In early April, an offshoot of the Just Stop Oil eco-activist group calling themselves Youth Demand descended upon the London HQ of the UK Labour Party and sprayed it all over with red paint. Its occupants had “blood on their hands”, they said. Apparently, the Labour Party, who are highly likely to form the next British Government come the General Election due later this year, were “threatening to continue [committing] genocide” once they were in office.
I didn’t realise they were committing it already.
What on earth was the Labour Party doing? For one thing, said Youth Demand, by failing to demand an immediate end to fossil fuel drilling across the nation, Labour was allegedly helping “kill hundreds of millions” thanks to climate change. But, equally, by failing to promise to call time on UK arms sales to Israel, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet was likewise facilitating the “mass murder” of innocent civilians (and equally innocent Hamas terrorists, no doubt) over in Gaza.
This conflation of environmentalism with the Israel-Gaza war does seem a rather strange campaigning tactic as the two issues have precisely nothing to do with one another. To link the two in only raises the danger of putting off people from supporting one of your causes by virtue of them not supporting the other one. It’s like a march upon Whitehall to demand the Government not only legalise cannabis immediately, and at the same time bring back hanging.
Some people may support Net Zero but also support Israel. Some people may support Hamas, but regard global warming as a hoax (I think in particular of Piers Corbyn, the crankish brother of former Far-Left Labour Party leader Jeremy). To risk splitting public support like this makes little political sense. Why not separate the two issues of Gaza and climate, as they should be?
How green is my Jordan Valley?
Ever since Hamas’ pogrom against Israel last October 7, Greens across the West have been having a similar heated debate. The movement’s current chief global figurehead, Greta Thunberg, everyone’s favourite Swedish apocalypse goblin, has been much criticised for engaging in needless stunts conflating environmentalism and Zionism.
The controversy has been particularly strong in Germany, where Green leaders from Greta’s own movement, the Fridays for Future school-strike organisation, felt compelled to put out a statement distancing themselves from her views, and reiterating their support for Israel’s right to exist. For obvious historical reasons, the accusation of anti-Semitism is one most mainstream figures in Germany are careful to avoid …
The November 18th edition of Germany’s leading news weekly, Der Spiegel, ran a lengthy article criticising Thunberg’s apparent Hamas-wards turn, accusing her of creating a “potential schism” within the Green movement. This investigation featured interviews with other young climate activists who had suddenly begun talking much more about saving the Gazans than saving the whales.
One 22-year-old Finnish activist featured, Ida Korhonen, openly admitted she had only really heard of the Israel-Palestine conflict a few weeks beforehand, boasting she got all of her information about the issue “from social networks, from Amnesty [International] and from Palestinian journalists on the scene.” What had such completely unbiased sources allowed Ida to discover? That Green activists “shouldn’t be talking about ourselves [i.e., our main actual cause of environmentalism] anymore, but only about Palestine … War against people is also always war against nature … There can be no [climate] justice without an end to the genocide against the Palestinians.”
What a Greta big fool
Greta Thunberg evidently agreed. In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel, she too had become an instant expert on the whole issue, posting tweets standing alongside fellow juvenile activists holding signs saying performatively progressive things like ‘STAND WITH GAZA’, ‘FREE PALESTINE’ and ‘CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!’ (as well as posing with a supposedly ‘anti-Semitic octopus’ cuddly toy, but that’s another story).
As a result of such provocation, the Israeli Education Ministry dropped all mention of the fallen child saint from their national curriculum for schools: I would question why she had ever been on it in the first place.
Yet, as so often, still Greta refused to shut up. In December, together with three other equally insufferable-sounding Swedish Fridays for Future activists, she penned an op-ed in the UK’s leading left-wing newspaper The Guardian, entitled ‘We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights’.
Here, she took her critics to task for saying that, by talking about this new and separate issue, she was only damaging their wider original cause, cautioning that “Silence is complicity. You cannot be neutral in an unfolding genocide.”
Greta’s rationale here ran as follows:
“Despite these horrors [the alleged ‘genocide’ being perpetrated by Israel in the region], some have chosen to focus the public debate on attempts to delegitimise statements about Gaza made by young people in the climate justice movement. Contrary to what many have claimed, Fridays for Future has not ‘been radicalised’ or ‘become political’. We have always been political, because we have always been a movement for justice. Standing in solidarity with Palestinians and all affected civilians has never been in question for us. Advocating for climate justice fundamentally comes from a place of caring about people and their human rights. That means speaking up when people suffer, are forced to flee their homes or are killed – regardless of the cause.”
As if to ram home just how woke she now was, Thunberg ended her piece by ritually citing her pronouns (“she/her”, in case you were wondering – hardly surprising, as she is a female).
Clueless in Gaza
Had Greta gone fully intersectional? Evidently so, and the whole fact was clearly rubbing some people up the wrong way.
In November, after Thunberg had invited a kaffiyeh-wearing Palestinian woman onto the stage at a climate-rally she was holding in Amsterdam, she was interrupted by a male audience member who snatched her microphone and informed her, quite reasonably, that “I’ve come here for a climate demonstration, not a political view” about a wholly irrelevant issue in the Middle East. Greta took little notice, however, seizing the microphone back before leading the crowd in a chant of the rather bizarre-sounding slogan “No climate justice on occupied land!”
What do such slogans even mean? How on earth can you have “No climate justice” for humanity so long as Israel continues to rule the roost in the Holy Land? What has global warming – or indeed the ever-pressing issue of one’s sacred pronouns – got to do with a never-ending round of ethno-religious warfare in Gaza?
Nothing, really. Nothing at all.
But that didn’t stop Greta & Co trying to lump it all in together by making an extremely spurious argument to the effect that, by daring to defend themselves against Hamas’ original attack by bombing the terrorists right back, the Israelis were massively adding to the supposedly planet-killing problem of global warming by virtue of selfishly using rockets and missiles which emitted large amounts of CO₂ from their exhausts (as if there are any other kind; did the Greens really expect the Israelis to throw their ordnance by hand, or else hurl them all from slings, David vs Goliath-style?).
But the poor quality of the logic hardly matters, as the rationale underlying such overblown conflations of climate and anti-Zionism, of pronouns and warfare, is that of so-called ‘intersectionality’, the idea that, by adding up all the causes of the world’s supposed ‘oppressed’ people together, they will gain trade union-style strength in numbers, and become unbeatable (see my deeply sceptical explanatory article on the subject here).
So, supposedly, black people, homosexuals, feminists, the disabled and the mentally ill are all natural allies. Even people you may not have previously expected to be on the same side, like, say, Islamic terrorists and transgenderists, are supposedly united as natural allies against cisgender Western imperialism, along the basic logic that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’.
Such thinking seems deeply misguided to me. All too often, ‘intersectionality’ is just a ridiculous and self-defeating process which will only end up alienating as many potential supporters from a cause they might otherwise support, as it will attracting any new ones to it. I’m sure we’ve all seen cases of ostensibly worthwhile charities, like Save the Children, whose campaigns we may until recently have been sympathetic towards, who have suddenly gone right to the bottom of our future donation lists because they suddenly became less concerned with actually Saving the Children, and more bothered about chemically castrating them along rainbow activist lines instead, or lecturing us all on the ins-and-outs of utter irrelevancies like Critical Race Theory.
In an open letter to Greta Thunberg, some irritated Israeli climate activists expressed similar sentiments:
“Due to her position, when Greta addresses a different topic superficially and dismissively, it inevitably weakens the validity of her climate-related positions. People from all walks of life might think that the shallowness she displayed on the other issue could cast doubt on the seriousness and depth of her climate activism. Those with vested interests could exploit this to portray climate activists as unserious and lacking depth. Therefore, even without addressing the ethical and moral implications she ignored, Greta is no longer a role model for us in the climate change context.”
Whilst I personally might be rather glad to see the whole overexaggerated climate-cult undermined in this wholly needless way, can today’s intersectional Greens really not see that, by promoting the causes of Hamas and Palestine, they might alienate many of their natural supporters likewise? If you were a Jew living in a Western city like London or New York today, scarred as they are by weekly anti-Semitic pro-Hamas hate-marches, what would you feel more threatened by? Islamism, or a hypothetical two degree raise in the Earth’s overall global temperature by 2100? Any pious young eco-intersectionalist who suddenly came along outside a synagogue rattling her tin to save the Palestinians rather than the pandas would surely be immediately told where they could shove their donation-box.
Why can’t intersectional idiots like Greta Thunberg just let their own main ideas and causes stand or fall on their own individual merit? Perhaps it is because, all too often, they don’t actually have very much genuine individual merit to speak of?
