VIDEO: Chair of Interfaith Council of Central Florida Rev. Bryan Fulwider arrested for Assault on a Minor

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WMFE.org’s Abe Aboraya reports:

The Reverend Bryan Fulwider has been arrested and charged with sexual assault on a minor by a person in a position of authority.

Fulwider is the co-host of Friends Talking Faith with The Three Wise Guys, an independent radio show carried by WMFE since 2012. It is also carried by WMFV.

When reached by WMFE Wednesday night, co-host Imam Muhammad Musri said he was unaware of the charges and arrest of Fulwider, and declined to comment.

His arrest warrant was issued by the Winter Park Police Department, but was not immediately available. Fulwider was arrested Wednesday and booked into the Seminole County Jail, and is due in court Thursday afternoon.

Read more.

In 2012, a team from The United West exposed the hypocrisy of an interfaith meeting when conservative views are introduced by Egyptian Baptist Pastor Usama Dakdok.  What followed was an interesting transition when Bryan Fulwider and Imam Sykes left and a true interfaith meeting followed.

Watch: Interfaith Dialogue Exposed – True Dialogue Held: Imam Sykes & Rev. Fulwider – The United West, posted Jan 21, 2012

D.C. and Virginia Do NOT Want Federal Shelters for Unaccompanied Alien Children

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This is an update of a story I posted here in August where we learned that even the Washington Post was calling out local Leftwing politicians for their hypocrisy!

It is your classic ‘Not-in-my-backyard’ tale.

Washington, D.C. and its wealthy (Democrat-run) bedroom communities of northern Virginia do not want shelters for the mostly teens coming across our borders illegally.

Send them to Arizona and Texas instead!

From the Washington Business Journal:

Trump administration drops plans for Northern Virginia immigrant shelter

The Trump administration has called off its plans to bring a new shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children to Northern Virginia.

Federal officials are “no longer conducting exploratory assessments of vacant properties to lease” in the region, according to an email from spokespeople with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. The agency revealed in August that it was considering a variety of Northern Virginia jurisdictions for a new, 110,000-square-foot facility.

But that move prompted fierce pushback from local leaders…

[….]

The HHS officials did not say why they ultimately declined to pursue a shelter in the region. They added in the email that they’ve also stopped searching for space in Atlanta, Central Florida and Los Angeles, and will likely pursue new facilities in Texas and Arizona instead.

The mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, Justin Wilson, said if the feds send some bucks to the city he might consider discussing it further.

“If the federal government wished to provide the city with the resources to care for these children, in partnership, I would be open to discussing such a scenario,” Wilson wrote. “But as it has been presented to the city at this point, I do not believe this is something the city should be a part of.”

The Trump administration’s plans for a similar immigrant shelter in D.C. are considerably more unsettled.

Separately from the search for space in Northern Virginia, HHS also plans to work with Maryland-based contractor Dynamic Service Solutions to open a new shelter in Takoma. Mayor Muriel Bowser, however, has rolled out new regulations in a bid to block that project, though it remains unclear whether federal officials have a way to sidestep her efforts.

More here.

Eric Zemmour, Who Demands – and Deserves – To Be Heard by Hugh Fitzgerald

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The noted French writer, essayist, and broadcast journalist Eric Zemmour, the most famous public intellectual in France, was invited in late September to a meeting in Paris organized by supporters of Marion Marechal, the daughter of Marine Le Pen, and herself a former deputy in the French Assembly, routinely – and inaccurately – described as of the “far right.” Zemmour was invited to give the opening address, for he is the most important French figure among intellectual islamocritics. He is articulate, detailed, humorful, and relentless; his book The Suicide of France, has had an enormous and salutary impact on French public opinion.

Zemmour has the unsettling habit of saying what he believes to be true, and of being unfazed by those who, constantly yapping at his heels, try, through lawsuits and libel, to bring him down. He has for years been warning about the islamization of Europe, and his forthright islamocriticism has led to an endless series of attempts to punish and censor him; he’s been fined, lost jobs in journalism, and even been convicted in the past for “racism,” and more recently, for preaching “hate” (against Muslims). He was last year banned from television; fortunately, that ban was only temporary and he will soon be reappearing regularly on a news program.

What follows are rough translations, preserving the meaning without being literal, of excerpts from his address in French, including the unfriendly remarks of the writer of the article at Le Point.

“All our problems, that are made worse by immigration, are made worse still by Islam,” the polemicist Eric Zemmour claimed in his appearance on Saturday [September 28], in an impassioned speech against “colonizing” immigrants and the “Islamization of the street,” thereby espousing the conspiratorial and controversial theory of the “great replacement” of populations.

“In France, as in all of Europe, all of our problems are made worse by immigration: our [failing] schools, our [lack of] housing, our [rising] unemployment, the deficits in social spending, [the breakdown in] public order, prisons…and all of these problems are made much worse still by Islam. France is being punshed twice” insisted the essayist, who introduced the meeting organized in Paris by followers of the former deputy of the ‘extreme right’ Marion Marechal.

He [Zemmour] who was recently found guilty of provoking religious hatred castigated the “universalism of the marketplace,” as well as “Islamic universalism” which crushes our [European] nations…our ways of life, our cultures.”

The French state has become, according to Eric Zemmour, “the weapon that is destroying our nation and bringing about the subjugation of its people, the replacement of its [French] people by another people, another civilization.”

Between true living – and “living together in imposed and endlessly celebrated diversity”– a choice must be made,” he stated, citing the writer Renaud Camus, the theoretician of the “great replacement” of the white, mainly Christian population in France by Muslim immigrants.

“The question for us is the following: will young French people accept living as a minority in the land of their ancestors?” he insisted, making a plea for the notion of national identity, “the most unifying of subjects because it affects both the working and the middle class.”

“Our brilliant ‘progressives’ have led us to the brink of war among the races and war among religions,” he added.

Zemmour has been condemned for “racism” though he has never uttered a “racist” remark; he has been similarly condemned for “hate” though he has never promoted “hatred” of Muslims. His is simply a clear-eyed view of what is happening in France, where there are ever more Muslims, the result both of immigration, legal and illegal, and of the much higher birth rates of Muslims compared to that for the indigenous French. He cryptically lists the various aspects of French life that have been affected, for the worse, by the increasing Muslim presence. We can flesh them out below.

First, he mentions l’ecole, thereby alluding to the effect of Muslim immigrants on French schools, where classes are disrupted by Muslim students ill-inclined to obey Infidel teachers and rules, or to be well-disposed toward non-Muslim classmates. Muslims have also objected to parts of the required curriculum, such as the study of French history. Why should Muslims, after all, care about the kings of France, or the Crusades, or the Enlightenment, or the Resistance? And study of the Holocaust is unacceptable because it leads to sympathy for Jews, and that would never do. Why should they study Proust or Montaigne, both half-Jews? Or why should Muslims, many of them ask, study French literature at all, which has nothing to do with Islam, and indeed offends Muslims with its decadent themes? Why should Muslims have to learn about Western philosophy, art, music?

The tremendous pressures on teachers in French schools, at all levels, where the duties of instructors have increased, the demands on their time ever greater, and government financing has not kept pace with the needs of immigrant children, was recently brought home by the suicide of Christine Renon, the head of a school in the Muslim area of Seine Saint-Denis, who left a long letter describing her inability any longer to cope with an ever-more-difficult task and, she lamented, ever-less support from the government.

Logement is Zemmour’s allusion to the housing crisis in France. The government believes it has a duty – but why? — to provide public housing for Muslim immigrants, with their large families (requiring larger apartments). The heads of these families, the supposed breadwinner, are often unemployed, in no hurry to find employment, and happy to have French taxpayers provide such low-cost or practically free housing and other benefits. These H.L.M., or Low-Cost Housing (Habitation a loyer modere) projects, cannot accommodate all who are in need of such housing. The more that such low-cost housing is assigned to Muslim tenants, the less will be available for the indigenous poor.

Chômage refers to the high rates of unemployment in France. Many Muslim migrants arrive with no employable skills. Many of them are not too concerned; they are happy to accept unemployment benefits offered by the generous French state, and are in no hurry to be gainfully employed. Others who do take jobs at the lowest level thereby increase unemployment among those least able to afford it, the indigenous French poor.

Deficits sociaux is a broad term that subsumes the just-discussed categories and more besides. It refers to the failure of the French state to provide adequately for all the needs – decent schools and housing, family allowances, medical care, and so on — of the indigenous poor. Even the left-leaning Le Monde has written a scathing report on the amounts being spent by the French state on refugees, including single men who pose as children, who arrive from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and other Muslim lands, with no skills, not a word of French, most often illiterate in their own language, who have to be provided at once with lodging, medical care, language training, the most basic needs of existence. It all adds up to colossal sums.

Another nightmare for French taxpayers are the large Muslim families that arrive, legally or illegally, wave after wave, in France and at once are provided with low-cost or free housing. Then the husband simply goes off somewhere, possibly to fight for ISIS or some other group, or perhaps he simply decides to return to his country of origin, having dumped his family in the lap of the French state. The wife, with five or six children in tow, has no idea how to cope, and a small army of French social workers now attends to her family’s every need. Unsurprisingly, social spending in 2019 in France has so far left a deficit of more than five billion euros. And there are no signs of budgetary relief.

The ordre public refers to the consequences of the Muslim presence in disrupting life, as when Muslims take over city streets to engage in their five daily prayers, halting traffic and making noise. It includes those who engage in street crime, attacking and robbing Unbelievers at will, or in larger demonstrations, such as those of the “Yellow Jackets” (Gilets Jaunes), taking the occasion of general unrest to smash shop windows and grab whatever they can. There is a general air of fear and lawlessness in the Muslim-populated neighborhoods of France, as in Seine Saint-Denis, where cars of non-Muslims are routinely set on fire, and even the police do not dare to enter except in groups. Muslim rates of criminality, especially for violent crimes such as rape and murder, are six or seven times as high as those for non-Muslims.

