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“Their Goal Is Really to Eradicate Christianity”: Persecution of Christians, June 2021 by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on August 8th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17610/persecution-of-christians-june

A Muslim father-of-four abducted a 13-year-old Christian girl, forced her to convert to Islam, and then “married” her…. He had also promised to pay the girl Rs.10,000 (US $63) per month for her services, but stopped paying her after a couple of months…. . She told her grandmother that she wanted to go home and was willing to sign anything to do so…. The following day, a visibly battered Nayab appeared before court and reaffirmed that she was 19-years-old and had converted to Islam of her own free will. — Pakistan.

[N]early a million people have been displaced since 2017 and thousands slaughtered…. “They say their goal is to set up a caliphate similar to ISIS in Iraq and Syria…. They ask, ‘Are you a Christian? Or are you a Muslim?’ If you’re a Christian, you’re killed. If you’re a Muslim, then you get the opportunity to quote some Quranic verses. And if you can quote them sufficiently, you save your life. Otherwise, you also get killed [sometimes by crucifixion].” — Todd Nettleton, The Voice of the Martyrs USA, Mission Network News, June 28, 2021, Mozambique.

Five Muslims entered the hospital he worked in, seized and left with him, and then killed him and left his body in the bush… “His killers, who are herdsmen, came to the hospital, specifically asked for [the Christian doctor] …. collected his money, took him away, and killed him without asking for ransom. “What did he do wrong?…. Everyone loved him, always smiling, and he was one of the most hard-working persons I have ever known. His hospital boomed because he was saving lives. If you had any problems, Emeka would be there to help.” — Morning Star News, June 21, 2021, Nigeria.

“Armed groups are destroying schools and hospitals. Teachers and pupils are being killed. They are even killing the sick as they lie in their hospital beds. Not a day goes by without people being killed… Many people are traumatized… A large-scale project is underway to Islamize or expel the indigenous populations. Anyone who has been kidnapped by these terrorist groups and managed to escape from them alive has told the same story. They were given the choice between death and converting to Islam.” — Bishop Paluku, Catholic World Report, July 28, 2021, Democratic Republic of Congo

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of June 2021:

Pakistan

The Rape, Forced Conversion, and Child Marriage of Christians

A Muslim father of four abducted a 13-year-old Christian girl, forced her to convert to Islam, and then “married” her. According to the father of Nayab Gill, when the beauty school she was attending shut down due to the Covid-19 lockdown, Saddam Hayat, a local Muslim who ran his own beauty shop, “told me that rather than wasting time, Nayab should learn salon skills to help her in supporting the family financially. He even offered to pick her up from home and drop her off after work, assuring us that she was just like his daughter.”

Hayat had also promised to pay the girl Rs.10,000 (US $63) per month for her services, but stopped paying her after a couple of months. When the girl went missing on May 20, her frantic parents turned to Hayat, who claimed not to know where she was, and kindly offered to help them find her. He even instructed Nayab’s simple and trusting mother to fill out the missing person’s report in a way that did not implicate him.

“On May 26, we were informed by the police that Nayab was in the Darul Aman [women’s shelter] since May 21,” her father continued. “In an application submitted to a magistrate’s court, Nayab claimed she had willfully converted to Islam a month ago …”

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Lebanon and its Ticking Bombs by Amir Taheri

Posted By on August 8th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17620/lebanon-ticking-bombs

Lebanon’s problems are deeply political. The consensus on which the Lebanese state was founded from the start has been badly shaken. Formal government structures have been duplicated, and at times replaced, by shadowy organs answerable to no one except, perhaps, foreign paymasters. The minimum rule of law that had survived many upheavals including a full-scale civil war has been replaced by the rule of the gunman.

The outside world cannot abandon Lebanon to its fate.

On the positive side, the region and beyond in the world needs Lebanon as a haven of contact, dialogue and peace, while a Lebanon turned into a platform for “exporting revolution” and real terror, along with drugs and dirty money, could harm everyone around or close to the Mediterranean basin.

In international politics, what do you do when you don’t know what to do but wish to appear to be doing something?

The answer is: you convene an international conference.

