were guilty of violating a higher law to which all nations are equally subject: the laws of nature and of nature's God," wrote Justice Moore.
That law binds all nations, including the State of Alabama, said Justice Moore. "In 2006, the AlabamaLegislature amended the homicide statute to define 'person' to include 'an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability," he wrote, "thus recognizing under the statute that, when an 'unborn child' is killed, a 'person' is killed."
In conclusion,  he wrote, "The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment provides that a state may not 'deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Unborn children are a class of persons entitled to equal protection of the laws."
"States have an obligation to provide to unborn children at any stage of their development the same legal protection from injury and death they provide to persons already born," wrote Justice Moore. "Because a human life with a full genetic endowment comes into existence at the moment of conception, the self-evident truth that 'all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' encompasses the moment of conception." 
"Legal recognition of the unborn as members of the human family derives ultimately from the laws of nature and of nature's God, Who created human life in His image and protected it with the commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill,'" wrote Chief Justice Moore.  "Therefore, the interpretation of the word 'child' in Alabama's chemical-endangerment statute, § 26-15- 3.2, Ala. Code 1975, to include all human beings from the moment of conception is fully consistent with these first principles regarding life and law."

Click here to view this article at cns news where we found this affirmation of God's truth.


April 24, 2014
the clarionproject.org

Tony Blair: Fighting Islamism –

 A Defining Challenge of Our Time

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a landmark speech yesterday calling on the world to unite against Islamism.

Tony Blair, the Former British Prime Minister, delivered a keynote speech at Bloomberg HQ in London entitled 'Why the Middle East Still Matters.' In it he described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world today.He argued "there are four reasons why the Middle East remains of central importance and cannot be relegated to the second order."

 Blair rapidly moved on to the fourth and most important reason: Islamic extremism also known as Islamism.

He identifies the conflict in the Middle East as one between an open and tolerant viewpoint and a fundamentalist Islamist ideology. He said "wherever you look – from Iraq to Libya to Egypt to Yemen to Lebanon to Syria and then further afield to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan – this is the essential battle."

Addressing those who regard these conflicts as distinct he said "there is something frankly odd about the reluctance to accept what is so utterly plain: that they have in common a struggle around the issue of the rightful place of religion, and in particular Islam, in politics." It is this central point that he hammered home again and again over the course of his 40 minute speech.

He argued that this struggle does not end at the borders of the region. Rather, "The reason this matters so much is that this ideology is exported around the world."

Click here to read in its entirety at the clarion project at
http://www.clarionproject.org/news/tony-blair-fighting-islamism-%E2%80%93-defining-challenge-our-time


You can listen to several minutes of Tony Blair's speech here:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/23/tony-blair-west-take-sides-growing-threat-radical-islam


The full text of the former PM's speech can be read here:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/04/full-text-tony-blairs-speech-on-why-the-middle-east-matters/



  More Attacks on the Freedom of Speech,
In the Form of Religious Persecution
Of our Air Force Cadets


From The Traditional Values Coalition:

Earlier this month, an Air Force Academy cadet was forced to remove a Bible verse on his personal white board after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation claimed offense.

 

"I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20

 

MRFF President Michael "Mikey" Weinstein, self proclaimed "undisputed leader of the national movement to restore the obliterated all separating church and state" in the military, described the student's white board quoting of scripture as pouring "fundamentalist Christian gasoline on an already raging out-of-control conflagration of fundamentalist Christian tyranny, exceptionalism, and supremacy."

 

The Air Force Academy complied with Weinstein's demands, having the scripture removed. But that's not enough -- Weinstein is demanding that not only should the cadet be punished, but that their entire chain of command should be as well.

 

At least a dozen cadets responded in support of religious freedom, posting Bible verses on their personal white boards. Please join me and thousands of others in standing with our cadets for their right to express their religious beliefs without fear of persecution <http://capwiz.com/traditional/utr/1/KTQOTSLPVY/KFTWTSLUWE/10253908236> .

 

No one, especially those who volunteer to risk their lives to defend our freedoms, should be denied their constitutional rights and religious freedoms. Groups like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation are seeking to silence those who profess their faith, stripping them of their religious liberties in the name of political correctness.

 

Our Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. Yet that doesn't seem to be enough for some groups.

 

View this article at the original Traditional Values Coalition website, where you can also sign a petition of support:

 http://www.capwiz.com/traditional/issues/alert/?alertid=63153151&type=CU




  The Clash of Law: Parsing the Modern War against Catholics, Catholicism and the Church

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 United States and similar rules in other Western nations which force even private individuals to actively participate in mandated actions which they find deeply immoral.

Meanwhile, in another part of the world, there is the unending pressure against Catholic life imposed by the theocratic laws of Islamic states, called Shari’a law. This alternative form of coercion is in the process of entering the West through Europe, where the presence of high percentages of Islamic immigrants raises the question of alternative legal systems for different communities and regions. Almost nowhere can we any longer find a legal system which is not essentially hostile to Catholicism, with its own transcendent source of moral knowledge.

A Striking Parallel

Interestingly, in his Regensburg Address in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI drew a close parallel between the habits of thought which underlie Islamic law and those that lie at the basis of contemporary European (or Western) law. Benedict saw that neither Islam nor the contemporary West (any longer) assigns to reason the role of identifying natural moral principles which can allow people of different beliefs and cultural backgrounds to share a common good and a common polity. Islam believes Shari’a Law covers all of life and is rooted purely in the will of God, completely unbound by any rational characteristic of consistency or fairness. Similarly, the old natural law tradition of the West—in which rational consistency and fairness were perhaps the most easily-grasped components—has given way to the sovereignty of the human will to remake reality according to whatever happens to be desired by those who have political, social and cultural power.

