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China’s New Crackdown on Christians Xi Jinping attacks the ‘patriotic’ church that has long co-existed with the government. By Jillian Kay Melchior

Posted By on February 5th, 2016

Nearly seven years after Warren Bird visited the biggest Protestant church in China, he’s still deeply moved as he recalls its pastor, “Joseph” Gu Yuese, preaching that morning from Psalms.

“His sermon was on how God understands our cares,” says Mr. Bird, an American researcher and expert on global megachurches. “He got very emotional—not in the sense of high emotion carried by his voice tone, but emotional in the sense of affirming, from the Psalms, that God cares about our hearts, and God feels our pain, and God relates to us. It was like, wow.”

Mr. Gu’s sermon in Chongyi Church on that Sunday morning in August 2009 now feels eerie—and prescient. Psalms is a book about finding comfort from God amid hardship and persecution, and this week Mr. Gu disappeared into the hands of the Chinese government. He is reportedly imprisoned in a secretive “black jail,” notorious for deplorable conditions and even torture. Not since the Cultural Revolution has the Chinese government gone after such a high-ranking church leader.

Mr. Gu comes from Zhejiang Province, a region known for both its flourishing Christianity and entrepreneurial spirit. Believers there have long enjoyed relatively good relations with the authorities.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary’s Wall Street Reckoning Clinton struggles to explain why Goldman paid her $675,000.

Posted By on February 5th, 2016

President Obama has spent seven years denouncing Wall Street and persuading young progressives that the U.S. economy is rigged for the benefit of wealthy financiers. So how will he now persuade them to support Wall Street’s favorite Democrat?

This is the political trap Mr. Obama has sprung on Hillary Clinton, who made it difficult to watch Wednesday’s Democratic town hall on CNN as she squirmed in response to a question about speaking fees she collected from Goldman Sachs. Host Anderson Cooper asked her whether she really had to be paid $675,000 for giving three speeches.

“Well, I don’t know. That’s what they offered,” said Mrs. Clinton—to much audience laughter. She then tried the argument that every Secretary of State does it, and then settled on the unbelievable claim that at the time she took the money she didn’t know she would be running for President again. Mr. Cooper was so startled he asked her to repeat the point.

The laughter likely occurred because the average voter can guess that the traders at Goldman have a keen sense of value. And they’re not trading $675,000 for the entertainment value of Hillary Clinton appearances.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Arab MKs meet with families of terrorists

Posted By on February 5th, 2016

Members of the Balad faction of the Joint Arab List – Haneen Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka, and Basel Ghattas – met the families a day before Palestinian President Abbas did the same. They attempted to hide the fact that the meeting took place.
Ynet reporters

A day before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met the families of terrorists in his Ramallah office, three Knesset members of the Joint Arab List met terrorists’ family members, among them those who have perpetrated deadly attacks as part of the current terror wave.

The three MKs in question are Haneen Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka, and Basel Ghattas. Among the relatives of what the MK’s called “shaheeds” (martyrs) was the father of Baha Aliyan, the terrorist who murdered three in a combined stabbing and shooting attack on a Jerusalem bus, along with his collaborator Bilal Ranem.

Aliyan’s father said in a video that the meeting was “warm and productive.” According to him, “The Palestinian Knesset member brothers listened to the suffering and pain of the shaheed’s families, whose bodies are held in Israel.”

According to the terrorist’s father, “The Knesset members’ hearts were open and they listened to every word we said. They emphasized that they would make every effort to return the bodies by pressuring the government in the Knesset and conducting talks with the security and diplomatic officials in the Israeli government. It was settled that we would continue to meet in order to keep track of the matter in the near future.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

“Islam is Just Christianity Misspelled” Edward Cline

Posted By on February 5th, 2016

The phrase encapsulates the common notion that Islam “shares” the same humanistic values as Christianity and Judaism.

