Saturday, August 7, 2021

IDF confirms: Over ten rockets fired at northern Israel - Chana Roberts

 

​ by Chana Roberts

Iron Dome intercepts incoming missiles after air raid sirens sound in Galilee and Golan Heights. IDF retaliating.

 

Air raid sirens sounded at 10:55a.m. Friday morning in Neve Ativ, Ein Qiniyye, and Kibbutz Snir in northern Israel.

Local residents reported hearing explosions in the area.

According to reports, the Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted several of the ten rockets, which were fired at northern Israel from the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon.

Magen David Adom (MDA) said that their hotline has not received any emergency calls related to the incident.

The IDF is responding by firing at the Har Dov area in Lebanon.

In a statement, the IDF said: "More than ten rockets were fired from Lebanese territory into Israeli territory. Most of these were intercepted by Air Force soldiers, and the rest fell in open areas in the Har Dov region. Those Israelis in towns near the Lebanon border may continue with their routines as usual."‎

"The IDF is attacking the source of the launches in Lebanon," the IDF added.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been updated on the events in the north, and in the coming hour he will hold a consultation with Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue and White), IDF Chief of Staff Avviv Kochavi, and senior defense officials.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has taken responsibility for the missile launch, claiming it is a retaliation for "Israeli attacks."

Hezbollah is funded by Iran, and operates out of Lebanon, with some of its members even serving in the Lebanese parliament.

On Wednesday, three rockets were fired from Lebanon towards Israeli territory. One of the rockets fell short, landing in Lebanon, while the other two exploded in Israel.

Following the launches, the IDF launched a series of strikes along the Lebanese border, and on Wednesday night attacked the areas in Lebanon from which the rockets had been launched.

 

Chana Roberts

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/311275

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Hassan Nasrallah: Israel is afraid to attack in Lebanon - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

​ by Arutz Sheva Staff

Hezbollah leader calls Israeli retaliation a 'dangerous development,' says Second Lebanon War was terror group's 'greatest achievement.'

Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of the Hezbollah terror organization, on Saturday marked 15 years since the Second Lebanon War, claiming that Israel is afraid of his organization.

In his speech, quoted in Hebrew on Israel Hayom's site, he responded to Israel's Wednesday night retaliation for the launching of three rockets into its territory.

"This is a dangerous development," Nasrallah said. "Israel miscalculated in a way that leaves its air attack without a response. We are brave enough to take responsibility for our actions."

"I applaud all those who stood by us during our years of battle against the Israeli enemy. Our central responsibility today is to preserve the opposition's achievements. Our greatest strategic achievement is the Second Lebanon War. Since then, Israel has not conducted aerial attacks on Lebanese territory - thanks to the deterrence which we created. In Lebanon, for the past 15 years, there has been security and quiet, such as there had not been since 1948.

"Israel is afraid to attack in Lebanon due to the internal consequences war has for them, and also because of their army. Israel is more afraid for its existence than ever, due to what is going on in Palestine and the strengthening of the opposing axis.

"Our message to Israel was that when they blow up open areas - we also blow up open areas. Any Israeli aerial attack in Lebanon will receive an appropriate and proportionate response. Our response reinforced the old status quo, which Israel had attempted to break.

Regarding the Lebanese Druze who seized a Hezbollah rocket launcher and gave it to the Lebanese army, Nasrallah threatened, "Those who attacked our men are not part of this world."

 

Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/311320

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Cries for Freedom: Biden, Are You Listening? - Clare Lopez

 

​ by Clare Lopez

Crisis in Iran and Cuba.

 


Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, has not even been sworn in yet, but tensions both within Iran and around the Middle East are ratcheting up a in serious way. Protests that began in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan Province over electricity blackouts and water shortages amidst the worst drought in 50 years have now spread nationwide. The Iranian people are in the streets in many of the country’s major cities, including the capital, Tehran. They have been massing in the streets and closing major roads and highways. Many Iranians blame regime corruption and mismanagement for the severe lack of electricity and water during the worst of the region’s blistering summer heat. In fact, Iran’s hydroelectric system is near collapse. And while Iranians first took to the streets of Khuzestan to protest the water shortage, their chants now are calling for the fall of the regime itself (“Death to the Islamic Republic”) and “Death to Khamenei!”, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.

The timing of these protests coincides with the elevation of Ebrahim Raisi to the presidency, with his inauguration scheduled for Thursday, 5 August 2021. Raisi’s June “selection” was openly arranged by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a presidential campaign and voting that was boycotted in protest by most of the Iranian electorate. Raisi rose to power in the ranks of the judiciary and was the Judiciary Chief before being tapped as Iran’s next president. He is known and reviled for his savage violations of human rights, especially in his role on the Death Commission that sent tens of thousands of Iranian prisoners, many of them belonging to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), to their executions in 1988. In typical fashion – and likely preview of Raisi’s presidential role as the regime’s enforcer -- Tehran has unleashed its security forces against the people, using live fire against demonstrators, disrupting Internet service, and carrying out sweeping arrests.