Prisons refers to the ever-increasing numbers of Muslim prisoners, whom some have claimed make up 70% of the prisoners, though Muslims are only 8-10% of the total population. Others claim the Muslim percentage of prisoners is “only” 50%. All prisoners cost a lot to house; Muslim prisoners, who must be supplied with halal meals and places for prayer, cost even more. And while in prison, Muslims have been able both to radicalize other Muslims, that is, make them even more dangerous, and to convert non-Muslims who are eager, for personal safety, to join the “largest gang,” that is, the Muslim gang. Once these converts, and these radicalized Muslims, get out of prison, they are high the list of those who need to be constantly monitored, at great cost, by the French security services.

Zemmour is a dangerous enemy of the apologists for Islam not only because he happens to believe what he says about Islam and Muslims is true, but because what he says about Islam and Muslims happens to be true. And that is why he is never answered point by point, because he cannot be; instead, his arguments are ignored and he is subject to endless personal attacks as a “racist” and a sower of “hate” whom we need not bother to refute. And so the Comédie Française continues. But as with the furious testimony against Islam and Muslims by the late Oriana Fallaci in Italy, Zemmour has become ever more impassioned about the palpable threat of Muslims colonizing France, and impossible, thank god, for anyone to ignore.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

PODCAST: The Gospel of Marx: A False Religion Explained

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Karl Marx once called religion the opium of the people—an imaginary coping mechanism that makes suffering in this world more bearable. His vision was a secular, atheistic one. But my guest today argues Marx’s vision was still intensely spiritual. In fact, he says Marx hijacked key themes from Christianity to create a false religion. Bruce Ashford joins me in today’s episode.

We also cover these stories:

  • Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., receives heart surgery after chest discomfort.
  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls for religious freedom around the world at Vatican symposium.
  • Plaintiff to appeal after federal judge sides with Harvard University in discrimination suit.

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

Daniel Davis: I’m joined now in the studio by Dr. Bruce Ashford. He is the dean of faculty and provost at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary down in North Carolina, where he also serves as a professor of theology and culture. He also blogs at “Christianity for the Common Good.” And as a note of personal disclosure, he is a professor of mine. I’m a part-time student at Southeastern.

Bruce, thanks for swinging by the studio.

Bruce Ashford: Yeah, it’s great to be on the podcast today. Thank you.

Davis: Bruce, you’re an interesting blogger and writer because on the one hand, you’re kind of like waist-deep in historical theology and philosophy and writing the journal articles and all of that. But you’re also writing contemporary books for your audience, which is largely Christian, and you’re also blogging about contemporary political issues.

And one of those issues that’s come up already is that socialism is a recurring theme, with [Rep.] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and [Sen.] Bernie Sanders and others bringing that back to the fore.

You’ve written about not just socialism, but the Marxist underpinnings of it. You write about how Marxism as an ideology is actually a false religion. And I think that’s an interesting angle.

I think a lot of folks, even conservatives, think of Marxism as just a set of bad ideas, but you’re saying it’s actually false religion and even idolatry. Why do you frame it that way?

Ashford: Yeah. And so you know, I’m not the first person to bring this up. The great French philosopher Raymond Aron, who’s a contemporary of [Jean-Paul] Sartre, explored this in a book that he wrote called “The Opium of the Intellectuals,” which is a play off of Marx’s “opium of the masses.”

He argued that structurally and existentially, Marxism functions more like a religion than just kind of a mirror ideology that’s been picked up on by some contemporary political scientists and philosophers like David Koyzis and Peter Kreeft.

The critique is really Augustinian, and Augustine argued that any time you take some aspect of the natural order and elevate it to a level of ultimacy, absolutize it, you’ve got yourself an idol or a false religion. And I think Marx did that with material equality.

What happens is when you take any one aspect of reality and you elevate it that high, you absolutize it, it becomes a cudgel with which you beat down other good aspects of reality. And we can talk about this later, but that’s exactly what Marxism has done, is taken this drive for material equality and beat down other good aspects of reality. It induces poverty and decreases liberty.

Davis: Lay out for us the basic Marxist paradigm. We hear the word so often, but what actually is the worldview of Marxism?

Ashford: We’ll start with his philosophy of history. He was an economic determinist, or something very close to a determinist, that believed the logic of human history can be traced by tracing economic struggles, class struggles.

So he divided the world into five eras and he argued that in each of these eras, you can see that human beings are essentially laborers and that their labor conditions determine who they are and determine the happiness of their life.

First is Asiatic, the hunter-gatherer stage, and this is where human beings were at the mercy of nature. The second era is the ancient era, and this is the slave master era where the slave is oppressed by the master. Then on the heels of that, you’ve got in the medieval era, the feudal system, and this is sort of the lord-peasant era and it’s a little bit better than the ancient era.

Marx argued that owners began to realize the problem with slavery is that your property can get sick or die, and your property usually wants to run away.

In the lord-peasant era, the peasants at least had some ownership of what they did. They got to keep their crops and so forth. They were less likely to run away.

Then we have capitalism, which is the owner-worker relationship, where he argued that the wealthy, the owners oppressed the workers. And he lived in an era of serious crony capitalism, the industrial era where there were immoral market agents who were working young children and adults 16 hours a day, things that we would never agree with—unhealthy forms of the free market. And he just assumed that that’s what capitalism was and he was wrong.

Then finally, the fifth era that he’s pushing toward is he believed that definitely and inevitably, the working class would disappear. They’d be replaced by machines and that they would rebel and that a few wealthy people would help them to overthrow the wealthy class, and that there would be a socialist utopia.

Eventually, and this is just laughable, he believed that under the Marxist paradigm, the state would wither away. And we’ve seen something like the opposite of that happen every time Marx’s thought has been instantiated in actual society.

Davis: That’s interesting, isn’t it?

Ashford: If you take Marx’s benchmark, which is history, Marxism fails under that benchmark in the most utterly devastating way, repeatedly. So that’s his philosophy of history.

His anthropology, this is important—he believed that human beings are essentially laborers. That’s who we are. It determines who we are. And because he was a determinist and because he believed that people’s way of thinking was determined by their economic class, he believed that people couldn’t really be reasoned with.

The problem with that, and we see this in contemporary society, [is] people take Marx’s thought and translate it to gender, sex, and race theory. The problem is that if people can’t be reasoned with, the only thing that’s left is coercion. They can be bullied—and we see in Marxist societies, imprisoned, assassinated. That’s his anthropology. So that’s a brief summary of his thought.

Davis: That’s interesting. It’s really evocative of the identity politics—you’re in this group but you’re in that group. And you’ve got certain interests and that’s all you are and you can’t rise above that. You can’t think beyond that.

It makes you wonder about Marx himself. Did he see himself as somehow above all of these people and able to get to the truth?

Ashford: That’s a great critique … and that’s another one of the many ironies that you’ve got.

Davis: Because wasn’t he a traitor to his own class? He was kind of raised in what he would call the bourgeois, the wealthy.

Ashford: Yeah. His father was a lawyer and he was sent to Berlin and didn’t have to pay for any of it. [He was at the] University of Berlin studying under the greatest minds.

Just last week I spoke at a College Republicans kickoff at a university in North Carolina and had a bunch of progressive activists show up and their activism, it was a Marxist form of activism. They treated me as a worthless piece of crap who could not be reasoned with and so they used kind of verbal forms of intimidation to try to bully me.

I’m not easily bullied, but I tried to engage them in good faith and about half of them ended up responding to me as a human being, but the other half didn’t. They treated me under Marx’s view. I was determined by my gender, sex, race, and economic class, and I’m somebody to be bullied rather than talked with.

It’s a problem that so many of our college students are being taught that sort of the Alinsky method and kind of the Marxist view of one’s social and political opponents.

Davis: That’s sad to hear. Unfortunately, [it’s] more and more common.

Before we get too much into that, though, I want to ask you about Marxism as an antithesis to Christianity. You write about this in your blogs and how Marx was putting forward an alternative to Christianity, but in many ways actually mirrored it. Talk about that.

Ashford: Marx converted to Christianity or early on, he was Jewish and converted to Christianity briefly. [He] even wrote some relatively beautiful prose about Christianity before he became an atheist. And when he became an atheist, he began writing his theory, you can tell it’s almost as if he had the Bible at his elbow. So for every major Christian doctrine, he built a Marxist doctrine that was the inverse of the converse of it.

For example, in Marxism, you’ve got a god and the god is material equality. You’ve got an evil, and the foremost evil is material inequality and the class struggle that exists because of that. Then you have a salvation. Salvation is Marxist ideology and revolution. And if I can stop there for just a minute, Marxist revolution is not political revolution.

Political revolution is something limited. That’s when you replace one political arrangement with another. But the socialists, most of them, to the extent that they’re like Marx, don’t want merely a political revolution. They want a social revolution, which is an entire upending, an overthrow of the social order. And that doesn’t go well. That never goes well.

When you clear the decks and try to start over again, there’s no one person or no group of people as brilliant enough and persuasive enough to overturn an entire social order and for it to go well. And that’s what Marx wants to do with the salvation he provides.

You’ve got Marx’s version of church and that will be pockets of classless people in the midst of the capitalist world.

When I was in Russia, I lived in Russia right after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Russians told me that they would have in their communist youth group meetings … a little Bible—

Davis: They had communist youth group?

Ashford: Yeah. Their youth group meetings. And they had a little green book that looked just like a Bible called “The Atheist Table” and they sang songs about how God doesn’t exist and how Jesus wasn’t God. It’s very similar.

Davis: Do they have any atheist altar calls or something?

Ashford: Yeah, I don’t know.

Davis: Baptism?