“Islam is Just Christianity Misspelled”

Daniel Greenfield, writing in his Sultan Knish column on February 2nd, “Will Banning Muslim Migration Ruin the Anti-ISIS Coalition?” noted:

The Muslim world wants to know what to expect from us. It hates Obama because of his unreliability. To them, his political ideology resembles some species of mysticism which they do not share. It much prefers an arrangement based on mutual interests over our misguided mystical attempts to discover shared values by pretending that Islam is just Christianity misspelled. (Italics mine.)

I couldn’t resist using that last part – “Islam is just Christianity misspelled” – as the thematic title for this column. But it is true. The phrase encapsulates the common notion that Islam “shares” the same humanistic values as Christianity and Judaism. The three faiths are alleged to be interchangeable, distinguished only by their traditions and rituals, with no significant or worrisome doctrinal differences. Christian and Jewish clerics who engage in “interfaith dialogue” with Muslims act under the assumption that Islam is just another religion, basically benign, not out to threaten or hurt anyone or force people to act against their religious beliefs by converting “peacefully” to Islam.

But there is no “peaceful” conversion to Islam. Islam tolerates no other religion. It is fundamentally “anti-coexistence.” To paraphrase Henry Ford’s 1909 dictum, Islam’s philosophy of coexistence is, “You can have any religion you want as long as it’s Islam.”*

I discuss the futility of “interfaith dialogue” in my January 2nd Rule of Reason column, “Interfaith Bridges to Islam,” which is based on Stephen Coughlin’s vital critique of our current and absolutely anemic and counter-productive “War on Terror” policies, Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad. Coughlin offers a brutal, thorough, but necessary vivisection of the pretentions and fallacies of interfaith dialogue. I noted that:

Postmodernism has allowed Islam unopposed and unparalleled entrée into the minds and values of Westerners. Coughlin discusses how this entrée works and the consequences of Christian and Jewish religionists compromising their own beliefs by agreeing to form a “united front” for peace and coexistence and multi-beliefs with Islam. He correctly identifies the chief culprit and enabler of Muslim Brotherhood-dominated interfaith dialogue as postmodernism. Postmodernism is not incidental to the inroads being made by Islam in the West. It is a key factor.

POLITICS Comments turned off

“Confession Time: We Texans Know About Ted Cruz” By Donna Garner

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

SIDE NOTE: From Janet Levy- I’m not sure where the candidates stand on ethanol production and its blending with gasoline but there are some SERIOUS negatives involved:

1) Per gallon, ethanol contains about 30% less energy than gasoline.
2) Ethanol production results in higher food prices as land used for food production produces corn for transportation fuel.
3) Ethanol mixtures increase gas prices as oil companies are forced to blend specified amounts of ethanol into their products.
4) Ethanol damages engines – cars, boats, lawn mowers, etc.
5) Burning ethanol increases air pollution adding 22% more hydrocarbons to the atmosphere than burning gasoline.

“In all fairness, we Texans have had a sizeable advantage over the rest of the country because we have followed Ted Cruz’s life and career for many years. What makes many of us Texans value Ted Cruz so highly is because of his proven record to stand for the Constitution even if it means alienating other people.

We Texans well remember the horrible crime committed by illegal immigrant José Ernesto Medellín in 1993. Two innocent girls, 14-year old Jennifer Ertman and 16 year-old Elizabeth Peña, were walking home in Houston and decided they would take a shortcut through a secluded area. José and members of his “Black and White” street gang captured and repeatedly raped and murdered both girls. At José’s trial, the details of his handwritten confession indicated that after the girls were raped, he stomped on the neck of one girl and strangled her with a belt. The other girl was strangled with a shoelace: José held one end of the shoelace while another boy held the other end, watching while it cut into the girl’s throat.

José was convicted and sentenced to death, but that is not the end of the story.