The gimmick started with the notorious Versailles Conference after the First World War that morphed into a series of photo-ops while real decisions were taken elsewhere and behind the scenes. More recently we had the grand Madrid Conference that was supposed to produce an unlikely peace in the Middle East but became an introduction to a new era of conflict in the war-torn region. Last week we have had a virtual version of the international conference on Lebanon, the second in 12 months and designed to mark the anniversary of the deadly explosion that tore Beirut apart.

The explosion shocked many, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, out of years of inattention to the many time-bombs that were ticking in Lebanon for almost three decades.

The first conference ended with classical clichés about solidarity with the Lebanese people and sugar-coated with pledges to provide $295 million for helping rebuild the shattered capital. The second conference noted that none of those clichés have acquired any meaning and that the money promised has either not been disbursed or ended up in the pockets of the usual suspects. The only rebuilding that has taken place, albeit on a modest scale, has been done by NGOs with some help from Switzerland and a few other countries.

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

On campus, the worst is yet to come By Richard Baehr

Posted By on August 8th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/on_campus_the_worst_is_yet_to_come.html

Review of Nevergreen by Andrew Pessin, 2021, Open Books

Andrew Pessin, the author of the comic novel Nevergreen (to be published September first), is a professor of philosophy at Connecticut College. He ignited the furies among the student body  at his college over his support for the state of Israel. That experience informs his newly published novel about a doctor invited to give a talk  at a fictional college facing the campus lynch mob. The book is titled to evoke the infamous case of Bret Weinstein of The Evergreen State University.  Weinstein was hounded out of his professorship and eventually collected a quarter million-dollar settlement from the University for the outrageous treatment he experienced.  In both the Weinstein and Pessin incidents, there were serious threats of physical harm to the “offending” professors, and administrators who did nothing to defend or protect them.

Nevergreen manages to capture the passions unleashed at the two real colleges (and many others in the past few years). In the novel, a physician who goes by J (his wife clarifies it is Jeffrey near the end), meets a woman on a plane while in route to a medical conference. He gets invited by the woman to speak at the school where she works, Nevergreen College, after his conference is concluded.  Nevergreen College is built on a small island where an asylum was once located, and inmates were buried, an ominous metaphor and portent.

J delivers his talk though no one is there to hear it. However, he soon becomes the focus of those who hate “the hate” he represents to them, which includes pretty much everyone on campus.  The campus gatherings directed at J, are longer than the daily two minutes hate in George Orwell’s 1984 and include campus newspaper attacks, and posting of his picture everywhere, including on masks worn by students hunting him down.

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The Predators Among Us By Abraham H. Miller

Posted By on August 8th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/the_predators_among_us.html

In our cities exists a culture of violence, and we ignore it at our peril, for we are all potential victims.

University of Chicago student Max Lewis was commuting to school on the Green Line Elevated Train when a bullet tore into his spine. A good Samaritan nurtured and consoled him until the paramedics came. An active and vibrant twenty-year-old, Lewis could only move his eyes when he awoke in his hospital bed. And with that, he communicated that he wanted the plug pulled. He did not want to live as a vegetable. He was ready to greet death.

Another life in a long list of lives tragically snuffed out by a “stray” bullet on Chicago’s southside. The police have no idea from where the bullet was fired. But was it a stray bullet? Did someone target the Elevated train the way people have targeted airline pilots with lasers, hoping to blind them on their approach and witness a plane crash?

As I read the demographics of victims of Chicago’s gang violence, I wonder, as have others, if there are predators out there hunting people for sport the way game hunters wantonly kill for sport. There are simply too many women and children, too many innocents, on the victims list.

I stumbled upon this notion when, during the George Floyd riots, carloads of young blacks descended on my exurban community and smashed their way into the upscale shopping mall. Armed police stood in place as the vandals looted the stores and unnecessarily damaged showcases and fixtures while helping themselves to whatever they desired.

Having successfully looted the stores as police looked on, the vandals loaded up their vehicles and drove toward the freeway. As one car veered out of the shopping area, someone fired a random shot into a group of shoppers.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel beats Russia, wins gold in gymnastics; Angry Russians accuse judges of bias

Posted By on August 8th, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/israel-beats-russia-wins-gold-in-gymnastics-angry-russians-accuse-judges-of-bias/?utm_source=

Linoy Ashram becomes first Israeli woman to take Olympic gold as Russians accuse judges of bias.