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AUTHOR
Steven Tucker is a UK-based writer whose work has appeared in print and online worldwide. The author of over ten books, mostly about fringe beliefs and eccentrics, his latest title, “Hitler’s and Stalin’s Misuse of Science” exposes how the insane and murderous abuses of science perpetrated by the Nazis and the Soviets are being repeated anew today by the woke left who have now captured so many of our institutions of learning.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
VIDEO: A review of ‘Dissent, The Highest Form of Patriotism’ written by Dr. Rich Swier
/in Elections, Hot Topics, Immigration, Must Read, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Video, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Editorial StaffTo read Dissent: The Highest Form of Patriotism is to know everything about its author, Dr. Rich Swier, a former combat veteran, TV and radio host, publisher of the popular political website DrRichSwier.com, and a proud, rock-ribbed conservative.
Clearly inspired by the avalanche of what he considers the anti-American, anti-Constitution, and also radical and racist policies of the Democrat’s leftist/liberal/progressive assault on our country—not starting but flourishing during the Obama years and now continuing at warp speed in the Biden years—Dr. Swier spells out, in 46 scrupulously documented chapters, not only the great destruction that has been wrought but what We the People can do about it.
This reader-friendly book gives every patriot the intellectual ammunition needed to expose the lies and myths that the Left and their enablers in the corrupt media have foisted on a largely stunned American populace…and just in time for the electorate to be as informed as possible for the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
Truly an urgent must-read!
Review by Joan Swirsky, author and journalist
ABOUT DR. RICH SWIER, Ed.D., LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)
Richard is a 23-year Army veteran who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1990. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his years of service. Additionally, he was awarded two Bronze Stars with “V” for Heroism in ground combat operations, the Presidential Unit Citation, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm while serving with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam.
Richard is the Publisher of DrRichSwier.com, an online e-Magazine dedicated to contesting the uncontested absurdities. He is the host of Dissent Television Channel on Rumble.
Richard is a “conservative with a conscience.” He believes that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is not virtue.”
Dr. Swier received his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Southern California.
Dr. Rich is a “conservative with a conscience.” He believes that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” His idol is former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was a true conservative who wrote this in his book “The Conscience of a Conservative“:
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”
Dr. Rich is inspired by the words of African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman Frederick Douglass, “I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
Dr. Rich is dedicated to contesting the uncontested absurdities.
©2024. Editorial Staff. All rights reserved.
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The Washington ‘Blob’ Seems Ready To Wreck The Republic To Save Themselves
/in Commentary, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics/by Royal A. Brown IIIA damn insightful, well written article follows — highly recommend reading.
The followers of the globalist, Marxist, godless left are definitely headed towards enslaving themselves and they’re too stupid to realize it.
The Washington ‘Blob’ Seems “Ready To Wreck The Republic To Save Themselves” | ZeroHedge
BY TYLER DURDEN
MONDAY, MAY 06, 2024 – 04:20 PM
Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com
Prisoners of Themselves
“Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the ‘deep state’, what is?” — Jeffrey Tucker
You realize, don’t you, that the gross misconduct of government officials from RussiaGate on down to the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan has amounted to one continuous operation against the American people?
If it were ever honestly adjudicated, many hundreds of them might go to prison, or worse.
Each successive seditious and treasonous action they attempt against their arch-nemesis, Mr. Trump, only compounds their criminal liability — the Steele Dossier, CIA agent Eric Ciaramella’s 2019 impeachment prank, the Covid-19 caper, the George Floyd-BLM hustle, the 2020 election hijinks, the J-6 op and the House J-6 Committee conjured up to spin it, the present battery of farcical court cases — and yet the Golden Golem of Greatness not only remains defiantly at large, but seems to amass ever more electoral mojo.
The epic failure of these mighty efforts, and the humiliation entailed, has lately driven this vast bureaucratic cabal – collectively styled as “the blob” – to a stage of abject desperation that looks a lot like insanity.
They fear for their lives, their fortunes, their chattels, and their families, and they seem ready to wreck the republic to save themselves. They have so far pretty much wrecked American justice with their lawfare tactics — a degenerate campaign to use the vested authority of prosecutors and judges to twist and cheat the law at the cost of the law’s legitimacy. Merrick Garland, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Marc Elias, Christopher Wray, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg have made law the enemy of the people.
All this becomes more obvious each day, for instance events of the past week in Judge Aileen Cannon’s federal courtroom in Florida where the Mar-a-Lago documents case proceeds. Turns out that Special Counsel Jack Smith has deliberately messed with the evidence, which is patently felonious. Also, turns out that sometime between the “Joe Biden” inauguration and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in August, 2022, boxes of presidential documents stored by the US General Services Administration were “delivered” to Mr. Trump’s mansion without any proper accounting for what might have been in them. A set-up you suppose? Why not? After everything else the FBI and the DOJ have attempted since 2015?
Christopher Wray in particular might have wanted some surefire probable cause to get his agents into Mar-a-Lago where, rumor has it, Mr. Trump kept his own dossier of evidence against the FBI and DOJ officials who concocted the “Crossfire Hurricane” chapter of RussiaGate. Even if you assume that Mr. Trump had multiple copies of the thing, FBI Director Wray — in position since 2017 throughout most of RussiaGate — surely wanted to see what Mr. Trump was holding if it would become necessary for current and former FBI / DOJ officials to defend themselves in court against very serious charges.
You see the desperation, don’t you? And how stupendously amateurish these machinations have been? Planting evidence and then fiddling around with it? I’m waiting for the moment when Judge Cannon summons Jack Smith and announces to his face that she is tossing the case for prosecutorial misconduct. Will she add a criminal referral to that? How will that affect the other case (attempting to overturn the 2020 election) brought against Mr. Trump in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s DC federal district court? Who will prosecute it if Jack Smith can no longer function as Special Counsel? And since the case was contrived in his name — even if Eisen, McCord, Weissmann, and others are really the authors — does that case blow up, too?
Letitia James’s real estate case under Judge Arthur Engoron was so idiotic it can’t possibly survive an ultimate appeal, and the Alvin Bragg confection under Judge Merchan is playing out like something that usually only happens in places like Honduras or Liberia. Yet the American Left, the “progressive” Democratic Party, is staking everything on it. It’s all they have left Lawfare-wise, at least for now.
Which brings us to the question:
Why do the non-governmental elites of this land, the managerial and thinking classes, the college presidents, the cable news producers, the corporate execs, the movie directors, the whole arts establishment. . . why do they feel compelled, for nearly a decade now, to hitch their identity and their self-respect to this fantastic train of Kafka-esque corruption, tyranny, and abuse? How did they get owned by the blob?
We may never find out, and they may never know either, even after they snap out of the mass formation they’ve been in thrall to. But they have made themselves ridiculous — figures like Sam Harris, Stephen Colbert, and Rob Reiner — yelling about “saving our democracy” while the blob they worship systematically disassembles the US Constitution, and makes American law a global laughingstock.
Most of my old ex-friends are riding the same ideological bus. You have to wonder: how did the likes of “Joe Biden,” Merrick Garland, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Christopher Wray, Fani Willis, Anthony Fauci, Klaus Schwab, and Bill Gates become their heroes?
Did the Covid vaccines destroy their minds? Are they really avid for central bank digital money and surveillance of their every move? Do they want to be told how to live by the WHO?
Things are going south fast now in our country. If these people ever cherished the idea of being free to think their own thoughts and live their own lives, it’s getting late in the game. They will end up prisoners of themselves.
AUTHOR
James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler says he wrote The Geography of Nowhere, “Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work.”
Home From Nowhere was a continuation of that discussion with an emphasis on the remedies. A portion of it appeared as the cover story in the September 1996 Atlantic Monthly.
His next book in the series, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, published by Simon & Schuster / Free Press, is a look a wide-ranging look at cities here and abroad, an inquiry into what makes them great (or miserable), and in particular what America is going to do with it’s mutilated cities.
This was followed by The Long Emergency, published by the Atlantic Monthly Press in 2005, is about the challenges posed by the coming permanent global oil crisis, climate change, and other “converging catastrophes of the 21st Century.” This was followed in 2012 by Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation which detailed the misplaced expectations that technological rescue remedies would fix the problems detailed in The Long Emergency.
His 2008 novel, World Made By Hand, was a fictional depiction of the post-oil American future. It eventually became a four part series that included The Witch of Hebron, A History of the Future, and (forthcoming in June 2016), The Harrows of Spring.
Mr. Kunstler is also the author of eight other novels including The Halloween Ball, An Embarrassment of Richesand Maggie Darling, a Modern Romance. He has been a regular contributor to the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Op-Ed page, where he has written on environmental and economic issues.
Mr. Kunstler was born in New York City in 1948. He moved to the Long Island suburbs in 1954 and returned to the city in 1957 where he spent most of his childhood. He graduated from the State University of New York, Brockport campus, worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer forRolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis. He has no formal training in architecture or the related design fields.