One of the greatest Christian gifts to the world has been the distinction between two fonts of law which arise without any possible contradiction from the same profoundly rational Divine source. On the one hand, there is the natural law, which is accessible to human reason and which opens to the human community a common ground of morality as the basis for human flourishing in the social order. On the other hand, there is the law derived from Revelation, equally rational but containing mysteries which are accessible only by faith. While in no way conflicting with the natural law—and in fact presupposing it in the created order—this Revelation enables the believer to rise to greater perfection through grace, in a direct relationship with God Himself, expressed in voluntary service to others.

.......

Fortunately, reading through the material has at least enabled me grasp the central issue more clearly, and to stress three important principles which might be used to guide our thinking and our response to the characteristic anti-Catholic pressures of our time. First, the practical points of serious clash and conflict are now primarily creations of law. Second, when it comes to law, the primary problem is not an attack on Faith but an attack on reason—the presumption that law derives its authority from the specific will of those in power, and is not limited by clear and consistent natural or supernatural principles. Third, and precisely because rational consistency is lacking, it will take great creativity to navigate this increasingly repressive legal landscape.

In closing, I should emphasize one even deeper truth: The will darkens the intellect by ordering it to cease its independent explorations in order to serve what the will desires. This is not something that we can expect to counteract naturally; it is in fact the mechanism which human nature uses to refuse cooperation with grace. Yet paradoxically the pandemic loss of the recognition of reason, and even of nature itself, must be remedied by grace. And so, in the midst of growing suffering and sacrifice for Catholics, it is not only arguments and creativity that we need, but prayer.

 Please click here to read this thoughtful original article in its entirety:

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=1173









What Do The Neighbors Think?

From The Canada Free Press
By Jim Yardley
Thursday, March 20, 2014

Checking to make sure that there was an easily understandable definition of the word, the dictionary defines Constitution as “the fundamental political principles on which a nation-state is governed, especially when considered as embodying the rights of the subjects of that nation-state and the statute embodying such principles.”

One would think that the President of the first nation to create that very thing, a legal statute that embodied the fundamental political principles, and who also was a college level lecturer on the topic of the Constitution, would have absolutely no problem in dealing with the concept.

Unfortunately for us, and for several other nations, Mr. Obama seems to view constitution to be infinitely malleable, and are subject to change upon a change in his whims of the day.

As far back as 2001, Barack Obama said in a radio interview with Public Radio station WBEZ-FM that the U.S. Supreme Court (under Chief Justice Earl Warren)

    “…didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf…”

So even at that time, the President announced clearly that he disagreed with the judgments of the Founding Fathers and two centuries of successfully working within the framework of the U.S. Constitution.  He had a different view of how the Constitution should have been written, and that had he been alive in 1789, he would have made sure it was different.

Of course he would have been limited to having only a pen at that time, since his Blackberry wasn’t even a science fiction fantasy at that time.

Apparently Obama’s disdain for Constitutions is not limited to only home grown ones, or limited to only with regard to “negative liberties.”  Fast forward to June 2009 and look at Honduras.

Manuel Zelaya, who was then in his second term as president of Honduras, violated that country’s Constitution (specifically Article 239) which bans presidents from holding office if they even propose to alter the constitutional term limits for presidents.

Apparently Mr. Zelaya really liked being president of Honduras, and wanted to change his country’s Constitution so that he could continue in the job.  Note again that any president of Honduras loses the right to serve as president if he even proposes a change like that.  The Honduran Supreme Court, expressly had the right to remove the president for seeking to alter the constitutional term limit, under Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution.

But apparently this made Obama upset, so he declared the Constitutional crisis in Honduras to have been a “coup”.  It wasn’t, of course. Sadly, for Obama, if he were to snivel that he didn’t like that part of the Honduran Constitution it probably would have been a public relations nightmare for him.

One might infer that Obama personally wanted that presidential term limit article to be ignored by the citizens of Honduras because it might set a bad precedent if he wanted to run for a third term himself.  Then Senator (and now Secretary of State) John Kerry agreed with Obama’s idea that the removal of a president who had acted contrary to the clear language of his nation’s Constitution must have been a “coup.”  This view was vocally supported by the then Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton who lusts after the idea of being Obama’s replacement.

Mr. Obama’s disdain for the U.S. Constitution has been demonstrated on a continuing basis over the five years that he has been in office, with “recess appointments” to the NLRB when the Senate was not in recess, the innumerable delays, waivers, interpretations and so on related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and so on.

Given Obama’s disdain for any constitutional limits on doing whatever pops into his head at any time, his reaction to the situation in Ukraine becomes almost comical. Sadly, even the always irreverent magazine The Onion couldn’t have seen the idea that Obama would leap to the defense of Ukraine by saying that the Crimean referendum was illegitimate and (wait for it) unconstitutional.  Even Nancy Pelosi was probably tempted to ask “Are you serious?”

The idea that Barack Obama would demand deference to any nation’s constitution is on a par with, well, nothing readily comes to mind.

Well perhaps it would be like seeing Dr. Jack Kervorkian leading a Right-to-Life rally, or perhaps seeing Willy Sutton doing an infomercial telling people how safe banks are.

It’s possible I suppose that Obama’s defense of Ukraine’s constitutional authority would be equivalent to listening to Bill Clinton lecturing on the benefits of sexual abstinence.

But given his history on the subject of adherence to constitutional principles, is it any wonder that no one, anywhere in the world, believes one word of what the man is saying?

Click here to read the original article in its entirety