The intensity of Iran’s unrelenting domestic upheaval combines with an escalation of regional tensions that together are pummeling the regime. Sensing that developments are spiraling out of its control, the Tehran regime is lashing out in multiple directions, both at home and abroad. The situation in Lebanon is deteriorating as Iran’s jihadist proxy, Hizballah, is facing an ongoing economic and governmental crisis that shows no signs of abating. Recent rocket fire out of Lebanon into Israel has been met with retaliatory artillery strikes by the IDF, which also has been conducting air strikes inside Syria targeting Iranian weapons deliveries. Additionally, Israel has been launching maritime strikes against ships carrying Iranian oil and weapons in regional waters. Beset within and without, the Iranian regime hit back at Israel on Friday 22 July 2021 with a drone strike off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea against a Liberian-flagged oil tanker operated by an Israeli-owned firm. The attack against the Mercer Street killed two crew members. Although Iran initially denied being behind the attack, an Iranian TV network later admitted responsibility, claiming it was retaliation for an Israeli strike inside Syria.

The Biden administration, desperate to revive and rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA), has been frustrated at Iranian stalling on a seventh round of talks, even as it watches Tehran breach virtually every provision of the deal. But repeated U.S. offers intended to appease and compromise with the Iranians have been rebuffed. Instead, the White House has been forced to witness increasing Iranian belligerence across multiple fronts, again, even before Raisi is sworn in. Faced with the latest provocation from the Iranian regime in the deadly attack on an Israeli-owned commercial tanker, it is reported that the U.S., United Kingdom, and Russia have given Israel a “green light” to retaliate against Iran.  

But for the Iranian people, in the streets crying for their liberty from an oppressive regime, the U.S. State Department had only the blandest words of support, saying in a 28 July statement that “[t]he Iranian people have a right to voice their frustrations and hold their government accountable” and urging the regime “to allow its citizens to exercise their right to freedom of expression…”. Instead of calling out the repressive thugs that crush the Iranian people (and are responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans on 9/11), U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken merely murmured softly about the “people’s deep frustration with the failure of the government to meet their basic needs", adding meaninglessly, “And, of course, we stand with the people of Iran in the desire to have their voices heard”.

The Biden team’s temerity in facing up to Iran’s brazen behavior is of a piece with its craven lack of meaningful response to the courageous uprising of the Cuban people against their tyrannical communist regime. Cubans have been in the streets for weeks now, openly crying for “Libertad!” (Liberty) and an end to communist dictatorship. But as Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell points out in a devastating 2 August piece at Gatestone, “Biden does not care a damn about the Cuban people throwing off 60+ years of communism…[h]alf of Biden’s White House staff probably…admires Fidel and Raul Castro and can be found wearing Che Guevara T-shirts on the weekends”. Farrell also correctly identifies Vice President Harris as “virtually a Marxist”. See Trevor Loudon for more on her multiple communist affiliations over the years as well as the deep infiltration of the Democrat Party by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

The late July 2021 forcible repatriation by the Biden administration of more than two dozen Cuban refugees trying to flee their oppressive communist regime must live in infamy as one of the most abominable capitulations to liberty-crushing tyranny any U.S. administration has ever committed. The return of the Cubans to a Cuban regime that will surely arrest, jail, and torture them, if not simply kill them, was presaged on 24 July by a despicable statement from U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas (himself a Cuban refugee), that warned Cuban asylum seekers “They will not enter the United States”.

The disturbing conclusion on the Biden administration is that cries for freedom from those suffering under despotic tyranny will not be heard, will not be answered, will not be helped. Sympathy from this White House leadership is only for criminals who illegally cross our sovereign borders and oppressive regimes in places like Cuba and Iran that keep a jackboot of oppression on the throats of their people.

 

Clare Lopez

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/cries-freedom-biden-are-you-listening-clare-lopez/

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The Arson Campaign Against Canada’s Churches - Lloyd Billingsley

 

​ by Lloyd Billingsley

What's really fueling it.

 


In recent weeks, more than 40 Christian churches have been torched in Canada, supposedly a response to abuse of indigenous people in residential schools. The arson campaign has drawn a variety of responses, including “Not much difference between Islamophobia and Christophobia,” from Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd.

He defines Islamophobia as “dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.” Christophobia is “Intense dislike or fear of Christianity; hostility or prejudice towards Christians.” From these definitions Todd extrapolates symmetry of action.

“In Canada there is now no shortage of shocking displays of both Islamophobia and Christophobia,” Todd explains. “There have been assaults on Muslims, some deadly. There has been arson attack after attack on churches.” In reality, it’s not quite so simple.

Islamophobia is an incantation to ward off any discussion of subjects such as Islamic jihad, hatred of Jews, and Muslim violence against non-Muslims. What Todd calls “Christophobia” is nothing more than hatred of Christians, next to anti-Americanism surely Canada’s strongest hatred, particularly among the ruling class.

