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“Burnt Beyond Recognition”: Extremist Persecution of Christians, August 2018 by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on December 2nd, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13367/extremist-persecution-christians-august

“The non-implementation of the law has brought us a gang of hardliners who have become above the law.” — Human rights activist, World Watch Monitor, Egypt.

A group of Muslims thrashed Vishal Masih, an 18-year-old Christian, after he repeatedly defeated a Muslim teen at arm-wrestling.” — Persecution, International Christian Concern, Pakistan.

“We cannot watch our children joining infidels’ church,” explained a local sheikh. — Morning Star News, Uganda.

Comoros: Sunni Islam was formally declared “the religion of the state.” “An ultra-conservative group of radical scholars … are pushing the country to a more extreme view of Islamic law (sharia) in the country and are against Christians.” — World Watch Monitor, August 3, 2018.

Christians Burned Alive and Churches Torched

Ethiopia: Approximately 15 Christian priests were killed—at least four burned alive—and 19 churches torched during Muslim uprisings in the east, where most of the nation’s Muslim population, consisting of 33% of the population, is centered. “Similar tensions are bubbling under the surface in other parts of Oromia,” which is approximately 50% Muslim, said a local source. “We have even heard of places where Muslims had asked Christians to vacate the area. And though this call is veiled as ethnic rivalry by some media and observers, it is at its very core a religious matter.”

Nigeria: During one of eight raids on Christian villages on August 28, Muslim Fulani herdsmen burned alive a Christian pastor, his wife, and three young children in their home; two other non-relatives were also killed in the raids. Armed with machetes and AK47 rifles, the Islamic raiders also looted and destroyed 95 houses and three churches. Gyang Adamu, one of the pastor’s surviving children who was away at the University of Jos at the time, “got to know about the attack when I saw a post on Facebook that Abonong village [his home], was under attack,” he said. When he finally got through to someone local, “the report I received was very devastating; I couldn’t believe that all my family members have been engulfed in the pogrom. On reaching home, I saw my daddy and younger ones burnt beyond recognition. The sight of the gory incident broke me down.”

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Turkey’s Reign of Terror: The Persecution of Minority Alevis by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on December 2nd, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13356/turkey-alevis-persecution

The Alevi-owned broadcaster, TV10, for example,was closed down in September 2016, two months after the failed coup attempt against Erdogan, for allegedly “threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”

A TV10 cameraman, Kemal Demir, was taken into police custody on November 25, 2017 and arrested on December 2. Veli Büyükşahin, TV10’s chairman of the board, and Veli Haydar Güleç, a TV10 producer, were arrested on January 10. All are still in prison.

“TV10 did not belong to a major business. While it was trying to carry out its activities with its few employees and very limited resources, it was closed down by executive order. Moreover, its properties were seized [by the government] and then sold by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (SDIF)… The indictments against them contain no criminal element and judges have turned down the indictments twice. Yet, these people have been detained for 10 months and there is still uncertainty as to when they will be tried in a court and when a result will be obtained from the hearings.” — Kemal Peköz, MP from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in a speech before parliament November 1.

In Turkey, several methods are employed to eliminate religious minorities, not only by physical violence. Instead, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tries to erase minority faiths by preventing their ability to function by denying them the freedom to establish and safely operate their own institutions and places of worship. The Alevis, for instance, a historically persecuted religious minority in Turkey, are all-too-familiar with this form of oppression.

The Alevi-owned broadcaster, TV10, for example, was closed down in September 2016, two months after the failed coup attempt against Erdoğan, for allegedly “threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”

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Smith, Bentham, Wilberforce and the Liberal Foundations of Australia by David Kemp ****

Posted By on December 1st, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/11/smith-bentham-wilberforce-liberal-foundations-australia/

As planning for the new colony of New South Wales was under way, Thomas Jefferson was in Paris working with La Fayette on a French Declaration of the Rights of Man. It was an age when the democratic idea had been given such momentum that it would be unstoppable, and nowhere would be more receptive to it than the Australian colonies. The British government might have hoped that the new colony would be well out of the way of dangerous ideas, located as it was on the other side of the world, but it could not but be influenced by the intellectual ferment of the times.

