The UK’s Mailonline reported recently that “a hero police officer suffered multiple skull fractures when an uninsured white van man tried to murder him in a savage machete attack.” After the perpetrator, a Muslim named Muhammad Rodwan, was arrested, Rodwan explained: “My life is worth more than his life.” Meanwhile, in northern Italy, according to the German-language site UnserTirol 24 “The higher regional court confirmed on Tuesday the first-instance verdict against Rabih Badr for the brutal murder of his partner Marianne Obrist (UT24 reported). Badr’s father was also present at the trial. The latter defended his son and accused Obrist of infidelity.” Badr’s father complained: “There was a problem between him and Marianne, namely the problem of infidelity. She was not loyal to him, he dedicated his whole life to her, but Marianne was not worthy of him.”
“My life is worth more than his life.” “Marianne was not worthy of him.” Is this just more Islamic “extremism,” or do Rodwan and Badr have a point?
Unfortunately, they do have a point – an Islamic point.
Reliance of the Traveller, a classic manual of Islamic sacred law, explains matter-of-factly that “the indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third the indemnity paid for a Muslim. The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth that of a Muslim.” (o4.9)
Sultanhussein Tabandeh, author of A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, agrees, stating:
“Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution. … Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash. … Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain…Again, the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed. … Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them.”
These ideas have lethal consequences. In Badr’s case, “according to judge Peter Michaeler,” Badr “‘beat her like a stray dog’ first with a stick, then with a baseball bat. Badr is said to have stabbed the 39-year-old with a knife….As was evident from Judge Michaeler’s reasoning at the time, the act was culturally motivated. Badr, who comes from Morocco, killed Obrist ‘without mercy’ and ‘bestially’ and exemplifies radical attitudes that are incompatible with the way of life of a Western woman….In Badr’s mind, the woman is subordinate to the man, the judge continued. As a result, Badr unjustly accused his partner of infidelity, and restricted and suppressed her. According to Michaeler, the motive was not jealousy, but the complete control Badr wanted to exercise over Obrist.”
As far as Badr was concerned, Obrist should have been under his total control, for she was not only a woman, but an infidel. She had no rights he was bound to respect. But of course, saying such things in the West today brings one charges of “Islamophobia.” Meanwhile, more women like Marianne Obrist will continue to be victimized and brutalized.
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-07 04:41:002020-02-07 04:41:00The Islamic Belief that Muslim Lives are Worth More than Infidel Lives
Again our Western world media has just celebrated #WorldHijabday, while in the Islamic world, hundreds of Iranian women are being arrested and put in prison for removing their hijab. That Islamic oppression of women is steadily coming here, by our media’s own hands. The fashion industry leads much of that dangerous change.
In 2019, Nike expanded on their Pro Hijab brand by releasing The Victory Collection. The new market niche adds performance-wear options for Muslim watersport athletes. Choice for women is good. But now Nike just makes it that much harder for women athletes who might otherwise choose to leave Islam.
Before long, following the pattern of Sharia states, it is not inconceivable that this gear could become mandatory for all women competitors — Muslims will next demand it, as officials will bow to their charges of an uneven playing field.
Such fashion marketing can normalize even Islam’s worst elements, such as jihad violence. In fact, we have already seen jihad imagery flow into Islamofashion marketing. In their Fall-Winter 2018 runway show in Milan in February 2018, Gucci’s line began to use beheading imagery among their fashion models. They claimed it had to do with something about cyborgs, and cephalophores — figurines of saints who carried their own heads as martyrs, from medieval and Renaissance art.
Would any modern fashion audience get that ancient and obscure art reference? Or cyborgs with severed heads? Or does it instead have to do with Islam? The Left won’t directly say it. But they will put horrors which attract them right in front of our faces.
It is no shocking secret anymore that devoted Muslims of ISIS who read Quran and follow Muhammad have lately been cutting peoples’ heads off, and holding them up and placing them in positions of grotesque display. That context of gory news media imagery is what makes Gucci’s fashion art concept recognizable — instead of just inexplicable.
Gucci’s unstated nod to modern Islamic terror is obvious. The Gucci-friendly article about the fashion models carrying their own heads even noted it as “terror-inducing.”
Gucci’s display of attraction to terror imagery sends a message that opposing traditional western societal virtue is “cool.” In that sense, they give an approving nod of respect to ISIS beheaders, as rebels against the western system.
After all, if the Left did not want to suggest that mental association, then why would Gucci so obviously risk playing around with severed heads? The imagery they chose is what makes people see that association with Islamic murder and butchery.
The severed head imagery actually began in the prior year, with leftist Kathy Griffin, in her infamous photos taken in May 2017, which featured Griffin holding a model of President Donald Trump’s head dripping with blood.
So Kathy Griffin broke open the wall of taboo against severed head imagery. She breached the limits of how much it could be tolerated by our society. And then the Gucci runway show toned down the bloody gore, to make it accepted as just a new part of our culture.
So now because Gucci did it in fashion, Islamic-style beheading imagery became just part of the elite culture scene. ISIS media has competition.
But skeptics might protest that Gucci is just signalling, “Look, we are so edgy and fashionable.” After all, there can be a childlike drive to want to shock the adults, without really having a barbarous ideology of murder about it.
But in fact the fashion designers and beauty marketers have been systematically embracing the Islam-ish market for years. Designers have been marketing upscale hijabs and abayas in London and Paris stores since early 2016. The fashionable Left was said to greet the announcement of those top brand designs “with jubilation.” And it was noted that the collection “could easily appeal to nonbelievers.” Forbes celebrated it as the “smartest move in years.” The Left love this suffocating stuff so much, they don’t want it to be just for oppressed Muslims.
Next, hijab was hailed as a “win” for fashion when New York Fashion Week debuted its first all-hijab runway show in September 2016. Hijabs for everybody. What women want to show hair and neck anyway?
Then in November 2016, CoverGirl began to feature a hijabi beauty blogger. And very rapidly, the fashionization of Islam became part of the consumer marketing landscape.
As far back as March 2017, I reported on Nike’s plan to release a sports hijab. Nike ultimately released its Nike Pro Hijab in December that year—with “moisture-wicking technology and breathable mesh for cool comfort.” Where would sports be, without the ability to breathe.
American Eagle came out with a denim hijab in July 2017. No, I can’t explain it either.
In January 2018, L’Oréal ran a campaign featuring a hijabi model. By that time, even Muslims began to become annoyed by the trend, which was being denigrated as a “hijab fetish” of product marketing.
While Gucci was deep into Islamic imagery during its February 2018 fashion show, it actually came under harsh criticism by the Left — no, not for Islamization — but for using too-white models in cultural appropriation. Gucci was asked, “Could you not find a hijabi model?”
Versace, and other luxury brands joined Gucci in the hijab imagery. Around the same time as the Milan show, in February 2018, Macy’s became the first Islamofashionized department store in the United States, with its Verona Collection.
In May 2018, H&M released an Islamized clothing line ahead of that year’s Ramadan. The company may have come late to the Islamofashion product market by that time, but they reportedly had used a hijabi model as far back as 2015. So Islam was already long in their culture view.
In summer 2018, Gap featured a smiling young girl in a hijab for its back-to-school campaign. So now it is pretty much everybody.
Marketing forces normalize things that we should not see as normal. The marketing of oppression is very dangerous. Women in Iran are fighting and risking jail to take off this ridiculous hijab. But the Left with their corporate marketing enablers are up there putting it on our own women here, as a fashion statement.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-06 14:32:282020-02-06 14:49:14The Fashionization of Islam by Aynaz Anni Cyrus
By the summer of last year, Glasgow had the highest number of housed refugees in the UK with almost 10% of the “asylum seekers” setting up shop in the Scottish city. The overflow of refugees, many of them from Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, has brought in government money, but also violence and crime. Refugees whose requests for asylum are rejected refuse to leave and remain on in Glasgow.
Glasgow had been eager to cash in on asylum seekers, and in the last two decades was fundamentally transformed by the tide of migrants filling up its neighborhoods. As Pakistanis became the largest minority group in Scotland, 42% of the country’s Muslim population took up residence in Glasgow.
By the 2011 census, a fifth of Glasgow’s population was non-Scottish. In Pollokshields, a quarter of the population is Pakistani. Pollokshields is also where Kriss Donald, a 15-year-old Scottish teenage boy, was kidnapped in the spring of 2004, stabbed all over his body and then set on fire by a Pakistani gang.
“His violent death was a result of political correctness that has gripped the police in Scotland,” Mike Liddell, a senior police officer warned. “Crime within Glasgow’s Asian community has been allowed to grow unfettered for years. Why? Because the police have been afraid to fight it in case they are accused of racism.”