In the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, “a Coptic Orthodox Church, frequented mostly by immigrants from Egypt, was destroyed by fire.” The Copts are an ancient Christian community that, as Raymond Ibrahim notes, suffers horrible persecution in Egypt, and in the Sinai Copts cry, “They are burning us alive!”

Coptic Christians flee this hatred, now going on in Canada. Since the Copts have nothing whatsoever to do with Canada’s residential schools, a different dynamic must be motivating the arson against the Surrey Coptic Orthodox Church. Todd does not explore all the possibilities but does note that police are “silent about these being hate crimes.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police “are certainly sensitive to recent events,” one RCMP sergeant told reporters, but “will not speculate as to possible motives.” If enraged mobs were burning mosques to the ground, one may be certain, it would be called a hate crime motivated by Islamophobia, and that would be proclaimed up front.

By contrast, “Christophophobia” was not invoked in 2017 when Habibullah Ahmadi, 21, attacked Christian grandmother Anne Widholm, beating the 75-year-old Windsor, Ontario, woman into a coma before she died from her wounds. No photo of the suspect was released, nor any investigation of his background. Habibullah Ahmadi was charged with second-degree murder but his possible motive was never explored. For one of the most brutal murders in Canadian history, the convicted murderer could possibly gain release from prison in 10 years.

Catholic Churches have been prime targets but arsonists recently torched the House of Prayer Alliance Church in Calgary, Alberta. “We are refugees,” Pastor Thai Nguyen told reporters, “We escaped from Vietnam to come here to get more freedom, to live, and we think it was a good country – and now it happened to our church. Maybe it is not safe to be here in Canada compared to Vietnam.” That nation is a Communist state, but police and reporters seemed uninterested in the possible motive for burning the refugees’ church. Prime Minister Trudeau, who cries “Islamophobia” at the drop of a hat, does not seem overly concerned.

Trudeau said the attacks on churches were “unacceptable” but also “understandable. As Raymond Ibrahim explains, these words neutralize each other, so in effect Trudeau issues “a  call for no action.” For Trudeau’s confidant Gerald Butts, the arson attacks are “understandable.” Harsha Walia of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, one of BC’s “top ten left-wing journalists and writers,” urges the arsonists to “burn it all down.” Raymond Ibrahim knows what the deal is.

“What was once the preserve of the Islamic world in recent decades—hate for and attacks on churches—is now a regular and acceptable feature of Canada,”  Ibrahim contends. “Considering that radical leftists and radical Muslims believe in the exact opposite things, rather tellingly, when it comes to torching churches, they are close allies.  This speaks volumes about what truly animates them, and what is at the core of their belief systems.” Another dynamic could also be in play.

The human remains at the Kamloops Residential school and other institutions were discovered by ground-penetrating radar. It has yet to be verified who, exactly, is in the graves and what caused their deaths. Back in September, 1964, according to one story, the Queen and Prince Phillip visited the Kamloops school, took ten children on a picnic, and those children were never seen again.

In reality, the Queen was not in Canada that month. She came to Canada in October, 1964, for the centenary of the Confederation Conference but did not visit British Columbia. The Queen did visit Kamloops in 1983, six years after the residential school closed, but nothing emerged about the picnic abduction. If embattled Canadians believed the church arsonists are also motivated by a conspiracy theory it would be hard to blame them.

 

Lloyd Billingsley

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/false-phobia-symmetry-syndrome-lloyd-billingsley/

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Is There A Way For The States To Stop Biden’s Border Madness? - Jeff M. Lewis

 

​ by Jeff M. Lewis

While many are thinking in terms of impeachment, that has to wait until Republicans retake Congress. Meanwhile, here’s another idea.

“One man with courage is a majority.”

This is widely attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but some sources say he might not be the source. No matter, it’s a great quote and serves as a reminder that in doing the right thing, one might motivate others to join the cause.

We might be at a tipping point. The corrupt, corporate, state-controlled media are having an increasingly difficult time hiding the installed administration’s failures on the “dinner-table” issues that affect every American: our discarded energy independence and the resulting rising gas prices (adding to ever-rising inflation), just about all things COVID and, lastly, the unmitigated disaster that has come from Biden/Harris immigration policies.

On Tuesday, August 3, stories began to break about Texas Congressman Chip Roy’s twitter thread and that he used the “I” word – “Impeachment” (*gasp*) – in a Twitter thread.

