Choose life for you and your children Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/and-god-saidchoose-life-for-you-and-your-children/

Something has gone very wrong. We have stopped choosing life; for ourselves and our children – including the unborn. We are intentionally killing the weak. We are sacrificing our children like Moloch. Why? How did we get here? When will it stop?

Who are the people who promote this culture?

La Maison Simons, commonly known as Simons, is a fashion retailer in Canada, headquartered in Quebec City, Quebec. It is a family business currently operated by Richard and Peter Simons. The business was established in 1840 by the son of a Scottish immigrant to Quebec as a dry goods store. In the 1960s, the focus of the business changed to a department store, incorporating youth-oriented brands.

It is so youth oriented that the powers that be at that company sat around the table one day and asked “What can we do to get our product noticed?” Hey, why not promote medically assisted aid in death to the sick and elderly! What a great idea! So they did. Every time you purchase something from Simons you can look at it and be proud they promote the killing of people.

And those publicists/marketers at Balenciaga. They sat around their table and asked themselves, how can we promote our product? Hey, let’s reach out to pedophiles and sado-masochists with an ad that shows children the beauty of bondage. What a great idea!

And BMO uses Drag Queens for promoting their wares. Why? Oh it’s about inclusivity.

And then we have VISA. It’s so important that a Drag Queen tells us to use our debit card. Why? Why are Drag Queens and their culture being normalized in commercials that children see?

The Stench of Fascism Is suffocating our democracy. by David Horowitz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-stench-of-fascism/

The stench of fascism and betrayal is suffocating our democracy, but nobody wants to talk about it. We sanitize our language so that classified documents strewn over unsecured garages and centers of Chinese influence are talked about as though it’s a matter of carelessness and not design. The indisputable brute fact is this: our commander-in-chief and his family have made themselves wealthy by taking bribes from foreign powers, chief among them our mortal enemy Communist China. Nobody seems to be asking, but how exactly were the inexplicable decisions to turn Afghanistan over to China and the Taliban made, and what American interest was served by this?

In classic fascist fashion, the Biden administration has suborned the intelligence community and the Department of Justice to censor and harass its political opponents. These include school parents and Capitol trespassers whom it libels and imprisons as “domestic terrorists” and (unarmed) “insurrectionists.” In typical fascist moves, it has suborned corporate America into spying on its political opponents with the goal of cancelling them and silencing their opinions. Just this week AT&T shut down the fastest growing and fourth largest cable news network, Newsmax TV, depriving 13 million viewers of access to its reporting. This attack on the First Amendment came on the heels of Twitter’s exposure of the way the FBI had put its platform on the federal payroll and dictated its censorship of tweets that could have changed the results of the last presidential election. The same fascistic arrangement was made with other tech social media giants like Facebook.

The Democrats have targeted their chief political opponent Donald Trump, who received 74 million votes in the last election, with the longest, most determined, and most vicious campaign of character assassination in modern history, and possibly ever. They have warned other potential presidential contenders like Governor Ron DeSantis that they will get the same treatment. They have smeared Republicans as racists, white supremacists and white nationalists, and has done this in the service of rigged elections in its drive to establish a one-party state.

Erdoğan’s Turkey: NATO’s Trojan Horse Moment by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19367/erdogan-turkey-nato-trojan-horse

In its Freedom in the World 2022 report, Freedom House, a U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., put Turkey in its “not free” category of countries, along with Afghanistan, Angola, Belarus, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and several other third world rogue regimes. Could one, by the criteria of democracy, imagine any of those countries as a NATO member state? But Turkey is.

Erdoğan needs NATO… He is tying NATO’s planned Nordic expansion, to include Sweden and Finland, to his election campaign.

“If you can come up with a security problem, then people rally behind the strong leader.” — Özer Sencar, chairman of the Turkish polling company, Metropoll.

