A Palestinian drove a truck into a group of soldiers in Jerusalem, killing four of them and wounding thirteen others. The driver was shot dead by soldiers while he was still in the cab of the truck. Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the truck jihadist may have been taking his cues from the Islamic State.
In other news, the Austrian government is echoing the proposal by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in calling for the establishment of migrant reception centers outside of Europe.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Diana West, ESW, JD, LP, Reader from Chicago, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
Airport Mass Shooter Received Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
The man identified as the methodical shooter behind Friday’s “heinous” attack in the baggage area of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, served in the U.S. military in Iraq and earned 11 awards, including the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.
U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jesse Stalder confirmed Esteban Santiago’s service record and the awards he earned in a email to Patch on Friday night.
According to Stalder, Santiago served from December 2007 to August 2016 and earned the awards during his time in the Puerto Rico National Guard and the Alaska National Guard. The Global War on Terrorism Service Medal recognizes members of the military who have performed service in the war on terror between Sept. 11, 2001 and a date not yet determined.
His military service as a combat engineer paints a very different image of Santiago than the person who walked into the FBI’s Anchorage office in November and demonstrated such “erratic” behavior that agents turned him over to local authorities for a mental health evaluation.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
As 21 WIRE has documented over the years, many so-called shooting/terror/attacks involve individuals being monitored by security services prior to an alleged act taking place. A place where a ‘lone wolf’ graduates into the ranks of a known wolf. In fact, very often those being watched by authorities exhibit all the tell-tale signs of a patsy or an informant, working either for a law enforcement or intelligence agency. Historically, government operators have often made use of low-life criminals, and mentally disturbed individuals to fulfill various role in entrapment stings or sometimes as bonafide actors in an actual attacks…
The apparent Fort Lauderdale airport shooter, Santiago-Ruiz, who is said to be Puerto Rican was born in New Jersey (living in Alaska), and was well-known to authorities, having recently undergone a mental health evaluation after allegedly visiting an FBI office in Alaska where he claimed he was under ‘CIA mind control,’ with voices in his head telling him to join ISIS’:…
Shades of the Manchurian Candidate?
We’re also told that the suspect’s aunt had flagged his mentally unstable condition previously. According to USA Today:
Yet the troubling episode is now part of an emerging profile of a deeply disturbed man described by his aunt Friday as someone who had “lost his mind.”
Maria Luisa Ruiz of Union City, N.J., said her nephew, who had moved to Alaska for work as a security guard, only recently began to show signs of instability.
“Like a month ago, it was like he lost his mind,” she said “He said he saw things.”
The inclusion of Santiago-Ruiz’s alleged ‘voices’ in his head, supposedly triggered by the CIA, immediately recalls another bizarre case that was also difficult to comprehend — the Navy Yard Shooter from 2013.
Here’s a passage from a 21WIRE report discussing the apparent Navy Yard shooter, Aaron Alexis:.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
CIA Bases Congressional Russian Hacking Report on Possibilities, Not Truth
Intelligence in the US is becoming even more emphatic about the Russian threat to elections, claiming that Russians will start to disrupt the elections of other countries like they are disrupting American ones.
The trouble with this is that intel agencies, specifically the CIA, have not yet proven that Russia has done what the CIA claims it has done.
On Friday, it claimed that Russia had attacked the US with specific hacks. But at least one top official knowledegable about hacking pointed out that using such eminently traceable hacks was unlike the Russians. The entire report was false, he claimed. The Russians wouldn’t have use such easily detected means to accomplish a hacking. If they’d actually done it, they be subtle not obvious.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
by Diana West
“Russian hacking” is the Left/Never-Trumpers’ explanation for Donald Trump’s election.
In their furrowed-brow-telling, they have recently discovered something called “Russian interference” and “Russian influence.” Don’t ask where so many of them have been all of our lives, because they’ve spent about the past century telling us there was no such thing.
That was then. Today, they insist that this newfound “Russian interference” and “Russian influence” secretly drove nearly 63 million American deplorables to reach for that GOP lever again and again to vote for Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton.
Let me squeeze in a little historical context. The late, great Sen. Joseph McCarthy himself was not wont to make such sweeping, conspiratorial charges without offering well-documented evidence, as we might see in his remarkable peroration on the still strange and perplexing career of George C. Marshall (pdf here; get over the Birch imprint; this is a reissue of the original 1952 Devin-Adair book publication).
Back to postmodern times…
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
FBI Deletes Details About Hacking Effort in Document Release
The FBI has released 100 pages of heavily censored documents related to its agreement with an unidentified vendor to hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters, but it did not identify whom it paid to perform the work or how much it cost.
The records were provided Friday in response to a federal lawsuit filed against the FBI by The Associated Press, Vice Media and Gannett, the parent company of USA Today.
The media organizations sued in September to learn how much the FBI paid and who it hired to break into the phone of Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people at a holiday gathering of county workers in December 2015. The FBI for weeks had maintained that only Apple Inc. could access the information on its phone, which was protected by encryption, but ultimately broke or bypassed Apple’s digital locks with the help of an unnamed third party.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Florida Shooter Charged, Could Face Death Penalty; Had Gun Returned After Found Mentally Stable
Federal prosecutors filed court documents on Saturday charging Ft. Lauderdale airport shooting suspect Esteban Santiago with carrying out an act of violence at an international airport resulting in death — a charge which carries a maximum punishment of the death penalty. The 26-year-old Iraq war veteran, who claimed he was “mind-controlled” by a US intelligence agency, was also charged with two firearms offenses…
Meanwhile, it emerged overnight that a firearm seized from Santiago by the FBI and Anchorage police was returned to him in December. Last November, Santiago walked into the local FBI office in Anchorage and told agents his mind was being controlled by a US intelligence agency, FBI special agent Marlin Ritzman told a press conference on Saturday. He had a loaded magazine on him at the time but left his gun in his vehicle along with his newborn child. The firearm was seized while Santiago was turned over to local police for a mental health evaluation.