In 2004 while President George W. Bush was in the White House and Condoleezza Rice was the Secretary of State, the judicial arm of the United Nations (a.k.a., International Court of Justice, World Court) decided that José’s case should be reopened because he had not been informed by the police of his right to contact his consulate even though José had lived as an illegal immigrant in the U. S. almost all of his life!

Gov. Greg Abbott was the Texas Attorney General at the time, and Ted Cruz was his Solicitor General whose job as lawyer for the state of Texas was to defend the laws and the Constitution of the State of Texas and represent Texas in litigation. Both Gov. Abbott and Ted Cruz agreed that the World Court had no right to subject state and federal courts to the authority of the United Nations.

Unfortunately, because of particular political circumstances at the time, President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and the U. S. Solicitor General Paul Clement (all Republicans and all people Ted Cruz respected highly) decided that Texas should obey the World Court’s decision. This would have meant that José Ernesto Medellín, a rapist, torturer, and murderer of two young girls, could have been set free.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Obama and Black Lives Matter Fight for a Violent Slasher The Democratic Party puts criminals first and victims last. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

There was never a better candidate for a police bullet in San Francisco than Mario Woods.

Mario Woods, a member of the Oakdale Mob, slashed a man with a knife. Then he threatened cops with a knife, warning them “You’re not taking me today.” SFPD officers hit him with beanbags and pepper spray and he still wouldn’t go down or drop the knife.

He taunted the officers, saying, “You better squeeze that mother___ and kill me.”

Then Woods moved toward a crowd of people while still holding the knife. And cops shot him.

It should have been the most open and shut case in history. This wasn’t Clint Eastwood’s Inspector Harry Callahan drawling, “Do you feel lucky, punk?” while staring at a downed bank robber. It was the prototype for a case in which the SFPD went by the book and tried their best to keep the punk alive.

The officers had done everything possible to stop a violent criminal by using non-lethal methods despite the risk to their own safety. They only opened fire once Mario Woods became a danger to civilians.

Mario Woods was a career criminal and a gang member who had recently gotten out after serving time for armed robbery. Two of the police officers were black. Only one officer out of five was white. There was no possibility of arguing that the shooting of Mario Woods was racially motivated.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Merkel’s Deadly Misstep The dark and tragic details of what the German chancellor’s open-door “refugee” policy really caused. Stephen Brown

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last August that her government would allow unregistered refugees to come to Germany, she set off the biggest migrant wave since the Second World War.

Despite the negative effects this huge influx of people has had on the German economy and society, such as the mass sexual molestation and rape of hundreds of women last New Year’s Eve in Cologne, increased crime and concerns for personal safety among native Germans, supporters of Merkel’s action believe it was nevertheless justified by the humanitarian emergency and the need to save lives.

But in an exclusive and revealing interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, an internationally recognised migration and Third World expert, Paul Collier, author of the book Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World, convincingly debunks this myth. Collier, a former director of the World Bank who currently holds an economics professorship at Oxford University, believes Merkel’s open-doors decision “…did not save a single Syrian from death.”

“Despite best intentions, Germany has, instead, dead people on its conscience,” Collier told Die Welt. “Many people understood Merkel’s words as an invitation and only after that did they actually set out on the dangerous journey, sacrifice their savings and entrust their lives to dubious smugglers.”

Meant as a humanitarian gesture, Collier maintains Merkel’s announcement had the opposite effect in regard to migrants’ safety and well-being. The refugees, he said, were already in safe, third states, such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, and did not come to Germany directly from “war and crisis countries.” But it was this “invitation” that caused them to leave these relatively safe havens, where most lived in tolerable conditions, and risk their lives on the arduous trip to Germany.

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The Islamic Rape and Murder of Christian Boys Another Muslim world phenomenon being imported into the West. Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

A group of Muslim men recently went into a Christian district in Pakistan, abducted a 7-year-old boy, and took turns gang raping him before finally strangling him to death with a rope. Locals found the child’s body dumped in a field the next day:

[T]he body was sent for post-mortem examination which revealed that the 7-year-old was killed after being brutally raped…. Speaking to The Express Tribune, a local said, “The suspects belonged to rich families and were drunk when they kidnapped the child and took him to their dera where they raped him.