Her blue ribbon soared halfway to the rafters, and Israel’s Linoy Ashram spun and swirled and caught it, winning gold in a performance that ended Russia’s decades-long dominance in rhythmic gymnastics.

But Russian sports officials accused the judges of bias and said they would lodge a complaint.

Ashram, 22, became the first Israeli woman to ever win an Olympic gold medal, edging out a pair of Russian identical twin sisters who were the favorites heading into Tokyo.

Dina Averina, 22, placed second and her sister, Arina, fell to fourth place. Alina Harnasko of Belarus won the bronze medal.

“This is history. I’m proud of represent Israel here, on the biggest stage in the world,” Ashram said after her victory. “It’s like a dream, I think it’s like I’m not here.”

Ashram, 22, has served as an Israeli military secretary since 2017, and she works there every day when she’s not performing. Israeli women are required to perform at least two years of military service, and she said it is important to her to give time and energy to her country.

In her final performance in the four-round competition, she danced to a techno remix of the Jewish celebratory folk song “Hava Nagila” as the crowd clapped along. Ashram, wearing a blue and white feathered bird leotard in the colors of the Israeli flag, missed a catch, and spectators gasped.

Dina Averina, who was set to perform just after Ashram, saw her mistake and was hopeful it was a chance for her to take the gold medal back to Russia.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Why the Border Crisis Is Here to Stay By Andrew C. McCarthy •

Posted By on August 8th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/why-the-border-crisis-is-here-to-stay/

Absent a credible impeachment threat, President Biden and the progressives are only going to continue abetting illegal immigration.

D on’t blame me, blame the Supreme Court — along with congressional Republicans, Republican presidents, and Washington’s entrenched post-sovereign, transnational–progressive political establishment. But don’t say you weren’t warned: The only hope for reestablishing security on the southern border is a credible threat to impeach President Biden.

And don’t bet on that emerging from a Democrat-dominated House.

That blunt reality is elucidated by the Biden administration’s assault on any remaining vestige of state sovereignty. In El Paso federal court, the Justice Department has sued Texas and Governor Greg Abbott for attempting to protect the state from waves of illegal aliens who are streaming into the country.

The federal government is aiding and abetting illegal immigration. That is a violation of federal law and thus another manifestation of Biden’s disregard for his solemn duty to execute the laws faithfully, on unabashed display this week with his dictatorial eviction-moratorium decree, which he and his administration concede is unconstitutional.

Immigration law commands that aliens who do not have a legal right to be present in the United States “shall be detained pending a final determination of credible fear of persecution and, if found not to have such a fear, until removed.” That is, even those who credibly claim to fear persecution if returned from whence they came — the infinitesimally small percentage of legitimate refugees among the hordes now seeking entry — are supposed to be held in custody until that claim is fully adjudicated.

But Biden has signaled that the border is open and that those who try to cross illegally stand an excellent chance of getting in and staying. Rhetorically, the president pretends the laws are being enforced, but he knows this is impossible in the conditions he has willfully created. The government is woefully short of the detention space, enforcement personnel, and administrative resources that would be needed to handle the vast migrant crowds arriving daily.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bill de Blasio and the Decline of New York City By John Podhoretz • *******

Posted By on August 8th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/08/16/bill-de-blasio-and-the-decline-of-new-york-city/#slide-1

The next mayor will have to contend with a legacy of wreckage

New York City is shrinking. Or rather: It was shrinking. Quite a while ago. Then it started to grow. Then it grew dramatically. But after eight years of Bill de Blasio as mayor, it is contracting once again, as the economic and population surge that took the city from the slough of despond to new heights over the course of four decades has been reversed. This is not the result of COVID. It is the result of a disastrous mayoralty and the ideas, prejudices, and idiocies that have animated it. De Blasio’s legacy as he prepares to leave office is just that: a city in decline.