Ayub Khan, a member of the Multi-faith Coalition group in Pollokshields, agreed, “people know that the police are too scared to come into the area and be accused of racism.”
That was 15 years ago.
Last year, Mohammed Maqsood, had his appeal thrown out. Maqsood had been accused of the Kriss Donald murder, but had remained free until he raped an 18-year-old girl, who got into what she thought was a taxi in Glasgow, before she was brutalized and left half-naked in the street.
Mohammed then generously dumped her clothes in a charity bin to hide the evidence.
The assault was one of many that involved taxis and Glasgow’s growing Muslim community. The taboo topic has been the subject of multiple police investigations after reports began to circulate in the press.
A 2011 report in the Evening Times documented the story of a teenage girl who had been abused and prostituted by a man named Nasir.
“One minute I was a normal teenage girl, the next, I was being forced to have sex with these old men,” she revealed. “I had never even kissed a boy before – they completely took my innocence from me.”
Nasir raped her in front of his fellow gang members while they recorded the assault on their cell phones. After she was prostituted, harassment by the gang forced her family to flee from Glasgow’s immigrants.
In 2011, Operation Cotswold was set up to focus on the Muslim refugees who were abusing young girls in care homes, facilities for children from broken families.
The police identified 26 potential victims, but no one was prosecuted.
In 2013, Operation Dash tracked the role of Muslim taxi services and fast food places in the grooming and sexual abuse of young girls. It focused on the Strathclyde area, a center of the city’s Pakistani population going back decades. That was where the police had launched and then shuttered Operation Gather a decade earlier because its focus on Muslim gangs had been deemed politically incorrect.
Operation Dash found that girls as young as 10 years old were being abused. 84 victims were identified and 27 suspects were reported. Only three were reportedly actually sent to prison.
And only one, Javaid Akhond, a refugee from Afghanistan working in a fast food place, was named.
Akhond got only 6 years in prison for grooming and sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl, grooming and sexually abusing her 13-year-old friend, sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl, and then, raping a 16-year-old girl who tried to intervene. Then, once he was locked up, he tried to pressure the 15-year-old from prison to name him officially as the father of her child so that he could avoid deportation from Scotland.
The Muslim refugee, like many foreign criminals, was hoping to rely on EU rules that prevent the deportation of even the worst criminals if they have left behind a child in a European country.
The Muslim refugee gangs aren’t just raping young girls, they’re using them as asylum requests.
In a familiar pattern, Cotswold and Dash turned up over 100 victims, but very few actual results.
Operation Cerrar, the latest successor to these operations, identified 56 members of a Glasgow grooming gang. The perpetrators were Pakistani, Iraqi, Egyptian, Turkish, and Moroccan refugees.
44 girls were abused by these refugees. Many were abused many times. Including one who was assaulted by 28 of the perpetrators and another by 23 of them.
14 of the abusers have been deported. Only 1 is in prison.
The police kept the investigation and its results secret. With results like these, it’s easy to see why.
After three investigations that have taken place over a decade with 154 identified victims, and at least 71 perpetrators, there have been seemingly only four actual prison sentences.
And the only one that has been made public amounted to a slap on the wrist.
If British authorities prosecuted Muslim grooming gangs as vigorously as they do ‘Islamophobia’, then the countless thousands of girls abused across major cities would sleep soundly in their beds at night.
Like many of these cities, Glasgow opened its doors to Muslim migrants for economic and political reasons. Labour and the Scottish National Party then fought eagerly over Muslim votes.
The 154 abused girls paid the price for the UK’s migration policies, for Glasgow’s eagerness for the economic benefits of opening up to migrants and refugees, and of the Scottish National Party’s desire to achieve independence for Scotland, even if it had to do it by submitting to the EU and Islam, and replacing the native population with a more reliable voting base for its social welfare and green energy.
In 2007, Bashir Ahmad became the first Muslim member of the Scottish Parliament for the SNP from Glasgow. He was followed by Humza Yousaf, his former assistant, who became the first Muslim cabinet minister holding down the justice portfolio and took his oath of allegiance in the Scottish Parliament in Urdu. Jahangir Hanif, a Glasgow SNP councilor, was caught teaching his children to fire an AK-47 at a training camp in Pakistan, near Kashmir.
The SNP’s Islamic squad came through the Muslim Brotherhood’s local outlet, the Scottish Islamic Foundation. And the SNP generously funneled money to the SIF in recognition of their support.
The SIF’s boss, Osama Saeed, who has cheered a return of the Caliphate, was an adviser to former First Minister Alex Salmond, the SNP’s dirty leader, who ran Scotland into the ground.
The Scotland National Party’s answer to Harvey Weinstein even stands accused of trying to rape a woman in Bute House, the official residence of the First Minister, and in the Scottish Parliament.
Is it really any wonder that Scottish authorities have managed to do an even worse job of tackling Muslim sex grooming gangs than their counterparts in Manchester, Rotherham, and Oxford?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-06 10:09:402020-02-06 10:10:09Only 4 of Glasgow’s 71 Muslim Refugee Child Rapists Have Gone to Prison by Daniel Greenfield
Twitter has suspended UK’s courageous freedom fighter Katie Hopkins, who had a million followers on the platform, and one thing is certain: she will not be the last foe of jihad violence and Sharia oppression who is banned from Twitter. It’s all about silencing “hate,” you see. But the banning of Katie Hopkins illustrates yet again that for the Left, there is good “hate” and there is bad “hate.”
According to the UK’s Independent, “Twitter said that Ms Hopkins had been temporarily locked out of her account for violating the site’s hateful-conduct policy, which bans the promotion of violence or inciting harm on the basis of race, religion, national origin or gender identity.”
Twitter has erased all but a handful of Hopkins’ tweets, so it’s impossible to tell what the offending tweets were, but it is abundantly clear at this point that for Leftist guardians of acceptable thought nowadays, virtually any dissent from the Left’s agenda will be read as “the promotion of violence or inciting harm on the basis of race, religion, national origin or gender identity.” While “promotion of violence” is fairly easy to spot, “inciting harm” can be seen in any critical word. And then the offender has to go.
The crusaders against “hate” in this case were once again the usual suspects. According to the Independent, Twitter suspended Hopkins at the insistence of a Leftist/Islamic coalition of enemies of the freedom of speech: “The move came a little over a day after Rachel Riley, a co-presenter of Channel 4’s Countdown and an anti-racism campaigner, met Twitter representatives calling for them to review and remove Ms Hopkins’ account. The meeting was organised by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) campaign group, which called for Twitter to permanently delete the account.”
CCDH’s chief executive, Imran Ahmed, commented in the condescending tones of a man who knows the world is at his feet: “We are pleased that preliminary action appears to have been taken by Twitter against the identity-based hate actor, Katie Hopkins following productive discussions with Twitter’s UK office. There is a long road ahead before social media is made safe for dialogue, information exchange and the formation and maintenance of relationships.”
However, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, and even though he is that most useless and contemptible of creatures, a dead white male, Twitter agrees with him. Rachel Riley was pleased at the forcible silencing of Hopkins, but noted that Twitter had not done her bidding to her complete satisfaction. The Independent continued: “Ms Riley said she was ‘pleased to see that action appears to have been taken’, but added that she had also called for the removal of George Galloway’s account, which remains online.”
It isn’t hard to see why this is so. Galloway, unlike Hopkins, is a fervent Leftist. According to Discover the Networks, Galloway is an “admirer of Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin.” He is also the founder of Viva Palestina, touted as “a fundraising project for the Palestinian people,” which “since its inception…has given millions of dollars, as well as much non-cash assistance, directly to Hamas.”
So it is clear. Twitter claims to be against “hateful conduct,” but it really only hates some hateful conduct, not all of it. Katie Hopkins opposing jihad violence and Sharia oppression? Why, that’s hateful conduct! She must be banned! George Galloway aiding a jihad terror group that targets Israeli civilians and celebrates when those civilians are murdered? Why, that isn’t hateful conduct, not at all, at least according to Twitter’s guardians of acceptable opinion. As far as Twitter is concerned also, hating Katie Hopkins, and showering her with abuse, is perfectly fine – I’ve witnessed it myself many times on that platform. But if someone uttered a cross word to George Galloway, it is certain that he or she would soon be free of the burden of limiting one’s utterances to 280 characters.
That is the lesson of the Twitter suspension of Katie Hopkins. If you also hold opinions that are unacceptable to the elites, you’re next. Twitter won’t tolerate “hate,” you see, which means it won’t allow anything but statements aligned with the views of the Leftist political and media elites. Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out, and at Twitter, it does look as if they’ve already slipped their chain.
President Donald J. Trump gave his third and most uplifting and visionary State of the Union address to the American people on February 4th, 2020. He had many special guests in the gallery and made note of each of their hopes, dreams, lives and sacrifices for America.