“Santiago was having terroristic thoughts and believed he was being influenced by ISIS.” Anchorage Police Chief Chris Tolley told the news conference.
However, last month Santiago was not found to be mentally ill and his firearm was returned early last month, Tolley said. He did not say whether the firearm was the same weapon used in the Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting.
[Comment: Did he volunteer to go undercover and end up being brainwashed instead? Walking into the local FBI office indicates a moment of lucidity where he realized what was being done to him. Tossing the empty gun immdediately after committing the deed and lying face down and spread eagled is weird. Perhaps indicative of conditioning.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
As I begin to draft this article, it has been one year since the January 2 standoff in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon caused by decades of persecution by the federal government that led Western farmers and ranchers to a breakpoint. On January 4, 2016 Oregon rancher Dwight Hammond and his son Steven began their second prison sentence entering the Federal Correctional Institution on Terminal Island, a low security prison in L.A. Harbor. They were prosecuted as “terrorists” under the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 for controlled burns on their property in 2001 and 2006 that got out of control and spread to around 150 acres of federal Bureau of Land Management land (on which the Hammonds own/have grazing rights). The fire caused no real damage and no threat to lives, homes or property of other citizens. The example below is an example of many of these “controlled burns” by federal agencies started in defiance of common sense and agency protocols, under conditions, that even the complete greenhorn would understand to be inherently dangerous and ripe for catastrophic results. But Hammonds ended up in prison…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Massive Network of ISIS Sleeper Cells Spanning United States Uncovered — Training Camps and All
How’s your weekend going?
Redditor, Law School Graduate, and nimble navigator William Craddick (/u/PleadingtheYiff / brand new Twitter handle @williamcraddick) has made quite the name for himself on Reddit’s “The_Donald” forum. In just three short months, Craddick has managed to rack up over 153,000 “post karma” and 48k “comment karma,” which (if you’re not familiar) is impressive. The guy is an incredibly effective dot-connector, perhaps owing it to his legal training — – often posting lengthy reads that are well worth the investment in time. Craddick made the Clinton — Silsby — Haiti connection, which is un-refuted to the best of my knowledge.
In his latest piece, Craddick presents frightening evidence of a massive ISIS network covering the USA. Let’s start with the conclusion:
Either the US government and current administration is so hopelessly incompetent that they are unable to detect domestic and foreign threats which are discoverable by investigative journalists and whistleblower organizations. Or, there are factions within the United States government who are seeking to prevent competent, well-intentioned members of the intelligence community, law enforcement, and legislative/regulatory branches from taking action against ISIS operatives and extremist recruits who are active both on the American border as well as in the United States.
Dig in: Abstract:
The director of the FBI, James Comey, has stated that ISIS now has a presence in all 50 of the United States:
ABC 7 News Chicago: https://archive.fo/OiEHM
This presence varies in its form from state to state. It exists in the form of smaller cells attached to mosques run by radicalized imams, paramilitary groups operating out of compounds throughout the US, reinforced by veterans and command figures from ISIS’ Syria theater and bolstered by recruits from American minority communities. If all the reports outlined here are in fact found to be true, ISIS has managed to amass a terrifyingly impressive network across the United States that would be capable of wreaking heavy damage in the event of a large-scale terror incident. I. Training Camps
One of the ways ISIS has established a military presence in the US is by directly franchising out training camps that build operations centers/cells in various parts of the country. Some of these camps are public knowledge although the media has tried to hide them from the public.
At least one established network of paramilitary training camps has been public knowledge since at least the 1980’s. The Jamaat ul-Fuqra, or “Muslims of America” network has run a network of camps estimated in a report from Sean Hannity to be spread across 35 different locations. The report (linked here) showed a number of Islamic jihadist style military training videos filmed at these sites in the United States. News site WND has placed the number of camps at least 22:
WND: http://archive.is/eYGbK
Here is a map showing the location of most of the compounds run by Jamaat ul-Fuqra:
https://i.sli.mg/nmtohh.jpg
The Clarion Project ran a report citing FBI documents which state that in 2014 the FBI investigated the organization “…based upon specific and articulate facts giving justification to believe they are engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation thereof…” This was due in part to an “accidental” deadly shooting that occurred in one of their compounds, Mahmoudberg, in Texas:
FBI Document: http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/exclusive-clarion-project-discovers-texas-terror-enclave#popup-1
Mahmoudberg was one of several compounds located on property Jamaat ul-Fuqra had purchased in the area:
Clarion: http://archive.is/6yjBu
Jamaat ul-Fuqra was based in Pakistan and its leader, Mubarak Ali Gilani was directly involved in the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped while going to interview Gilani in Iraq. He was questioned but never arrested for the role he played:
http://archive.is/vjwk5
You will recall of course, that the group who carried out the murder of Pearl was Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was the forerunner of ISIS. This indicates that ISIS has had established connections to this network in particular since at least 2002.
Hannity’s report and the piece by WND both mention the fact that Jamaat ul-Fuqra has produced a video titled “Soldiers of Allah” where Gilani states:
We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.
Despite all of this troubling information, the Department of State does not list Jamaat ul-Fuqra as a terrorist organization. Here is a list of videos both showing footage these Islamic jihadist paramilitary groups have filmed or reports referencing them:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
New Report Exposes Rockefeller Dynasty’s Role in “Climate Scam”
An unfathomably wealthy banking and oil dynasty has been hijacking governments, media organs, universities, non-profits, and other power centers to expand its control over the economy and the energy sector in particular, according to a recently released investigation by a watchdog group. That dynasty, of course, is the Rockefeller family. In essence, they have largely created, bankrolled, and weaponized what is known as the “green” movement “as a means to expand their empire over the past three decades,” the report found.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Pro-Reagan College Kids Labeled Hate Group
The Student Coalition for Progress at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently pushed a petition that alleged University of Wisconsin Madison’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter is a hate group and its members and efforts “create a hostile environment on campus.”