I have been ruminating on this for months. I live in South Texas, and despite the lack of comprehensive news coverage of events taking place along the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S.-Mexico border (we have corporate media down here, too), there are some media outlets that will publish reports about what is going on:

  • Scores of immigrants’ corpses have been found in the county adjacent to where I live every year, ongoing for multiple years. A simple internet search (take your pick of search engine) will review the years of accumulating documentation. Here is one from two months ago. Just the other day, a van carrying illegal aliens crashed at high speeds, killing ten (and putting the U.S. on the hook for the medical care of the other 20).
  • It is hardly a secret, but a well-known and established fact, that the Mexican drug cartels are profiting from the human trafficking that takes place on the border.
  • “Stash houses” are being discovered and shut down with increasing frequency. It doesn’t take a wild imagination to guess what happens when dozens of these people are crammed into these houses, or what they may be experiencing at the hands of the Mexican cartel-allied gangs on our side of the border.
  • The criminal enterprise of human trafficking is exploiting and endangering children).
  • Even the American Civil Liberties Union – neither a paragon nor a repository of conservative values – cannot escape the truth that the illegal immigrants crossing our borders will be subjected to years of exploitation and indentured servitude. The ACLU rightly calls it what it is – slavery.
  • While the chaos at the border facilitates human trafficking, don’t forget that drugs are still coming across in record numbers. More Fentanyl has been seized in the first six months of 2021 than in years past, even beating this record-breaking seizure in Arizona.

I could go on and on. I am not a sophisticated guy (as anyone who knows me would agree). I am just an oh-so-average regular dude, yet all I have done is search the internet via the least sophisticated of methods. If I can find all this, then what about the people who can do something about it? American Thinker Editor Andrea Widburg hit the nail on the head when she wrote about Chip Roy’s use of the “I” word, and I will amplify what she said by joining her in saying, “Yes, finally!”

I’m also not an attorney nor have I played one on TV (although I worked closely with some attorneys several years ago). However, I have learned that there is the RICO Act (or statute), a description of which I have copied from nolo.com for the other non-attorney readers:

Passed in 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a federal law designed to combat organized crime in the United States. It allows prosecution and civil penalties for racketeering activity performed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise. Such activity may include illegal gambling, bribery, kidnapping, murder, money laundering, counterfeiting, embezzlement, drug trafficking, slavery, and a host of other unsavory business practices.

To convict a defendant under RICO, the government must prove that the defendant engaged in two or more instances of racketeering activity and that the defendant directly invested in, maintained an interest in, or participated in a criminal enterprise affecting interstate or foreign commerce. The law has been used to prosecute members of the mafia, the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, and Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group, among many others.

Are we onto something here? It’s going to take someone with the courage to “gear up,” and “saddle up” and do something. Which brings me to my next most-favorite quote of the day, attributed to none other than that great American, John Wayne: “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.”

The Governors of the border states of Texas and Arizona need to get started. The Attorneys General of these same border states (who have as much or more legal standing than any of the other 48) can co-author their civil suit against the Biden Administration. These same Governors and Attorneys General can find the right panel of federal judges to enjoin the Biden Administration and halt this life-threatening, lawless, and devastating invasion of the United States.

Start with the following violations of the law and injuries to the citizens of the United States, naming the President, Vice-President, and every applicable member of the Cabinet with jurisdiction over or responsibility for these issues:

  • For the material support of the Mexican drug cartels criminal drug smuggling operations
  • For the material support of the Mexican drug cartel’s criminal human trafficking
  • For Crimes against Humanity, specifically the material support of the Mexican drug cartels criminal exploitation and indentured servitude (slavery) of every person entering the United States illegally
  • For Crimes against Humanity, specifically the criminally reckless endangerment of children used as “props” in assisting those they accompany to illegally enter the United States
  • For Crimes against the People of the United States of America, who have continued to endure the threat of the rejection of their civil liberties while un-tested and infected immigrants have not only poured across the border but also have been deliberately and purposefully transported throughout the interior of the United States
  • For Crimes against the People of the United States of America, who have lost beloved family, livelihoods, and trillions of dollars of wealth and commerce
  • For Crimes against the People of the United States of America, specifically for the criminal abrogation and neglect of the responsibility of the Office of President of the United States to secure the sovereignty of the nation and to uphold the Constitution

It’s time to saddle up! We don’t have much time. Keep it covert if you must, but this better happen no later than November 9, 2022 (the morning after the mid-terms), when Articles of Impeachment will also be needed.

IMAGE: Illegal aliens who broke into America. YouTube screen grab.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Jeff M. Lewis is a Christian, a husband and father, a Veteran, and a small-business owner from South Texas.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/is_there_a_way_for_the_states_to_stop_bidens_border_madness.html

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Jordan’s “Incitement Force” on the Temple Mount - Dr. Edy Cohen

 

​ by Dr. Edy Cohen

Why are so many “employees” needed, and why does Israel allow such a large number? Do the security authorities know their identities?

 

The al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, image via Wikipedia

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,115, August 6, 2021

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Jordanian Minister of Religions recently revealed that 850 Jordanians are working at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on behalf of Jordan’s Ministry of Religion. Does Israel know the identities of these workers, and how many of them are involved in incitement and terrorism?

At the end of the Gaza war in May, during a meeting with members of the Palestinian Affairs Committee of the Jordanian Senate, Dr. Muhammad Khalaila, Minister of Religion of the Hashemite Kingdom, revealed two interesting things.

First, the cost of maintaining Jordanian workers at the al-Aqsa Mosque, which is funded by Jordan, is about NIS56 million a year (12 million Jordanian dinars). As is well known, Jordan attaches great importance to its position as the mosque’s “guardian,” rivaling Saudi Arabia’s traditional role as guardian of Islam’s holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina.