Any unwisely public Turkish-Western confrontation in the few months before Turkey’s elections will add to votes for Erdoğan. Most Turks still believe what they were taught at primary school: A Turk’s only friend is another Turk. They are still living in a xenophobic unreal world where every other nation is an enemy of their land and is plotting against Turkey. That childish feeling, in a matter of collective psychology, coerces them to unite behind the leader. Trouble with the West, and Erdoğan wins again.

NATO is essentially a security alliance. Its preamble, however, states that the organization is founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. The grossly autocratic one-man show in Turkey, a NATO member, features none of that. According to the 2021 Democracy Index prepared by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Turkey ranks 103rd among 167 countries. The index evaluation was based on five criteria: electoral processes and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties.

Everything that needs electricity is made with oil By Ronald Stein

https://www.cfact.org/2023/02/01/everything-that-needs-electricity-is-made-with-oil/

The few wealthy countries pursuing the generation of electricity from wind turbines and solar panels while simultaneously moving to rid the world of fossil fuels have short memories of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years.

Renewables may be able to generate intermittent electricity form breezes and sunshine, but they cannot replace what is manufactured from fossil fuels, that are demanded by lifestyles and economies around the world.

Efforts to cease the use of crude oil will be the greatest threat to civilization, not climate change, and lead the world to an era of guaranteed extreme shortages like we had in the decarbonized world in the 1800’s without fossil fuel products. This pursuit of renewables without fossil fuels can only lead us back to shorter life spans, diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths resulting from the elimination of the products from fossil fuels that are now benefiting society.

If the zero-emission cult succeeds in ridding the world of fossil fuels, wind turbines and solar panels may be able to generate intermittent electricity, but they cannot manufacture anything. Electricity from breezes and sunshine may be renewable, but it’s not reliable. Again, short memories about the zero-emission society that we already had in the 1800’s.

Everything that needs electricity is made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. Let’s take a look at a few infrastructures, and products, that did not exist before the 1800’s, that now need electricity to operate:

Transportation

Hospitals

Medical equipment

Appliances

Electronics

Telecommunications

Communications systems

Space programs

Heating and ventilating

Military

Time For The Rest Of The Red States To Follow The DeSantis/Rufo Lead Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-2-1-time-for-the-rest-of-the-red-states-to-follow-the-desantisrufo-lead

It was only six days ago, on January 26, when I wrote a post containing a list of proposals for Christopher Rufo and the other new trustees of New College of Florida to take back control of the institution from the insane left. In an uncanny development, as if they having been reading the Manhattan Contrarian blog, Rufo and his fellow trustees, along with Governor Ron DeSantis, have already implemented the first proposal, and are well along on implementing the second.

How about all you other red states? Why can’t you do the same things?

My first proposal was: “Replace the President.” It took them all of five days. From ABC7 Sarasota, yesterday (January 31) evening: “New College President Okker terminated by Board of Trustees.” The newly designated President, according to ABC7, is a guy named Richard Corcoran, a Republican who served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2016 to 2018. Good start!

My second proposal was: “Fire the entire ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ staff.” The new trustees aren’t wasting a lot of time on that one either. Again from ABC7 Sarasota: “The board offered to hold off on abolishing the school’s Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, instead opting to terminate four positions within the office.” OK they didn’t fire them all at once, and they are “holding off” on abolishing the office altogether. But they should not wait long to finish the job.

Actually, it may not matter so much what these trustees do on this issue, because Governor DeSantis is separately taking on the job himself. From The Independent Florida, January 31:

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he will completely defund diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Florida universities during a press conference Tuesday morning. DeSantis addressed what he called “DEI bureaucracies,” or departments within universities that promote diversity, equality and inclusion, which he said impose a liberal agenda on university students and faculty. “These bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom, and really they constitute a drain on resources and end up contributing to higher costs,” he said.

DeSantis’s defunding initiative requires approval by the legislature, which will begin its session in March. But with large Republican majorities in both houses (28-12 in the Senate and 84-35 in the House), I would expect the proposal to pass easily.