Young Americans for Freedom is a conservative student organization that aims to promote free market economics and Reaganesque principles.
The 3-week-old petition, titled “Denounce Young Americans for Freedom and the alt-right,” also recommended Young Americans for Freedom members be subjected to “intensive diversity training.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Intelligence Community Versus Donald Trump
The continuing campaign to discredit President-Elect Trump is increasing in intensity. It is based on allegations that the Russians interfered in the U.S. election. It is suggested that Hillary Clinton would have won the election if the Russians had not interfered. The establishment media echo accounts by the administration’s anonymous sources frequently neglecting to include the word “alleged.” In spite of their damaged credibility, they have demonstrated that they can still be influential. In addition to anonymous sources, the media are relying on academics and retired intelligence personnel.
The New York Times has reported, “The assessment by American intelligence agencies that the Russian government stole and leaked Clinton campaign emails has been accepted across the political spectrum, with the notable exception of Mr. Trump.” Apparently, the Times searched for people who supported Trump, but they were unable to locate them. Trump’s critics are everywhere.
Critics of the president-elect have charged him with everything but being a KGB agent…
People who disagree with the establishment narrative are unpatriotic. When Tucker Carlson asked Rep. Adam Schiff for evidence to support his allegation that Putin ordered the hacking of Podesta’s emails, Schiff’s response was that Carlson was carrying water for Vladimir Putin and was an “apologist for the Kremlin.”…
Trump is having trouble with the leadership of the intelligence community. He may have wide support among the rank and file. The leadership of the intelligence community has been politicized. Information is frequently distorted. Fifty intel analysts have made a formal complaint about their reports on ISIS being altered. Rep. Peter King claimed that CIA director John Brennan was orchestrating a “hit job.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
One of the things Donald Trump has really done correctly is to assess his future arena in the areas of intelligence-gathering and operational security. Trump wants to return to a “courier” method of transmitting sensitive information and classified documents for the purpose of reducing the amount of material that can be hacked or stolen. There is a subtlety about this for a caveat, in case the compliment has bloomed flowers in your thoughts: the NSA $50 billion facility for collection and storage of data in Utah won’t be shutting down anytime soon.
As Snowden’s exposes clearly pointed out, the government has clearly followed Petraeus’ glowing “internet of things” yellow brick road to form an integrated, interconnected surveillance state. All CCTV (closed circuit television) systems, all merchants with cameras, all law enforcement cameras…all of the camera surveillance systems everywhere are either tied into data collection immediately or can be accessed for use at a later time.
The latest “Jason Bourne” movie clearly illustrates how the government can utilize devices such as cellular telephones (especially the ones with cameras) to track movements, record conversations, and be a “piggyback” to relay information to a nearby computer or a camera. This isn’t the future: this is now.
There is an older piece written by Michael Snyder in June of 2013 entitled 27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send a Chill Up Your Spine. The information in this article is directly from Edward Snowden that revealed exactly what the government has been doing regarding their total surveillance program. The surveillance did not occur overnight, and in the manner of the “frog in the cold-water kettle” by stretching out the time for putting it all into place, the stultified public’s focus was either diverted or bypassed entirely.
Here are a few other pieces worth reading over regarding the government’s total information awareness and the (ongoing) growth of the surveillance state:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
What the Politicians You Elected Have Done to America
For the last decade I have been stressing how we, the American people have failed to pay attention to the quality of people that we are sending to Washington. Our Founders believed that the system of government they established required men of high character that would abide by the Constitution that they established and the people ratified. As far back as 100 years ago we elected Woodrow Wilson who was no lover of our Constitution. He was what was called a ‘progressive’ which changed to liberal because it proved to be a negative label and then back to progressive by Hillary when liberal became negative. He felt the Constitution was cumbersome and was one of the first to believe that it was a ‘living, breathing’ document that changes with the times: “The trouble with the theory [of limited and divided government] is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. This is where the living and breathing constitution comes from. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life.” He also commented: “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission-in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word-to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”
But a true constitutionalist does not agree as basic laws never change. The late Antonin Scalia stated: “That’s the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break. But you would have to be an idiot to believe that. The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn’t say other things.” He also stated: “It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one, when we amend its provisions so breezily.”
When we have people that ignore the Founding Principles of America we begin to go down a path that is not scripted by the Founders. They established a system of government that gave us the right to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Wilson began us on a path that gravitates towards government control of relieving social problems. Our Founders believed in limited government and the people be allowed to fair for themselves.
For the last hundred years we have strayed far from the path the Founders put us on.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Who is Checking the So-Called “Fact Checkers?”
SNOPES
Snopes is the brainchild of husband and wife team Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, launched in 1995 at the pinnacle of the “MoveOn” from the Bill Clinton impeachment era. As reported by Daily Headlines — “Snopes main fact checker is Kim Lacapria, who was formerly with Inquisitr, a site known for publishing fake quotes and hoaxes. Lacapria was a huge disaster as a writer with many of her stories getting just 10 to 20 shares. She is a vitriolic far left wing blogger. While at Inquisitr she described herself as an openly left leaning liberal.”
David P. Mikkelson was accused of embezzlement in a divorce proceeding and arrested on charges of fraud and corruption. Mikkelson’s wife is reportedly a “non-voting Canadian.”
Yet, Snopes has been quoted as a reliable “fact checker” even recently, including by a few ill-advised or downright corrupt Federal Judges. For anyone to rely on such an overtly unreliable operation is either gross ignorance or an intentional misinformation op.