The second item revealed by the minister is that there are 850 Jordanian employees in al-Aqsa who are registered as official employees of the Jordanian Ministry of Religion.

This is curious. As anyone visiting the mosque can attest, no more than a few dozen Jordanian Waqf security guards are visible—not hundreds, and certainly nowhere near 850. So who are the others, where are they, and what are they doing?

The most likely hypothesis is that those workers are used as mercenaries of a sort in times of crisis. Many significant gatherings have sprung up almost instantly on the Temple Mount in recent years whenever the site deteriorated into violence—during the recent Gaza war, during the magnetometer riots (July 2017), during the Mercy Gate crisis (March 2019), and in many other violent outbursts. The Jordanian workers might serve as a “rapid incitement force” that increases the volume of the event, stirs up the crowd, and stimulates it to conduct riots, or joins with the crowd to create a sense of “togetherness” against the “occupation.” If each of those Jordanians brings along one or two young men, in a short time thousands of rioters can be expected.

This allows the organizers of the riots to put tremendous pressure on the Israeli authorities and render it difficult for them to calm the situation. The road from there to surrender is short.

Why are so many “employees” needed, and why does Israel allow such a large number? Do the security authorities know their identities? Is their income legally reported to the tax authorities? How many of them have been arrested, and how many are involved in riots or terrorism? These are questions that need to be answered.

View PDF

This is an edited version of an article published in Israel Today on July 13, 2021.

 

Dr. Edy Cohen, a researcher at the BESA Center, grew up in Lebanon and served for 15 years in the Israeli intelligence community. He specializes in inter-Arab relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, terrorism, and Jewish communities in the Arab world. He is the author of The Holocaust in the Eyes of Mahmoud Abbas (Hebrew).

Source: https://besacenter.org/jordans-incitement-force-on-the-temple-mount/

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Cultural Habits: Far More Than the Sum of Their Parts - Jocelynn Cordes

 

​ by Jocelynn Cordes

A closer look at the British love affair with tea

For decades now, it has been fashionable to condemn, discredit, or deconstruct anything generally understood to be Western.  Most recently, this has been accomplished by associating racism with whatever aspect of Western civilization is under scrutiny.  Classical music, literature, grammar, and even gardening have all been attacked for being tainted by the colonialist enterprise or for being suffused with white supremacy.

I want to take a look at a seemingly trivial example of this phenomenon in order to consider what it reveals about our historical moment and its intellectual underpinnings.  While this example of cultural demolition hails from Britain and concerns a cultural practice considered fundamentally British, what we can glean from it has social implications for all Western nations that find themselves face to face with today's Visigoths.

Since 2009, with only one short interruption, the BBC has produced a children's comedy television series under the title Horrible Histories, featuring the crude, the cruel, and the revolting in history.  Naturally, at least among the younger demographic, the show was quite popular.  It also won numerous awards, including the BAFTA children's award.  In 2020, to commemorate Brexit, it offered an episode composed of a selection of sketches from previous years' episodes.  One of them, featuring a song first aired in 2009 titled "British Things," generated quite a bit of controversy this time around.  The sketch was intended to lampoon English assumptions about their inventions and "Britishisms" by pointing out that there really aren't any.  And the central British cultural practice targeted for erasure in the sketch is "British tea."

In this skit, "Queen Victoria" asks her butler for tea, only to be enlightened regarding the ugly realities associated with this seemingly innocuous custom while he serves it.  The butler inundates her (in song) with facts concerning the drink's association with slave labor, from the tea itself to the sugar with which it is sweetened.  Most importantly for the purposes of this essay, the butler informs his monarch of the shocking truth that tea is not from Britain.

Now, this was an observation that quite a few creators — eager to jump on this anti-English ideological bandwagon — picked up and ran with.  Suddenly, there appeared a raft of videos decrying the alleged "Britishness" of certain customs or trumpeting the "theft" of aspects of British culture from other countries, thus "proving" that Britain has no culture of its own.  In all of these, the observation that tea is not originally from England is pronounced in the ultimate "gotcha" tones, despite its origins usually being misattributed in these amateur productions (as well as in the aforementioned BBC take) to India.  Some wunderkinds even lumped it in with all the things from around the world that Britain "stole."  (Yes, there are a plethora of videos on that theme.)

Witting or not, most of these productions are crude attempts to deconstruct elements of English culture by exposing the foreign origins of things known the world over as "British," as if once foreign origins are proven, the practice as a singularly British phenomenon unravels.  The result?  Britain ceases to have a culture and essentially evaporates as a distinct place.

But what a bizarre notion this all rests on!  For the underlying premise here is that if a thing has foreign origins, a different country's claim to it as fundamental to its culture is negated.