He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, RPI, the University of Virginia and many other colleges, and he has appeared before many professional organizations such as the AIA , the APA., and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
He lives in Washington County, upstate New York.
Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack
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Trump NY Prosecutor was Paid $12,000 by Democratic National Committee for ‘Political Consulting’
/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Election Fraud, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Geller ReportRight.
And how much did the Judge’s daughter make working for the Democratic campaigns President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?
Trump prosecutor Matthew Colangelo not only took payoffs form the DNC but his wife, Anne Small, sits on the board of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund with Jonathan Soros. They filed an amicus brief with SCOTUS asking Trump be disqualified from running for office.
This is beyond corruption. This is America gone.
Even the communists in China and the old Soviet Union hid it better than these evil clowns.
Revealed: Trump hush money prosecutor was paid $12,000 by Democratic National Committee for ‘political consulting’
AUTHOR
Pamela Geller
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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
A Palestinian Visits Auschwitz, Tells Jews ‘You Belong Here’
/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad WatchThe first Palestinian to have visited a Nazi concentration camp was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the 1920s to the 1940s, who spent the war years in Berlin. He had a nice chat with Hitler on November 28, 1941, captured in a famous photograph here. Al-Husseini expressed to Hitler his enthusiasm for the Final Solution. He was befriended by Heinrich Himmler, and there is some evidence, not conclusive, that the Mufti may have been taken to Auschwitz by Himmler, or possibly by another person he had befriended, Adolf Eichmann, to see how swimmingly things were proceeding there. It is certain that the Mufti visited the concentration camp at Tebbin, for there are numerous photographs of him at the site together with high Nazi officials, as can be seen here.
As his contribution to the Nazi war effort, Hajj Amin el Husseini is known to have raised several Waffen SS battalions consisting of Bosnian Muslims. He also broadcast pro-Nazi propaganda to the Arab world throughout the war.
In January 2020, in quite a different spirit to that exhibited by the Mufti, a group of 25 Muslim faith leaders visited Auschwitz, in what was at the time called a “groundbreaking” visit. “To be here… is both a sacred duty and a profound honor,” the Saudi head of the Muslim World League said during a tour of Nazi death camp with members of the American Jewish Committee.
Now another Palestinian has just been in the news for his visit to Auschwitz, not undertaken In the spirit of sympathy for the victims that the delegation of Muslim faith leaders exhibited but, rather, in a triumphant mode, demanding that Jews everywhere “return” to where they belong — that is, to the Nazi death camps. Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and more on this latest example of a Palestinian expressing murderous antisemitism can be found here: “Palestinian man visits Auschwitz, publicly calls on Jews to return there ‘where they belong,’” Jerusalem Post, May 2, 2024:
These were not ghettos, but death camps. And so very few survived them. But that doesn’t bother the unnamed Palestinian who filmed his visit. He only sees these as places from where “the Zionists came” to inflict pain on poor Palestinians. And he wants “the Zionists” — the Jews — ideally to return to Auschwitz where they can be dealt with appropriately, that is, put to death. But if that is not possible, then at least the Jews must leave the land they stole from the Palestinians and go back, he says “to your countries.”
Though the campus brats accuse Israel of a “genocide” in Gaza, the only “genocide” that has been attempted was that carried out by Hamas on October 7, when 3,000 Hamas operatives smashed into Israel from Gaza, in cars, on motorbikes, and on paragliders, and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children. A great many Palestinians — 82% — have expressed approval of what Hamas did on that day. Now we have a Palestinian, cheerfully videotaping himself as he tours Auschwitz, so that his fellow Palestinians, and indeed all Muslims, can see him calling for “the Zionists” — he means “the Jews” — to “all [be returned] to the concentration camps” where, Allah willing, they can be put to death.
Would any of the thousands of campus nitwits now chanting “Say No To Genocide” care to comment on this Palestinian’s heartfelt desire to send Jews back where he knows they belong — to Auschwitz?
AUTHOR
HUGH FITZGERALD
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Does the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act ‘Criminalize the Gospel’?
/in Commentary, Culture War, Education, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Social Issues/by Family Research CouncilWith the heated anti-Semitism protests booming on college campuses, lawmakers, school authorities, and even average citizens are wrestling with how to deal with the chaos, hatred, and slander of Jewish people and the Jewish state. Law enforcement has made their fair share of arrests as pro-Hamas protestors violate policies and incite violence. Many have voiced something must be done to reign in the anti-Jew hostility, and last week the House of Representatives responded by passing the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA).
The bill’s definition of “anti-Semitism” is not new, but one of the examples it includes is drawing greater scrutiny. Back in May 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a coalition of all of the largest Jewish organizations (conservative and liberal), agreed on a working definition of anti-Semitism that has since been widely adopted, including by the U.S. State Department in 2016 and by the Trump administration (by executive order) in 2019. The definition states, “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities,” and includes concrete examples (which both the Trump executive order and the current bill included).
While most of the examples have drawn little commentary, there’s one that this time around has sparked concern and controversy, even though it was included in the 2019 Trump executive order: “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.” The words within the parenthesis are drawing all of the attention.
The second phrase in the parentheses, “blood libel,” is not. Blood libel is defined as the “accusation that Jewish people used the blood of Christians in religious rituals,” and this is a form of anti-Semitism widely acknowledged. But the first part has stirred immense tension, causing many to interpret it as a hinderance to the gospel, which teaches that Jesus was hung on a cross by some hateful Jewish leaders. However, what experts want to point out, including the lead sponsor of AAA, is that this section of the legislation has been heavily misinterpreted.
On Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), the sponsor of the legislation, discussed with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins the details of AAA in order to clear the air of what the law is really saying. But before addressing the controversy, the congressman took the time to explain why the legislation matters, and the importance of getting it right.
Considering the anti-Semitism on college campuses, Lawler said, “[T]hese protests are so overwhelmingly anti-Semitic and need to be rooted out at every turn.” He emphasized how out-of-hand they have become, and how they’re “not a function of free speech,” they’re “not a function of … protesting against decisions made by the Israeli government or the United States government. That’s constitutionally protected. This is anti-Semitic hate at its worst.” As such, sharper definitions are needed to crack down.
Perkins re-emphasized how “the main thrust” of the Act “is to adopt a standardized definition of anti-Semitism, which actually takes a definition that’s already in existence.” But “there’s been some opposition raised about this,” he added, specifically when it comes to that one example. As Perkins explained, some are concerned it “would criminalize the gospel.” But according to Lawler, that’s simply not true.
“I’m a practicing Catholic,” Lawler stated. “[B]orn and raised. [I] go to church. I believe very deeply in the gospel and in Jesus Christ.” And so, when people suggest that the claim of “Jews killing Jesus” is somehow a symbol of anti-Semitism, it’s crucial to understand the context of that kind of statement. Lawler insisted, “[N]obody is saying that the Bible should be criminalized. Nobody is saying that anybody who believes in the context of the Bible is somehow wrong.” What it is saying, he continued, “is if you are trying to use something for the purpose of attacking an entire group of people and trying to associate them with some action that someone else may have taken for the purpose of discriminating against them, then that can be considered anti-Semitic.”
Ultimately, “[I]n no way is anybody objecting to or trying to target Christians with this bill. This is about putting in place protections on college campuses for Jewish students.” And, as he went on to highlight, the legislation specifically states individuals have a right to “criticize the State of Israel as you would any other government.” He insisted, “We want robust public debate. People should be free to voice their opinions, their objections to decisions made by the government. Nobody is disputing that.” What the legislation has in mind is the violent protests that have emerged. “[T]he moment those protests turned violent,” Lawler asserted, is the moment “you lose that right” to protest.
Perkins agreed that clear definitions are necessary. Currently, “it’s like silly putty. It’s stretched to accomplish whatever someone wants [it] to do.” Perkins also emphasized that the legislation addressed constitutional protections, stating, “Nothing in this act shall be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” As such, Perkins said, “[R]eligious freedom is not affected by this.”
Lawler also noted that this bill, which passed in the House Wednesday, has “broad bipartisan support.” As he said, “You saw 320 members of Congress vote for this bill. None of us would put forth something that would curtail free speech and First Amendment rights or violate someone’s constitutional freedoms. … [W]e’re trying to provide … a clear path forward on how to deal with these instances of anti-Semitism.”
In comment to The Washington Stand, Quena Gonzalez, senior director of FRC’s Government Affairs, took the time to detail why the misinterpretation of AAA is vital to rectify. While there still may be parts of the legislation some disagree with, Gonzalez carefully addressed the main controversy at hand:
AUTHOR
Sarah Holliday
Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.