FACTCHECK
FactCheck.org is a creation of Annenberg Project, which of course, begs the question — who and what is Annenberg Project?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
German Vice Chancellor Says “European Break Up No Longer Unthinkable”
There was a time when even the merest hint of a breakup of the Eurozone was considered a taboo topic in Europe. Who can forget Mario Draghi’s response to a question from Zero Hedge readers who wondered if there is a “plan in place if a nation is forced to step out of the Eurozone” to which Draghi’s response was that “if the Euro breaks down, and if a country leaves the Euro, it’s not like a sliding door. It’s a very important thing. It’s a project in the European Union. That’s why you have a very hard time asking people like me “what would happened if.” No Plan B.”
In short: to demonstrate just how “cohesive” Europe was, even the mere possibility of a break-up was unthinkable, i.e., “no plan B”.
Fast forward three years later, when things in Europe have changed dramatically, and unfortunately for the worse as many warned, because as Reuters reports citing Germany’s second in command, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, “a break up of the Eurozone is no longer unthinkable.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Germany Detained Over 900 Human Traffickers in 2016
Germany detained about 900 human traffickers in 2016 — more than half of them on the border with Austria — according to Interior Ministry data cited by Welt am Sonntag.
Most of the smugglers, 481, were caught on the Austrian border by December 2016. On the borders with Poland and Czech Republic, 155 and 106 people were arrested respectively. Forty five arrests were made on the Belgian border, and almost 90 traffickers were caught entering from France. Germany’s airport security registered 23 arrests for 2016
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Germany’s Islamist Scene Growing: Security Chief
Berlin (AFP) — Germany’s domestic security chief warned Sunday that the country’s radical Islamist scene is not only growing, but becoming more decentralised, posing greater challenges to surveillance operations.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
German Economic Minister: The European Union Could be Finished
Following the surprise exit — or “brexit” — of the United Kingdom from the European Union last June, 58 percent of Germans wanted German Chancellor Angela Merkel to refuse to compromise with Britain following the brexit referendum.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Le Pen Warns EU: I Will Come to Brussels and Dismantle France’s Relationship With the Bloc
MARINE Le Pen announced her first foreign visit would be to Brussels to dismantle France’s relationship with the EU if elected president later this year.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Leftist Threatens Legal Action Because She Lost an Argument on Twitter
Yes, really
Lily Allen threatened Tommy Robinson with legal action because she lost an argument on Twitter. Yes, really. Here’s Tommy’s response…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Jerusalem Attack: 4 Soldiers Killed After Truck Rams Into Pedestrians
Four soldiers were killed and 13 people were wounded in Jerusalem on Sunday when a truck rammed into pedestrians near the Armon Hanatziv Promenade.
According to the police, the truck veered from its course along the promenade and rammed into a group of soldiers getting off a bus.
Police chief Roni Alsheich described the truck-ramming as a terror attack. The assailant, a resident of East Jerusalem, was shot and killed, the police chief said, adding that there was no advance warning for the attack.
“You don’t need more than two to three seconds to find a terrorist target. The soldiers at the scene reacted immediately and killed the attacker,” the police commissioner said.
The security cabinet will convene at 5:30 P.M. for a meeting that will deal with the attack, among other issues…
| — Hat tip: LP | [Return to headlines] |
Dear USA: There Will be No Partition in Syria
East Aleppo is liberated, and regime-change has lost its luster. It’ s no surprise Syria’s foes are ready to promote the next big goal: partition. Like most Syrian conflict predictions, of which few have materialized, the ‘partition’ of Syria is not going to happen.
In February, when East Aleppo was still bulging with Western-trained, Al Qaeda-allied militants, Syrian President Bashar Assad was asked the question: “Do you think that you can regain control over all Syrian territory?”
Well, yes, said Assad: “This is a goal we are seeking to achieve without any hesitation. It makes no sense for us to say that we will give up any part.”
Western politicians were having none of that.
First up was US Secretary of State John Kerry who coyly informed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Obama administration may have a Plan B up its sleeve for Syria: “it may be too late to keep it as a whole Syria if we wait much longer.”
Next, James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Commander and head of the US European Command penned an article for Foreign Policy entitled “ It’s time to seriously consider partitioning Syria” where he claimed: “Syria as a nation is increasingly a fiction.”
Then, CIA Director John Brennan joined the chorus: “ There’s been so much blood spilled, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get back to [a unified Syria] in my lifetime.”
But now the stinging defeat of Western-backed militants in East Aleppo has turned up the dial on the idea of breaking up Syria. Frantic neocons and liberal interventionists are piling in on the ‘ partition’ punditry — with nary a backward glance to their five failed years of “Assad will fall” prognostications.
But Assad understands something that Western analysts, journalists and politicians cannot seem to grasp. Syria’s allies in this war — Iran, Hezbollah, Iraq, Russia, China — have maintained only two hard red lines throughout the conflict:
The first is that Assad can only be removed from office in a national election, by a Syrian majority.
The second is that Syria must stay whole.
Their logic was simple. Regime-change, remapping of borders, mercenary proxy armies, divide-and-rule…the old tricks of Western hegemons needed to stop in Syria. Otherwise, they would aggressively find their way to Moscow, Beijing and Tehran.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Syria Would’ve Fallen Into Terrorists’ Hands Without Russia — French MP
Syria could easily have been controlled by terrorists if not for Russia’s military intervention, French MP Thierry Mariani has said during a tour of Aleppo.
Mariani said what they saw contradicts what is being peddled by Western media, and pledged to convey the real picture to the French people and authorities, SANA and TASS news agencies reported.
Mariani was in the area as part of a French parliamentarian visit.
“If the Russian army wasn’t here for a few months, Syria would have had a chance of falling into the hands of terrorists,” Mariani said. “Fortunately, Russians came here, and this changed the [direction] of the war,” he added.
“The war hasn’t finished, but I think it’s important that the Russians stay here until the end of the war,” the French MP concluded, calling the liberation of Aleppo a game changer in the fight with terrorism in the world.