When I first encountered this absurdity, I wondered how anyone could think the origin of a thing is a constitutive element in how it transforms into a cultural practice elsewhere.  For instance, China invented noodles (as well as tea, unbeknownst to these opinion-makers), but the culinary delight that pasta dishes eventually became as a staple of Italian culture is a long way off from those noodles that originally hailed from the East.

The premise I referred to above rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of what cultural practices are and what meaning they have to a people, an opinion I discovered was shared by others.  While many high-profile media personalities quibbled with the historical inaccuracies in the BBC sketch in question, one of the most astute responses to this cultural vandalism came from media influencer Carl Benjamin, more popularly known as Sargon of Akkad.  Benjamin produced at least two videos in response to the Brexit sketch.

In one, during the course of a shrewd analysis, he puts forward a couple of observations that had occurred to me when I first saw one of these inane productions, the most central being how absurd it is to totalize the ritual of "British tea" as the tea itself, mistaking the whole for the sum of — or even one of — its parts.  As Benjamin points out, not only was tea planted in India by the British rather than stolen, but it is irrelevant where tea came from in the first place.  Why?  Because the experience of tea transcends the particulars of which the ritual is composed.  Tea is situated in a cultural practice that is much greater in significance than the steeping of rolled, dried, and fermented leaves in hot water.  It isn't the thing itself, the tea, that is the central element in the practice of "afternoon tea," but something else — the meaning of the ritual to those who participate in it.

For instance, consider how different the practice of Japanese tea is from British tea.  Early on after its introduction to Japan, "Japanese tea" became a ritual whose purpose was to encourage disengagement with the cares of the world.  It was associated with a specific sort of place — a small, austere structure set in a garden at the end of a pathway composed of natural elements chosen specifically to begin the visitor's transition to a state of tranquility.  As one walked along that path, one shed one's worldly burdens and entered the tea house prepared to consummate one's inner peace with the drinking of tea, itself a highly ritualized, tightly orchestrated process.

British tea time was something else again.  The entire world correctly associates it with a particular sort of aesthetic — a table carefully set with China and gleaming silverware loaded with dainty sandwiches, scones, and an array of scrumptious desserts.  This vision of upper-class British tea is still sought all over the globe and is experienced in places which manifest the same aesthetic — delicate beauty.  But while this version of the ritual betokens moneyed gentility, the reality is that the British quickly became obsessed with tea at all social levels from its earliest importation from China.  The tea break was as important as the tea itself — so much so that in the late 19th century, tea breaks were bargained for by English trade unions, usually successfully.  

These two cultures' superficially different experience of leaves steeped in hot water might very well be summed up by the words of Chinese sage T'ien Yiheng: "Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world."  And that is precisely the meaning of this ritual to the British — the brief suspension of toil accompanied by as much ritual as one can manage.  And it is ultimately ritual that defines the experience.

Image via Max Pixel.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Jocelynn Cordes

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/cultural_habits_far_more_than_the_sum_of_their_parts.html

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To Biden Administration: No Visa, No Negotiations with Iran Regime's Mass Murderer - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

If the Biden administration has a shred of respect for human rights and those people who lost their lives to reach freedom and democracy, it should not negotiate with Iran's mass murderer president, or grant him a visa to come to New York.

  • If [Iran's President Ebrahim] Raisi is granted a visa to come to the US, the Iranian regime's legitimacy will be enhanced, and the regime will be empowered to try to kidnap more Americans on US soil.

  • The senators' letter sheds a light on several examples: "In 1988, the United States barred PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat from entering the United States to attend a meeting of the United Nations. In 2014, President Obama denied an entry visa to Iranian Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi, who was involved in taking American diplomats hostage in 1979. In 2020, the United States declined to issue a visa for Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif."

  • The Biden administration needs to listen to the US senators, who have accurately explained: "Ebrahim Raisi's role in the Death Commissions, brutal crackdowns on Iranian protesters, and his association with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps should disqualify him from receiving a visa to the United States."

  • If the Biden administration has a shred of respect for human rights and those people who lost their lives to reach freedom and democracy, it should not negotiate with Iran's mass murderer president, or grant him a visa to come to New York.

If the Biden administration has a shred of respect for human rights and those people who lost their lives to reach freedom and democracy, it should not negotiate with Iran's mass murderer president, Ebrahim Raisi, or grant him a visa to come to New York. Pictured: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi stands at the podium during his swearing-in ceremony at the Iranian parliament in Tehran on August 5, 2021. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration has signaled that it is in a hurry to negotiate with the government of Iran's new president, Ebrahim Raisi, a mass murderer who is known as the Butcher of Tehran, in order to revive former US President Barack Obama's catastrophic 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which Iran never signed -- and lift sanctions against the Iranian regime.

Just last month, Iran was exposed in an attempt to kidnap a dual US-Iranian citizen, Masih Alinejad, from her home in New York City.

Raisi is currently scheduled to come to the city of that planned kidnapping to speak at the United Nations General Assembly in September. This prospect prompted six Republican senators -- Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) -- to send a letter to US President Joe Biden urging him to deny entry visas to Raisi and other Iranian officials who are planning to attend the annual UN event.