House GOP investigating John Kerry’s secret China negotiations Comer’s letter to Kerry is but one of many such document requests House Republicans have sent in recent weeks.By Ben Whedon

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/house-gop-investigating-john-kerrys-secret-china-negotiations

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are investigating private discussions that White House climate czar John Kerry held with Chinese Communist Party officials.

In a Thursday letter, committee chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., informed Kerry of the investigation and renewed requests for documents and materials connected to his activities as the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), according to Fox News. Comer made similar requests while Republicans were the minority in the lower chamber, but Kerry ignored them.

While in his current post, Kerry has held a number of private discussions with Beijing officials about the administration’s ambitious climate agenda. The details of those conversations and the origins of the administration’s seemingly lenient stances on Beijing-related environmental issues are of interest to Comer.

“The Committee requests documents and information to understand your role and provide necessary transparency over the SPEC and its activities,” the Kentucky lawmaker wrote. “As a member of the President’s cabinet, you should be representing the United States’ interests. Your statements, however, consistently show disregard for American national security and taxpayer dollars.”

As Millions Flee Blue States, Red States Need To Remind Them Why

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/03/millions-fled-blue-states-in-2022-red-states-need-to-remind-them-why/

New Census data show that roughly half of the states had net gains in population in 2022, and the other half net losses, thanks to what’s called internal migration. The winners were almost entirely red states, the losers blue. There’s a huge opportunity for conservatives, if they seize it.

Think about this migration trend for a minute. The map below shows the net migration of hundreds of thousands of people in 2022. (On this map, which is a screenshot from CBS News’ website, the redder a state the more people it lost, and the bluer the more it gained.)

Source: CBS News

Notice anything? If you didn’t, check out the map we created based on how states voted for president in the past six elections. In this case red means they voted for Republican candidates in more than three of those elections; blue means they voted for Democrats most of the time. (Only one state, Iowa, split down the middle.)

I&I Chart

The two maps look almost identical, with red and blue colors switched.

This isn’t a new trend. People have been fleeing leftist strongholds such as California, New York, and Illinois for many years.

What’s interesting about the new data is that they come in the wake of COVID, when the different approaches taken by states could not have been starker. California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and the like used COVID to exercise maximum control over their residents – with mandates, curfews, lockdowns, and school closures.

New York Keeps Piling on Taxes More reasons for workers and employers to flee to Florida

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-kathy-hochul-budget-tax-increase-cap-and-trade-business-11674066745?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

New York is bleeding taxpayers and business, so how does Gov. Kathy Hochul open her first legislative year? By proposing to raise taxes some more. That’s the economic news buried in the $227 billion budget she unveiled this week that includes a higher payroll tax plus a new CO2 cap-and-trade program.

The Governor is directing state officials to develop an economy-wide carbon trading system that will force businesses to pay for their CO2 emissions. This is a stealth tax increase. The state will establish a cap on statewide emissions that will decline over time to reduce emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 85% by 2050. The state will auction allowances to fuel distributors, utilities, manufacturers and other businesses to offset their CO2 emissions.

Allowance prices will increase over time as the cap declines, meaning businesses will have to slash their emissions or pay more to offset them. Ms. Hochul seems to think the program will prod businesses to electrify operations and reduce fossil-fuel consumption. She fails to consider that many can’t.

Natural gas accounts for 45% of the state’s electricity and will continue to be needed to balance intermittent wind power. Utilities and other companies will have to buy credits at increasing cost and then pass the cost to customers. The result will be higher energy costs across the board.

The Never-Ending ‘Pandemic’: 360 Million Christians Persecuted Worldwide by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19365/christians-persecuted

Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 360 million believers suffering high levels of discrimination and violence.

These are among some of the findings of the World Watch List 2023, recently published by the international humanitarian organization, Open Doors.

The worst nations and their rankings are: 1) North Korea, 2) Somalia, 3) Yemen, 4) Eritrea, 5) Libya, 6) Nigeria, 7) Pakistan, 8) Iran, 9) Afghanistan, 10) Sudan, 11) India.