The French delegation were on a two-day fact finding mission to Aleppo, and visited districts destroyed by terrorists.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UAE Bans Sale and Possession of Tigers and Lions as Pets
Offenders risk up to six months in prison and fines up to $ 140 thousand. Large felines represent a status symbol to show off in homes, cars and on the streets. The new law also cover dog owners: registration, use of leash and vaccination mandatory.
Abu Dhabi (AsiaNews / Agencies) — The private possession of wild animals like tigers, lions and cheetahs are now banned in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)after years of controversy and debate. A widespread trend in the country — and other States in the oil-rich region — it is not uncommon for wealthy families to have large and mostly dangerous feline specimens as pets.
These animals have long represented a status symbol to show off not only in domestic settings, but also in parks, on boats and even in cars (see photo).
It is not uncommon to see photos of wealthy Arabs on their social profiles posing next to big felines, regardless not only of the danger they represent, but also the needs of the same animals that prefer other natural habitats.
In October a video where some tigers — white and Bengali — were bathing in the waters off a beach in Dubai went viral on the web.
However, from today owners are likely to face heavy fines if not the prison for violations.
Rather than motivated by the need to protect these animals, the Emirate authorities are trying to curb the danger posed by the animals, which have repeatedly have been found roaming free in the streets of the country. According to reports from the site Gulf News, the law prohibits the sale and possession of “all kinds of wild animals and domesticated ones, but which still represent a danger.
In future, these animals should be housed only in zoos, wildlife parks, circuses and research centers or conservation and study of wild species. Anyone found with a large feline or other exotic animals in public will be punished with penalties of up to six months in prison and fines of 500 thousand dirhams (just under $ 140 thousand). The fines can go up to 700 thousand dirhams if the samples are used to “terrorize” the population.
The legislation also involves the owners of more traditional domestic animals. Even dog owners, in fact, will have to apply for and obtain a permit and, in the case of walking in public, will need to keep the animal on a leash and make vaccines against the most dangerous diseases.
Again there are fines up to 100 thousand dirhams for breaches. Dog lovers will have until mid-June to get licenses and proceed with injections.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
US Backed “Moderate Rebels” Target French Delegation in Aleppo
In a clear breach of the Russian brokered ceasefire, US backed FSA (Free Syrian Army) division, Company 23, fired upon Aleppo airport. The shelling took place just prior to the departure of a French delegation, led by French politician, Thierry Mariani, after a fact finding trip to the recently liberated industrial, second capital city, of Aleppo.
According to Fares Shehabi, independent, Aleppo MP and head of the Aleppo Chamber of Commerce, the missiles were fired from an area next to Khan Touman, 8km away from the airport, in a deliberate act of terror against the French delegation. The leader of this group of so called “ moderates” is Hassan Rajoob, a colonel who had previously defected from the Syrian Arab Army.
[Comment: US, NATO proxies trying to murder French delegation before they go back and report the truth, that rebels=ISIS.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Sends Special Forces to Russian Border
Nato Poised to strike back against Vladimir Putin’s ‘aggression’
PRESIDENT Obama has deployed US special forces troops along Lithuania’s border with “aggressive” Russia.
Tensions between Washington and the Kremlin have reached Cold War levels amid reports Vladimir Putin is deploying nuke-ready missiles in the Russian province of Kaliningrad — which borders Poland, Belarus and Lithuania.
And Lithuanian Defence Ministry spokeswoman Asta Galdikaite confirmed America has offered additional military support following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
She said: “The United States was the first to offer additional safety assurance measures to the Baltic countries following the deterioration of the security situation in the region after the annexation of the Crimea.”
[Comment: Puppet Obama following globalist plan to trigger WWIII.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: About 110 Imams Are Arrested in Lahore for Hailing Salman Taseer’s Murder
The arrests took place on the anniversary of the death of Punjab’s governor, murdered because he had defended a Christian, Asia Bibi. Activists and ordinary people braved death threats and attended the memorial service.
Lahore (AsiaNews) — Lahore Police arrested a group of 110 imams yesterday whilst celebrating the murder of Salman Taseer.
The arrest of the Islamic clerics took place on the sixth anniversary of the death of the Governor of Punjab, who was “punished” because he had defended a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, and had spoken out against the “black law” on blasphemy.
Speaking to AsiaNews, some activists slammed a climate of religious fanaticism and the country’s deep contradictions.
“On the one hand,” said Rana Kashif Javed, “the Government of Pakistan loudly expressed its intention of implementing the National Action Plan and reiterated the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law; on the other, religious extremists take to the streets and block the capital of Punjab province, violating fundamental human rights.” According to the activist, “all this is a constant threat to our country.”
The imams were detained and arrested on Main Boulevard Gulberg, where they were staging a rally to celebrate the death of the murdered governor. Their goal was to block the city and prevent the memorial service.
Defying the threats by radicals, activists and ordinary Pakistanis gathered a few tens of kilometres away, in the Lalik Chowk area. Syeda Deep, the organiser of the vigil, said that the participants waved placards, chanted slogans and lit candles against terrorism and religious fundamentalism.
“They came here,” she said, “despite the death threats and reiterated that they would not be terrified by fear of the neo-fascist mullahs.”
“In Lahore, religious intolerance has reached the highest levels,” said Samson Salamat, the Christian chairman of the Rawadari Tehreek, a movement for tolerance. “Islamists tried to block the memorial. This is ridiculous considering that Mumtaz Qadri, the Salman Taseer’s self-confessed murderer, was found guilty by the law and hanged.”
“What the imams tried to do is a serious violation of freedom and fundamental rights,” Salamat added. “What is even more serious is that all this has happened event though the National Action Plan clearly calls on the government and institutions to stop such activities.”
Salamat believes that Pakistan “will not be a peaceful country until the State itself does not take decisive action against militant groups that commit ‘hate crimes’ and spread intolerance in society.”