Madam Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and my fellow citizens:
Three years ago, we launched the great American comeback. Tonight, I stand before you to share the incredible results. Jobs are booming, incomes are soaring, poverty is plummeting, crime is falling, confidence is surging, and our country is thriving and highly respected again! America’s enemies are on the run, America’s fortunes are on the rise, and America’s future is blazing bright.
The years of economic decay are over. The days of our country being used, taken advantage of, and even scorned by other nations are long behind us. Gone too are the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes, and constant excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power, and prestige.
In just 3 short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny. We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never going back!
I am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is the best it has ever been. Our military is completely rebuilt, with its power being unmatched anywhere in the world — and it is not even close. Our borders are secure. Our families are flourishing. Our values are renewed. Our pride is restored. And for all these reasons, I say to the people of our great country, and to the Members of Congress before me: The State of our Union is stronger than ever before!
The vision I will lay out this evening demonstrates how we are building the world’s most prosperous and inclusive society — one where every citizen can join in America’s unparalleled success, and where every community can take part in America’s extraordinary rise.
From the instant I took office, I moved rapidly to revive the United States economy — slashing a record number of job-killing regulations, enacting historic and record-setting tax cuts, and fighting for fair and reciprocal trade agreements. Our agenda is relentlessly pro-worker, pro-family, pro-growth, and, most of all, pro-American. We are advancing with unbridled optimism and lifting high our citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed.
Since my election, we have created 7 million new jobs — 5 million more than Government experts projected during the previous administration.
The unemployment rate is the lowest in over half a century.
Incredibly, the average unemployment rate under my Administration is lower than any administration in the history of our country. If we had not reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witness to America’s great economic success.
The unemployment rates for African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans have reached the lowest levels in history. African-American youth unemployment has reached an all-time low.
African-American poverty has declined to the lowest rate ever recorded.
The unemployment rate for women reached the lowest level in almost 70 years — and last year, women filled 72 percent of all new jobs added.
The veterans’ unemployment rate dropped to a record low.
The unemployment rate for disabled Americans has reached an all-time low.
Workers without a high school diploma have achieved the lowest unemployment rate recorded in United States history.
A record number of young Americans are now employed.
Under the last administration, more than 10 million people were added to the food stamp rolls. Under my Administration, 7 million Americans have come off of food stamps, and 10 million people have been lifted off of welfare.
In 8 years under the last administration, over 300,000 working-age people dropped out of the workforce. In just 3 years of my Administration, 3.5 million working-age people have joined the workforce.
Since my election, the net worth of the bottom half of wage-earners has increased by 47 percent — 3 times faster than the increase for the top 1 percent. After decades of flat and falling incomes, wages are rising fast — and, wonderfully, they are rising fastest for low-income workers, who have seen a 16 percent pay-increase since my election. This is a blue collar boom.
Real median household income is now at the highest level ever recorded!
Since my election, United States stock markets have soared 70 percent, adding more than $12 trillion to our Nation’s wealth, transcending anything anyone believed was possible — this, as other countries are not doing well. Consumer confidence has reached amazing new heights.
All of those millions of people with 401(k)s and pensions are doing far better than they have ever done before with increases of 60, 70, 80, 90, and even 100 percent.
Jobs and investment are pouring into 9,000 previously-neglected neighborhoods thanks to Opportunity Zones, a plan spearheaded by Senator Tim Scott as part of our great Republican tax cuts. In other words, wealthy people and companies are pouring money into poor neighborhoods or areas that have not seen investment in many decades, creating jobs, energy, and excitement. This is the first time that these deserving communities have seen anything like this. It is all working!
Opportunity Zones are helping Americans like Army Veteran Tony Rankins from Cincinnati, Ohio. After struggling with drug addiction, Tony lost his job, his house, and his family — he was homeless. But then Tony found a construction company that invests in Opportunity Zones. He is now a top tradesman, drug-free, reunited with his family, and he is here tonight. Tony: Keep up the great work.
Our roaring economy has, for the first time ever, given many former prisoners the ability to get a great job and a fresh start. This second chance at life is made possible because we passed landmark Criminal Justice Reform into law. Everybody said that Criminal Justice Reform could not be done, but I got it done, and the people in this room got it done.
Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world, by far. With the tremendous progress we have made over the past 3 years, America is now energy independent, and energy jobs, like so many elements of our country, are at a record high. We are doing numbers that no one would have thought possible just 3 years ago.
Likewise, we are restoring our Nation’s manufacturing might, even though predictions were that this could never be done. After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America has now gained 12,000 new factories under my Administration with thousands upon thousands of plants and factories being planned or built. We have created over half a million new manufacturing jobs. Companies are not leaving; they are coming back. Everybody wants to be where the action is, and the United States of America is, indeed, where the action is.
One of the single biggest promises I made to the American people was to replace the disastrous NAFTA trade deal. In fact, unfair trade is perhaps the single biggest reason that I decided to run for President. Following NAFTA’s adoption, our Nation lost one in four manufacturing jobs. Many politicians came and went, pledging to change or replace NAFTA — only to do absolutely nothing. But unlike so many who came before me, I keep my promises. Six days ago, I replaced NAFTA and signed the brand new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) into law.
The USMCA will create nearly 100,000 new high-paying American auto jobs, and massively boost exports for our farmers, ranchers, and factory workers. It will also bring trade with Mexico and Canada to a much higher degree, but also to a much greater level of fairness and reciprocity. This is the first major trade deal in many years to earn the strong backing of America’s labor unions.
I also promised our citizens that I would impose tariffs to confront China’s massive theft of American jobs. Our strategy worked. Days ago, we signed the groundbreaking new agreement with China that will defend our workers, protect our intellectual property, bring billions of dollars into our treasury, and open vast new markets for products made and grown right here in the United States of America. For decades, China has taken advantage of the United States, now we have changed that but, at the same time, we have perhaps the best relationship we have ever had with China, including with President Xi. They respect what we have done because, quite frankly, they could never believe what they were able to get away with year after year, decade after decade, without someone in our country stepping up and saying: Enough. Now, we want to rebuild our country, and that is what we are doing.
As we restore American leadership throughout the world, we are once again standing up for freedom in our hemisphere. That is why my Administration reversed the failing policies of the previous administration on Cuba. We are supporting the hopes of Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to restore democracy. The United States is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, a tyrant who brutalizes his people. But Maduro’s grip of tyranny will be smashed and broken. Here this evening is a man who carries with him the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of all Venezuelans. Joining us in the gallery is the true and legitimate President of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó. Mr. President, please take this message back to your homeland. All Americans are united with the Venezuelan people in their righteous struggle for freedom! Socialism destroys nations. But always remember, freedom unifies the soul.
To safeguard American Liberty, we have invested a record-breaking $2.2 trillion in the United States Military. We have purchased the finest planes, missiles, rockets, ships, and every other form of military equipment — all made in the United States of America. We are also finally getting our allies to help pay their fair share. I have raised contributions from the other NATO members by more than $400 billion, and the number of allies meeting their minimum obligations has more than doubled.
And just weeks ago, for the first time since President Truman established the Air Force more than 70 years earlier, we created a new branch of the United States Armed Forces, the Space Force.
In the gallery tonight, we have one of the Space Force’s youngest potential recruits: 13-year-old Iain Lanphier, an eighth grader from Arizona. Iain has always dreamed of going to space. He was first in his class and among the youngest at an aviation academy. He aspires to go to the Air Force Academy, and then, he has his eye on the Space Force. As Iain says, “most people look up at space, I want to look down on the world.”
Sitting beside Iain tonight is his great hero. Charles McGee was born in Cleveland, Ohio, one century ago. Charles is one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen — the first black fighter pilots — and he also happens to be Iain’s great-grandfather. After more than 130 combat missions in World War II, he came back to a country still struggling for Civil Rights and went on to serve America in Korea and Vietnam. On December 7th, Charles celebrated his 100th birthday. A few weeks ago, I signed a bill promoting Charles McGee to Brigadier General. And earlier today, I pinned the stars on his shoulders in the Oval Office. General McGee: Our Nation salutes you.
From the pilgrims to our Founders, from the soldiers at Valley Forge to the marchers at Selma, and from President Lincoln to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Americans have always rejected limits on our children’s future.
Members of Congress, we must never forget that the only victories that matter in Washington are victories that deliver for the American people. The people are the heart of our country, their dreams are the soul of our country, and their love is what powers and sustains our country. We must always remember that our job is to put America first!