The US has previously denied an entry visa to other Iranian officials and successfully barred them from entering the US to attend the UN General Assembly. The senators' letter sheds a light on several examples:

"In 1988, the United States barred PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat from entering the United States to attend a meeting of the United Nations. In 2014, President Obama denied an entry visa to Iranian Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi, who was involved in taking American diplomats hostage in 1979. In 2020, the United States declined to issue a visa for Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif."

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in her former role as the State Department spokeswoman, stated in 2014 that visas can still be denied on "security, terrorism, and foreign policy" grounds.

The Biden administration must not allow Raisi to come to New York, the same city where the Iranian regime recently attempted to kidnap a US citizen. If Raisi is granted a visa to come to the US, the Iranian regime's legitimacy will be enhanced, and the regime will be empowered to try to kidnap more Americans on US soil. As the six senators pointed out in the letter:

"Allowing Raisi to travel to the United States—to the same city where the Iranian regime just tried to kidnap a U.S. citizen—would legitimize his repression, undermine America's moral leadership, and potentially endanger our national security, given the likely presence of intelligence agents in the Iranian traveling party."

Human rights organizations have issued calls to investigate Raisi -- who will most likely be the next Supreme Leader of Iran. Amnesty International's Secretary General Agnès Callamard stated:

"That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran. In 2018, our organization documented how Ebrahim Raisi had been a member of the 'death commission' which forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity."

Raisi, as a member of the "Death Commission", would be known for, and implicated in, one of the world's largest mass executions, in which more than 30,000 people were executed, including children and pregnant women. A US House of Representatives resolution detailed:

"... over a 4-month period in 1988, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran carried out the barbaric mass executions of thousands of political prisoners and many unrelated political groups... according to a report by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, the massacre was carried out pursuant to a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini..."

It was also under Raisi's watch as the head of Iran's Judiciary that nearly 1,500 people were killed during the widespread protests of 2019, many were tortured, and, last year, high profile people such as the champion wrestler Navid Afkari were executed.

The Biden administration needs to listen to the US senators, who have accurately explained:

"Ebrahim Raisi's role in the Death Commissions, brutal crackdowns on Iranian protesters, and his association with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps should disqualify him from receiving a visa to the United States."

If the Biden administration has a shred of respect for human rights and those people who lost their lives to reach freedom and democracy, it should not negotiate with Iran's mass murderer president, or grant him a visa to come to New York.

 

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US foreign policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17612/ebrahim-raisi-us-visa

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'Fault Lines': New Bestseller Exposes Critical Race Theory's Danger - Danusha Goska

 

​ by Danusha Goska

Things are scary now, but Dr. Voddie Baucham offers hope.

 


Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe by Dr. Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., is the number one bestseller in its category in Amazon as of this writing in early August, 2021. The book was released in April, and yet it already has five thousand customer reviews, 94% of which award the book five-stars. Given that Fault Lines is not receiving the kind of major-media, saturation coverage that a bestseller might expect, many of those thousands of reviews are fueled by enthusiastic word-of-mouth.

Fault Lines deserves its phenomenal success. Don't let its "Evangelical" subtitle fool you. I'm no Evangelical, but I will happily join my five-star review to the thousands of others. Baucham's presentation of the history and current profile of critical theory is accessible to all readers. Even non-Christians can benefit from understanding how the majority faith of Americans is being corrupted. Finally, as a Christian, Baucham offers hope for the future. Even non-Christians can apply some of Baucham's recommendations.

Fault Lines is one of many recent books struggling to take readers by the hand and guide them through our current cultural moment, of pupils suddenly being asked to inform their teachers of their "preferred pronouns," of toppling statues, burning cities, and careers ruined by one suspect utterance. Fault Lines belongs on the same bookshelf as James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose's Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why This Harms Everybody, as well as Douglas Murray's The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity. Cynical Theories goes into greater detail on the roots of today's hysteria, and its authors are Christophobic atheists who hold up a vague and unhistorical notion of "The Enlightenment" as our salvation. Douglas Murray, a former Christian and current atheist, appears to despair of any hope; rather, he's given to dire prognostications: "The US is on the brink of Civil War;" Murray has said; the Western world is "standing on the precipice" of cultural annihilation.

Voddie T. Baucham has one up on Lindsey, Pluckrose, and Murray. Yes, Baucham recognizes how bad things are. "The United States is on the verge of a race war, if not a complete cultural meltdown," Baucham predicts. But Baucham offers hope, and he offers healing. He finds both in Christian faith. Again, though, you don't have to be a Christian to benefit from reading Fault Lines.

Fault Lines is very reader-friendly. Lindsey and Pluckrose offer much more detailed and academic surveys of how Marxism's twisted evolution lead to the concept of "microaggressions" and social media videos in which obese women insist that if you aren't sexually attracted to them you are a bigot. Like those authors, Baucham also introduces his reader to influential progenitors of Woke like Antonio Gramsci, Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Peggy McIntosh, but more briefly. Clearly, Baucham exhibits the Evangelical's zeal to reach the maximum audience with the deepest truths, while never allowing academic jargon to get in the way. This is a book you could understand even if you were reading it in a noisy and crowded subway car. Its ease of reading in no way diminishes its profundity.