For Kashif Javed, Salman Taseer “was an honest ruler. The way his family and other supporters — who defend the law, peace, tolerance and equality — are targeted is unconstitutional.”
Taseer’s son Shaan was recently the subject of a fatwa because he called for prayers for people unfairly accused of blasphemy.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Lahore: Evangelical Christian Accused of Blasphemy for Tearing Up Pages of the Qur’an
Shahbaz Babu risks the death penalty for writing his name on the pages of Islam’s sacred book even though he is completely illiterate. The charge appears to be due to a business dispute. The accused is also popular among some Muslims for his prayer meetings.
Lahore (AsiaNews/Agencies) — An evangelical Christian from the village of Kamahan, near Lahore, was arrested on charges of blasphemy and now faces the death penalty.
According to a complaint by a Muslim, Haji Nadeem, Shahbaz Babu desecrated Islam’s holy book by writing his name on some pages, tearing them up and then scattering them on the street in front of a mosque where a Muslim, Peer Baba Gujjar, preaches.
According to British Pakistani Christian Association, the Christian man is completely illiterate, so he could never write his name on any pages.
Still Babu was arrested on 30 December in accordance with Article 295B of the Pakistan Penal Code. After the complaint, Babu, 41, a married father of three, was taken to the Nishtar police station.
Later, to avoid possible reprisals from Muslims and to ensure his protection, the accused was moved to the Model Town station, in another district of Lahore.
Activists note that no one saw him write his name in the Qur’an. Instead, the complaint could be a retaliatory act against his family, because the accuser is in a dispute with Babu’s brother George Masih who owns a thriving grocery store, which Nadeem wants to take over.
The Evangelical Christian is also disliked by local Muslims for organising prayer meetings at his home. For 15 years, many Christians, but also several Muslims, have participate in his meetings and have asked for his blessings and healings.
Some of the accused’s friends believe that his increasing popularity has fuelled a climate of intolerance among Muslims, especially since Peer Baba Gujjar’s mosque was losing members.
Others also point out the oddity of the sequence of events: Babu is supposed to have desecrated the Qur’an in secret, but then left the evidence for everyone to see.
In Pakistan, insulting Muhammad is a capital crime. Anyone speaking out against the ‘black law’ of blasphemy risks life and liberty.
This is what happened to Shaan Taseer, son of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab who was killed in 2011 by his bodyguard for defending Asia Bibi, a Christian mother accused of insulting the prophet, in prison since 2009.
Shaan Taseer had recently posted a Christmas message on social media calling for prayers for the unjustly accused.
This was followed by a fatwa against him by an Islamist group, Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasool Allah, saying that he is “condemnable to death.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
N. Korea Holds Mass Rally After Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s ‘Nuke’ Message
“Let us accelerate the victorious advance of socialism!”
Thousands of North Koreans have taken to the streets of the capital Pyongyang after leader Kim Jong-un, in his New Year’s message, announced preparations for a test-launch of banned ICBMs were at the ‘final stage.’
The demonstrators gathered in Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang and chanted “long live comrade Kim Jong-un,” AFP reported. Some of them were seen holding banners saying “Let us accelerate the victorious advance of socialism!”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Philippine Police Raid Islamic Centre Before Catholic Event
MANILA: Police have killed a foreign insurgent during a skirmish with a pro-Islamic State group in the southern Philippines, an official said yesterday. The firefight erupted as police were hunting down members of the Ansarul Khilafa Philippines (AKP) group on the restive southern island of Mindanao Saturday, local police spokesman Superintendent Romeo Galgo said. “A foreign national initially identified as Abu Naila and one female member identified only as a certain Kadija, resisted arrest by attempting to lob a grenade against the arresting personnel,” he said in a statement.
The police responded by opening fire, killing the two, he added. Authorities did not disclose the nationality of Abu Naila although they have previously said the AKP has worked with foreign militants. Extremists from other Southeast Asian nations have been known to come to the Philippines to train local fighters especially in the use of explosives. The AKP is one of several violent Islamic militant groups on Mindanao, homeland of a large Filipino Muslim minority where a decades-old separatist rebellion has claimed more than 120,000 lives.
The government has been hunting down other members of the group after its founder and leader, Mohammad Jaafar Maguid, was tracked down and shot dead last week at a beach resort in Mindanao while three “cohorts” were arrested. The group has been known to fly the black flag of the so called Islamic State and Maguid appeared in a video circulated on social media last year with the leaders of other local militant groups pledging allegiance to IS. The authorities are looking into Ansarul Khilafa’s role in a bombing in Davao, Mindanao’s largest city in September last year that killed 15 people and injured dozens of others.—AFP
| — Hat tip: ESW | [Return to headlines] |
Attempted Assassination of US Consular Official in Mexico Caught on Tape (Videos)
An attack on a US consular official in the western Mexico city of Guadalajara was caught on surveillance cameras. FBI offered a $20,000 reward for information on the attacker who is still at large.
One of the videos shows the moment of attack. The gunman awaits the official near the exit of an underground parking. When his car stops at a barrier, the attacker pulls out a gun and shoots a single bullet into windshield, apparently wounding the consular employee, and then runs away.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Austria Wants to Build Asylum Centres Outside EU
Liberal European Union (EU) leaders have attacked Austria for proposing the creation of asylum centres located outside the bloc to help solve the migrant crisis.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Migrants Left at Freezing Car Park in Germany
A people smuggler abandoned 19 people at a car park in southern Germany. They were left as temperatures plunged well below freezing point. Emergency services said several children were in the group.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Persecution of Christians
Invaders in Germany: 1 Crime Every 2 Minutes Third World invaders in Germany committed one crime every two minutes during the first nine months of 2016, including at least 366 murders/attempted murders, and 214,600 other serious crimes-or 32 crimes every hour, 787 per day, and 23,844 every month, an official police report has revealed.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Riyadh: Strike Against Non-Payment of Salaries: Immigrants Arrested and Flogged
A Saudi court has imposed four months in prison and 300 lashes for damage to public property. Nationality of convicted immigrants unknown. The workers were employees of construction giants Binladin Group and Saudi Oger. Behind the crisis, the collapse of revenue in the oil industry, which has had an impact on the state budget.