Ashford: Yeah, catechisms and so forth. The priesthood in Marx’s system is the Communist Party and now here’s an important one, the ethic. So the Christian ethic is a principled ethic. There are certain things that are wrong in and of themselves and you never do them, ever.

Davis: Like murder, stealing, rape.

Ashford: Rape, murder, yeah. But the Marxist ethic is utilitarian and under the Marxist system, the good is whatever helps achieve the socialist utopia. The bad is whatever hinders it. And that’s why Marxist societies have been so easily able to justify assassinations.

You had 800,000 executions in the first three decades of communism in Russia and it’s why they could imprison in the Gulag, I think, 1.7 million people in the first three decades in the Soviet Union. And those are the Soviet numbers. Those aren’t American numbers. That’s a fact.

So you’ve got a utilitarian ethic that ends up undermining human dignity. You have an end times. Christians talk about … We believe that Christ will return one day, set the world to rights, install the one-world government, the one-party system and justice will roll down like the waters. Well, Marx said his version of that and that is that once his revolution had happened, there would be such material abundance.

That’s funny, isn’t it? There’d be so much material abundance, people would be so happy, they’d be frolicking, and in the midst of abundance the state would wither away. And we know, of course, that the opposite happens in the Marxist system.

The state doesn’t wither away, it becomes like a giant octopus that swells to enormous proportions and reaches its tentacles into every sector of society in every sphere of culture.

And then finally, the Christian view of history is that history is linear. It’s proceeding toward something that would be Christ’s return. And that history is not a closed system, that there’s something that transcends us as a transcendent moral framework and there’s a God who underpins that. But for Marx, history is a closed system and the meaning of life is found within history, not without.

So that’s a summary of the way that Marxism functions as a false religion. And we can, if you want to in a little while, we can talk about what happens when you build an ideology, the functions of false religion.

Davis: Well, let’s do that.

Ashford: OK.

Davis: You talked about living in the post-Soviet world in Russia. You saw, I assume, the disastrous consequences of a whole half-century of communism. But talk about how that came about and why building a system on what you call an idol is what was really problematic.

Ashford: I was born in the ’70s, all right? So I’m an old guy and I remember—

Davis: Gen X.

Ashford: Exactly.

Davis: The last good generation, as they say.

Ashford: I hope so. I hope we’re a good generation. But when I was a kid … I remember watching Ronald Reagan on television talking about the evils of communist society. And I remember my parents received a bulletin four times a year from Voice of the Martyrs, and it would have photographs of Russian pastors and Christians who had been put in the Gulag in the concentration camps and it would tell their story and they almost always died of starvation within a few months or they were assassinated or killed, executed.

It got my imagination going. So, in the ’90s, I moved to a Central Asian corner of Russia and lived there for awhile. And I saw and talked to the people who lived under that regime. And it was absolutely devastating.

So here’s how we put it: When you take an aspect of the natural world and elevate it to the level of a god and make it a god, it’s always going to go badly. It’s going to distort and warp reality. It’s going to beat down other good aspects of reality.

So let’s talk about how that happened. And we’ll just use Russia as our examples, or the communists, the Soviet Union. We could do the same thing with the People’s Republic of China. And if it’s called the People’s Republic, it’s probably not the people’s republic. We do the same thing with Cuba.

Davis: Venezuela, today.

Ashford: Yeah, Venezuela. But we’ll focus on the Soviet Union. I know those numbers the best.

Marxism fails by its own benchmark, which is history. So, historically, the abolition of private property has not led to liberation. It’s led to oppression. Think about it. If you don’t have private property, you only have one thing left, which is your own soul, right? Your own inner freedom, freedom of conscience. And that’s something that nobody can ever take away. But other than that, you have nothing.

If you don’t have private property, the government can take absolutely everything away from you. They’ve got you in an iron grip. You can’t even go home. You can’t even go home to your house and be with your family, because you don’t even have that.

Historically, … the state has not withered away. It’s actually become enormous and oppressive. So to give some numbers in the USSR—the Communist Party used systematic terror, because remember, you can’t reason with people, right? People are historically determined.

If somebody is an opponent of the government and they can’t be reasoned with, and if you have utilitarian ethic, then the good thing to do is to get rid of those people.

Just from 1921 to 1953, 1.7 million Soviet citizens died in the Gulag, 800,000 were executed, 400,000 died from forced resettlement and the starvation and so forth that occurred from that kind of a resettlement.

Anthropology, Marx did believe in human dignity, not in the same way that I do, but his system undermined human dignity. …

For those of you listening, you really ought to read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.” There’s an abridged edition. That’s a very good edition. And in that, he talked about how the Soviet leaders viewed the Soviet citizens as swarming lice, that they didn’t have any inherent value or dignity. They only had instrumental value. And if you were for the revolution, they were good with you. If you are against the revolution, you could be eliminated.

Human beings also were essentially robots or animals in this theory, and I think that’s a negative. I think another problem with Marxism, and we see this in contemporary forms of Marxism, is that it misunderstands human nature and … it misunderstands evil and it locates evil either exclusively or primarily in systems.

Christianity doesn’t do that. Christianity recognizes that evil is, on the one hand, located in the human heart and rooted in the human heart, and that’s why we believe in bringing justice to individuals who have flouted the law. We do believe in what people call today systemic evil, that institutions, if you have enough individuals who are unjust, then their sin coalesces at the social level to warp institutions. But if you get rid of systemic injustice, you don’t get rid of evil.

The problem with Marxists is that they aim almost exclusively at institutions and don’t realize that you can get rid of the institutions and evil will still be there, rooted in the human heart.

A couple of other negative consequences is that a Marxist historic determinism led to moral relativism. We’ve touched on that a little bit, but that’s part of the corruption of society in the Soviet era, is moral relativism from stem to stern.

Then the last thing is … when I hear somebody like AOC or some of the socialists today talking about the 1%, sometimes I’ll laugh, sometimes I get upset about it because it’s so false.

We look at what Marx did in the USSR. The Communist Party, the KGB bosses were enormously wealthy and everyone else in the country was poor. Everyone else was poor. There wasn’t a 1%, there was a 1000th of 1% who was enormously wealthy and everybody else was poor. So if you’d like to help the U.S., let’s embrace a reality-based politic like you’ve got here at [The Heritage Foundation]. Socialism is not a reality-based politic. It’s grand utopian promises that can’t be backed up.

Davis: Given all that history you just laid out, economic Marxism has been devastating for country after country after country. Why do you think [socialism is] making this resurgence in American politics if it’s got such a bad track record? Is it just because we’re not educated or do you think there’s something more?

Ashford: Good question. I’ll give it my best shot at answering it. I think on the one hand, with younger Americans—millennials and Generation Z—there is a lack of awareness, historical awareness. They didn’t grow up exposed to the utter horrors of the Soviet Union, People’s Republic of China, the atrocities in Cuba. There’s not a kind of existential and historical awareness, so that’s part of it. But you’ve got older people, you’ve got Bernie, you know, crazy Bernie up there …

Davis: Who spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union.

Ashford: And that woman stayed with him. And I don’t understand that, but I think people are drawn to utopia. I think we all are. We want, especially idealistic people, people are idealistic and are drawn to utopia. And there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but we can’t usher into utopia. And the reason is, their evil is rooted in the human heart, not in systems.

So no amount of clearing the deck socially and starting over with new institutions will ever bring that utopia. So we’re going to have to settle for something more realistic. And for me, I think the realistic thing is to have as minimal of a government as possible. Government’s going to have to expand a little bit sometimes and step in and fix some things. But the government should set the conditions where human beings can flourish.

When there’s immoral market agents, then we can step in and correct those immoral market agents. But we can’t do this sort of grand utopian revolutionary politics, it’s just not going to work out well.

Davis: Marxism, in its economic form, as you were talking about, is clearly devastating and a lot of folks on the left have said, “Yeah, maybe that doesn’t work. We’ll adopt like a softer capitalism, but we’re going to apply Marxism and all these other areas in sex, gender, race.”

Talk about that transition and how Marxism lives on even in countries that are capitalist.

Ashford: If you’d asked me 20 years ago, 15 years ago even, I would’ve said, “Marxism is dead. It is absolutely dead. It will never make a comeback.” But it has made a comeback. And you’re right, not just in the economic dimension.

Marx’s historic determinism has been taken and applied not just to economics, but to gender, race, and sex. You as a person, Daniel, are a white male, middle class, upper-middle class, I don’t know what you are, but you’re determined—

Davis: Definitely lower-middle class.

Ashford: … You’re determined by that and you’re not a person who can be reasoned with. Right? You are a person who should be shouted down, mocked, insulted, kind of intimidated, bullied a little bit.

Davis: Just incapable of an original thought.

Ashford: Yeah, that’s right. So you have identity politics based on identities. And I do think that identity politics defined as seeking the good of your own tribe at the expense of the common good is the death of democracy. It is a way to burn down the house that our Founding Fathers built.

So we want to promote a view where people are independent agents, that we’re not completely independent, we’re interdependent on other people, but we are able to think freely.

People can change their way of thinking like Marx did—[he] went from being a Jew to a Christian to an atheist, right? He changed his thought. He wasn’t so determined historically. And we want to treat other people with that kind of respect. I want to ascribe human dignity to them, and reason with them or persuade them instead of engaging in coercive forms of activism.

Davis: When you’re engaging with people, say they’re college students or someone else who thinks that you’re just part of your identity group and not to be reasoned with, to be shunned, are you ever able to succeed in breaking through to them?

I know you mentioned some college students earlier where you did, but how do you do that and how do you meet them at a mental level where you can actually have a conversation so that they’re not so tied to their ideology that they keep shunning you?

Ashford: It’s a great question. I started as an opinion writer about four years ago and mostly for Fox, but I’ve written some for The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller. When I would link to those articles on my Facebook author page, I would get all sorts of comments, as you can imagine, from activists.