Interestingly, while the NY Daily News, the Independent, and other media state that the boy was seized from a “Christian district,” the original report, published by one Kashif Zafar in the International New York Times’ Express Tribune, avoids mentioning the religious identity of either rapists or raped. It even fails to mention that this atrocity took place in Pakistan and merely names the region, Bahawalnagar, in both the title and body of the report, though few have any clue what country Bahawalnagar is located in.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama at Muslim Brotherhood-linked Mosque: “Muslim Americans Keep Us Safe” And: “Islam has always been part of America.” Really? Robert Spencer

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

When Barack Obama visited the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of Baltimore on Wednesday, he said: “The first thing I want to say is two words that Muslim Americans don’t hear often enough: Thank you.”

While Obama has been President, Muslims have murdered non-Muslims, avowedly in the cause of Islam, at Fort Hood, Boston, Chattanooga, and San Bernardino, and attempted to do so in many, many other places. Imagine if armed Baptists screaming “Jesus is Lord” had committed murder, and explained that they were doing so in order to advance Christianity, in four American cities, and had attempted to do so in many others. Imagine that those killers were supporters of a global Christian movement that had repeatedly called for attacks on U.S. civilians and declared its determination to destroy the United States.

Imagine how incongruous it would be in that case for the President of the United States to visit a church and say: “The first thing I want to say is two words that Christian Americans don’t hear often enough: Thank you.” And imagine how unlikely it would be that Barack Obama would ever have done that.

But his visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore was the apotheosis of the Muslim victimhood myth, as he signaled yet again to the world (and worldwide jihadis) that in the U.S., Muslims are victims, victims of unwarranted concern over jihad terror, and thus that concern is likely to lessen even more, as Obama dismantles still more of our counter-terror apparatus.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

White House Ignores Mounting Failures in Afghanistan By Mark Moyar

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

‘We have made gains over the past year that will put Afghanistan on a better path,” said Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on January 27, in a message of congratulations to outgoing commander General John Campbell. But the upbeat pronouncements of top administration officials are inconsistent with nearly all the information coming out of Afghanistan. On the day after Carter’s statement, the latest quarterly report from the Pentagon’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction observed, “In this reporting period, Afghanistan proved even more dangerous than it was a year ago. The Taliban now controls more territory than at any time since 2001.” An independent assessment by Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal also concluded that the Taliban has rapidly extended the terrain it controls since President Obama announced the official end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan. The U.S. has the ability to blunt the Taliban’s momentum, but a President who refuses to recognize the problem is not likely to provide the necessary resources.

​Is There a War in Afghanistan?

On December 21, a Taliban suicide-bombing attack at Bagram air base killed six Americans. On January 5, an American Special Forces soldier, Staff Sergeant Matthew McClintock, died and two others were wounded in Helmand province while assisting Afghan forces. As of mid-2015, American Green Berets were still accompanying their Afghan counterparts on six to ten missions per week, according to Major General Sean Swindell, commander of the Coalition’s special-operations forces. Forty times per week, Americans were providing Afghan special-operations forces with intelligence, logistical support, air cover, or other assistance. In December, Stars & Stripes reported, “U.S. troops are increasingly being pulled back into battle to aid overstretched Afghan forces.”

From the vantage point of the White House, these activities do not amount to war. On the White House website, a list of President Obama’s accomplishments says he “responsibly ended the U.S. combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Shortly before the President’s final State of the Union address, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price tweeted, “The U.S. ended two costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing home 90% of 180K troops deployed.” In the address itself, President Obama offered nary a word of thanks to the 9,800 troops who remain. He mentioned the country only once, as part of a list of places where “instability will continue for decades.”