The next step forward in building an inclusive society is making sure that every young American gets a great education and the opportunity to achieve the American Dream. Yet, for too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools. To rescue these students, 18 States have created school choice in the form of Opportunity Scholarships. The programs are so popular, that tens of thousands of students remain on waiting lists. One of those students is Janiyah Davis, a fourth grader from Philadelphia. Janiyah’s mom Stephanie is a single parent. She would do anything to give her daughter a better future. But last year, that future was put further out of reach when Pennsylvania’s Governor vetoed legislation to expand school choice for 50,000 children.
Janiyah and Stephanie are in the gallery this evening. But there is more to their story. Janiyah, I am pleased to inform you that your long wait is over. I can proudly announce tonight that an Opportunity Scholarship has become available, it is going to you, and you will soon be heading to the school of your choice!
Now, I call on the Congress to give 1 million American children the same opportunity Janiyah has just received. Pass the Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act — because no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school.
Every young person should have a safe and secure environment in which to learn and grow. For this reason, our magnificent First Lady has launched the “Be Best” initiative — to advance a safe, healthy, supportive, and drug-free life for the next generation, online, in school, and in our communities. Thank you, Melania, for your extraordinary love and profound care for America’s children.
My Administration is determined to give our citizens the opportunities they need regardless of age or background. Through our Pledge to American Workers, over 400 companies will also provide new jobs and education opportunities to almost 15 million Americans.
My Budget also contains an exciting vision for our Nation’s high schools. Tonight, I ask the Congress to support our students and back my plan to offer vocational and technical education in every single high school in America.
To expand equal opportunity, I am also proud that we achieved record and permanent funding for our Nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
A good life for American families also requires the most affordable, innovative, and high-quality healthcare system on Earth. Before I took office, health insurance premiums had more than doubled in just 5 years. I moved quickly to provide affordable alternatives. Our new plans are up to 60 percent less expensive. I have also made an ironclad pledge to American families: We will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions — that is a guarantee. And we will always protect your Medicare and your Social Security.
The American patient should never be blindsided by medical bills. That is why I signed an Executive Order requiring price transparency. Many experts believe that transparency, which will go into full effect at the beginning of next year, will be even bigger than healthcare reform. It will save families massive amounts of money for substantially better care.
But as we work to improve Americans’ healthcare, there are those who want to take away your healthcare, take away your doctor, and abolish private insurance entirely. One hundred thirty-two lawmakers in this room have endorsed legislation to impose a socialist takeover of our healthcare system, wiping out the private health insurance plans of 180 million Americans. To those watching at home tonight, I want you to know: We will never let socialism destroy American healthcare!
Over 130 legislators in this chamber have endorsed legislation that would bankrupt our Nation by providing free taxpayer-funded healthcare to millions of illegal aliens, forcing taxpayers to subsidize free care for anyone in the world who unlawfully crosses our borders. These proposals would raid the Medicare benefits our seniors depend on, while acting as a powerful lure for illegal immigration. This is what is happening in California and other States — their systems are totally out of control, costing taxpayers vast and unaffordable amounts of money. If forcing American taxpayers to provide unlimited free healthcare to illegal aliens sounds fair to you, then stand with the radical left. But if you believe that we should defend American patients and American seniors, then stand with me and pass legislation to prohibit free Government healthcare for illegal aliens!
This will be a tremendous boon to our already very-strongly guarded southern border where, as we speak, a long, tall, and very powerful wall is being built. We have now completed over 100 miles and will have over 500 miles fully completed by early next year.
My Administration is also taking on the big pharmaceutical companies. We have approved a record number of affordable generic drugs, and medicines are being approved by the FDA at a faster clip than ever before. I was pleased to announce last year that, for the first time in 51 years, the cost of prescription drugs actually went down.
And working together, the Congress can reduce drug prices substantially from current levels. I have been speaking to Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and others in the Congress in order to get something on drug pricing done, and done properly. I am calling for bipartisan legislation that achieves the goal of dramatically lowering prescription drug prices. Get a bill to my desk, and I will sign it into law without delay.
With unyielding commitment, we are curbing the opioid epidemic — drug overdose deaths declined for the first time in nearly 30 years. Among the States hardest hit, Ohio is down 22 percent, Pennsylvania is down 18 percent, Wisconsin is down 10 percent — and we will not quit until we have beaten the opioid epidemic once and for all.
Protecting Americans’ health also means fighting infectious diseases. We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the Coronavirus outbreak in China. My Administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.
We have launched ambitious new initiatives to substantially improve care for Americans with kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, and those struggling with mental health challenges. And because the Congress funded my request, we are pursuing new cures for childhood cancer, and we will eradicate the AIDS epidemic in America by the end of the decade.
Almost every American family knows the pain when a loved one is diagnosed with a serious illness. Here tonight is a special man, someone beloved by millions of Americans who just received a Stage 4 advanced cancer diagnosis. This is not good news, but what is good news is that he is the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet. Rush Limbaugh: Thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country. Rush, in recognition of all that you have done for our Nation, the millions of people a day that you speak to and inspire, and all of the incredible work that you have done for charity, I am proud to announce tonight that you will be receiving our country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I will now ask the First Lady of the United States to please stand and present you with the honor. Rush, Kathryn, congratulations!
As we pray for all who are sick, we know that America is constantly achieving new medical breakthroughs. In 2017, doctors at St. Luke’s hospital in Kansas City delivered one of the earliest premature babies ever to survive. Born at just 21 weeks and 6 days, and weighing less than a pound, Ellie Schneider was born a fighter. Through the skill of her doctors — and the prayers of her parents — little Ellie kept on winning the battle for life. Today, Ellie is a strong, healthy 2-year-old girl sitting with her amazing mother Robin in the gallery. Ellie and Robin: We are so glad you are here.
Ellie reminds us that every child is a miracle of life. Thanks to modern medical wonders, 50 percent of very premature babies delivered at the hospital where Ellie was born now survive. Our goal should be to ensure that every baby has the best chance to thrive and grow just like Ellie. That is why I am asking the Congress to provide an additional $50 million to fund neo-natal research for America’s youngest patients. That is also why I am calling upon the Members of Congress here tonight to pass legislation finally banning the late-term abortion of babies.
Whether we are Republican, Democrat, or Independent, surely we must all agree that every human life is a sacred gift from God!
As we support America’s moms and dads, I was recently proud to sign the law providing new parents in the Federal workforce paid family leave, serving as a model for the rest of the country. Now, I call on the Congress to pass the bipartisan Advancing Support for Working Families Act, extending family leave to mothers and fathers all across the Nation.
Forty million American families have an average $2,200 extra thanks to our child tax credit. I have also overseen historic funding increases for high-quality child care, enabling 17 States to serve more children, many of which have reduced or eliminated their waitlists altogether. And I sent the Congress a plan with a vision to further expand access to high-quality childcare and urge you to act immediately.
To protect the environment, days ago, I announced that the United States will join the One Trillion Trees Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together Government and the private sector to plant new trees in America and around the world.
We must also rebuild America’s infrastructure. I ask you to pass Senator Barrasso’s highway bill — to invest in new roads, bridges, and tunnels across our land.
I am also committed to ensuring that every citizen can have access to high-speed internet, including rural America.
A better tomorrow for all Americans also requires us to keep America safe. That means supporting the men and women of law enforcement at every level, including our Nation’s heroic ICE officers.
Last year, our brave ICE officers arrested more than 120,000 criminal aliens charged with nearly 10,000 burglaries, 5,000 sexual assaults, 45,000 violent assaults, and 2,000 murders.
Tragically, there are many cities in America where radical politicians have chosen to provide sanctuary for these criminal illegal aliens. In Sanctuary Cities, local officials order police to release dangerous criminal aliens to prey upon the public, instead of handing them over to ICE to be safely removed.
Just 29 days ago, a criminal alien freed by the Sanctuary City of New York was charged with the brutal rape and murder of a 92-year-old woman. The killer had been previously arrested for assault, but under New York’s sanctuary policies, he was set free. If the city had honored ICE’s detainer request, his victim would be alive today.
The State of California passed an outrageous law declaring their whole State to be a sanctuary for criminal illegal immigrants — with catastrophic results.
Here is just one tragic example. In December 2018, California police detained an illegal alien with five prior arrests, including convictions for robbery and assault. But as required by California’s Sanctuary Law, local authorities released him.
Days later, the criminal alien went on a gruesome spree of deadly violence. He viciously shot one man going about his daily work; he approached a woman sitting in her car and shot her in the arm and the chest. He walked into a convenience store and wildly fired his weapon. He hijacked a truck and smashed into vehicles, critically injuring innocent victims. One of the victims of his bloody rampage was a 51-year-old American named Rocky Jones. Rocky was at a gas station when this vile criminal fired eight bullets at him from close range, murdering him in cold blood. Rocky left behind a devoted family, including his brothers who loved him more than anything. One of his grieving brothers is here with us tonight. Jody, would you please stand? Jody, our hearts weep for your loss — and we will not rest until you have justice.