I started an experiment then that I’ve continued, not just electronically, but sort of in-person engagement with progressive activists. And the good thing is that these people are human, they’re human. And that means that there’s a good chance that if you enter into a good faith conversation with them, they’re going to respond decently.

On average I would say about half of the folks do, if you work at it, end up responding decently and you have a good conversation … You don’t usually come away agreeing. You’re not going to win them over on the spot. But you come away with it having been a good engagement. And the other half of the folks I think on average have been so … so overwhelmed by ideology that their humanness doesn’t come out. But I think we need to be careful not to respond in kind.

Davis: Right, because I would imagine … it is easy for some on the right to also fall into that identity politics mindset where it’s like, “OK, you’re just going to hate me for who I am, then I’m just going to hate you for who you are.”

Ashford: Yeah. It’s a temptation. I’ve fallen into that trap plenty of times in my life. When you’re being kind of mocked and insulted and treated like a worthless piece of trash, you want to give it back to them. And I think it is OK to sometimes poke some fun at it or to push back really hard.

But we’ve got to remember not to respond in kind. And if we can do that, I think we’ll be able to win the day.

Davis: Well, Bruce, this is a fascinating discussion. I hope our listeners have enjoyed it. I understand you have some books on the market. What should our listeners check out on Amazon?

Ashford: If you’re out there and you’d like some reading, I’ve got a couple books recently you might like. I published a book called “One Nation Under God: A Christian Hope for American Politics,” it is a gift-size book, very small.

And then I published one recently called “Letters to an American Christian.” It was a fun book. I wrote it as a series of hypothetical letters, 27 brief letters to a hypothetical college student at an elite university, encouraging him not to be seduced by his secular progressive professors.

It’s a fun read. It’s kind of a book meant to be read at the beach or in an easy chair, if you’d like. It addresses all the hot-button issues, every hot and button issue that I can imagine that book addresses. So if you’d like to read it or buy one for a friend of yours who’s headed to college or who wants to think through political issues, I think that would be one that’s easy to read and gives some good talking points.

Davis: Fantastic. Bruce, thanks for your time today.

Ashford: Thanks. It’s been great to be on the show with you.

COLUMN BY

Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis is the commentary editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal podcast. Send an email to Daniel. Twitter: @JDaniel_Davis.

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A Note for our Readers:

In the wake of every tragic mass shooting or high-profile incident involving gun violence, we hear the same narrative: To stop these horrible atrocities from happening, we must crack down on gun laws.

But is the answer really to create more laws around gun control, or is this just an opportunity to limit your Constitutional right to bear arms?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you better understand the 8 Stubborn Facts on Gun Violence in America.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal podcast and column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Anonymous Group Condemns Errors in Amazon Synod’s Working Document

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by Stephen Wynne  •  ChurchMilitant.com

‘International Group of Fathers’ denounces four ‘unacceptable’ teachings

VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – An anonymous group of clerics and laity is denouncing “unacceptable” teachings put forth in the Amazon Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris (working document).

Calling itself the Coetus Internationalis Patrum Working Group (the “International Group of Fathers,” a reference to an influential traditionalist faction during Vatican II), the collection of “bishops, priests, and Catholic faithful from all over the world” explains that its members have chosen to conceal their identities owing to a “growing climate of intimidation and purges present in the Roman Curia and in the Church in general.”

Addressing Pope Francis and the synod fathers, the group begins by affirming that the Instrumentum Laboris “raises serious questions and very grave reservations, because of its contradiction of individual points of Catholic doctrine which have always been taught by the Church, as well as its contradiction of faith in Jesus Christ, the One Savior of all mankind.”

It goes on to summarize and refute four key “theses,” or errors, contained in the working document, declaring: “In conscience and with great frankness, we affirm that the teaching of these theses is unacceptable.”

First, drawing from paragraphs 30, 39 and 138 of the Instrumentum Laboris, Coetus Internationalis Patrum explains that according to synod architects, the religious diversity of Amazonian peoples “evokes a new Pentecost.”

Additionally, the group observes that according to the synod fathers, “respect for this diversity means to recognize that there are other paths to salvation, without reserving salvation exclusively to the Catholic faith,” and that the Catholic Church must integrate “other modalities of being Church, without censures, without dogmatism, without ritual and ecclesial forms.”

In its rebuttal, the group references the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2000 declaration Dominus Iesus (On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ):

It must therefore be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith that the universal salvific will of the One and Triune God is offered and accomplished once for all in the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. Hence, those solutions that propose a salvific action of God beyond the unique mediation of Christ would be contrary to Christian and Catholic faith.

Second, Coetus Internationalis Patrum notes that according to the Instrumentum Laboris, “The teaching of Pan-Amazonian theology, which takes special account of myths, rituals, and celebrations of indigenous cultures, is required in all educational institutions” and that Catholics are asked to “adapt the Eucharistic rite” to these cultures.

The group answers these contentions by again referencing Dominus Iesus:

It would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological kingdom of God. One cannot attribute to [prayers and rituals of other religions] a divine origin or an ex opere operato salvific efficacy, which is proper to the Christian sacraments. Furthermore, it cannot be overlooked that other rituals, insofar as they depend on superstitions or other errors, constitute an obstacle to salvation.

Third, Coetus Internationalis Patrum notes that Instrumentum Laboris characterizes “the territory” of the Amazon and “the cry of its peoples” as a source of revealed religion, alongside theological sources such as Sacred Scripture, Church Councils and the Fathers of the Church.

The group responds by quoting from the Vatican’s 1965 document Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation):

Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.

Finally, Coetus Internationalis Patrum spotlights the Instrumentum Laboris’ attack on the priesthood: “It is suggested that ordination be conferred on older persons who have families and to confer ‘official ministries’ on women. There is thus proposed a new vision of Holy Orders which does not come from Revelation, but from the cultural usages of the Amazonian people.”

In its refutation, the group points to half a dozen Vatican documents, including Presbyterorum Ordinis, the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 decree on the ministry and life of priests; Pastores Dabo Vobis, Pope John Paul II’s 1992 apostolic exhortation on the formation of priests; Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical on priestly celibacy; and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter on reserving priestly ordination to men alone.

In denouncing multiple errors in the Instrumentum Laboris, Coetus Internationalis Patrum joins a growing chorus of critics, including Cdl. Raymond Burke, Cdl. Gerhard Müller, Cdl. Walter Brandmüller, Cdl. Jorge Urosa and Bp. Athanasius Schneider.

Antifa Blocks, Berates Elderly Woman Using Walker

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Masked members of Antifa blocked the way of an elderly woman using a walker, berating her by yelling, “Nazi Scum, off our streets!” (See video below)

The woman was trying to attend a fundraising event featuring Maxime Bernier, founder of the People’s Party of Canada, considered by the protesters as right-wing and, thus, unacceptable.

The video shows the woman’s husband coming to her aid as they attempt to cross a street to enter Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Her husband can be seen trying to reason with a female protester, who can be heard screaming at him, “Don’t you f***ing touch me!”

He eventually got help from police officers who intervened and escorted the couple into the building, where Bernier was – ironically – holding a discussion with U.S. political commentator Dave Rubin on free speech and censorship.

The woman’s son, David Turkoski, later posted his mother’s response on Twitter.

Bernier supports stricter immigration laws and opposes the “extreme multiculturalism and cult of diversity” of current Canadian Prime Justin Trudeau.

Before he founded the People’s Party, Bernier was a member of the Conservative party where he served as a member of parliament as well as Minister of Industry, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism. In 2017, he nearly won the leadership of the party.

Counter-protesters showed up to oppose Antifa, who unsuccessfully put maximum pressure on Mohawk College to cancel the event. Four arrests were made (two from each side) for breaching the peace.

Police are currently reviewing the video of the event before deciding to arrest the specific individuals involved in the incident.

Antifa has a history of violent protests, most recently when they targeted journalist Andy Ngo, among others, at a protest in Portland. Ngo ended up in the hospital with a brain bleed from the injuries he sustained. Others ended up with bleeding heads as well.

Antifa was also responsible for the 2017 violent demonstration and subsequent riots in Berkeley. Its members were reacting to conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos being invited to speak on campus. During the riots, Antifa members smashed the windows of a Marine Corps recruiting office after sucker-punching someone who voiced opposition to them.

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PODCAST: Parents Fight Back: Sex and Kindergarten in America

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“I dare you… Hold up the textbook in front of the camera and show them a picture of what 10-year-olds are going to be asked to see.” That was Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers’s (R) challenge to reporters, when they asked him about his fierce response to the radical Left’s sex ed. He pointed to a book, called It’s Perfectly Normal, that isn’t normal at all — unless you’re one of those rare individuals who think teaching anal sex to five-year-olds is a good idea.

Arizona State Superintendent Kathy Hoffman’s (D), Twitter profile shows a picture of the new officeholder carrying a sign that says, “#IAmPublicEducation.” And after hearing her vision for sexualizing kids, that’s exactly what parents are afraid of. “I couldn’t even read the manual to you over the radio,” State Senator Sylvia Allen (R-Ariz.) told me on “Washington Watch” Monday. “When [they] talk about comprehensive sex education,” she warned, “that’s exactly what they mean. It’s very comprehensive, very detailed—they leave nothing out. And when you read the material, you can only come to the conclusion that if they’re going to give [kindergarteners] on up different types of information, the only reason for that is because you are… giving them information to help sexualize them.”Bowers, who is fighting alongside Allen, agreed. The dad of seven has been on a one-man mission to keep the curriculum changes the state derailed in June off track. “I don’t need to sexualize children and tell them how to masturbate,” he said. “It’s way beyond where we need to be.” Hoffman’s office fired back that his fears had no basis in reality.

Bowers is not alone in his concern.