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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
Democrats Thought Bragg Trial Would Sink Trump’s 2024 Campaign. Polling So Far Suggests Otherwise
/in Courts & Law, Election Fraud, Elections, Featured, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily CallerWhile Democrats may have hoped that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump would hurt his 2024 campaign, recent polling shows the proceedings have failed to seriously impact the president’s chances.
Trump will enter his fourth week of the New York trial on Monday, where he faces 34 felony counts related to allegedly falsifying business records when reimbursing a payment to pornstar Stormy Daniels in 2016. Several polls released since the start of jury selection on April 15 have found that a potential conviction won’t deter voters from supporting Trump in November. Moreover, individuals nationwide say they don’t believe the former president acted illegally or is being treated fairly in Bragg’s case.
“Millions of Americans are hopping mad at this kangaroo court, and it shows in this recent polling data,” Mark Weaver, a veteran Republican strategist, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “When dozens of partisan players – most of whom are coordinating with the Biden White House or the Biden Justice Department – use taxpayer dollars and precious court resources to try and defeat Trump long before the voters can decide, it makes people understandably angry.”
An Emerson College poll out April 30 showed that a majority of swing-state voters across Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania said that a potential conviction in the case wouldn’t deter them from backing Trump in 2024. A plurality of independent voters — a crucial voting bloc in general elections — said a conviction would have “no impact” on whether they support the former president.
A CNN/SSRS poll released on April 25 indicated that 76% of registered voters who back Trump say they’ll cast a ballot for him regardless of a conviction in Bragg’s case. The survey also showed that a majority of Americans aren’t confident that the Manhattan jury can reach a fair verdict at 56%.
An AP/NORC survey published on April 16 found that only 35% of Americans think Trump acted illegally in regard to the New York allegations. The poll also indicated that just 31% of respondents are “extremely” or “very confident” that Trump is being treated fairly by the prosecution.
Some Democrats appear optimistic about Trump’s trial potentially hurting his standing among voters ahead of November while in turn helping Biden’s.
“Trump lost the popular vote twice and has a lot of ground to make up from his 2020 loss,” Jim Messina, campaign manager for former President Barack Obama’s reelection bid, told The Hill. “It’s going to be hard to move any swing voters while there’s wall-to-wall coverage of Trump campaigning from a courtroom.”
Democratic strategist Katie Grant Drew echoed some of Messina’s sentiment, and told the outlet that the trial “will provide a stark contrast between the priorities of President Biden, who will be focused on getting work done for the American people, and Trump, who will be focused on his own personal legal travails.”
Republican National Committee spokesperson Rachel Lee slammed Democrats for “hanging their hopes on a show trial, while voters see it for what it is: a political witch hunt.”
“Meanwhile, soaring Bidenflation is hitting Americans hard and Biden still has not condemned the pro-Hamas mobs wreaking havoc on college campuses nationwide,” Lee told the DCNF in a statement. “It’s no wonder why Joe Biden is losing to Donald J. Trump in every battleground state.”
Additionally, an NPR/PBS/Marist poll conducted between April 22 and April 25 found that a majority of Americans aren’t following Trump’s New York trial at 55% compared to 45% who are.
Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist and veteran of numerous campaigns, believes that while Trump getting “convicted won’t be helpful, necessarily,” there’s “no doubt this case is the least serious.”
“A liberal prosecutor using a novel legal theory to pursue felony charges against the leader of the opposition party and keep him from campaigning? Pretty ridiculous, honestly,” Jennings told the DCNF. “Far more consequential things are happening in the world. Biden has lost control of everything. And Democrats are out here trying to convict Trump of failing to file the proper sex paperwork. Give me a break.”
The prosecution is seeking to convey that Trump’s actions related to an alleged $130,000 payment to former porn star actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair were part of a broader scheme to interfere with the 2016 election.
Trump has been restricted from being on the campaign trail for the last few weeks due the court’s proceedings, and was fined $9,000 by Judge Juan Merchan for repeatedly violating a gag order. The former president was able to hold two rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday while the court was in recess.
Trump is currently leading Biden by 1.5 points in the RealClearPolitics average — which is slightly up from his previous 0.3-point margin when the trial began. The former president is ahead anywhere from one to 5.4 points in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Kyle Kondik, nonpartisan polling analyst and managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball, cautioned that the effects of the trial on the campaign will likely remain unknown until a verdict is reached.
“There’s very little indication that the trial has made any sort of impact on the electoral horse race,” Kondik told the DCNF. “We’ll have to wait for the verdict to see if there are any implications one way or the other – and, even then, it very well may not change anything.”
The Manhattan case is likely the only one Trump will have to go to trial for ahead of November, as the other three indictments over alleged mishandling of classified documents and alleged interference in the 2020 election have been delayed in court.
John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster and CEO of McLaughlin & Associates, told the DCNF that the former president’s “dignified defiance of the Biden prosecutions is making him a sympathetic figure.”
“The Biden campaign to prosecute and convict President Trump of a phony crime is backfiring. Biden will make Trump the Nelson Mandela of America,” McLaughlin said. “Joe Biden is corrupt and desperate and it shows.”
McLaughlin pointed the DCNF toward the latest national poll released on April 17 that shows 66% of voters believe the four indictments against Trump are politically motivated, as well as 53% who say Biden is trying to prevent the former president from winning another term by putting him in jail.
“They know if Biden can persecute President Trump, he could persecute any American,” McLaughlin added.
AUTHOR
MARY LOU MASTERS
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Russia responds to ‘provocative statements and threats’ by Western officials about sending troops into Ukraine with nuclear drills and threats of its own
/in Elections, Hot Topics, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Leo HohmannRetired U.S. Army colonel: ‘They’re not bluffing’; Russian tactical nuke drills are loud warning to U.S./NATO to stay out of Ukraine
Russian troops are sitting at the doorstep of victory in Ukraine, whose forces look just weeks away from collapsing given the current situation on the ground. Ukraine is losing 500 to 800 men every day and showing signs of cracking.
But Western globalists are talking tougher than ever and threatening Russia with new forms of direct military warfare from the West. Don’t believe for a second that our Western puppet leaders will let go of their anti-Russia, anti-Putin crusade — they’re too far in, have too much invested, and there’s simply too much money to be made by their financial benefactors.
Government officials in the US, UK and France continue to ratchet up the war rhetoric against Russia by threatening the country with Western troops and the possibility of using UK-supplied long-range missiles to strike deep into the heart of Russia.
If Russia succeeds in its war with Ukraine, and it’s not a matter of if but when, U.S. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries announced on CBS News Sunday that the U.S. will intervene directly with troops. Think about what this means.
“We cannot allow Ukraine to fall, because if it does, there is a significant possibility that America will have to intervene in the conflict — not just with our money, but with our troops,” he told CBS News.
Then, like a cynical puppet of the blood-drenched military-industrial complex, Jeffries mouthed the favorite talking points of the neocon war hawks, showing he answers to the same faction of billionaire greed-mongers as the GOP leadership in Congress.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to “restore the Soviet Union” to “threaten NATO countries,” he said. This is the same baseless messaging that has been repeated over and over the last two and a half years by the likes of Mike Pence, Mitch McConnel, Nikki Haley, Senator Lindsey Graham and all of the other war hawks on the other side of the aisle. When it comes to foreign policy and being salesmen for perpetual war, there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties. They are the Uniparty.
The Russian government wasted no time responding to what it perceives as a growing threat from the US and NATO to send troops into Ukraine.
The Russian news outlet RT.com is reporting Monday a strong message from Moscow warning of dire consequences if any NATO country sends troops into Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron has been the most outspoken about the possibility of sending troops to fight Russians in Ukraine, but now Congressman Jeffries has taken it to a new level with his comments to a major establishment news outlet over the weekend.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron was also quoted by Reuters last week that Ukraine has the right to use long-range missiles sent by the UK to strike deep inside Russia.
The Russians tailored their response to the British and didn’t mince words.
Moscow said it will retaliate against British targets in Ukraine or elsewhere if Kiev uses UK-provided missiles to strike Russian territory, the Russian Foreign Ministry told London’s ambassador on Monday.
RT.com reports that Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the ministry following the remarks by Cameron to Reuters.
”Casey was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.
As noted by RT, the US and its allies had previously qualified their deliveries of long-range weapons to Kiev by saying they could only be used on territories that Ukraine claims as its own – Crimea, the Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Cameron’s statements to the contrary “de facto recognized his country as a party to the conflict.”
Russia sees Cameron’s comments as “evidence of a serious escalation and confirmation of London’s increasing involvement in military operations on the side of Kiev,” the ministry added.
Casey was urged to “think about the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps from London and to immediately refute in the most decisive and unequivocal manner the bellicose provocative statements of the head of the Foreign Office.”
Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry announced an exercise to test the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. President Vladimir Putin ordered the drills after “provocative statements and threats” by Western officials, the military said.
Putin said that if troops get sent in from any Western country, that country will be essentially vaporized within seconds.
Here is Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Earl Rasmussen warning that Putin should not be seen as bluffing.
According to the article by RT, Moscow hopes the nuclear drills will “cool down the ‘hot heads’ in Western capitals and help them understand the possible catastrophic consequences of the strategic risks they generate,” as well as “keep them from both assisting the Kiev regime in its terrorist actions and being drawn into a direct armed confrontation with Russia,” the Foreign Ministry said in a follow-up statement.
It looks more and more like World War III will get ramped up into direct warfare between the US and Russian superpowers, perhaps sooner than any of us thought. It could even happen before the November US presidential elections.
Pray for peace. Prepare for war. It’s very likely coming to U.S. soil. Godspeed.
©2024. Leo Hohmann. All rights reserved.
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The United States Constitution for Kids: A Guide for Young Explorers and their Moms & Dads
/in Commentary, Education, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics/by Amil ImaniUnlocking America’s Greatest Treasure: A Fun Family Adventure with the U.S. Constitution! @everyone
Is your child curious about the USA? Do they ever ask questions about how our country works or why things are done a certain way? The U.S. Constitution is the key to unlocking the answers, but it can seem complicated and overwhelming.
“The United States Constitution for Kids: A Guide for Young Explorers and their Moms & Dads” is the answer you’ve been waiting for! This exciting and educational book transforms America’s most important document into a thrilling adventure for young readers and their parents.
Imagine a journey where:
“The United States Constitution for Kids” is more than just a book; it’s a passport to understanding America. Embark on this incredible journey together! Order your copy today and unlock the secrets of America’s greatest treasure!
Click here to order your copy of The United States Constitution for Kids: A Guide for Young Explorers and their Moms & Dads.
©2024. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.
What has Global Warming got to do with the War against Hamas?
/in Culture War, Elections, Energy, Environment, Featured, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by MercatorNet - Navigating Modern ComplexitiesIn early April, an offshoot of the Just Stop Oil eco-activist group calling themselves Youth Demand descended upon the London HQ of the UK Labour Party and sprayed it all over with red paint. Its occupants had “blood on their hands”, they said. Apparently, the Labour Party, who are highly likely to form the next British Government come the General Election due later this year, were “threatening to continue [committing] genocide” once they were in office.
I didn’t realise they were committing it already.
What on earth was the Labour Party doing? For one thing, said Youth Demand, by failing to demand an immediate end to fossil fuel drilling across the nation, Labour was allegedly helping “kill hundreds of millions” thanks to climate change. But, equally, by failing to promise to call time on UK arms sales to Israel, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet was likewise facilitating the “mass murder” of innocent civilians (and equally innocent Hamas terrorists, no doubt) over in Gaza.
This conflation of environmentalism with the Israel-Gaza war does seem a rather strange campaigning tactic as the two issues have precisely nothing to do with one another. To link the two in only raises the danger of putting off people from supporting one of your causes by virtue of them not supporting the other one. It’s like a march upon Whitehall to demand the Government not only legalise cannabis immediately, and at the same time bring back hanging.
Some people may support Net Zero but also support Israel. Some people may support Hamas, but regard global warming as a hoax (I think in particular of Piers Corbyn, the crankish brother of former Far-Left Labour Party leader Jeremy). To risk splitting public support like this makes little political sense. Why not separate the two issues of Gaza and climate, as they should be?
How green is my Jordan Valley?
Ever since Hamas’ pogrom against Israel last October 7, Greens across the West have been having a similar heated debate. The movement’s current chief global figurehead, Greta Thunberg, everyone’s favourite Swedish apocalypse goblin, has been much criticised for engaging in needless stunts conflating environmentalism and Zionism.
The controversy has been particularly strong in Germany, where Green leaders from Greta’s own movement, the Fridays for Future school-strike organisation, felt compelled to put out a statement distancing themselves from her views, and reiterating their support for Israel’s right to exist. For obvious historical reasons, the accusation of anti-Semitism is one most mainstream figures in Germany are careful to avoid …
The November 18th edition of Germany’s leading news weekly, Der Spiegel, ran a lengthy article criticising Thunberg’s apparent Hamas-wards turn, accusing her of creating a “potential schism” within the Green movement. This investigation featured interviews with other young climate activists who had suddenly begun talking much more about saving the Gazans than saving the whales.
One 22-year-old Finnish activist featured, Ida Korhonen, openly admitted she had only really heard of the Israel-Palestine conflict a few weeks beforehand, boasting she got all of her information about the issue “from social networks, from Amnesty [International] and from Palestinian journalists on the scene.” What had such completely unbiased sources allowed Ida to discover? That Green activists “shouldn’t be talking about ourselves [i.e., our main actual cause of environmentalism] anymore, but only about Palestine … War against people is also always war against nature … There can be no [climate] justice without an end to the genocide against the Palestinians.”
What a Greta big fool
Greta Thunberg evidently agreed. In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel, she too had become an instant expert on the whole issue, posting tweets standing alongside fellow juvenile activists holding signs saying performatively progressive things like ‘STAND WITH GAZA’, ‘FREE PALESTINE’ and ‘CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!’ (as well as posing with a supposedly ‘anti-Semitic octopus’ cuddly toy, but that’s another story).
As a result of such provocation, the Israeli Education Ministry dropped all mention of the fallen child saint from their national curriculum for schools: I would question why she had ever been on it in the first place.
Yet, as so often, still Greta refused to shut up. In December, together with three other equally insufferable-sounding Swedish Fridays for Future activists, she penned an op-ed in the UK’s leading left-wing newspaper The Guardian, entitled ‘We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights’.
Here, she took her critics to task for saying that, by talking about this new and separate issue, she was only damaging their wider original cause, cautioning that “Silence is complicity. You cannot be neutral in an unfolding genocide.”
Greta’s rationale here ran as follows:
“Despite these horrors [the alleged ‘genocide’ being perpetrated by Israel in the region], some have chosen to focus the public debate on attempts to delegitimise statements about Gaza made by young people in the climate justice movement. Contrary to what many have claimed, Fridays for Future has not ‘been radicalised’ or ‘become political’. We have always been political, because we have always been a movement for justice. Standing in solidarity with Palestinians and all affected civilians has never been in question for us. Advocating for climate justice fundamentally comes from a place of caring about people and their human rights. That means speaking up when people suffer, are forced to flee their homes or are killed – regardless of the cause.”
As if to ram home just how woke she now was, Thunberg ended her piece by ritually citing her pronouns (“she/her”, in case you were wondering – hardly surprising, as she is a female).
Clueless in Gaza
Had Greta gone fully intersectional? Evidently so, and the whole fact was clearly rubbing some people up the wrong way.
In November, after Thunberg had invited a kaffiyeh-wearing Palestinian woman onto the stage at a climate-rally she was holding in Amsterdam, she was interrupted by a male audience member who snatched her microphone and informed her, quite reasonably, that “I’ve come here for a climate demonstration, not a political view” about a wholly irrelevant issue in the Middle East. Greta took little notice, however, seizing the microphone back before leading the crowd in a chant of the rather bizarre-sounding slogan “No climate justice on occupied land!”
What do such slogans even mean? How on earth can you have “No climate justice” for humanity so long as Israel continues to rule the roost in the Holy Land? What has global warming – or indeed the ever-pressing issue of one’s sacred pronouns – got to do with a never-ending round of ethno-religious warfare in Gaza?
Nothing, really. Nothing at all.
But that didn’t stop Greta & Co trying to lump it all in together by making an extremely spurious argument to the effect that, by daring to defend themselves against Hamas’ original attack by bombing the terrorists right back, the Israelis were massively adding to the supposedly planet-killing problem of global warming by virtue of selfishly using rockets and missiles which emitted large amounts of CO₂ from their exhausts (as if there are any other kind; did the Greens really expect the Israelis to throw their ordnance by hand, or else hurl them all from slings, David vs Goliath-style?).
But the poor quality of the logic hardly matters, as the rationale underlying such overblown conflations of climate and anti-Zionism, of pronouns and warfare, is that of so-called ‘intersectionality’, the idea that, by adding up all the causes of the world’s supposed ‘oppressed’ people together, they will gain trade union-style strength in numbers, and become unbeatable (see my deeply sceptical explanatory article on the subject here).
So, supposedly, black people, homosexuals, feminists, the disabled and the mentally ill are all natural allies. Even people you may not have previously expected to be on the same side, like, say, Islamic terrorists and transgenderists, are supposedly united as natural allies against cisgender Western imperialism, along the basic logic that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’.