In the domestic debate in Britain about the nature of government, there were three thinkers who were to have deep and direct impact on the colonies through their influence on Britain’s government and the thinking of its rulers and its intellectual classes: William Wilberforce (1759–1833), Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and Adam Smith (1723–1790).

The ideas of these thinkers would constantly resonate in political debate and in the press (when it developed in the 1820s) in Australia, but the one who has claims to be the theorist around whom the greatest debate swirled was Adam Smith, for Smith’s ideas were extraordinary and counter-intuitive. They challenged some of the deepest prejudices and beliefs that had governed policy as far back as anyone could remember. Wilberforce’s ideas appealed to the heart, and through Christianity to a deep faith-based belief in the equal humanity (and divinity) of all people; Bentham’s appealed to the legal reformers and institution builders, to those who liked a systematic and rationally ordered world; but Smith’s ideas required people to confront conflicts between heart and mind in a way no other thinker of the age was to do. In no other thinker was the conflict between the recommendations of reason and those of prejudice to be so dramatic. His ideas were to build a broad social and policy base for liberalism, both in Britain and in its Australian possessions.

Economic liberty and the public interest

Smith was a leading figure of the so-called “Scot­tish Enlightenment”. During the eighteenth century the Scottish universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews were pre-eminent in Britain in their intellectual quality, and a number of thinkers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen developed ideas that were to transform people’s understanding of human society. David Hume (1711–1776), a historian and philosopher, Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), a historian, Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University, James Steuart (1707–1780), the first political economist to use the phrase “supply and demand”, and Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, led the revolution in ideas. Each of these men attempted to add to the then pitifully small amount of knowledge about how human societies actually worked: what caused them to evolve and grow and develop certain characteristics and, above all, what was the basis for peaceful co-operation between people in a world where authority had retreated and coercion was weak.

Like the philosophes in France who influenced them, these Scottish thinkers were highly sceptical of the common understandings and explanations of their day about the functioning of the social and economic order. They did not believe that societies were held together by the force or the authority of absolute monarchs or ruling classes nor even by the efforts of organised religion, nor did they believe that the ceaseless pursuit of treasure was the real road to wealth, nor that a nation was better off by excluding the products of others.

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SYDNEY WILLIAMS: NOVEMBER 2018-THE MONTH THAT WAS

Posted By on December 1st, 2018

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

November was the “mean” month, or, rather, another “mean” month. Tweets, inanities, recriminations and a general sense of unpleasantness, swept the nation and Europe: In the U.S., ballots disappeared, others became water-damaged and some arrived without signatures. In Europe, France’s Emmanuel Macron, already on the ropes for the economy, called for a European military force: “We must protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States.”This was said with President Trump, leader of the country that pays over 70% of the continent’s defense through NATO, standing nearby. This nastiness occurred despite the month hosting the great American holiday of Thanksgiving. Instead of giving thanks for living in this great land, the media and political elites went out of their way to find fault with anyone or anything that got in the way of their ideology, especially Donald J. Trump – witness the election results in Florida and Georgia and blame for the California wildfires. The crevasse created by identity politics, Mr. Trump’s Tweets and Trump haters grows wider and deeper. Bridging it grows more difficult and less likely.