When activists tried to overturn 40 years of conservative sex ed messaging and replace it with graphic, pro-LGBT propaganda, the crowd was so large at the state board of education that officials had to open three overflow rooms! Outside groups like Planned Parenthood and GLSEN were trying to strip the state’s ban on “abnormal, deviate, or unusual sexual acts and practices” — and parents on both sides were furious. “Instead of creating more Planned Parenthood customers, let’s put our energy into improving the reading ability of our children,” one mom railed. Another held up the same book Bowers did and pointed to the nude pictures. It’s completely unnecessary, Bowers argues. The board agreed, deciding to table the changes — for now.

But the battle isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Extremists are still finding ways to slip the indoctrination into districts where parents aren’t watching. At an event in September, Bowers took his warning on the road, asking people to think about these consequences. When we sexualize kids, he argued, what are the results? “Sexually transmitted diseases, which we treat for money. Abortion, which we do for money. Even the heinous selling of body parts, which we do for money. And the treatment of AIDS across the world, which we do for money.”

These activists, including the ones at the highest levels of state government, are counting on parents’ ignorance to push this agenda through. “That’s my reason for being very involved in this,” Sylvia told me, “because I believe that these programs are going against the vast majority of parents—and what parents want taught to their children about this subject… In Arizona, we have local control over curriculum. So that means parents have got to be active in their school district to see what their school district might want to propose on this subject.”

Of course, when we talk about sex ed, there’s probably a tendency for a lot of moms and dads to think back to when they were in school and the lessons were a lot more subdued. This is not your grandmother’s sex education. This isn’t even your mom’s. This is explicit. But the Left is overreaching — and in school after school, we’re seeing a monumental pushback from parents of both parties. As Sylvia said, this isn’t a partisan issue. No one wants to leave this crucial part of a child’s development to the activists in their district. They don’t want to be in a race to beat their schools to this conversation. In Arizona, leaders like Allen are trying to overhaul the system to create an opt-in type permission system where the schools will have to obtain the parents’ consent before teaching these subjects.

Right now, they’re hoping other states are paying attention to what’s happening in their districts and learning from it. Do you know if your local sex ed is an opt-in or opt-out program? Have you looked at the curriculum? If they update the materials, do they tell you? These are the questions our friends at the Center for Arizona Policy are asking their parents. Take a look at their post, “What is the state teaching your kids about sex?” and apply it to your community. The best parent is an informed parent. Join the movement to Take Back Our Schools!

Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

No, Mattel: Kids Don’t Want Your Gender-Neutral Dolls

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Fox Business Network reported some news last week that may surprise business strategists as well as kids and parents alike: Toymaker Mattel has announced a new line of gender-neutral dolls.

The company cites new “research” finding that kids “don’t want their toys dictated by gender norms.”

So, for $30, children will now be able to outfit dolls with long or short hair, clothing that includes pants, skirts, or both—whatever the kids decide. The dolls are also available in six skin tones.

“Toys are a reflection of culture and as the world continues to celebrate the positive impact of inclusivity, we felt it was time to create a doll line free of labels,” explained the company’s senior vice president, Kim Culmone.

“This line allows all kids to express themselves freely, which is why it resonates so strongly with them. We’re hopeful Creatable World will encourage people to think more broadly about how all kids can benefit from doll play.”

It’s hard to know what to find more shocking: that Mattel has created a “gender-neutral doll,” or that the market—primarily made up of kids—is supposedly demanding one.

Somehow, it’s difficult to believe that young kids who don’t yet know the meaning of “gender neutral” would be demanding a gender-neutral doll.

A much more likely possibility is that Mattel is caving to progressive political forces that want “gender-neutral dolls.” In that respect, the new line of dolls tells us more about the politics of the present moment than the desires of kids.

Some might push back and say, “Calm down, they’re just dolls. Dolls aren’t meant to imitate real life.” And that’s true, to an extent.

Many toys are unrealistic—consider Batman, Spider-Man, Paw Patrol figures, and others. But the companies that manufacture those toys don’t pretend they are mimicking reality. They aren’t. They’re based on fiction and intended to ignite imaginative play, an important part of a healthy childhood.

But dress-up dolls are much more realistic than action figures, and they have often been used to promote gender stereotypes—for better or for worse.

With these gender-neutral dolls, Mattel is deconstructing the notion of sex in the minds of young children and teaching them an ideology that says there is no relationship between biological sex and reality.

This same radical gender ideology has proved disastrous when taken to its ultimate conclusion: pushing young people down the path of sex-reassignment with life-altering drugs and harmful surgeries

This ideology claims that since gender is simply a social construct with no basis in biological reality, it can therefore be fluid—hence the term “gender fluid.” However, a study published in 2017 in the Infant and Child Development journal suggests there is a biological basis for human behavior.

The study observed 1,600 boys and girls at play and found that when offered a variety of toys to choose from, under various conditions, boys and girls consistently preferred toys typed to their own sex, indicating biology’s persistent role in behavior.

Of course, kids shouldn’t be forced to conform to rigid sex stereotypes that dictate, for instance, that girls can’t play with trucks and boys shouldn’t play with dolls.

But it is a huge mistake to treat our sexed bodies as secondary to a subjective self-perception of gender. That is misleading at best, and damaging at worst.

The truth is that there are only two sexes, and toy companies should not mislead children to believe otherwise.

Gender dysphoria is a real condition, but the transgender community’s recommendations for medical treatment have been shown to be not only ineffective at resolving a person’s underlying distress, but actually harmful—especially to children.

Studies show this isn’t a safe process. Brand new data from the Food and Drug Administration shows that over 6,000 adults have died from the effects of a drug that is being used to block puberty in children who struggle to feel comfortable with their sexed bodies.

Progressive gender ideology isn’t helping Americans; it’s hurting them. It is not only nonsensical, but irresponsible for Mattel to create a line of gender-neutral dolls aimed at indoctrinating kids with this harmful ideology.

COMMENTARY BY

Nicole Russell

Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

In the wake of every tragic mass shooting or high-profile incident involving gun violence, we hear the same narrative: To stop these horrible atrocities from happening, we must crack down on gun laws.

But is the answer really to create more laws around gun control, or is this just an opportunity to limit your Constitutional right to bear arms?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you better understand the 8 Stubborn Facts on Gun Violence in America.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!
GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Tea and Treachery

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Teas take on different significance in different cultures, but a TeaTime hosted by the Muslim Brotherhood members resembles no other. It is a time to be wary of the dualism of Islam and the gathering’s true purpose.  

The modest event was publicized as TeaTime in a local church.  It would not be a four-o’clock, English-style social occasion, complete with porcelain tea service and petit fours; or Japanese ceremony symbolizing peace, harmony and happiness; or Chinese ritual of peace, quiet, enjoyment and truth.  Perhaps the focus would not be on the beverage at all but another T.  The initial T.  T as in Taqiyyah, whose meaning in Arabic is the practice of concealing one’s belief (more accurately known as duplicity) and foregoing ordinary religious duties in order to make Islam supreme.  It is a concept and reality that must be borne in mind when reading or listening to the words of Muslims.  It provides the opportunity for the affable advance guard to sell you an appealing story about a war monger, a mass murderer, so that we may continue to welcome the 1.6 billion adherents into the west, our country, and into our lives, and fundamentally and forever change what we have.

T might also refer to the visiting Taskforce and its Tactic,  as well as Theocracy, Tyranny, Treachery, Territorialism, Thought control, Takeover and Theirs, all combined into a system by which they seize dominance of land and people through the centuries, as they have come to Threaten and dominate in the Middle East and Africa; proceeding in the UK, mainland Europe, Scandinavia, and progressing in the Americas and Oceania.

Their informational flyers would be displayed during the session, including one titled, “What they say about the Prophet Muhammad,” published by ICNA – Islamic Circle of North America, an offshoot of the Muslims Students Association (MSA), which is itself an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) – to complement the conversation at this Islamic outreach program.  The MB is a religiopolitical organization, founded in 1928 to carry on the work of Muhammad, to advocate the application of Islamic law (sharia) in all aspects of society – and in every society on the globe.  This is Hijra, conquest by population, and this is why they’re here.

This T-time would not be a Muslim outreach for socialization and assimilation, to engage their Christian neighbors and ease the adjustment of the incoming migrants into American life.  They have not come to learn because they already know far more about us than we know about them, their ideology and their purpose. They have come to leave their spiritual mark on our Territory, on the church itself, because, according to Muhammad, now that they have set foot on this place, it is Theirs.  There will be no need for war and bloodshed if they can convince these church folks that their religions are similar, that they believe in the same god, and that these kafirs (non-Muslims) will eventually make a peaceful Transition to worship Allah.  A 2017 study revealed that Islam is the fastest-growing religion, primarily due to the young age and high fertility rate of Muslims. and conversion must be maintained to equal the rate of apostasy – desertion of the faith – which calls for the penalty of death.

When the Target country is too daunting for military conquest, a peaceful stealth operation may be employed to disable a population.  In Leo Hohmann’s Stealth Invasion, the author reminds us that Muhammad’s unarmed warriors (men, women and children), come as legal refugees on air-conditioned planes, as legal guest workers, legal green-card holders, legal students, legal entrepreneurs, and legal professors and preachers.  They will implement secret trade deals and mass immigration policies that will inevitably erode national sovereignty, divide national populations against each other, and cause civil strife, as well as inflict small increments of pressure for accommodation as we slowly adjust our lives to comply and adapt.

They live among us and donate to Muslim charities – particularly to the sixth pillar of jihad as directed by the Koran – and absorb the prescribed messages of behavior instilled at the five-times-daily prayer times in the mosques.  These are the local businessmen, laborers, and parents who encourage their children to advocate the BDS (boycott-divestment-sanctions) movement in the hope of triggering Israel’s economic collapse, to restrict Jewish students’ educational rights and opportunities, and to harass and cause physical harm to the students who support Israel.