Senator Thom Tillis has introduced legislation to allow Americans like Jody to sue Sanctuary Cities and States when a loved one is hurt or killed as a result of these deadly policies. I ask the Congress to pass the Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act immediately. The United States of America should be a sanctuary for law-abiding Americans — not criminal aliens!
In the last 3 years, ICE has arrested over 5,000 wicked human traffickers — and I have signed 9 pieces of legislation to stamp out the menace of human trafficking, domestically and around the globe.
My Administration has undertaken an unprecedented effort to secure the southern border of the United States.
Before I came into office, if you showed up illegally on our southern border and were arrested, you were simply released and allowed into our country, never to be seen again. My Administration has ended Catch-and-Release. If you come illegally, you will now be promptly removed. We entered into historic cooperation agreements with the Governments of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. As a result of our unprecedented efforts, illegal crossings are down 75 percent since May — dropping 8 straight months in a row. And as the wall goes up, drug seizures rise, and border crossings go down.
Last year, I traveled to the border in Texas and met Chief Patrol Agent Raul Ortiz. Over the last 24 months, Agent Ortiz and his team have seized more than 200,000 pounds of poisonous narcotics, arrested more than 3,000 human smugglers, and rescued more than 2,000 migrants. Days ago, Agent Ortiz was promoted to Deputy Chief of Border Patrol — and he joins us tonight. Chief Ortiz: Please stand — a grateful Nation thanks you and all the heroes of Border Patrol.
To build on these historic gains, we are working on legislation to replace our outdated and randomized immigration system with one based on merit, welcoming those who follow the rules, contribute to our economy, support themselves financially, and uphold our values.
With every action, my Administration is restoring the rule of law and re-asserting the culture of American freedom. Working with Senate Majority Leader McConnell and his colleagues in the Senate, we have confirmed a record number of 187 new Federal judges to uphold our Constitution as written. This includes two brilliant new Supreme Court Justices, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
My Administration is also defending religious liberty, and that includes the Constitutional right to pray in public schools. In America, we do not punish prayer. We do not tear down crosses. We do not ban symbols of faith. We do not muzzle preachers and pastors. In America, we celebrate faith. We cherish religion. We lift our voices in prayer, and we raise our sights to the Glory of God!
Just as we believe in the First Amendment, we also believe in another Constitutional right that is under siege all across our country. So long as I am President I will always protect your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
In reaffirming our heritage as a free Nation, we must remember that America has always been a frontier nation. Now we must embrace the next frontier, America’s manifest destiny in the stars. I am asking the Congress to fully fund the Artemis program to ensure that the next man and the first woman on the moon will be American astronauts — using this as a launching pad to ensure that America is the first nation to plant its flag on Mars.
My Administration is also strongly defending our national security and combating radical Islamic terrorism. Last week, I announced a groundbreaking plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Recognizing that all past attempts have failed, we must be determined and creative in order to stabilize the region and give millions of young people the change to realize a better future.
Three years ago, the barbarians of ISIS held over 20,000 square miles of territory in Iraq and Syria. Today, the ISIS territorial caliphate has been 100 percent destroyed, and the founder and leader of ISIS — the bloodthirsty killer Al‑Baghdadi — is dead!
We are joined this evening by Carl and Marsha Mueller. After graduating from college, their beautiful daughter Kayla became a humanitarian aid worker. Kayla once wrote, “Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.” In 2013, while caring for suffering civilians in Syria, Kayla was kidnapped, tortured, and enslaved by ISIS, and kept as a prisoner of Al-Baghdadi himself. After more than 500 horrifying days of captivity, Al-Baghdadi murdered young Kayla. She was just 26 years old.
On the night that United States Special Forces Operators ended Al‑Baghdadi’s miserable life, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, received a call in the Situation Room. He was told that the brave men of the elite Special Forces team, that so perfectly carried out the operation, had given their mission a name — “Task Force 8-14.” It was a reference to a special day: August 14th — Kayla’s birthday. Carl and Marsha, America’s warriors never forgot Kayla — and neither will we.
Every day, America’s men and women in uniform demonstrate the infinite depths of love that dwells in the human heart.
One of these American heroes was Army Staff Sergeant Christopher Hake. On his second deployment to Iraq in 2008, Sergeant Hake wrote a letter to his 1-year-old son, Gage: “I will be with you again,” he wrote to Gage. “I will teach you to ride your first bike, build your first sand box, watch you play sports and see you have kids also. I love you son, take care of your mother. I am always with you. Dad.” On Easter Sunday of 2008, Chris was out on patrol in Baghdad when his Bradley Fighting Vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. That night, he made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Sergeant Hake now rests in eternal glory in Arlington, and his wife Kelli is in the gallery tonight, joined by their son, who is now 13 years old. To Kelli and Gage: Chris will live in our hearts forever.
The terrorist responsible for killing Sergeant Hake was Qasem Soleimani, who provided the deadly roadside bomb that took Chris’s life. Soleimani was the Iranian Regime’s most ruthless butcher, a monster who murdered or wounded thousands of American service members in Iraq. As the world’s top terrorist, Soleimani orchestrated the deaths of countless men, women, and children. He directed the December assault on United States Forces in Iraq, and was actively planning new attacks. That is why, last month, at my direction, the United States Military executed a flawless precision strike that killed Soleimani and terminated his evil reign of terror forever.
Our message to the terrorists is clear: You will never escape American justice. If you attack our citizens, you forfeit your life!
In recent months, we have seen proud Iranians raise their voices against their oppressive rulers. The Iranian regime must abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons, stop spreading terror, death, and destruction, and start working for the good of its own people. Because of our powerful sanctions, the Iranian economy is doing very poorly. We can help them make it very good in a short period of time, but perhaps they are too proud or too foolish to ask for that help. We are here. Let’s see which road they choose. It is totally up to them.
As we defend American lives, we are working to end America’s wars in the Middle East.
In Afghanistan, the determination and valor of our warfighters has allowed us to make tremendous progress, and peace talks are underway. I am not looking to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan, many of them innocent. It is also not our function to serve other nations as a law enforcement agency. These are warfighters, the best in the world, and they either want to fight to win or not fight at all. We are working to finally end America’s longest war and bring our troops back home!
War places a heavy burden on our Nation’s extraordinary military families, especially spouses like Amy Williams from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and her 2 children — 6-year-old Elliana and 3-year-old Rowan. Amy works full time, and volunteers countless hours helping other military families. For the past 7 months, she has done it all while her husband, Sergeant First Class Townsend Williams, is in Afghanistan on his fourth deployment to the Middle East. Amy’s kids have not seen their father’s face in many months. Amy, your family’s sacrifice makes it possible for all of our families to live in safety and peace — we thank you.
As the world bears witness tonight, America is a land of heroes. This is the place where greatness is born, where destinies are forged, and where legends come to life. This is the home of Thomas Edison and Teddy Roosevelt, of many great Generals, including Washington, Pershing, Patton, and MacArthur. This is the home of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Tubman, the Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong, and so many more. This is the country where children learn names like Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, and Annie Oakley. This is the place where the pilgrims landed at Plymouth and where Texas patriots made their last stand at the Alamo.
The American Nation was carved out of the vast frontier by the toughest, strongest, fiercest, and most determined men and women ever to walk the face of the Earth. Our ancestors braved the unknown; tamed the wilderness; settled the Wild West; lifted millions from poverty, disease, and hunger; vanquished tyranny and fascism; ushered the world to new heights of science and medicine; laid down the railroads, dug out canals, raised up the skyscrapers — and, ladies and gentlemen, our ancestors built the most exceptional Republic ever to exist in all of human history. And we are making it greater than ever before!
This is our glorious and magnificent inheritance.
We are Americans. We are the pioneers. We are the pathfinders. We settled the new world, we built the modern world, and we changed history forever by embracing the eternal truth that everyone is made equal by the hand of Almighty God.
America is the place where anything can happen! America is the place where anyone can rise. And here, on this land, on this soil, on this continent, the most incredible dreams come true!
This Nation is our canvas, and this country is our masterpiece. We look at tomorrow and see unlimited frontiers just waiting to be explored. Our brightest discoveries are not yet known. Our most thrilling stories are not yet told. Our grandest journeys are not yet made. The American Age, the American Epic, the American Adventure, has only just begun!
Our spirit is still young; the sun is still rising; God’s grace is still shining; and my fellow Americans, the best is yet to come!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png001600 Daily - The White Househttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png1600 Daily - The White House2020-02-05 05:05:052020-02-05 06:09:06President Donald J. Trump’s Historic State of the Union Address — February 4th, 2020
Michael Pakaluk: The evidence is strong that the Lord clearly taught that unrepented sin leads to eternal damnation. Thus, if Hell is invented, it’s Jesus who invented it.