Consider Jamal Khashoggi – not an admirable character, and not just because he was a columnist for The Washington Post, but because he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a right-wing, religiopolitical organization. Nevertheless, his murder was despicable and undoubtedly leaders in Saudi Arabia had fore-knowledge of the killing. But, spare me the hypocrisy – that does not make angels of those crying foul. Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other nation according to PBS. Iran is a hotbed of exporting terrorism. Yemen is ground zero in the battle between Shias and Sunnis, with Iran supporting the Houthi rebels who have infiltrated the country against the Saudi-supported government. Mr. Trump does himself a disservice in the crudity of his response, but had he singled out MBS (Mohammad bin Salman) for blame, the media and the left would have found fault for his cozying up to the Turkish dictator. As well, they would blame him for a spike in oil prices, which undoubtedly would have followed an abandonment of our decades-old relationship with the Kingdom. What Mr. Trump should do, with MBS in the spotlight, is pull concessions from the Saudis. He has already told the Saudis to end the bloodshed in Yemen, but he should do more. He should push them to restore ties with Qatar and to ensure the Gulf Cooperation Council remains effective. He should pressure the Saudis to recognize Israel. Keep in mind, the Saudis remained our ally after 9/11, despite fifteen of the nineteen hijackers being Saudi citizens. And it was President Obama who, in September 2016, vetoed a bill that held Saudi Arabia legally accountable for 9/11. Fortunately, Congress overrode his veto. Just remember, there are no clear consciences when a democratic nation’s interests require allying with a dictator.

Elections in the United States were much as expected, though counting extended into the middle of the month, and one Senate race – Mississippi – not decided until November 27. (Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith won by eight points.) Some results were not accepted by those that lost, reminding one of Anthony Trollope’s 1858 novel, Dr. Thorne: “…no political delinquency is abominable in the eyes of British politicians, but no delinquency is so abominable as that of venality at elections.” The bottom line: Democrats took over the House, while Republicans increased their lead in the Senate.

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Trump hints at the scandal about to blow By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on December 1st, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/trump_hints_at_the_scandal_about_to_blow.html

There is big news ahead, and President Trump teased it yesterday from Argentina via Twitter. Politics has become a game of narratives, something well understood by both President Trump and his enemies in the media-Democrat establishment. For more than two years, the professionals of the cultural and media establishment have worked assiduously to create an objectively false narrative, with no evidence whatsoever, that Vladimir Putin actually changed the count of votes to hand Trump the presidency, making his victory illegitimate. Most Democrats actually believe this now and have in earlier polls as well.

But as I keep reminding our readers, President Trump was the most successful reality television producer in the history of the medium, and he understands a story arc well, as events that can be programmed unfold. That must be kept in mind in understanding this enigmatic tweet that came from the president half a world away, in Argentina for meetings with the leaders of the 20 biggest economies in the world.

Watch @seanhannity on @FoxNews NOW. Enjoy!

Here is the short (barely over a minute) segment on Hannity last night to which the president referred:

John Solomon has a smile on his face as he reveals that two prosecutors working for John Huber, the Salt Lake City U.S. attorney tasked by then-A.G. Sessions with investigating corruption beyond what the Mueller team is handling, “reached out” to a whistleblower from the Clinton Foundation.

The Clinton Foundation scandal is, as President Trump would say, yuuuuge. I am told by a knowledgeable source that the official that John Solomon cites “knows where the bodies are buried.”

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THE TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS

Posted By on December 1st, 2018

“In a 1992 essay in the New Criterion, Roger Kimball reviewed a book by Julien Benda entitled The Treason of the Intellectuals, “an unremitting attack on the politicization of the intellect and ethnic separatism” published a decade before the outbreak of World War II. Applying Benda’s observations to his own time, Mr. Kimball wrote: “From the savage flowering of ethnic hatreds in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to the mendacious demands for political correctness and multiculturalism on college campuses across America and Europe, the treason of the intellectuals continues to play out its unedifying drama.”

The Treason of the Intellectuals by [Benda, Julien, Kimball, Roger]

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Thirty Years After ‘The Closing of the American Mind’ written by Jonathan Church

Posted By on December 1st, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/11/28/thirty-years-after-the-closing-of-the-amer
Over thirty years ago, Allan Bloom—the late American philosopher and university professor who was the model for Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein—published The Closing of the American Mind. He began with a startling declaration: “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” Relativism, Bloom claimed, “is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it.” Students “have all been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society.” What students “fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance.” At the end of the opening paragraph, Bloom summarized the result: “The point is not to correct [their] mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.”