They are our neighbors who have suddenly purchased land that accommodates a mosque that far exceeds the size required for a Muslim community its current size, who demand special considerations for their children in school, halal foods in local food establishments, particular accommodations in the workplace, extra swim time for their women only at the local pool, and distinct laws in the courtrooms.  They are our neighbors who run for local office – perhaps city council or school board – and make gradual, acceptable changes to the rules, the laws, the textbooks; the teachers and professors who change the curriculum to denigrate Christianity and Judaism, America and Israel, and provide a propagandist education about Islam.  They are the instructors who take the children on unauthorized field trips to the local mosque, invite imams to class to teach the Shahada (Muslim profession of faith and conversion) to replace the Pledge of Allegiance to America, and influence the girls to wear hijabs.   These are the doctors who brazenly declare they will prescribe wrong medicines to Jewish patients or the pharmacist who may administer the next flu vaccination.

The flyers include literature that describe Muhammad as one of unblemished character, the perfect human being and role model, who surpassed all standards of human greatness, and the “founder of twenty terrestrial empires.”   The truth, however, is completely defined as Hudna in the Koran,  which sanctions the use of deception (taqiyyah) to negotiate peace treaties and break them with sudden violence and perpetual massacre until the unwary conquered fall.  Within a year of Muhammad’s death, his followers used the tactics against the indigenous people from Spain to India.  Despite the complicit left’s ability to keep us underinformed, there is a website, “Religionofpeace.com,” that updates the Islamic attacks since 9/11, the (27) countries, (1176) people injured and (734) killed, and (13) suicide blasts in August 2019 alone.

On Internet websites, Muhammad is considered a charismatic warrior, but charismatic also means persuasive, and persuasive may also mean threatening.  He was a self-appointed Messenger of God who revolutionized Arabian warfare, implementing his messianic ideology, his scheme of supersessionism over Judaism and Christianity, holy war (jihad) against infidels and apostates) and martyrdom (shahada).  And, If his charisma did not win over the other faiths, their scimitars were drawn, and remain the weapons so proudly displayed on the flag of the “Religion of Peace.”  He introduced guerilla warfare and established a belief that everyone – men, women, and children – has an obligation to fight and spread Islam throughout Arabia, thereby changing Christian pacifistic thinking.

Beginning with only 314 combatants in 624 ce, he amassed 10,000 men with his assault on Mecca in 620, and 30,000 men and a 10,000-man cavalry by that year’s end, acquiring additional military equipment as booty and quickly becoming the fearsome, powerful warlord.  He ordered the beheading of Medina’s 900 Jewish men in the town square and enslaved (or sold into slavery) their women and children.  Terrorism ensured discipline and control over his forces, but he also offered a better pay scale with all the booty they could carry for bravery, and a deceitful promise of sexual paradise for a hero’s death.  His legacy is the death of perhaps in excess of 900 million people over 1400 years (600 million Hindus alone!), dwarfing the deaths of the Black Plague,  and bested only by malaria and influenza.

Among the statements usually presented at a T-event is that we all worship the same God.  In Judaism, God uses Moses to deliver The Ten Commandments to establish the moral foundation for human behavior.  If we were to sum up the basic ideals of Judaism and  Christianity, it would be The Ethics of Reciprocity, known as The Golden Rule and expressed in the former as “that which is hateful unto you do not do to others,”  in the latter as “do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”  In both religions, the focus is on ethical teachings, honesty, dignity and acts of kindness.  Although stories of violence are told in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, they are lessons to be learned – not open-ended dictates.  The violence was an occasional and regrettable necessity, but it never became a rule of life.  Islam has no Golden Rule.  It has severe sharia law, replete with painful subjugation and slavery.  Mainstream Islamic law stipulates detailed regulations for the use of violence, including the use of corporal and capital punishment within the family or household, as well as when and against whom to wage war.  Judaism’s laws are meant for Jews, not to be imposed on others; Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have spent massively to promote and inflict their ultra-conservative version of Islam worldwide.  They come not to America to become Americans, but to make us Theirs.

Toward the end of T-time, it is customary to send an American convert-to-Islam to collect the written questions from the audience. After selecting and reading aloud the simpler queries, the leader graciously announces his apologies that they’ve run out of time.  The guests are invited to visit a mosque in the future, avail themselves of the literature on the table, and call with any questions.  They have been softened up for the kill.  And, should any of the Brotherhood presenters be running for office, the face is now familiar and friendly, and the unfamiliar name suggests there is no threat.  No Threat indeed.

RELATED ARTICLE: Jacksonville, FL: Citizen of Nepal Arrested for Soliciting Underage Girl for Sex

EDITORS NOTE: © All rights reserved. If you liked this essay, consider Tabitha’s book, available on Amazon.

Watch: New hoax, same swamp

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First, Democrats in Congress and their footsoldiers in the mainstream media tried to overturn the 2016 election with an exhausting two-year investigation on alleged Russia collusion. It ended when a case built entirely on lies and deception collapsed in embarrassing fashion.

That they tried and failed already isn’t stopping Congressional Democrats, who are playing the same political games once again. Armed with a new fabrication, they’re determined to do what they couldn’t in a fair election: beat President Donald J. Trump.

Why are they so scared?

President Trump promised American citizens that he would fight for them—and, in the process, drain a swamp that’s served them countless empty promises for years. Democrats and the media cannot stand that President Trump has exposed their true colors with simple, brutally effective language that speaks to working Americans.

Just like last time, there’s no truth to anything they’re selling. There was no “quid pro quo” between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine. There was no cover-up to a now publicly available call. And all this stemmed from the complaints of an anonymous “whistleblower” who admitted to having no firsthand knowledge of any of it.

The saddest part is that this doesn’t hurt President Trump, who won’t suffer in terms of public opinion facing another witch hunt. The only ones it hurts are the American people, who once again see their Congress squandering years on political theater rather than delivering on its promise of an agenda for the middle class.

It’s a new hoax—in the same swamp. The good news is that while the left breaks its promises once again, it will never stop President Trump from keeping his.

The Washington Times: “After failing on Russia, Democrats try a new hoax”

 Coincidence? “Intel community secretly gutted requirement of first-hand whistleblower knowledge”

It’s a new era for the Hispanic American community

On Friday, President Trump welcomed 400 Hispanic community, business, and faith leaders from across America to the White House to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.

 President Trump: Hispanic Americans are a big part of our national story 

“This evening, we come together to honor the devotion, and the drive, and the faith, and genius, and exceptional achievements of our incredible Hispanic-American community,” the President said in the East Room. “Hispanic Americans enrich America in countless ways, and we will always honor this solemn commitment to you.”

Hispanic Americans are thriving like never before. When President Trump was elected, his pro-growth, pro-worker agenda was set to change the economic landscape for many. The Hispanic community in particular has felt that positive impact, seeing their unemployment rate fall to an all-time low of 4.2 percent.

A big theme of the Trump Economy has been soaring income and falling poverty rates. Hispanic families are no exception: Their median income has reached a historic high, surpassing $50,000 for the first time on record. And with a historic low poverty level last year, the gap between the poverty rate for Hispanic Americans and Americans overall is the smallest it has ever been.

“There is no part of American society you have not made better,” President Trump said. “There is no aspect of American life you have not made stronger. And I know that I speak for all Americans when I say that we could not be prouder of our Hispanic American community than we are today.”

President Trump’s Proclamation on National Hispanic Heritage Month.

More: Hispanic Americans are flourishing in the Trump Economy!

© White House. All rights reserved.

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Full Tommy Robinson discussion with Facebook on Danish TV

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Posted by Eeyore

This is a very disturbing interview and full credit to the Danish show and host. She was exceptional in her handling of this Facebook exec, defender of his company’s Soviet like propaganda. He admitted several things in this people should be aware of. That truth does not matter. That anyone can be de-personed and evidence of the crimes, or reasons for this action, can not be found, nor will It be produced.

This is a profoundly important bit of video and I am providing two embeds, D Tube as well as Bitchute. However I will also produce a download link for anyone to grab the file and upload it to their own Facebook account and or Youtube and social media in general.

People need to know the state of decrepitude of our freedoms at this time.

Direct link.

Thank you Tania Groth for the translation of this critical video.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Priests Ticked at Pope

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TRANSCRIPT

Things are growing tense in and around Rome — not to mention the whole Church — as Catholics on both sides of the Church brace themselves for a heck of a conflict.

That conflict is being fueled in a hundred different ways, including most especially by Pope Francis himself, who seems to have ramped up his own personal attacks and sideways comments about faithful clergy and Catholics.

The crew and I were barely off the plane at the Rome airport and some priests approached us — at the airport — and thanked us for our work at Church Militant.

We expected they were friendly, owing to their cassocks, and they were.

They also didn’t hesitate to express their unhappiness and frustration at the Pope’s latest swipe at tradition-minded clergy when he blasted them for wearing cassocks and hats known as saturnos — traditional garb for priests.

He said of them, “Have you never seen young priests all stiff in black cassocks and hats in the shape of the planet Saturn on their heads? Behind all the rigid clericalism there are serious problems.”

This is not the first swipe at traditional faithful clerics from the Pope who asks “who am I to judge?” — and those clergy are getting pretty sick and tired of their holy father insulting them and suggesting they have mental problems while at the same time he appoints men to the College of Cardinals who are walking heretics.

Men like Matteo Zuppi from Italy who support homosexuality and women’s ordination; or men like Brazil’s Cdl. Cláudio Hummes, the Pope’s point man for this shipwreck of an upcoming synod, who is pushing for veritable heresy to be instituted.

Hummes appeared at Bergoglio’s elbow on the loggia in Rome the night he was elected in 2013, and Francis credits Hummes, a supporter of the condemned liberation theology, for choosing his name as Francis.

The truth is the synod is little else than a collection of Marxist and theologically anti-Catholic ideas being promoted by a rogue gallery of Churchmen who have little faith, if any, and who have been condemned by other Churchmen for flirting with heresy, apostasy and schism.