Hell is on my mind, and it is not even November. Presumably, any one of the Four Last Things can serve as matter for reflection any time of year. But after my last column, which was on David Bentley Hart’s denial of the traditional notion of eternal punishment, some readers said that they wished I had spent more time on what Jesus said on Hell. So this time I want to oblige them by discussing, paradoxically, what Jesus did not say.
From many years spent interpreting texts, especially Aristotle, I find that people commonly make a certain mistake. They think the only evidence for or against a theory are words or sentences that can be identified in advance.
Here’s what I mean: Suppose the view in question is whether Jesus taught that we’re at risk of being judged worthy of eternal punishment – Hell. Someone bent on denying Hell might go through the New Testament, pick out the twenty or so verses that seem to imply the existence of Hell, and taking these verses to be the only evidence, argue that they don’t really imply that.
This is David Bentley Hart’s approach. Jesus says in one verse (Mt 25:46) that the unrighteous will be sent away into everlasting torment (kolasin aiōnion). So Hart expends a lot of effort arguing that the Greek word aiōnios does not necessarily mean “everlasting” and that kolasis need not mean “punishment.”
Jesus also talks a lot about Gehenna: “it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire” (Mk. 9:43); “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell” (Mt. 10:28). There are altogether twelve verses that refer to Hell, Gehenna, in the New Testament.
You would think that the meaning of a word is fixed by its function and that twelve sentences suffice for revealing a word’s function. But, no, Hart argues. By Gehenna Jesus meant a certain place outside of Jerusalem, which may or may not have been a pagan place of child sacrifice, and may or may not have been a garbage dump.
It’s all very unclear, he says. And all that stuff about “unquenchable fire” and “the worm that never dies”? Typical Semitic hyperbole. In any case, we are not obliged to identify this “Vale of Hinnom,” as Hart prefers to call it, with the “opulent” medieval invention of “Hell,” or so he says.
And so it goes. Except Hart goes farther than interpreters usually do: to deal most definitively with such evidence, he, in effect, annihilates it. That is, he produced an entire translation of the New Testament so that aiōnios never means everlasting but always “of the Age.” And Gehenna never means Hell, but always “the Vale of Hinnom,” and so on. In Hart’s Bible, Jesus warns the unrighteous that “these will go to the chastening of that Age.” (Mt 25:46) Voilà! No more offending evidence.
But the point I wish to urge about interpretation is that so far we have looked at only the smallest portion of the available evidence. We need to reason not simply from evidence to theory, but also from theory to evidence. That is, we have to ask: on the assumption that a theory is true, does the evidence match what we would have expected or not? This approach is sometimes called “Bayesian”: Newman dealt with it under the heading of “antecedent probabilities.”
In the present instance, we ask: Suppose the Lord Jesus believed, or rather knew, universal salvation to be true, holding to it with all the conviction of David Bentley Hart. This would be a highly important truth for him to convey, as Hart clearly holds. Does Jesus speak, then, as someone who knows this to be true and strongly wants to convey it? Or does Jesus say things contrary to what we would expect, i.e., is he silent where a universalist would certainly not be?
See now that each verse in the New Testament becomes potential evidence against Hart’s view, and not merely the handful that seems to be speaking about Hell explicitly.
You can start almost anywhere. You are the branches, the Lord says, and if a branch gets separated from the vine, it is already as good as dead, and these withered branches are then thrown into the fire and burned. (Jn 15:6) Apart from the mention of fire here, which we realize is so characteristic of Jesus – would someone who affirmed universalism have chosen, for his imagery, the irreversible process of desiccation? When Plato, for instance, wanted to suggest that there are additional chances for souls after death, he provided, as illustrations, cyclical processes.
Or the good thief repents, and Jesus tells him that he will be with him in paradise on that very day. (Lk 23:43) Wouldn’t a universalist, at that point, turn also to the bad thief, the one who was reviling him, and tell him to have courage, because, when he faces torment after death, it will be merely a “chastening for the Age,” which will lead him eventually to eternal blessedness? But Jesus fails to teach this.
Or what about the demons? Demons are persons too, and they experience pleasure and pain. When a “legion” of them torments the man at the tombs, Jesus sends the demons into a herd of swine, who rush over a cliff into the sea, apparently to illustrate a point about their evil power. (Mk 5:10-20) But wouldn’t a universalist, to make his message perfectly clear, once in a while send a demon or two into Heaven, as a proof that all will be reconciled to God?
This is what I mean: hundreds of verses point to things Jesus did not say, which count against universal salvation in Hart and many others who hold a similar position.
COLUMN BY
Michael Pakaluk
Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book, on the Gospel of Mark, The Memoirs of St Peter, is now available from Regnery Gateway. He is currently at work on a new book on Mary’s voice in the gospel of John.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Catholic Thinghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Catholic Thing2020-02-04 06:43:362020-02-04 06:43:36What Jesus Did Not Say About Hell
If this video gets pulled from YouTube or requires a sign in, please leave a comment saying so under this post and I will make sure its restored immediately.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2020-02-03 13:35:472020-02-03 13:37:06Excellent Tommy Robinson video on the hypocrisy of reporting on Islam and Islamic terror
The feast of the Presentation recalls the old man Simeon chanting thanks for having lived to see the Messiah. His “Nunc Dimittis“—”Let thy servant depart in peace”—is part of the Church’s evening prayers. In 542 in Constantinople, the Emperor Justinian placed it into the Eastern liturgy.
This year the feast falls on Super Bowl Sunday. Human nature instinctively finds entertainment more compelling than edification, but like all things ephemeral, games pass away while the songs of saints will endure until the end of time.
Few today remember the Isthmian games of the Greeks, or the cheers in the Roman circus. But those games also warn thinking people of the dangers in giving sports a cultic status. When the amateur is overwhelmed by professionals who are paid mind-boggling salaries, inflating the cost of tickets, and whose lives and deaths distract from the great events of the day, a culture’s perspective becomes irrational.
Add to this the “ad verecundium fallacy” by which people accept the unqualified opinions of individuals simply because of their celebrity. This applies to sports figures and Hollywood starlets who turn entertainment into political theater.
The aforementioned Justinian had to deal with this problem. He and his empress Theodora were not the only couple who have rooted for opposite teams; however, their situation was serious, since the teams represented political and religious factions. Theodora was a fan of the Greens, who were Monophysite heretics, and the emperor supported the Blues, who were orthodox Chalcedonians.
No one who collects abstruse sports statistics should object that these theological issues are too obscure. Feelings were so intense in 532 that the “Nika Riots” (Nika being the term for “victory,” now adapted for Nike sneakers, made mostly in third-world countries under disputed labor conditions) led to the deaths of 30,000 rioters and the destruction of much of the city.
Super Bowl half-time extravaganzas surpass in their vulgarity only the Field of the Cloth of Gold games in France in 1520 when Henry VIII, 29 years old and an impressive 6’1″ wrestled Francis I, 23 years old and over 6’5″. Thousands of tents were erected for the crowds, and for refreshments, there were 3,000 sheep, 800 calves, 300 oxen and fountains flowing with wine. Even the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I donated for entertainment dancing monkeys painted gold.
During the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 B.C.) the Greeks built a gymnasium at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Even some Jewish priests of the Herodian temple succumbed to the sports mania. Should any pulpit orator try to beguile his congregation on the feast of the Presentation with banter about the Super Bowl, let him be reminded: “Disdaining the temple and neglecting the sacrifices, [the priests] hastened, at the signal for the discus-throwing, to take part in the unlawful exercises on the athletic field” (2 Maccabees 4:14).
Father George W. Rutler is pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Church in the archdiocese of New York. His Sunday homilies are archived. He has authored multiple books, including Calm in Chaos: Catholic Wisdom in Anxious Times and his latest, Grace and Truth. Individuals may donate to his parish.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Church Militanthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngChurch Militant2020-02-03 10:07:502020-02-03 10:07:50FEAST YOUR EYES ON THE SPECTACLE: Super Bowl reminds us of what men find edifying
Remember, anyone who calls for immigration reform or who points out that immigration is a national security issue is a racist, bigoted “Islamophobe.”
“Alleged Al-Qaeda Leader Accused of Killing Iraqi Police Found Living in Phoenix, Arizona,” by Jeffery Martin, Newsweek, January 31, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Law enforcement officials in Phoenix, Arizona arrested a man on Thursday who was alleged to be the former leader of an Al-Qaeda terrorist group in Iraq. Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri is accused of murdering two Iraqi police officers in 2006 in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Al-Nouri allegedly participated in the killing of two officers in the Fallujah Police Directorate as part of a division of Al-Qaeda that focused on killing Iraqi police.