Riyadh (AsiaNews / Agencies) — A Saudi court has sentenced dozens of migrant workers to imprisonment and flogging, employees of the construction giant Binladin Group, for having gone on strike against non-payment of back wages.
The Saudi press has not yet specified the nationality of the workers who were on strike over arrears in monthly salaries; the protests eventually escalated into street violence, which led to the arrests.
The first to report the incident was Arab newspaper Al-Watan et Arab News, which, however, it did not clarify the nationality of migrant workers. Some diplomats contacted by AFP were unable (or unwilling) to clarify the affair, claiming to not know the details.
A group of workers has been sentenced to four months in prison and 300 lashes for damage to public property and inciting public disorder. Others received a lighter sentence, for a maximum of 45 days in prison inflicted by a Mecca court.
For some time the workers of the construction industry, employees of Binladin Group and Saudi Oger, have not been paid in part because of the crisis in the oil sector, which has led to a slump in revenues. The same Saudi government late on payments, is aggravating the debts of the two companies.
As the name reveals, the Arab multinational company founded in 1931 is owned by the family of Osama bin Laden — the al Qaeda leader and once the most wanted man in international Islamic terrorism — who was one of the 52 sons of the founder Mohammed bin Laden. Among the various appointments made by the founder, the restoration of the famous al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. However, today the group is in crisis and the image of a crane collapse in September 2015 at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which caused the death of 109 people has certainly not helped. The group’s crisis, exacerbated by the collapse in oil revenue, has also led to the dismissal last May of tens of thousands foreign workers.
The Saudi Minister of Finance Mohammed Aljadaan intervened recently on the crisis in the construction industry. On December 22 last, during a press conference dedicated to the presentation of financial statements for 2017, the top government official assured that the payment of arrears will be “within 60 days”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Syrian Refugee ‘Brutally Killed by Gang of Migrants in Savage Attack in Germany
A 15-YEAR-OLD Syrian refugee has been brutally attacked and killed by a gang of fellow refugees, German media has claimed.
| — Hat tip: Reader from Chicago | [Return to headlines] |
U.K.: Invader Fraudsters Rewarded With Cash
A new case of an invader who used a fake passport to enter and claim “refuge” in Britain-and who is now being given thousands in cash by the state as a reward-has showcased the utterly fraudulent nature of the “asylum” swindle being perpetrated on race-blind Europeans.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Liberals Take to the Trenches in the War on Science
Time and again, the American left — led by the mainstream media, the Hollywood elite, and the Democratic Party — lectures us about the ignorance of conservatives, Christians, and anyone else who isn’t devoted to a “progressive” (amazing how regressive is “progressivism”) worldview. With their talk shows, columns, commercials, movies, sitcoms, roundtables, protests, Facebook posts, tweets, and the like, liberals unashamedly, repeatedly, and without hesitation (and often without much thought) denigrate those with whom they disagree. Yet time and again, as they preach their philosophy and live out their “faith,” it is liberals who are stubbornly hindered by the facts of science and morality…
In December of 2015, in what The New York Times hailed as “a historic transformation of the American military,” Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that the Pentagon would open all combat jobs to women. Carter proudly and foolishly announced:
There will be no exceptions. They’ll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat. They’ll be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers and everything else that was previously open only to men.
As Iraq veteran, Harvard Law School graduate, and Bronze Star winner David French noted a few months prior to Secretary Carter’s announcement, such thinking is intellectually corrupt and “idiotic.” As I noted last year, comparing male and female athletes, “in spite of the efforts of liberals, there will never be ‘gender equality’ when it comes to [men and women], because human genders are not — and will never be — equal. Men are bigger, faster, and stronger than women[…] … What’s more, as most anyone not devoted to a liberal worldview who’s observed human beings for at least 15 minutes was already aware, men are naturally more physically aggressive than are women.”…
The Boy Scouts of America has been similarly corrupted, and the ignorance is just as stunning. Three and a half years ago, in June of 2013, when the Boy Scouts decided to allow young homosexuals into their ranks, I warned:
[H]ow long will it be before the Boy Scouts are again in court? This time it will be a couple (probably same-sex) who wants their young girl — who has decided that she wants to be a boy — in the name of “tolerance” to be able to join the Boy Scouts. However, the fight won’t last 23 years in this case. After all, the next moral compromise will be easier than the previous one.
Two years later, in May of 2015, it was the Girl Scouts of America who were the first to capitulate to the transgender wing of the LGBT agenda. However, the Boy Scouts (Cub Scouts) are now in the national news because they have kicked a New Jersey girl out of a Cub Scout troop because — of course — she’s not a boy…
As psychologist, author, and renowned family expert Dr. James Dobson put it in his excellent book, Bringing Up Boys, the ultimate goal of the feminists and homosexual activists is to “dissolve the traditional roles of mothers and fathers and, in time, eliminate such terms as wife, husband, son, daughter, sister, brother, manhood, womanhood, boy, girl, masculine, and feminine.” And as the former psychiatrist-in-chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital recently noted, transgenderism is “a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention.” Dr. Paul McHugh notes that not treating transgender disorder properly “can lead to grim psychological outcomes.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Family Unit Has to be Destroyed
Control of the world is a very large task and it takes many busy hands and mouths working in basic alignment to try and pull something like that off. Senator McCarthy and others have tried to warn us of the looming agenda of some wanting to “rule the world”. Even JFK, in all seriousness just months before his assassination told us in part:
“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”
At the time, most Americans including myself, really didn’t hear the words or if they did, had no understanding of what he was speaking about. We do now!