So you can forgive the little group of tradition-minded clergy for being ticked off that Pope Francis goes after them with such abandon at nearly every turn.

Apparently, the condemnations against judging and being gossipy and divisive are lifted when speaking of traditional clergy and faithful.

The same concerns are being heard more and more commonly by tradition-minded faithful as well, who are also growing increasingly embittered by the constant insults emanating from Rome, including the Pope.

When the Holy Father freely tosses around the word “schism” and says he doesn’t really care and is unafraid of it, that’s a nuclear bomb going off among faithful Catholics, faithful Catholics who are sick to death of watching devils roam freely around the Church.

That was the underlying cause of the silent witness of prayers this past Saturday near the Castel Sant’Angelo where 200 Catholics stood silently praying, staring at St. Peter’s, and offering Pope Leo’s prayer to St. Michael for exorcism.

Church Militant participated in the event and was happy to do so. Even the Rosaries we prayed on were specially produced by cloistered Carmelites who understand that there are devils swarming the Church who need to be exorcised.

Saint Michael stands atop the medieval fortress next to the Tiber, the fortress which has always been identified with defending the papacy.

During the reign of Pope Gregory the Great in the late sixth century, a devastating plague broke out in Rome and Gregory made a public invocation to St. Michael to end the plague.

Saint Michael appeared over the top of Castel Sant’Angelo and the plague ceased.

For this reason, the statue was of the archangel was erected here and St. Michael became the official protector of Rome.

Saint Michael is being implored again, throughout the Church, to come once again and protect not just Rome and not just from a physical malady, but the entire Church from a spiritual infestation of devils.

Even Pope St. John Paul had strongly recommended that the prayer to St. Michael be reinstituted and offered at the end of every Mass.

In the spirit of starting small, perhaps we can all ask St. Michael to intervene and ask him to stop Pope Francis from attacking good priests and calling them names.

It’s going to be a wild ride here in Rome for the next few weeks, and it hasn’t even officially gotten underway yet.

Coming to you from Rome in preparation for the Sin-od on the Amazon.

RELATED ARTICLE: Abortion Activists Try to Burn Down Catholic Church During Protest, But Catholics Stop Them

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Ukrainian Corruption is Socially Acceptable Democratic Privilege

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“Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.” –  Hannah Arendt

“Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.” – Steve Allen

“That is the problem with this rich and anguished generation.  Somewhere a long time ago they fell in love with the idea that politicians, even the slickest and brightest presidential candidates, were real heroes and truly exciting people.  That is wrong on its face.  They are mainly dull people with corrupt instincts and criminal children.” –  Hunter S. Thompson

The whistleblower who accused President Donald Trump of pressuring Ukraine’s president to interfere in the 2020 presidential election is a CIA employee who was detailed to the White House.  Exactly who detailed a CIA agent to the White House, and why didn’t the Secret Service expel the person?  The “whistleblower” has since returned to the CIA.

The Secret Service provides physical security for the White House Complex, the neighboring Treasury Department building and the vice president’s residence.  They ensure the safety of the President, the Vice President, their immediate families, former presidents, their spouses, etc. Link  The Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security.  So, where was the Secret Service when a CIA Agent was in the White House spying on the President?

Article II of the Constitution gives the president sweeping power to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate with leaders of other nations, make demands or offer promises.  The Constitution does not grant the power of review, approval or disapproval to spies or other unelected officials in the executive branch.  A constitutional-law attorney’s analysis of the Trump phone call exposes the fraudulence of this entire charade.

Whistleblower Law Firm

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow commented on the “whistleblower” complaint alleging President Trump urged Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to probe former Vice President Joe Biden.  The complaint was filed on rumors and riddled with gossip and blatant falsehoods; the whistleblower stated he had no firsthand knowledge.  Research by Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) indicates that dirty cop James Comey planted spies inside the White House.

Sekulow called the probe into alleged Trump wrongdoing a “faux investigation” over something that would not be admitted in court, hinting at a conspiracy because the complaint appears to have been “written by a law firm.”

The whistleblower’s lawyer, Andrew Bakaj interned for Schumer in the spring of 2001 and for Hillary Clinton in the fall of the same year, according to Bakaj’s LinkedIn page. More recently, Bakaj has worked as an official in the CIA and Pentagon and specializes in whistleblower and security clearances in his legal practice.

Bakaj told the Times that “any decision to report any perceived identifying information of the whistle-blower is deeply concerning and reckless, as it can place the individual in harm’s way.”  Doubtful that this CIA agent would undergo the same treatment as Edward Snowden, Julian Assange or William Campbell.

The whistleblower sprinkles throughout his document footnotes referring to a publication with the initials OCCRP. One guess who funds OCCRP, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.  Soros’s dirty money is all over this story.

The ICWPA Law Changed

The original Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA) defined the parameters of an “urgent concern” complaint as an abuse or violation of law “relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.”  The president’s conversation with a foreign leader does not seem to fall under this whistleblower definition.

However, a week before this whistleblower’s hearsay document allegedly prepared by his CIA lawyers, Pelosi’s Congress passed a bill changing the whistleblower law to include “hearsay.”

The Federalist’s Sean Davis discovered that the intel community secretly changed the rules governing whistleblowers, including amending the required form, in order to allow 2nd hand information to suffice. This happened just days before the Trump-Ukraine whistle-blower filed his complaint.

Isn’t that just too convenient?

CIA Director Gina Haspel

Just who would know about the ICWPA changes?  Why the CIA Director of course.

Upon her nomination for Director by President Trump, more than 50 former senior U.S. government officials, including six former CIA Directors and three former directors of national intelligence signed a letter supporting her nomination.  They included former Directors of the CIA, John Brennan, Leon Panetta and Michael Morell, former Directors of the NSA and CIA Michael Hayden, and James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence.

A group of 109 retired generals and admirals signed a letter expressing “profound concern” over Haspel’s nomination due to her record and alleged involvement in the CIA’s use of torture and the subsequent destruction of evidence.

In 2013, John Brennan, then the director of Central Intelligence, named Haspel as acting Director of the National Clandestine Service, which carries out covert operations around the globe.  However, she was not appointed to the position permanently due to criticism about her involvement in the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program.

Brennan called on an unlimited number of deep state spies to use the new, secretly altered whistleblower complaint form to report Trump.  On September 28, 2019, he tweeted, “A reminder to federal officials: There is no limit on the number of individuals who can use the whistleblower statute. If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive from Mr. Trump or someone doing his bidding, now is the time to report it.”

Bidens and Ukraine

Hunter Biden, that upstanding and righteous son of former VP and Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden certainly has a jaded and nefarious past.  His older brother, Beau Biden, died of cancer in May of 2015.  Hunter divorced his wife, mother of his three children, and moved in with his deceased brother’s wife, Hallie, for three years before their separation.

A U.S. official told NBC News that Hunter Biden was kicked out of the Navy Reserve in 2014 after he failed a drug test which showed positive for cocaine.  The Wall Street Journal first reported the incident.

A couple months later, Hunter Biden was on the Board of the largest gas and oil company in the Ukraine, Burisma Holdings, making $50,000 a year, an exorbitant amount for a Board member at any company.  The largest oil and gas company hired a practicing drug addict only a few months after the addict was removed from the U.S. Navy for doing cocaine.  This makes no sense unless this individual was the son of the Vice President of the U.S., Joe Biden.

In 2006, Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin, in his investigation of corruption involving Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company, identified Hunter Biden as the recipient of over $3 million from the company.  Joe Biden didn’t want this corruption exposed, so as the VP of the U.S., using loan guarantees of a billion dollars as hostage, he demanded the Ukraine fire Victor Shokin, and then he bragged about doing this at the Council on Foreign Relations.  He said he told Ukrainian President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, “We’re not giving you the billion unless you fire Shokin.”  Ultimately, he was fired.

The well-heeled Biden Democratic socialist family has problems, especially with drugs, when father Joe is allegedly anti-drug.  Like her brother, Ashley Biden allegedly had problems with cocaine and marijuana.  Caroline Biden, daughter of Joe Biden’s financier brother James Biden, dodged jail despite a $100K credit card scam.

Hunter Biden, Chris Heinz and Devon Archer

According to a Time’s article, in May 2014, David Leiter, a former Senate chief of staff to Secretary of State John Kerry, signed on to work as a lobbyist for Burisma about a week after Biden announced he was joining the company.

Included was a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company. 

The three friends, Hunter Biden, Chris Heinz and Devon Archer established a series of related LLCs. The trunk of the tree was Rosemont Capital, the alternative investment fund of the Heinz Family Office.

Joe Biden and John Kerry negotiated sensitive and high-stakes deals with foreign governments, Rosemont entities secured a series of exclusive deals often with those same foreign governments.  Profitable deals were struck with foreign governments on the heels of crucial diplomatic missions carried out by their powerful fathers.

Often those foreign entities gained favorable policy actions from the United States government just as the sons were securing favorable financial deals from those same entities.  There is even a huge China connection via the Thornton Group run by infamous mobster Whitey Bulger’s nephew, James Bulger.

See the NY Post article by Peter Schweizer, author of Secret Empires.

Democrats and Ukraine

Ex-lobbyists won’t be indicted for Ukraine work, including Tony Podesta’s firm, the Podesta Group, and Mercury LLC.  The question facing government investigators was whether the Podesta Group and Mercury knew their work for the Ukrainian nonprofit was in fact being directed by the Ukrainian government. Podesta and former Minnesota Republican Congressman Vin Weber, Council on Foreign Relations member and Aspen Institute Trustee, violated a law that requires U.S. lobbyists for foreign governments to register as foreign agents and disclose their work to the DOJ.

Obama White House counsel Greg Craig was acquitted in another case stemming from the probe into whether a group of Washington consultants improperly hid from U.S. authorities their work for the Ukrainian government around 2012.