Bill de Blasio has governed with a potent mix of old and new — the bad old and the horrible new. He has pushed wretched new ideas that have blighted the education system and poisoned the streetscape. And he has revivified incompetent policies driven by ideological priors — ideas so long discredited that their failure had been forgotten and had to be experienced yet again by young New Yorkers who weren’t alive when the city was nearly destroyed by them and were therefore unable to heed the warnings of those of us who did live through their nightmarish implementation.

To tell the story of de Blasio’s New York, we need to go back to the city’s great devastation.

In 1970, 7.9 million people lived in New York City. Ten years later, that number had dropped by a staggering 800,000. Over the course of the ’70s, residents voted with their feet and got the hell out of Dodge — fleeing an increasingly lawless and chaotic municipality whose feckless authorities stood by and let the place fester and rot.

This unprecedented depopulation was the consequence of a budgetary free fall that led the city to the verge of bankruptcy in 1975 — a managerial catastrophe that wreaked havoc on garbage collection, public safety, schooling, even on the grass in its parks. Its leaders, Nathan Glazer once quipped, stopped doing the things they knew how to do (like picking up the garbage) and started trying to do things no one knows how to do (like ending poverty). The expansion of social-welfare programs came at the expense of the prosaic quotidian tasks necessary if any city is to be livable.

Here’s just one example. In his book The Fires, Joe Flood tells the story of how Mayor John V. Lindsay (whose time in office ran from 1966 to 1973) sought to redirect city money so that he could spend it on social programs. He hired the RAND Corporation to study the city’s fire department: “NYC-RAND’s goal was nothing less than a new way of administering cities: use the mathematical brilliance of the computer modelers and systems analysts who had revolutionized military strategy to turn Gotham’s corrupt, insular and unresponsive bureaucracy into a streamlined, non-partisan technocracy.”

Using RAND’s efficiency experts and their findings as fodder and justification, Lindsay’s people closed dozens of fire stations because of supposed redundancies. Meanwhile, the department’s inspectors stopped ensuring the good working order of the city’s hydrants. The result: Enormous swaths of the Bronx burned down in the 1970s because there were no nearby fire trucks to put out the fires and no water in the hydrants when they did show up.

The staggeringly dark popular-culture portrayals of New York in the 1970s — Death Wish, Taxi Driver — didn’t feel excessive. They felt like documentaries. In 1974’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, subway hijackers demand $1 million for the safe return of their hostages. “This city doesn’t have a million dollars!” shouts the mayor. It was a joke, but it was no joke.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

US business pushes Biden  for a China trade deal Trump era tariffs on Chinese imports are fuelling record US inflation and threaten Biden’s chances at 2022 mid-term elections: David Goldman

Posted By on August 8th, 2021

https://asiatimes.com/2021/08/us-business-pushes-biden-for-a-china-trade-deal/

The US-China trade war has endured under the Biden administration.

NEW YORK – Never before in US political history has the whole of the American business community—more than thirty major business organizations—spoke with one voice as it did in an August 5 appeal to the Biden administration to eliminate tariffs on imports from China.

No entities in American politics are timider than business lobbies, most of whose work involves quiet lobbying for administrative relief and legislative tweaks. Such a high-profile intervention suggests that the business organizations believe that a deal is already underway.

A deal is likely because inflation could poison the Democratic Party’s chances at 2022 mid-term elections and return control of the US Congress to the Republicans. Cutting tariffs is the quickest way to reduce inflation. Beyond the arithmetic of electoral politics, a consensus is emerging that the technology sanctions that Trump imposed on China have failed and may even have backfired.

More than 30 business groups including the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the Semiconductor Industry Association, as well as retailer, farm and manufacturing representatives asked Biden to cut tariffs and restart trade talks with China.

The letter stated: “A worker-centered trade agenda should account for the costs that US and Chinese tariffs impose on Americans here and at home and remove tariffs that harm U.S. interests.”

Last month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the New York Times that tariffs “hurt American consumers.” Since then-president Donald Trump imposed a 20% tariff on roughly half the goods America buys from China, the Treasury has collected about $100 billion in fees. Most of that was paid by US consumers.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Critical Race Theory FORCED on West Point Cadets – Judicial Watch Sues

Posted By on August 7th, 2021

https://www.judicialwatch.org/deep-dive/crt-forced-westpoint/

“…They want to destroy our military. This is a revolutionary approach, straight out of the Marxist playbook.” 