After an Iraqi judge issued a warrant for Al-Nouri’s arrest, the government of Iraq requested Al-Nouri’s extradition.
According to a news release from the Department of Justice, Al-Nouri’s arrest was carried out by the FBI Phoenix Field Office and the U.S. Marshals Service.
“If Ahmed’s extradition is certified by the court,” the release said, “the decision of whether to surrender him to Iraq will be made by the U.S. Secretary of State.”
Newsweek reached out to the Department of Justice for further comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Authorities arrested a man believed to have been the leader of an Al-Qaeda group in Phoenix, Arizona Friday….
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-03 09:22:102020-02-03 09:22:51ARIZONA: Al-Qaeda jihadi accused of killing Iraqi police found living in Phoenix
Last week’s national March for Life was amazing. Tens of thousands of people – if you believe the mainstream media’s downplaying of the nation’s largest annual civil rights gathering – came to Washington, D.C. to create a culture of life. In Chicago, San Francisco, and elsewhere, pro-life advocates showed their support for the unborn killed by abortion and the families ruined by this ultimate sin.
We wrote last week about the pernicious racism associated with abortion. This alone should scare corporations from sending tens of millions of dollars to support it. However, there are many other reasons to oppose abortion and its leading promoter, Planned Parenthood:
Abortion is sexist. It targets boys and girls in the womb but denies only women the right to have their bodies be used as God designed them. And it is Planned Parenthood which apparently thinks that white women only oppose abortion because men force them to.
Abortion, sometimes, takes place to hide sexual assault. On a practical level, this means Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups put money ahead of protecting women from predators. It also gives predators a “get out of jail free” card by preventing them from being responsible for the children they created.
Planned Parenthood breaks the law. In addition to not reporting sexual assault, the group was busted for committing illegal abortions to make illegal profits off of baby body parts.
Every day, corporations enable Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. They use your money to hurt women and children. They deny millions of people their rights to life and liberty.
Last week, you marched and walked for life. Thank you. Now let’s take our 2ndVote passion into the next level of action and demand that Bank of America, United Way chapters, and other Planned Parenthood enablers put their money where your mouth is – into acting as politically neutral organizations providing products and services, not leftist partisans.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png002ndvote .comhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png2ndvote .com2020-02-02 07:19:582020-02-03 08:07:47Abortion: The Ultimate Sin Against Humanity
DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) – President Donald Trump is promising to stop the deportation of Michigan’s Iraqi Catholics, who face persecution abroad.
Trump announced his decision on Thursday at the Dana factory in Warren, Michigan during his visit promoting the trade deal he signed with Canada and Mexico a day earlier. The president told Dana personnel he’d made up his mind to help Michigan’s Iraqi Christians, virtually all of whom are Catholic, earlier that day while en route to Michigan for his fifth visit as president.
“We have some Chaldeans that are working here,” said Trump. “And we talked about it long and hard on the flight in, and we’re going to make sure that we do everything we can to keep people who have been good to this country out of harm’s way.”
“When I get back [to Washington] we’re going to give those who need it an extension to stay in our country,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Trump discussed with lawmakers efforts that had been underway to deport hundreds of Michigan Iraqi Christians. Yet Trump asked that they focus on creating an exception for those who are hard-working, have no criminal record and face persecution in their homeland should they be forced to return.
In 2017, the president authorized the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to resume deporting from Michigan Iraqis with criminal records. Obama stopped deporting Iraqi immigrants with criminal records in 2010. But Trump recently learned that many law-abiding Iraqi Christians, who face persecution if deported, were also being sent back to their home country.
While traveling with the president, two Michigan lawmakers made the case for these Iraqis. Republican Rep. John Moolenaar and Democratic Rep. Andy Levin proposed a bipartisan bill that would pause deportation for Iraqi nationals for two years.
Levin blamed Trump for causing the deportation problem in Michigan.
“It should be noted that Iraqi nationals face these precarious circumstances only because President Trump broke with past administrations and started aggressively deporting Iraqis,” he claimed.
Levin, however, wants Trump to extend his assistance to all Iraqi nationals.
“The president’s words inspire me with cautious optimism, but let me be extremely clear — relief must be extended to all Iraqi nationals who would face danger if they are deported against their will,” he said.
Trump said on the plane ride earlier that day, Michigan lawmakers laid out a persuasive case for these law-abiding Iraqis.
“I said to them, ‘I know you have a wonderful Iraqi Christian community in Michigan,'” he said. “And the congressmen were telling me on the plane how rough it’s been for them. It’s been a very tough time for a lot of Christians all over the world.”
Trump didn’t lay out any specific plans yet but did promise to start working on the issue when he returned to Washington. He did speak, however, of expanding their ability to legally stay in the country.
Rep. Andy Levin
“And so we’re going to be extending them,” he said. “And a lot of people in Michigan have been asking for that. So we’ll work with that when we get back with your great congressmen.”
Trump said his overhaul of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed the previous day, will add many new jobs for workers in Michigan. The new deal will allow Iraqi nationals looking for work to remain in the state, as it’s projected to create 76,000 new jobs in the U.S. automotive sector alone.
“Over the next five years, USMCA is projected to increase purchases of American auto parts by $23 billion a year, and automotive investment by at least $34 billion,” Trump told Dana workers. “And it’s the very first trade agreement in decades endorsed by American labor.”
The president said the creation of new jobs was a result of ending NAFTA.
“We just ended a nightmare known as NAFTA,” stated Trump. “They took our jobs for a long time. It’s a whole different ballgame, and it’s going to be great for this plant.”
Many Iraqis in the Detroit area look forward to being able to stay in the area, owing to the president’s promised immigration protection and his creation of local jobs.
Raised in the great outdoors of Montana, Brad’s at home with horses, camping and farm life.
While putting a Petroleum Engineering degree to work in Alaska’s oil field, he studied Engineering Management and enjoyed Alaska’s rugged outdoors. Catholic from birth, Brad began devoting more time to reading the Bible, prayer and volunteering at Covenant House Alaska, an organization that cares for runaway kids.
At 26, Brad left his occupation to follow a religious vocation with a start-up Franciscan third order community in Connecticut. After completing his seminary studies, Brad taught high school math, science and religion in addition to helping run Catholic summer camps.
After 22 years the religious community ended, so Brad began working as a writer and associate producer for ChurchMilitant.com. Three years later he married a devout Catholic, and God has blessed the couple with a son.
WARNING: As our friend Paul put it, “(this) Might be the most offensive 1.29 minutes on film.
This was translated for us by Janya, a translator of most Indian dialects into English. If you are sensitive about how you wish to hear Jesus and Mary described, I would give this a miss. But seeing as how muslims like to riot and burn things when someone says something true about Islam or Mohammad in an unflattering way, there doesn’t seem to be a point in hiding this.
We don’t know anything else about this clip yet. But hopefully we can find out how this guy is and what his cannon is like.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2020-02-02 05:48:152020-02-02 05:49:42VIDEO: What appears to be a religious Muslim describes Jesus and Mary in highly offensive terms
It is astounding that seventeen years after 9/11 that it would be newsworthy that the FBI called a jihad attack “jihad,” but the denial and willful ignorance have been pandemic, and made into official U.S. policy during the Obama administration. This is a small step back to sanity for the still largely clueless and corrupt FBI. Much more is needed.
“FBI continues investigation into deadly NAS Pensacola shooting, calls motive ‘jihad,’” by Michael Warrick, WALA, January 30, 2020:
PENSACOLA, Fla. (WALA) – Nearly two months after a Saudi national killed three young sailors aboard NAS Pensacola, the FBI says its investigation is “ongoing,” stopping short of disclosing what the shooter was doing in the hours leading up to the tragedy.
The FBI and base commander spoke to reporters Thursday, but declined to answer how Mohammed Alshamrani, got a gun onto the base prior to the shooting. The FBI is working with Apple to look at two phones that were in Alshamrani’s possession.
“We have no evidence that there were any co-conspirators,” FBI Special Agent in Charge, Rachel Rojas said. “However we are still seeking the cooperation of Apple so we can look through the two I-Phones.”…
“The Deal of the Century” turned out to be remarkably generous to the “Palestinians,” giving them far more than they had any right to expect. It promises them a state – the state of Palestine. It doubles the size of the territory under Palestinian control. The Palestinians will under the plan possess nearly 80% of the West Bank. They will also have their capital in East Jerusalem. The plan includes Palestinian use and management of facilities in Haifa and Ashdod ports, Palestinian development of a resort area in the north shore of the Dead Sea, and continued Palestinian agricultural activity in the Jordan Valley. Ultimately, the plan envisions “modern and efficient transportation links” through the future Palestinian state, including Gaza. The West Bank and Gaza will be linked through a tunnel.