In 2013 Ukrainian Igor Pasternak held two different fund raisers for Rep. Adam Schiff asking for contributions between $1,000 and $2,500.  Pelosi and Loretta Sanchez have also used Pasternak.  He is an arms dealer and has sold arms in places like Syria.

In the WSJ analysis of Clinton Foundation disclosures, Ukraine became a vast pool of U.S. taxpayer-funded “aid” that poured into that long-corrupt nation and then saw piles of kickbacks returned to powerful and politically-connected recipients.  Joe Biden grabbed some of that Ukraine stash for his family but chances are it wasn’t anywhere near what the Clintons did – and all with the blessing of President Obama.  Between 1999 and 2014, Ukraine leads in contributions to the Clinton Foundation by individuals of donating more than $50,000.

Meanwhile, Paul Manafort rots in prison.

DOJ Press Release

The mainstream media is not telling America that the DOJ press release issued the day the transcript of the President’s conversation became public, makes explicit that the president never spoke with AG Barr about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former VP Biden or his son or asking him to contact Ukraine on any other matter…including the fact that the AG has not communicated at all with the Ukraine.

The press release also contains the fact that the DOJ team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counter-intelligence investigation directed at the 2016 Trump campaign.  Certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.

In Andrew McCarthy’s new book, Ball of Collusion, he suggests that during the 2016 campaign, the FBI tried to get evidence from the Ukrainian government officials against Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to pressure him into cooperating against Mr. Trump. Link

Conclusion

The left’s hatred for President Trump has become psychotic to the point where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling for impeachment proceedings against President Trump despite the fact there are no grounds.  Pelosi is also claiming, without evidence, that Russia had a hand in the Trump-Ukraine call.

Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) is incensed with the lies told by Adam Schiff regarding President Trump’s Ukrainian phone call, that he has introduced a motion to condemn and censure House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) for performing a fabricated conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.  Schiff did this during his opening statement at a panel hearing the morning of September 26th, 2019.

Biden’s presidential campaign made an extraordinary request to executives of top news channels on Sunday, September 29th, asking them to no longer book Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on their programs.

As New York City Mayor, Giuliani took on the mob.  The mainstream media Democratic comrades may acquiesce to Biden’s request, but no one will ever muzzle a scrapper like Rudy Giuliani.

RELATED ARTICLE: Former CIA official on whistleblower: ‘How could this be an intelligence matter?’

© All rights reserved.

Levin interviews Peter Schweizer author of ‘Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends’

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Mark Levin interviews Peter Schweizer author of  the #1 New York Times best selling book “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.”

America is still suffering from the Obama legacy of socialist government. 

Peter Schweizer has been fighting corruption―and winning―for years. In Throw Them All Out, he exposed insider trading by members of Congress, leading to the passage of the STOCK Act. In Extortion, he uncovered how politicians use mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves. And in Clinton Cash, he revealed the Clintons’ massive money machine and sparked an FBI investigation.

Now he explains how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world.

An American bank opening in China would be prohibited by US law from hiring a slew of family members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals.

President Donald Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.

In many parts of the world, the children of powerful political figures go into business and profit handsomely, not necessarily because they are good at it, but because people want to curry favor with their influential parents. This is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. But for relatives of some prominent political families, we may already be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.

Deeply researched and packed with shocking revelations, Secret Empires identifies public servants who cannot be trusted and provides a path toward a more accountable government.

Watch this compelling interview with Peter Schweizer:

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© All rights reserved. Video from Life, Liberty  & Levin.

INTEL UPDATE: Egypt

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Friday, 27 September, al-Jazeera Arabic reported that the call for demonstrations against President as-Sisi asked for the people to hit the streets after the Friday prayers.

That has already happened early Friday morning U.S. time.

In the meantime the security services blocked off all the streets and bridges leading to midaan at-tahreer (Cairo’s center plaza which was the focus of the January 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations that brought Mubarrak down).  Other areas of the city were also locked down.

This seemed to stifle the demonstrations at first, but then it seemed like the numbers picked up as the day went on as people began to gather in side streets to demonstrate.  There were also demonstrations in a number of other cities in Egypt.

Since the only major Arabic news entity reporting on these events is al-Jazeera, which has an anti-President as-Sisi bias, and al-Jazeera’s only video feed are images from participators’ cell phones, It is difficult to judge exactly how extensive these demonstrations are and how numerous the demonstrators.  (Note, all western news entities mentioning the demonstrations in Egypt are relying on the accounts coming out of al-Jazeera.)

My gut feeling though, is that it is not as big a deal as were those last Friday.  Meaning that the heavy hand, and the lock-down of Cairo, may have succeeded in dampening the protests to some extent–in spite of al-Jazeera’s wishes.

The arrest count from last week’s protest is now at 1900 and includes people from all walks of life.  There is no word yet as to the numbers arrested today, although tear gas has been used in some areas.  There is some video feed of people burning pictures of as-Sisi.  Unlike last week, there seems to be a lot more children and African immigrants participating in these protests.

Talk show host ‘Amru Adeeb reported on his al-hakaya (the Story) show that Muslim Brotherhood members who fled to Turkey have called for the formation of a new group which would be able to get the people out onto the streets to protest the regime.  This new group is needed, according to the MB, because the regime has penetrated the previous groups it has formed.

(Note:  Since the Egyptian government has declared the MB to be a terrorist group, it has been banned in Egypt.  Therefore, they tried to get around that by forming new groups such as al-hasm, and al-murabitoun.  Note also that the above-mentioned talk show host ‘Amru Adeeb is reputed to be close to the regime in general, and close to Egyptian intelligence in particular.)

Issues related to the current demonstrations (other than those delineated in previous reporting) include:

  • The government’s oppression.
  • The never-ending war in the Sinai which the protestors claim the government is intentionally extending so they can use the excuse of “the War on Terror” to keep the country virtually under martial law.
  • The “renaissance dam” in Ethiopia which Egyptians fear will cut off the flow of the Nile, Egypt’s only source of water.  They blame as-Sisi for signing a protocol with Ethiopia allowing Ethiopia to go ahead with the dam’s construction.
  • General corruption in the regime, but more specifically:
  • The appointment of as-Sisi’s son, Mahmoud, as the head of Egyptian General Intelligence (EGI).  The EGI includes all intelligence functions, foreign and domestic.  In U.S. terms it would be like housing the FBI, CIA, DHS, and NSA all in the same agency headed by the same bureaucracy.  President as-Sisi appointing his twenty-something son Mahmoud as head of the DGI would be like Donald Trump appointing Ivanka as head of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and DHS all at the same time.  Imagine the uproar that would cause.

ANALYSIS:  One of the major conundrums for U.S. policy makers with regards to the Middle East, is that in the Islamic Middle East it seems that the only choices for government are either a corrupt Monarchy (such as Saudi Arabia), a corrupt military dictatorship (such as Mubarak, Assad, Saddam, Qadhafi, etc.), or an equally corrupt Islamist regime such as the one Khomeini set up in Iran when the Shah was pulled down, or the MB regime in Egypt that took over when Mubarrak was pulled down.

The military dictatorships tend to become family mafia fiefdoms.  We saw that in Saddam’s Iraq as he was grooming his two sons to take over.  Syria is in the second generation of a family mafia rule, with both the father and the son appointing their brothers to head up Syria’s intelligence organization.

One of the final straws that broke the Mubarrak camel’s back was Mubarrak grooming one of his sons to take over after him.   So, now we see as-Sisi making the same mistake by appointing his “still wet behind the ears” son to head the EGI.  

President as-Sisi, on paper, has done a lot for his country.  In the foreign policy arena he has developed good relations with virtually every country on the planet from the wealthy oil countries of the Gulf to the great powers of the north:  Russia, Japan, China, U.S., and Europe  (regardless of their antagonisms towards each other).  He has good relations with both Pakistan and India, as well as both Koreas.  Egypt, under as-Sisi, is at odds only with the Islamist regimes of Turkey, Iran, and Qatar.

President as-Sisi’s foreign policy successes have led to a massive uptick in foreign investments in Egypt allowing him to beef up the country’s infrastructure.  This in turn has led to a roaring economy producing a Chinese-esque 5% annual GDP growth.

The carrot and stick approach as-Sisi has used to keep his people both happy and under control seemed to boost his actual popularity for awhile.  However, I believe that the turning point came when he had the constitution changed Putin style allowing him to remain in office until the mid-2030s.

After the dethroning of the MB president Mursi in 2013 the new constitution that was voted in, and signed by as-Sisi after his assuming the office of president in 2014, called for the office of president to be up for election every four years, with a term limit of just two terms, as in the United States.  President as-Sisi “won” re-election in 2018 (in an election in which all credible candidates were disqualified), meaning that based on the constitution he would still have to step down in 2022.

But, then (perhaps over-estimating his popularity with the folks) he had the constitution changed to make the presidential term six years, instead of four.  Then, because the rules of the game were changed he had a judicial decision made that since he had never had the opportunity to run for a six-year term, he had to be granted that opportunity, i.e. to start all over under the new system with a blank slate.

Translation:  When his current four-year term ends in 2022, he will now legally be able to run for one of the new six-year terms beginning in 2022, which would take him until 2028 at which time he could run for a second six-year term taking him to 2034 before he would have to retire—barring any additional changes to the constitution—and you can just imagine how “fair and legitimate” the 2022 and 2028 elections are going to be.

This move towards a Putin-esque “president for life” situation was so blatant that it embarrassed even his staunchest supporters, and no doubt poured fuel on the fire of his critics.

Thus, the appointment of his son to head the EGI may turn out to be the final straw to break the back of as-Sisi’s camel.  His carrot and stick policy may have won this current round of Arab Spring 2.0, but my advice to U.S. policy makers is: don’t put all of your chickens in the pot in terms of as-Sisi’s long term survival.