Such thinking seems deeply misguided to me. All too often, ‘intersectionality’ is just a ridiculous and self-defeating process which will only end up alienating as many potential supporters from a cause they might otherwise support, as it will attracting any new ones to it. I’m sure we’ve all seen cases of ostensibly worthwhile charities, like Save the Children, whose campaigns we may until recently have been sympathetic towards, who have suddenly gone right to the bottom of our future donation lists because they suddenly became less concerned with actually Saving the Children, and more bothered about chemically castrating them along rainbow activist lines instead, or lecturing us all on the ins-and-outs of utter irrelevancies like Critical Race Theory.
In an open letter to Greta Thunberg, some irritated Israeli climate activists expressed similar sentiments:
“Due to her position, when Greta addresses a different topic superficially and dismissively, it inevitably weakens the validity of her climate-related positions. People from all walks of life might think that the shallowness she displayed on the other issue could cast doubt on the seriousness and depth of her climate activism. Those with vested interests could exploit this to portray climate activists as unserious and lacking depth. Therefore, even without addressing the ethical and moral implications she ignored, Greta is no longer a role model for us in the climate change context.”
Whilst I personally might be rather glad to see the whole overexaggerated climate-cult undermined in this wholly needless way, can today’s intersectional Greens really not see that, by promoting the causes of Hamas and Palestine, they might alienate many of their natural supporters likewise? If you were a Jew living in a Western city like London or New York today, scarred as they are by weekly anti-Semitic pro-Hamas hate-marches, what would you feel more threatened by? Islamism, or a hypothetical two degree raise in the Earth’s overall global temperature by 2100? Any pious young eco-intersectionalist who suddenly came along outside a synagogue rattling her tin to save the Palestinians rather than the pandas would surely be immediately told where they could shove their donation-box.
Why can’t intersectional idiots like Greta Thunberg just let their own main ideas and causes stand or fall on their own individual merit? Perhaps it is because, all too often, they don’t actually have very much genuine individual merit to speak of?
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AUTHOR
STEVEN TUCKER
Steven Tucker is a UK-based writer whose work has appeared in print and online worldwide. The author of over ten books, mostly about fringe beliefs and eccentrics, his latest title, “Hitler’s and Stalin’s Misuse of Science” exposes how the insane and murderous abuses of science perpetrated by the Nazis and the Soviets are being repeated anew today by the woke left who have now captured so many of our institutions of learning.
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Rape as a Weapon of War — Why Israel was Traumatised by Oct 7
/in Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by MercatorNet - Navigating Modern ComplexitiesScreams Before Silence is a harrowing, yet sensitively crafted and ultimately viewable, documentary film about the weaponisation of rape by Hamas during the atrocities committed on October 7 last year.
The film features Sheryl Sandberg, who was chief operating officer of Facebook and Meta Platforms until August 2022. She is also founder of LeanIn.Org, a women’s leadership network. She has become an outspoken advocate for Israeli women who suffered the full force of the violence of October 7.
Produced by Kastina Communications and directed by Anat Stalinsky, the film provides a platform for the testimonies of survivors, eyewitnesses, first responders and forensic experts to be heard by the general public as they recount what they saw or heard and, in some cases, endured as a result of the attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel.
In a rampage of killing in streets, homes, kibbutzim and at a music festival, some 1200 Israelis were murdered, thousands more wounded and 240 hostages taken to Gaza.
Make no mistake: the subject matter is distressing in what it reveals of the extent to which the bodies of women and girls were sexually abused, tortured, slaughtered and mutilated, especially at the site of the Nova music festival.
However, Screams Before Silence is no horror film of gruesome pictures, nor a demonisation of Palestinians. It is a sensitively delivered piece of storytelling and truth-telling that showcases not only the depravity of which human beings are capable, but also examples of extraordinary courage and human resilience.
Relying largely on a series of interviews by Sheryl Sandberg and video footage from October 7, the film draws the viewer into the violent world of the massacre without plunging into a sea of traumatising images. Apart from the people speaking, most of the footage shows destroyed homes and cars, not dead bodies. Occasional images of a corpse are fleeting and have been deliberately blurred. The film carefully leads the viewer down into the depths of its dark subject matter before moving upwards towards the light (if one may call it that) of an ending that strikes a note of resilience, purpose and empowerment.
Screams Before Silence places front-and-centre what should be an uncontroversial message: that weaponisation of rape and sexual violence is never acceptable, can never be excused by a larger political “context”, and must be condemned forthrightly by every decent human being and treated as criminal conduct without prevarication.
What makes this film especially relevant is that the crimes of October 7 are not over. Some 129 hostages remain in Gaza, including women and children. From the testimony of released hostages we know that there is good reason to fear that sexual abuse of those who remain behind continues. “Bring Them Home Now!” should be on the lips of every vocal feminist protesting violence against women.
It is not wise for all people to see this film. Protection of one’s mental health must be a priority. However, I urge those who feel they can do so, to watch the film. Its content and message need to be processed, in the same way that Holocaust documentaries play a critical role in our grasp of historical and present-day events. Holocaust footage is always disturbing to watch, but it is downright dangerous for societies to turn a blind eye.
And, just as Holocaust denialism is widespread today, so too has October 7 denialism been embraced by some anti-Israel activists. Such a wilful distortion of history is inadvertently exacerbated by the tendency of good and well-intentioned people to downplay these crimes through half-hearted reporting or utter silence, whether for political reasons or simply out of discomfort, ignorance, or confusion.
Rather than wallow in a sense of helplessness, the gift of this film is that it empowers a constructive response. By simply setting aside an hour to view it, anyone can bear witness to what actually occurred on October 7. I believe strongly that non-Jewish people have a special responsibility to view the film, so that Jewish communities are not left alone to bear the burden of witness.
So, I appeal to all non-Jewish adults who are able to do so: Please, set aside an hour to watch online Screams Before Silence. Allow yourself to be confronted by the raw truth of what occurred on October 7. Deal with your emotions: your tears, grief, anger, or disbelief. Pray for the dead and the bereaved. Then, share the link; discuss the film with family, friends, and colleagues; if you have a public platform to write or speak, then write, then speak!
Be a voice for the voiceless — for the women, and for the men too, who were mercilessly abused on October 7 in unspeakable acts which appear to have been part of a calculated, targeted, systematic plan to destroy not only the bodies of women, but the soul of a nation.
If you have watched “Screams Before Silence”, tell us what you think in the comments box below.
AUTHOR
TERESA PIROLA
Dr. Teresa Pirola is a Sydney-based freelance writer and faith educator, and author of Catholic-Jewish Relations: Twelve Key Themes for Teaching and Preaching (Paulist Press, 2023).
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EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Nuclear Power Radiation — Part 2
/in Elections, Energy, Environment, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by John Droz, Jr.Recently, I posted a commentary arguing that there are good reasons to categorize Nuclear power as a “renewable” source of electrical energy, followed by another post: Nuclear Power Radiation — Part 1. That outlined radiation from normal nuclear power operations, waste, and misc. This Part 2 will briefly cover the rest of the well-known nuclear radiation possibilities…
1 – Nuclear Power Accidents
US nuclear power facilities are built to be extraordinarily safe. Even when there are accidents, there are backup systems — and often backups to the backups. The most familiar nuclear accident to us is the Three Mile Island problem in 1957. This summary states it well:
“A cooling malfunction caused part of the core to melt in a reactor, resulting in a limited off-site release of radioactivity over a multi-state area. Doses off-site were less than normal background radiation.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined the accident “led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community.”
Considering the consequences, the rhetoric about this event seems out of proportion.
2 – Nuclear Power Man-Made Disasters
The most famous case here was in Chernobyl (Ukraine: 1986). What is rarely covered by mainstream media (surprise!) is: a) there are no other nuclear reactors in the world that have the Chernobyl design, and b) the reactor failure was reportedly caused purposefully — i.e., it was not an accident.
The truth of what happened may be as evasive as the full story of the Kennedy assassination. My understanding (from reliable sources), was that there was a dispute within the facility between two groups (let’s say engineers and administrators). The issue reportedly was who was really in charge? Each group tried to “prove” to the other that they were in control — and in the process they purposefully shut off several safety mechanisms. The 100% predictable result was a catastrophic failure.
This is a reasonable account about this disaster (which soft-pedals the dispute part). Despite all the alarmism, the official total is only 45± deaths:
3 – Nuclear Power Natural Disasters
The classic case here is Fukushima (Japan: 2011). Again, my understanding (from reliable sources) is not what has generally been reported. The two indisputable facts are: a) Japan was hit by a tsunami, generated by a record undersea earthquake, and b) the tsunami was so large that it flooded the diesel backup power units (sitting on the ground), that were there to properly shut down the core in an emergency.