Under the Trump plan, the Palestinians will be obligated to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad, must stop their Pay-For-Slay plan, must stop inciting terrorism, must end the rampant corruption in the PA, must respect human rights, and must guarantee a free press and religious freedom. We shall see if the PA is able to meet these conditions precedent to achieving a state. The PA’s record to date is not encouraging.
The plan also requires Israel to observe a four-year moratorium on any new settlements in the West Bank while negotiations with the Palestinians are going on, but says nothing about whether the moratorium would continue if, after four years, negotiations are still continuing. It makes provision for $50 billion in aid to be given to the Palestinians, as had previously been announced at the “Peace Through Prosperity” workshop in Manama last June. That is a huge sum, but who would pay it? One hopes that it will not be the Western Infidels paying for the Palestinians. The $50 billion ought by rights to come from fellow Muslim Arabs, those who live in the oil-rich states of the Gulf – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar.
The most important concession of all, according to Trump’s peace initiative, would be the recognition of a new state, the State of Palestine. This State of Palestine would have to agree to be disarmed, but how that disarmament would be enforced, and exactly what arms it would include, remains unclear.
Israel also gets certain concessions. Existing Israeli settlements (that is, towns and cities) in the West Bank would be recognized as sovereign Israeli territory. The Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinian refugees, or “refugees” (the quotation marks indicate that these are the descendants of refugees, not true refugees themselves) would be integrated into the countries where they now live. There would be no right of return.
Netanyahu and Gantz have both declared themselves pleased with Trump’s peace plan. But can they truly be pleased with the recognition of a State of Palestine, with its capital in East Jerusalem? Perhaps they are pleased because the plan is better than any of the previous plans presented by Trump’s predecessors, and because they know that Abbas will never accept it, so they needn’t worry. They can afford to be pleased. There is no other state in the world that has been successfully disarmed. How likely is it that a State of Palestine, full of Jihadis, could be permanently disarmed, and not become a source of terrorism against Israelis, whether living in the West Bank or elsewhere in Israel?
The plan is generally good, but I confess that I expected even better. I did not think this administration would recognize a State of Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem. I envisioned instead an arrangement whereby the local Arabs (to be carefully referred to as “Palestinian Arabs”) in the West Bank would be given as much autonomy as was consonant with Israeli security, but not a state. The safer the Israelis, the greater the degree of local autonomy. I see that I was wrong.
However, there is one thing about this plan that makes it most welcome. And that is the assurance that neither Mahmoud Abbas, nor any of his successors in the Palestinian Authority, nor anyone in Hamas, will be willing to negotiate over this plan in good faith. The Palestinians rejected Trump’s plan before they knew what was in it; they reject it again now that they know what is in it. Much of the world will be able to see that even when the Palestinians are offered a state of their own, even when they are promised that that state’s capital will be in East Jerusalem, even when they are further promised $50 billion in aid, far more than any of the more than 100 developing countries have ever received In aid, that is not enough to satisfy them. They are the spoiled brats of the international community.
Other Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Oman, will urge the Palestinians to take the deal — “You get a state, you have your capital in Jerusalem, the Israelis have to stop building settlements, you’ll have 80% of the West Bank” – “or else.” “Or else” would mean only this: “We are tired of your whining, tired of the whole Palestinian problem; tired of your refusal to accept $50 billion in aid. We have so many bigger problems to think about, starting but not ending with Iran. Get with the program. Or count us out.” The refusal of the Palestinians to take the deal will only widen the gap between them and the other Arabs.
In agreeing to the Trump plan, Israel will have committed itself to not building new settlements in the West Bank for four years, while negotiations are going on. It’s a big concession. But if there are no negotiations, because the Palestinians continue to refuse enter into them, then the Trump administration has made clear that Israel is no longer required to refrain from settlement building. The Trump administration has noted that, in that case, it will support Israel should it decide to unilaterally incorporate other areas of the West Bank, beyond what it will already have annexed. And the offer of a State of Palestine will not be revived. And very few, at that point, will care.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-01 06:16:432020-02-01 06:26:46First Thoughts On the Trump Plan and How Mahmoud Abbas Will Save the Day by Hugh Fitzgerald
“PMW exclusive: PA gave 517.4 million shekels to terrorists as salaries in 2019,” by Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch, January 30, 2020:
According to recently published Palestinian Authority financial reports, Palestinian Media Watch can expose that the PA has admitted to spending no less than 517.4 million shekels ($149.7 million/€136 million) paying salaries to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners in 2019.
The PA expenditure on allowances to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists was at least 151.6 million shekels in 2019. Accordingly, the total minimum PA expenditure in 2019 on its payments to terrorists and families of dead terrorists – its Pay-for-Slay policy- was 669 million shekels ($193.6 million/€175.8 million).
In accordance with the Israeli law, Defense Minister Naftali Bennet should present the National Security Cabinet with a report showing that the PA expenditure on its Pay-for-Slay policy was no less than 669 million shekels.
Israeli law demands that this figure be deducted from the monthly tax transfers Israel makes to the PA.
Background
Since created in 1994, the PA has implemented a “Pay-for-Slay” policy according to which it pays millions of shekels/dollars/euro every year in monthly salaries to reward Palestinian terrorist prisoners and released prisoners and monthly allowances to reward wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists (so-called “Martyrs”).
The PA codified the policy in the Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners in 2004. Since then, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has twice approved substantial hikes in the monthly salaries paid by the PA to the terrorists (2006, 2010).
According to sworn testimony given by a senior official on behalf of the PA, the PA payments to the wounded terrorists and families of dead terrorists are not codified in PA law, but rather only stipulated in undisclosed internal documents.
While the PA policy has been widely condemned, with four countries (Canada, the US, Australia, and Holland) cutting off all direct aid to the PA until the policy is abolished, and while the PA continues to request (and receive) considerable amounts of foreign aid, the PA itself carries on squandering hundreds of millions of shekels/dollars/euro on terrorist salaries every year, incentivizing and rewarding Palestinian terrorists.
In 2018, Israel passed a law to combat the PA policy. According to the law, at the end of each year, the Israeli Minister of Defense must submit a report to the National Security Cabinet detailing the PA expenditure on terrorist salaries and allowances in the passing year. Once the Cabinet approves the report, the PA expenditure in the passing year is deducted in twelve equal parts from the taxes that Israel collects and transfers to the PA in the coming year.
The new Israeli law was first implemented in February 2019, after PMW exposed that the PA had admitted to spending no less than 502 million shekels to pay the monthly salaries to the terrorist prisoners and released prisoners in 2018.
In response to the Israeli decision, Abbas positively decided to plunge the PA into a self-inflicted financial crisis by refusing to accept all the tax revenues from Israel, if Israel deducted any sum. Since the tax revenues account for almost half of the PA budget, rejecting their receipt had a substantial impact on the PA economy.
After 7 months, the PA finally capitulated and agreed to receive the taxes that remained after the deduction.
Following an additional PMW report on the subject of the PA payments to the wounded and the families of the dead terrorists, in late December 2019 the Israeli National Security Cabinet decided to deduct an additional sum of 150 million shekels. Since the number of wounded Palestinian terrorists and the number of Palestinian terrorists killed grew in 2019, it is reasonable to assume that the PA expenditure for these terrorists grew.
According to statistics published by the PA and Israeli NGO B’tselem, no fewer than 110 Palestinian terrorists were killed in 2019. Taking into account the different PA payments, the additional expense incurred by the PA was no less than 1.6 million shekels.
During the presentation of his new Middle East peace plan, – the deal of the century – US President Donald Trump stressed the need for the PA to abolish its policy of rewarding terrorists and murderers:
“To ensure a successful Palestinian state, we are asking the Palestinians to meet the challenges of peaceful co-existence. This includes adopting basic laws enshrining human rights; protecting against financial and political corruption; stopping the malign activities of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other enemies of peace; ending the incitement of hatred against Israel — so important; and permanently halting the financial compensation to terrorists.”
[www.whitehouse.gov, Jan. 28, 2020]
Whether the PA will suddenly listen to US President Trump – for whom the PA has only shown contempt – only time will tell, but until then, Israel – if it wants to abide by its own laws – should deduct no less than 669 million shekels ($193.6 million/€175.8 million) from its tax transfers to the PA in 2020.
In the meantime, while most of the world agrees that the PA practice of paying financial rewards to terrorists is despicable, the PA continues to waste ever-growing amounts of fungible donor aid to fund this policy. To help put an end to the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” policy, the EU and more countries should make their aid conditional on the permanent abolishment of the policy.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-01 06:05:552020-02-01 06:08:33Palestinian Authority paid $150,000,000 to jihad terrorists as salaries in 2019