In the ensuing pages, Bloom argued that modern universities were failing their students in part because postmodern trends in the humanities had devalued the Western literary canon, which he championed as a tradition that honored, cultivated, and molded the Socratic dictum that the unexamined life is not worth living. Introspection was, in Bloom’s view, the point of a liberal education. In the preface to his book, Bloom described the job of a teacher as a guide in this quest, more akin to midwifery than socialization: “i.e. the delivery of real babies of which not the midwife but nature is the cause.” A liberal education, he argued, helps students to develop a mature perspective and resolute position on universal questions about human nature—the most central being, what is man?—and “to become aware that the answer is neither obvious nor simply unavailable, and that there is no serious life in which this question is not a continuous concern.”

Bloom confessed upfront that the sample of students upon which he had based his diagnosis of the “present situation” in American education was selective: “It consists of thousands of students of comparatively high intelligence, materially and spiritually free to do pretty much what they want with the few years of college they are privileged to have—in short, the kind of young persons who populate the twenty or thirty best universities.” He made no apologies, however: “It is sometimes said that these advantaged youths have less need of our attention and resources, that they already have enough. But they, above all, most need education, in as much as the greatest talents are most difficult to perfect, and the more complex the nature the more susceptible it is to perversion.”

In summarily declaring that higher education had been so undermined that truth itself had been discarded as irrelevant or illegitimate by the best and the brightest at America’s top universities, Bloom undoubtedly gave us a controversial, even dire, account of the state of modern education. Whether or not things were as bad as he said, however, the book was a stimulating contribution to an emerging conversation about social, political, and cultural values at a time when the ethos of multiculturalism was becoming a hot-button topic in institutions of higher learning and in society at large. A term that can mean many things, “multiculturalism” refers in part to a benign and productive effort to include a multiplicity of cultural perspectives in the canon of great literary and philosophical works. But it can also spark a more controversial politics of identity, tending to promote relativism, whereby truth, knowledge, and humanistic inquiry are seen as inseparable from the subjectivity of identity, perspective, and institutional affiliation.

A few years after Bloom’s book appeared, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. published a book entitled, The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. A political liberal, Schlesinger warned of the dangers of identity politics but also expressed optimism that unity would prevail in American society. His warning came as the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union broke apart, and ethnic separatism asserted itself in Eastern Europe. In America and abroad, it was an open question whether the ethos of multiculturalism in America, and ethnic separatism abroad, would lead to unity while broadening the circle of inclusion and pluralism, or greater division by galvanizing the tribal instincts of humanity.

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Trump, Russia and lessons from the mob: Did ‘godfathers’ steer collusion probe? By John Solomon

Posted By on December 1st, 2018

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/419193-trump-russia-and-lessons-from-the-mob-did-godfathers-steer-collusion

Back in the mafia’s heyday, FBI and IRS agents had a set of surveillance rules.

If one mobster showed up in town, pay notice. If two arrived, be suspicious. If three or four were in the same vicinity, something was going down.

And if five or more headed to the same neck of the woods, a meeting of consiglieri or La Cosa Nostra’s council was likely happening. (This, because there were always five families in New York and some adjunct families elsewhere that made up the council’s leadership.)

There also was another rule of thumb: Mobsters would always have the same calling card, or excuse, to be in town. Attending a funeral (the mid-1980s mob meeting in Chicago) or a vacation in the sticks (the infamous 1957 gathering in upstate New York) were some of the more memorable ones.

Early in my reporting that unraveled the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe, tying it to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and possible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses, I started to see patterns just as in the old mob meetings: FBI or intelligence-connected figures kept showing up in Trump Town USA during the 2016 campaign with a common calling card.

The question now is, who sent them and why?

Interviews with more than 50 witnesses in the Trump case and reviews of hundreds of pages of court filings confirm the following:

At least six people with long-established ties to the FBI or to U.S. and Western intelligence made entrees to key figures in the Trump business organization or his presidential campaign between March and October 2016;

Campaign figures were contacted by at least two Russian figures whose justification for being in the United States were rare law enforcement parole visas controlled by the U.S. Justice Department;

Intelligence or diplomatic figures connected to two of America’s closest allies, Britain and Australia, gathered intelligence or instigated contacts with Trump campaign figures during that same period;

Some of the conversations and contacts that were monitored occurred on foreign soil and resulted in the creation of transcripts;

Nearly all of the contacts involved the same overture — a discussion about possible political dirt or stolen emails harmful to Hillary Clinton, or unsolicited business in London or Moscow;

Several of the contacts occurred before the FBI formally launched a legally authorized probe into the Trump campaign and possible collusion on July 31, 2016.