Judicial Watch’s countless lawsuits and political investigations are raising alarm bells on the spread of critical race theory across the United States. From the DOJ’s Georgia Lawsuit, to public schools in Masschusetts, Maryland and elsewhere, policymakers are pushing for every issue to be viewed through the lens of race. As Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton explained during Friday’s Weekly Update, “this is a revolutionary approach, straight out of the Marxist playbook.”  Shockingly, as Fitton pointed out, it’s now being taught at West Point, “where our rising generation of leaders for the Army go to train,” Fitton explained. “They want to brainwash our incoming Army officers.”

In light of this revelation, Judicial Watch has sued the United States Military Academy for the following information: 

Copies of all diversity, inclusion, and equity training materials for first-year Cadets entering West Point. This includes lists of reading materials and presentation materials that promote diversity, inclusion, and equity for first-year Cadets.
Copies of all contracts between the U.S Military Academy and any organization or company responsible for coordinating and implementing diversity, inclusion, and equity programs and training for Cadets at the United States Military Academy.

Judicial Watch’s lawsuit was filed in conjunction with Congressman Mike Waltz’ (R-FL) recent discovery of controversial training materials at the U.S Army’s military academy, which included “examples of Corps of Cadets being mandated to attend seminars and presentations on critical race theory…” As Fitton reminded viewers Friday, Critical Race Theory is “not just a racialist approach, its about categorizing people by their immutable characteristics – sex, race, ethnicities, sometimes age, disability – it’s all part of that mix.” 

As Fitton concluded: 

“Critical race theory is racist, anti-American, and repackaged Marxism.  It has no place in our military, let alone the storied heights of West Point,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Pentagon needs to immediately follow the FOIA law so the American people can fully understand and stop the extremist indoctrination of the U.S. Army’s rising leadership at West Point.”

If you’re concerned about the impact of Critical Race Theory on America’s military and its most celebrated institutions, support Judicial Watch today. Let’s expose the truth about Critical Race Theory. 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The 2020 Election is Breaking the Legal Profession Sanctioning lawyers who are fighting to uphold the country’s election process is a great way to scare away competent, qualified, and strong ones from taking charged cases. By Deion A. Kathawa

Posted By on August 7th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/06/the-2020-election-is-breaking-the-legal-profession/

“Elites are psychologically predisposed to swat down, with extreme prejudice, any perceived threats to the ruling class’ continued legitimacy; it has ever been thus. But make no mistake: This sort of thing, if it spreads and becomes normalized as the routine operation of our legal system, will have dire consequences.”

The Hill reports that a Colorado federal magistrate judge, N. Reid Neureiter, “sanctioned lawyers who challenged the 2020 presidential election results, calling their election claims ‘fantastical.’” “Plaintiffs’ counsel shall jointly and severally pay the moving Defendants’ reasonable attorneys [fees]”—which is very likely to be many thousands of dollars. This ruling comes while a federal district judge in Michigan, Linda Parker, considers imposing sanctions on attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, both of whom raised questions about the propriety of the 2020 presidential election. 

In January, James Boasberg, a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., “referred a Minnesota lawyer [Erick Kardaal] for potential discipline” for his lawsuit regarding the last election. And these three proceedings occur in the shadow of the sanctioning of Rudy Giuliani by a New York state appellate court, which saw fit to suspend his law license for representing his client, then-President Donald J. Trump, in the wake of the 2020 election. Giuliani likely will face “permanent sanctions” at the conclusion of the process.

These are deeply troubling developments. Even the Bush v. Gore saga didn’t generate such official acrimony.

Attorneys in every state are duty-bound to offer zealous advocacy for their clients. This doesn’t mean that they can lie to the court or to the other lawyers involved in a case, or make a mockery of the process, but it does mean that they have an ethical obligation to press every possible good-faith claim in their client’s favor as hard as they possibly can. The American legal system is adversarial; therefore, a case’s legal soundness is only as good as the competition between the lawyers who appear before the court.