The part that I heard was that Japanese officials had been advised prior to this event, that to be extra safe, they should elevate the backup diesel generators off the ground. That had not been done. If it had been there very likely would have been no nuclear power failure. That said, considering that there never had been anything remotely like that tsunami, their delay is understandable.
Let’s keep things in perspective: a) there were about 20,000 deaths due to the tsunami, and b) less than ten fatalities due to the nuclear power plant failures. Here is a reasonably balanced discussion of the Fukushima nuclear disasters
Takeaway
Regretfully, what the mainstream media reports on any nuclear facility problem, is not an objective, factual explanation, but rather an alarmist exaggeration of reality. In other words, once again political science is trying to take over Real Science.
Considering that there are some 435 operating nuclear power facilities (worldwide), and almost all are operating basically 24/7/365, the safety of nuclear power is exceptionally good. Worldwide, over the last 60± years, less than 100 people have died from a nuclear power plant failure.
By comparison, there have been WAY more deaths related to industrial wind turbines! (See this table, where the good people tabulating the data stopped keeping track in 2012, due to the huge increase in workload.)
Another perspective is that 40,000± people die annually from US car accidents, that would roughly translate to 2 million deaths over the same 60± year period.
This is yet another example of why having critically thinking citizens is the best defense against dishonest and ignorant purveyors of information. Remember that fear is the primary tool used to control people…
©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.
Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:
Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.
WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.
C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.
Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.
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NHS Formally Declares Sex a ‘Biological’ Reality
/in Culture War, Elections, Healthcare, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research CouncilBritain’s top health authority is officially rejecting transgender ideology and declaring that biological sex is a reality, while “gender identity” isn’t. The U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) is revising its constitution to state, “We are defining sex as biological sex.” The proposed constitutional revisions stress a need for “respecting the biological differences between men and women,” further warning, “If these biological differences are not considered or respected, there is the potential for unintended adverse health consequences.”
Among other things, the constitutional revision will bar biological men who identify as women from accessing female-only wards, allow female patients to request other biological females for “intimate care,” and do away with terms such as “chestfeeding” and “birthing people.”
“We need to be making this robust case to refuse to wipe women out of the conversation,” Health Secretary Victoria Atkins stated, according to The Telegraph. “We have always been clear that sex matters and our services should respect that. By putting this in the NHS constitution we’re highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer for all.”
“The confusion between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in official policies like the NHS constitution is what has enabled women’s rights to be trampled over in the name of transgender identities,” explained Maya Forstater, co-founder and chief executive of the advocacy group Sex Matters. “Sex, of course, is a matter of biology, not identity, and it is welcome that the NHS is now spelling this out in relation to single-sex accommodation and intimate care.”
Last year, then-Health Secretary Steve Barclay announced similar plans to eliminate “wokery” in the NHS, including barring biological who identify as women from accessing female-only wards, doing away with terminology like “chestfeeding,” and restoring the word “woman” to NHS guidance on subjects like menopause and ovarian cancer. “We need a common-sense approach to sex and equality issues in the NHS,” Barclay said at the time. “It is vital that women’s voices are heard in the NHS and the privacy, dignity and safety of all patients are protected.”
The constitutional revisions are hardly the only changes the NHS is making in its approach to transgenderism. In March, NHS England formally banned the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to minors, announcing instead a focus on family therapy, individual child psychotherapy, parental support or counseling, and other forms of counseling and therapy. “Puberty blockers … are not available to children and young people for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria because there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness,” NHS England announced. Last month, Scotland’s NHS offices followed suit, “pausing” the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to minors while health officials examine “evidence of safety and long-term impact for therapies.”
Many of the changes in how British healthcare practitioners approach transgenderism center around the publication of the Cass Review, an extensive four-year investigation led by renowned pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass into gender transition procedures for minors. The report found that there was “remarkably weak evidence” to recommend the use of puberty blockers and hormone drugs, there was “no evidence” that gender transition procedures prevented or reduced the risk of suicide, the majority of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria suffer from a host of often-neglected psychological co-morbidities, and serious research into the harms of gender transition procedures was impeded by “toxic” debate surrounding the topic. Additionally, the groundbreaking 400-page report found that gender transition procedures for children are largely based on biased and even low-quality research.
For example, the infamous Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) clinic at Tavistock worked in close conjunction with transgender activist group Mermaids. In 2022, two years before her final report was due, Cass urgently recommended that the U.K. government shut down Tavistock’s GIDS clinic, based on concerns over an absence of child safeguarding and an excess of gender ideology guiding staff members’ decisions. Cass reported that staff and clinicians often rushed children as young as 10 years old onto puberty blocker and hormone drug regimens, sometimes after as few as three consultations. Ninety-six percent of child patients at Tavistock’s GIDS clinic were placed on puberty blockers and numerous whistleblowers reported that staff often diagnosed children with gender dysphoria while ignoring or neglecting other psychological conditions such as autism, anxiety, or depression.
In the wake of the Cass Review’s publication, a cohort of 16 unnamed clinical psychologists penned an open letter saying that they were “ashamed of the role psychology played in gender care” and of how psychologists “failed young people at Gender Identity Development Service clinics.” The clinicians called for “accountability for the managers and clinicians who pursued such unethical practice and caused avoidable harm to young people,” adding that “the role of our own profession should be fully examined.”
Numerous European countries have halted or placed stringent safeguards around gender transition procedures for minors. France, Sweden, Norway, and Finland have joined the U.K. in largely or entirely halting the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to children, warning that there is a lack of thorough research and study surrounding the safety and efficacy of gender transition procedures. Yet the U.S. still allows for gender transition procedures to be practiced on minors, earning the label of “outlier.”
AUTHOR
S.A. McCarthy
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
RELATED VIDEO: Muslim leader demanding death to homosexuals
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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
The Bible Does Not Justify Anti-Semitism
/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Religion/by Family Research CouncilA bill (H.R. 6090) to make the Department of Education adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism “is unnecessarily raising concerns” about its effect on the gospel message, said Quena Gonzalez, senior director of government affairs at Family Research Council. The IHRA definition includes “contemporary examples,” he told The Washington Stand, among which is “using … claims of Jews killing Jesus … to characterize Israel or Israelis.”
But “no biblical Christian characterizes Israelis or modern Israel, just because they’re Jewish, as having killed Jesus,” Gonzalez responded. “Christians have long denounced this trope, going back to the church fathers of the first few centuries, and Christians today need not be concerned that this bill implicates proclaiming the gospel.”
The New Testament is clear that ethnic Jews and ethnic Gentiles both stand condemned before God as sinners and can only be saved through faith in Jesus Christ. The same God “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything,” and “he made from one man every nation of mankind” (Acts 17:25-26). Yet both Jews and Gentiles have broken God’s law, so “both Jews and Greeks are under sin,” Paul declared (Romans 3:9). “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law … the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift …” (Romans 3:21-24). Now “there is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
As to who killed Jesus, the Bible’s most comprehensive answer holds Jews and Gentiles equally responsible — although God was ultimately responsible. As the apostles prayed, “in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28). In fulfillment of prophecy (Acts 4:25-26, Psalm 2:1-2), God so orchestrated the circumstances that representatives of all mankind — both Jews and Gentiles, the people and their leaders — participated in Jesus’s death, giving no one group reason to boast against another.
God’s sovereign involvement does not nullify human responsibility, but it does add to the significance of Jesus’s death. Jesus died in this way so that he might be the Savior of the whole world. “The gospel is, that I killed Jesus by my sin,” said Gonzalez. “The gospel (literally, the ‘good news’) is that God the Father sent His Son to die for my sins; God killed Jesus.” In fact, three times Jesus said that he laid down his own life as a sacrifice for his people (John 10:11, 15, 17).
Regrettably, some people — even some Christians throughout history—have lifted biblical texts out of context in an attempt to justify anti-Semitism. In the earliest recorded Christian sermons, preached several months after Jesus’s death in Jerusalem, Jews who believed in Jesus as the Messiah rightly declared to a Jerusalem audience that they had played a role in causing Jesus’s death:
This accusation only applied to those present in Jerusalem at Jesus’s crucifixion. When the Jewish apostle Paul preached to Jews living in modern-day Turkey, he did not accuse them of Jesus’s death but “those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers” who “asked Pilate to have him executed” (Acts 13:27-29). He warned these Jews not to imitate those who did not believe in their Messiah.
None of these passages condones anti-Semitism. In each instance, the Jewish preacher aims to convict his hearers of sin so that they might turn to the Messiah and repent. Thus:
If God intended to judge the Jewish people for having Jesus killed, then why did he offer them salvation, healing, forgiveness, and blessing? Those who twist these texts into a warrant for anti-Semitism presume to inflict a greater judgment than God, the Judge of all.