Most of you have heard of John Dewey and his Marxist idea of raising children. Basically, they were to all be the same — in growth, play and learning to work at keeping them mindless, but easily “taught” as in Skinnerian’s idea that a young child could be trained like a caged rat or dog to dance to the tune of their “trainers”…
In the Communist Manifesto, we are told of specific goals that are expected to be completed — not by any real-time period as Communists have a great deal of patience. Those of the greatest concern to me and should be to you are those laid out which play with the character of our children and their relationship to God, family and friends.
Over and over throughout the document, the two things that stood out to me were to (1) preserve the Communist Party/Country’s at all cost and (2) leading the children to an ungodly life acceptable to all and to be supportive of everything they had formally been taught was immoral or disrespectful:
* 17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
* 19. Use student riots to foment public protests programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
* 24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
* 25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
* 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
* 27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
* 28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.” (It was the Communist/Socialist individuals who came up with “separation of church and state”)
* 29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
* 30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
* 31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the grounds it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
* 40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
* 41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
* 42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use a united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Christian Clergy Are Following the Final Pope’s Lead by Welcoming, Bowing to Muslim Takeover
Since he was elected Pontiff, Francis has spent a lot of time in mosques. He has visited many Islamic places of worship abroad, as in Turkey and in the Central African Republic, but he was also willing to become the first Pope to visit the Grand Mosque in Rome.
When it comes to Islam, the Pope embraces religious relativism. He repeated that Islamist violence is the work of “a small group of fundamentalists” who, according to him, have nothing to do with Islam. When asked why he did not speak of Islamic violence, the Pope replied, “If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence”, even though one would be hard-pressed at this time to find any priests, nuns or other Catholics planting bombs anyplace in the name of Jesus Christ.
This trend goes beyond Italy. In the UK, Bishop Harries suggested that Prince Charles’s coronation service should open with a reading from the Koran. In the US, more than 50 churches, including the Washington National Cathedral, hold Koran readings. The head of the Protestant Church in Germany, Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, has also called for Islam to be taught in state schools. Is there any reading of the Christian liturgy in the mosques?
These interfaith shows also seem to be making us blind to more disturbing readings of the Koran in Christian churches, such as the one that recently took place in Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia: for the first time in 85 years, Turkish Muslims read an Islamic text inside the Christianity’s most beautiful Eastern church. Their goal, as attested by bills submitted to Turkey’s parliament, is clear: Islamizing the church, which had been used as a museum since 1935.
Christian silence is less clear: how is it that so few Christian leaders raised their voice against this unprecedented attack on a Christian monument? Have they organized so many Koran readings in their own churches so that they now view it as normal to convert a church into a mosque?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Persecution of Christians
Muslim attacks on Christian churches are on the rise all around the world — including in America. The worst occurred last month when a bomb exploded in Egypt’s St. Peter’s Cathedral, killing 28, mostly women and children. Preliminary investigations had indicated that a woman entered the church, sat in the women’s section, and then left an unattended purse that later detonated. Later reports asserted that, although others were involved, including one Muslim woman, a male suicide-bomber was the chief culprit (graphic pictures of his remains here).
How much hate must a woman have to enter a church, smile in the faces of Christians, pretend to be worshipping alongside them — here’s a similar example from Turkey — and then knowingly leave a bomb precisely where it would kill mostly women and children? How much hate must a man have for people who are peacefully praying that, in order to kill as many of them, he is willing to kill himself?
The answer is an unfathomable — and, to Western and Christian minds, unbelievable — amount of hate. Yet, the wonder isn’t that the church was bombed but rather that many are surprised by it. After all, many Muslim scriptures, clerics, mosques, schools, satellite stations, and Internet sites — — even the ministry of education — openly incite hatred for Egypt’s indigenous (but “infidel”) inhabitants: the Christian Copts. Among other forms of animosity, they teach that Muslims must hate — and show that they hate — Christians, even if they are their own wives.
Worse, they teach that the most abominable crimes in God’s sight — “worse than murder and bloodshed” — take place inside churches: there, Christians flaunt their rejection of Islam’s core doctrine of tawhid (“monotheism”) by ascribing partners to God (shirk) via their worship of the Trinity. This is why some of Islam’s most revered ulema (scholars) describe churches as “worse than bars and brothels” and “dens of iniquity” which “breed corruption throughout the lands” (see Crucified Again, pgs. 32-36).
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Birth of Half-Human, Half-Animal Chimeras
It is 120 years since Wells first published his novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, and to read some recent headlines you would think that we are veering dangerously close to his dystopic vision. “Frankenstein scientists developing part-human part-animal chimera,” exclaimed the UK’s Daily Mirror in May 2016. “Science wants to break down the fence between man and beast,” the Washington Times declared two months later, fearing that sentient animals would soon be unleashed on the world.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Why does the EU leadership from Merkel on down bring in millions of Muslims?
We know Western Woman doesn’t reproduce a replacement population.
Should we connect those dots? All the troubles float from them, don’t they?
Trump possesses a rapid learning curve for things that draw his attention.
Tsk, tsk. Trump needs to pursue or mount a rapid learning curve, he does not possess one.
Elizabeth O’Brien at Grammar Revolution is strongly recommended, and one of her most recent posts pertains to my nitpick of the day:
http://www.english-grammar-revolution.com/products.html
Full Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Ms. O’Brien other than as a reader and customer.
Well, then, I disagree with the esteemed Ms. O’Brien.
Some people do indeed appear to possess a capacity for learning new things that other people don’t have. One doesn’t “mount” one’s characterological virtues or habits. They can, perhaps, be developed but that’s another matter. Thus, we refer to those who are exceptionally gifted as being “polymaths” or “Renaissance men” – Sir Gregory Copley from Australia is one.
I’ll stick with possession.