” [A]pproximately 80% of the worst persecution around the globe takes place in the name of Islam…

Although the persecution in North Korea is worse, there is at least hope for the Christians there: their ill treatment is entirely connected to the regime of Kim Jong-un. Once he is gone, North Korea may well become like South Korea, where Christianity is flourishing. Conversely, the Muslim persecution of Christians is perennial, existential, and far transcends this or that regime or ruler. It is part of the history, doctrines and socio-political makeup of Islam — hence its tenacity and ubiquity.

In Somalia, “Christians from Muslim backgrounds are regarded as high-value targets and may be killed on the spot if discovered.”

In most Muslim nations on the list, all three sectors of society — Muslim authorities, Muslim mobs and Muslim terrorists — persecute Christians to varying degrees.

In Afghanistan, “More than a year after the Taliban’s takeover, any promises they made about recognising freedoms have proved to be false. Following Jesus remains a death sentence, if discovered.”

In Pakistan, “roughly a quarter of all blasphemy accusations target Christians, who only make up 1.8% of the population.”

In Egypt, “President al-Sisi regularly speaks positively about Egypt’s Christian community. However, the lack of serious law enforcement and the unwillingness of local authorities to protect Christians leave them vulnerable to all kinds of attacks….”

In the worst of these Sub-Saharan nations, Nigeria, “Christians are experiencing a genocide.”

“China’s model of oppression is spreading…. The apparent success of China, especially in economic terms, is appealing to many leaders around the world. The promise of growth and prosperity, while being able to control all groups and individuals perceived as deviant, has triggered the interest of leaders from all over the world, no matter their ideological background.”

Perhaps the most disturbing trend is that, since 1993, the persecution of Christians has nearly doubled… and has already increased by nearly 70% over the last six years, with no signs of abating.

How long before this seemingly irreversible trend metastasizes into even those nations currently celebrated for their religious freedom?

In 2022, 5,621 Christian around the world were “killed for faith related reasons.” Another 4,542 Christians were illegally detained or arrested, and 2,110 churches were attacked, many destroyed. Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 360 million believers suffering high levels of discrimination and violence.

Controlling the Narrative of the Protest Movement in Iran By Dr. Amin Tarzi

https://besacenter.org/controlling-the-narrative-of-the-protest-movement-in-iran/?swcfpc=1

When popular protests began in Iran in mid-September 2022, the regime of the Islamic Republic initially tried to portray them as sporadic disturbances by misguided individuals who were supported and encouraged by the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and a few European countries. As the protests intensified and began to spread throughout the country, the regime subtly yet systematically shifted the blame onto two non-Persian, predominantly Sunni regions of the country: Kurdistan in the northwest and Sistan and Baluchistan in the southeast. While the protests have lost some of their intensity, the regime’s object is to taint the message of popular protest movements and muddy their message by linking them to separatist aspirations in those regions and foreign meddling.

I have discussed elsewhere why the current protests in Iran have an objective that, if sustained and coordinated, could begin to resemble the protests of 1978-79 that ended the monarchical system in Iran. Here I will focus on the centrality of the protests’ narrative to their success.

The Message of the Protest Movement

Mass public protests in Iran are nothing new. At various times, the Islamic Republic has tried to present different faces of the regime to the public, occasionally offering a semblance of more openness or public participation. However, the protests that began in September 2022 are not calling for cosmetic changes. They are calling for the end of the regime, which has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the Iranian people — particularly those of the post-revolution generations.

The authorities in Tehran are of course well aware of the protesters’ goal. In response, they have targeted — using both rhetorical weapons and intensified brutality — two predominantly non-Shia and non-Persian regions of the country in an attempt to link the protests to the Kurdish and Baluchi insurrections and separatist movements. Their intention is to break the protest movement’s momentum and muddy its anti-regime message.

The current protests were triggered by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody. The popular uprisings have much deeper roots, however, than concern over the violation of women’s rights or other civil liberties.