In fact, these same passages even show God’s sovereign agency behind Jesus’s death:
Thus it was prophesied, “it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand” (Isaiah 53:10).
Furthermore, those who would abuse biblical texts to justify anti-Semitism must overlook the New Testament’s multiple positive references to Jews. Paul expressed “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” over their unbelief (Romans 9:2). Jews not only received “the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2), but “to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen” (Romans 9:4-5).
Paul further testified that God has always preserved a believing remnant among the Jewish people (Romans 11:1-5). “A partial hardening has come upon Israel,” he admitted, but only “until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved. … For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:25-26, 29). Paul’s concern — and God’s concern — is that the Jewish people might believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to magnify God’s mercy (Romans 11:32). Anyone concerned with inflicting punishments on or discrimination against the Jewish people is not aligned with God.
To summarize: Jesus willingly laid down his life according to the eternal plan of God, and both Jews and Gentiles, the leaders and the people, were equally complicit in his death. The Bible does not hold Jews especially responsible for Jesus’s death, nor does it hold them especially accursed for their complicity. It certainly does not implicate the modern state of Israel and modern Israelis, who were not there, any more than it implicates modern Gentiles, who were not there. But it does hold out future hope that Jews will come to believe in Jesus.
The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism “does not criminalize the gospel,” insisted Family Research Council Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs Travis Weber on “Washington Watch.” Even in the one example causing confusion, the anti-Semitism “has to be attached to the state of Israel,” he added, and that’s not what Bible-believing Christians do. So, “for Bible-preaching churches that are preaching the gospel, this is not an issue,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said.
AUTHOR
Joshua Arnold
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
Columbia Cancels Main Commencement Ceremony Amid Anti-Israel Protests
/in Culture War, Education, Elections, Hot Topics, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily CallerColumbia University announced on Monday the cancellation of its main commencement ceremony following weeks of anti-Israel protests and encampments on campus.
Protestors — who are demanding the school boycott, divest and sanction Israel over its counteroffensive in Gaza following the Hamas terrorist attack — were threatened with suspensions last week if they did not remove themselves from the encampments. The Ivy League’s administration told students in a press release that it would forgo its university-wide commencement on May 15 to instead celebrate them “individually alongside their peers” via “Class Days and school-level ceremonies.”
“Our students emphasized that these smaller-scale, school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families,” the press release reads. “They are eager to cross the stage to applause and family pride and hear from their school’s invited guest speakers. As a result, we will focus our resources on those school ceremonies and on keeping them safe, respectful, and running smoothly. A great deal of effort is already underway to reach that goal, and we understand the Deans and school teams are looking forward to working with their students to incorporate the most creative and meaningful ideas to celebrate this extraordinary moment.”
Pro-Palestinian protestors seized Columbia’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday, with one employee reportedly claiming to have been held hostage inside the building. The New York Police Department made over 44 arrests, according to the New York Post.
The administration also announced that its remaining ceremonies will be relocated from Morningside campus, which is where Hamilton Hall is located.
“These past few weeks have been incredibly difficult for our community,” the press release reads. “Just as we are focused on making our graduation experience truly special, we continue to solicit student feedback and are looking at the possibility of a festive event on May 15 to take the place of the large, formal ceremony. We are eager to all come together for our graduates and celebrate our fellow Columbians as they, and we, look ahead to the future. We will share more in the coming days.”
Anti-Israel protests have popped up on college campuses across the country in recent weeks, including at Yale University, Emerson College, University of California, Los Angeles and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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MARY LOU MASTERS
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RELATED ARTICLE: Columbia University Shifts Classes Online After Pro-Palestinian Protest Takes Over Campus
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America: Willful Blindness
/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Amil ImaniIt is hard to believe how quickly we’ve forgotten the largest terrorist attack on American soil. So, let me remind our readers once again:
On September 11, 2001, nineteen Muslim terrorists, mostly Saudi Arabian citizens, hijacked four commercial aircraft. In a synchronized attack, the hijackers deliberately flew two of the planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. The passengers on the fourth plane launched a counterattack, spurring the hijacker pilot to crash the plane into a field in Pennsylvania.
Approximately 3,000 people died on that day, the single largest loss of life that resulted from a terrorist attack on American soil.
After these attacks, I saw many stickers on many cars saying, “Everything I Needed to Know About Islam I Learned on 9/11.” Well, apparently not.
Islam and Sharia continue to creep into every aspect of American culture stealthily. And too few people know it or are talking about it. Why? Americans have been conditioned by the liberal elites to be tolerant and compassionate, to embrace multiculturalism, and to respect each other’s beliefs, ideals, and values. That would be wonderful in a Utopian world, but the fact is, Islam doesn’t embrace any aspect of Western civilization—much less American culture. We are rapidly and methodically being dismantled as a nation, and our freedom and liberty are more fragile than at any other time since WWII. And while we fight the enemy abroad with combat troops, intelligence, and drone strikes, we’re doing nothing to combat the same enemy who resides on our own soil and in broad daylight.
This is no longer an alarm. Our enemies are already here and busy making plans to make America just like another European country. Suppose we don’t defeat Islam politically, lawfully, and swiftly. In that case, our children and grandchildren may well be engaged in an endless religious and ideological bloody war, the likes of which have never been seen on American soil.
For those who have forgotten what Islam is:
Islam is a theocratic political ideology that hides behind the mask of religion to accomplish its mission of a worldwide caliphate. Americans must understand Islam is a totalitarian “theo-political” belief system and a social doctrine (the two go hand-in-hand) based on the Quran, Sira, and Hadith, what Dr. Bill Warner of the Center for the Study of Political Islam aptly coins the “Trilogy.” It has mandates on every single aspect of life, and those mandates are enforced and regulated by the barbaric criminal and civil codes known as Sharia Law. The precise definition of a Muslim becomes crystal clear when you read the trilogy of Islam. Bottom line: you are to be an Allah-fearing, Quran-believing, and Mohammed-following zealot who forces people to submit, convert, and comply with Islam and Sharia or be killed. Those are the facts.
Does every Muslim follow the commands of the Quran? No, thank God. But as they superficially assimilate themselves into communities and increase in numbers, they become more militant and less tolerant of that community’s laws and regulations.
Any religion or ideology whose “holy book” commands its followers to commit crimes that are antithetical to the laws of this country should not only lose its tax-exempt status but lose its 1st Amendment protections and be banned from the United States altogether. In case you are not familiar with some of the condoned atrocities of Islam and Sharia law, let me tell you a few facts.:
Are you aware that women are stoned to death for committing adultery, and according to the interpretation of Islam, gays should be thrown from a high building and then stoned if they are not dead when they hit the ground? Or that the genitals of little girls are mutilated (FGM)
in an attempt to control her sexuality, and that children may be murdered in the name of family honor? And last, Islam does not recognize the separation of church and state and doesn’t follow our Constitution or any manmade laws. They have their own laws: Sharia or Islamic laws.
In countries where Islamic enclaves and ghettos have emerged, like France, Britain, Sweden, Belgium, and North African countries, local Imams or mullahs enforce Sharia law regardless. What most Americans fail to understand is that Sharia law is the foundation of Islamic theocracy and totalitarianism. The establishment of global Sharia law is their final goal. The Quran is unequivocal in its directive to Muslims to establish a global Islamic state (Caliphate) over which the Islamic messiah, or Mahdi, will rule with Sharia as the only law of the land. Make no mistake that is the intent of influential Islamic elements in America.
The problem is that too few Americans are aware of it, and organizations like the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Brotherhood are taking full advantage of our naiveté and our lenient laws. Moreover, Islam stands in stark contrast to the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and what the First Amendment was designed to protect—our God-given unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Sharia law is very complex and it’s derived from multiple Islamic sources: the Quran, considered the “unmitigated word of Allah” is the primary source of Sharia law. The Hadith (sayings and actions of Muhammad) is the second most important document in Sharia and Sira (the life of prophet Muhammad). Historic rulings by jurists over the years and so-called reasoning by analogy make up the other two less influential sources of Sharia. Together they constitute Islam’s theological core and they result in a totalitarian way of life for Muslim followers and non-Muslims (kafirs and infidels). Sharia law is in complete contradiction with American values because it enslaves people and encourages acts of violence and barbaric behavior. Sharia demands the death of those who renounce Islam.
In short, Mild Islam is not all that obtrusive since it is like the early stages of pregnancy. Yet, pregnancy it is. Before long, the full-term beast will make its appearance. If we don’t want to deal with the beast, we need to prevent the pregnancy in the first place.
©2024. All rights reserved.