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Trump Bucks G20 Climate Consensus as Group Releases 2018 ‘Declaration’ By Caleb Howe

Posted By on December 1st, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/trump-bucks-g20-climate-consensus-as-group-releases-2018-declaration/

There may not be a scientific consensus on the cause of climate change, but there certainly was a consensus among politicians at the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Buenos Aires on Saturday. Out of the 20 world leaders gathered, 19 signed off on supporting and adhering to the Paris climate agreement. President Trump was the lone holdout.

The gathering released their final, non-binding “Declaration” on Saturday, with consensus on reforming the World Trade Organisation (WTO), other trade issues, and migration, but on Climate had to mark a dissent.

Items 20 and 21 note the U.S. differentiated from the other 19 countries represented.

19. A strong economy and a healthy planet are mutually reinforcing. We note the latest IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5 degrees centigrade. We recognize the importance of comprehensive adaptation strategies, including investment in infrastructure that is resilient to extreme weather events and disasters. In this sense, we support actions and cooperation in developing countries, especially those that are particularly vulnerable, including small island states such as those in the Caribbean. We discussed long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies and alignment of international finance flows. We also shared countries´ experiences and considered the 2018-2019 work program on adaptation, acknowledging that each country may chart its own path to achieving a low emission future. We look forward to successful outcomes of the UNFCCC COP24, and to engage in the Talanoa Dialogue.

20. Signatories to the Paris Agreement, who have also joined the Hamburg Action Plan, reaffirm that the Paris Agreement is irreversible and commit to its full implementation, reflecting common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances. We will continue to tackle climate change, while promoting sustainable development and economic

growth.

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Is Paris Burning? Yes, for the Second Weekend in a Row By Rick Moran

Posted By on December 1st, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/is-paris-burning-yes-for-the-second-weekend-in-a-row/

Is Paris Burning? is a 1966 film about the Nazi occupation. As the Allies closed in on Paris, the German general in charge was ordered to burn the city before the Allies could seize it. After agonizing over the decision, General Cholitz refuses to level the city and Free French forces march triumphantly down the Champs Elysee.

How ironic it is that the historic street with the Arc de Triumph in the background was the scene of several vehicle fires set by masked demonstrators who, for the second weekend in a row, are violently protesting the government of President Emmanuel Macron.

ABC News:

The violence started early Saturday morning near the famous Avenue des Champs-Elysees. Dozens of angry protesters, many of them wearing gas masks or ski goggles, threw rocks and projectiles toward French police. In turn, police attempted to disperse the crowd by firing tear gas and blasting water cannons.

Later in the day, violent protesters who were pushed away from the Arc de Triumph used plywood and other material to make barricades on various streets throughout central Paris. Demonstrators also set multiple cars and trash containers on fire over the course of the day.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe visited the Paris police command center on Saturday and announced that around 5,500 protesters attended the demonstrations in Paris on Saturday.

Philippe said some protesters attacked police forces “with a rarely seen violence.”

Nearly 200 people were arrested during the protest, Paris police told ABC News. They added that 92 people were injured, including 14 police officers.

What began as protests against a rise in the gas tax has morphed into something far more; a revolt against high taxes, the high cost of living, and the Macron government’s policies.

The nationwide protests started in small urban and rural areas of the country, where demonstrators have been blocking roads over the past three weeks. The movement has no clear leader and has attracted groups of people with a wide variety of demands.

Macron, who is currently in Argentina for the G20 summit, said earlier this week in a speech that he understood the complaints expressed by protesters but has so far refused to cancel the planned increased in fuel taxes. CONTINUE AT SITE