Helen Pluckrose, a plump woman, has the courage and integrity to take on the excesses of extremist feminists and fat activists. Murray is a gay man who critiques extreme LGBT activists. Baucham is a black man, and a descendant of slaves. He grew up in the hood and he currently serves as dean of theology at the African Christian University in Zambia. He tackles Black Lives Matter and critical race theory.

Yes, Baucham has a Ph.D. and is a preacher and professor. But our Woke overlords judge qualifications not on training or intelligence but on identity, and on the grounds of identity, Baucham is qualified to stand head-to-head with Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Baucham devotes 31 pages of his 251-page book to his own biography. Baucham has traced his maternal ancestry back to slaves in Alabama, Virginia, and Texas. He traced his paternal ancestry to a slave in North Carolina. He was born to a teenaged mother who married his teenaged father in a "shotgun wedding." The marriage didn't last and Baucham has no memories of being in an intact family. For decades, that lack of a father and a family life "haunted" him. His cousin Jamal was shot to death by a fellow drug dealer while he was selling crack. His absent father freebased cocaine in Baucham's presence, was shot five times in a crack-related incident, and eventually succumbed to the damage cocaine did to his heart.

"I grew up poor, without a father, and surrounded by drugs, gangs, violence, and disfunction in one of the toughest urban environments imaginable … I didn't just survive, I thrived! Not because of government programs or white people 'doing the work of anti-racism'" but because of his mother. Baucham credits his single mother with keeping him on the straight and narrow. She did this by impressing upon him a sense of agency and accountability. He was always certain of two things: "My mother loved me, and if I got out of line, she'd kill me." To conform to peer pressure from his black "homeboys," Baucham purposely underperformed in school. Baucham's mother visited his school and got him back on track. Young Voddie once wore a t-shirt featuring images of Malcolm X and Elijah Mohammad. At the time, "I was more black than Christian." In fact, his mother was a Buddhist and he was raised as a Buddhist. He converted to Christianity after contact with a Campus Crusade for Christ staffer.

Moving to Africa affected Baucham deeply. "Most Africans would give all they had to get to America." He realized he didn't have to, because he was American. He also realized that his ancestors were enslaved by fellow Africans. Those sold west were relatively lucky. "Thank God they were not sold to the Arabs! The Arab slave trade lasted more than thirteen centuries and ... few Africans sold to the Arabs even survived." Life in Africa taught Baucham that "culture does matter … not all cultures are equal … Christian culture has produced the highest levels of freedom and prosperity … in the world … transforming culture is a laudable and worthwhile goal."

These are remarkable statements that defy Woke at every turn. Baucham rejects cultural relativism that says that, say, a culture where girls undergo FGM is no worse than cultures that do not practice such mutilation. He refuses to join in Woke demonization of the West. And he says that "transforming culture is a laudable and worthwhile goal." Many on the left condemn calls for conforming to Western civilization, capitalism, or middle-class values as "imperialism." Rather, the larger culture must change to accommodate minority culture. If black kids are not doing well in school, that is because of racism, and the racist culture must be dismantled. Objective truth and the scientific method are denounced as white supremacist. Black children are presumed to possess superiority at music, sports, and storytelling about their own life experience. These "Afrocentric" skills must become the new standard, in place of "white" excellence at math, science, or literature.

"Our pursuit of justice must be characterized by a pursuit of truth," Baucham says, citing Leviticus 19:15. With that and other Bible verses in mind, Baucham interrogates the many lies of Black Lives Matter, a movement founded on lies. Baucham is fearless; his sentences advance like a warrior marching into battle. His weaponry consists of facts. Never does he quiver or hesitate or apologize, as some white critics might do, for fear of appearing "racist." Baucham recognizes that there is in fact nothing racist about truth. Baucham cites the research on police shootings published by Roland G. Fryer, Jr, the National Academy of Sciences, David J. Johnson, and the Washington Post. There is no epidemic of racist white police officers killing unarmed black men. In fact "it is white people who are actually shot at disproportionately high rates when the number of interactions with police is tallied up."

BLM counters that numbers alone do not tell the full story, because, they say, white cops murder black people under circumstances that would never result in the killing of a white suspect. On June 11, 2020, John McWhorter published "Racist Police Violence Reconsidered" in Quillette. Quillette is a fine publication, but this important piece should have appeared in McWhorter's home publication, The Atlantic, which has a larger circulation. Perhaps it was too controversial – that is, too truthful – for The Atlantic. McWhorter cites case after case in which whites died in police custody in circumstances that parallel the death of blacks in police custody, starting with a comparison between the deaths of George Floyd and Tony Timpa. Baucham makes the same sort of comparisons. Baucham cites numerous whites, adults and children, who died after brandishing fake guns, as did the African American child, Tamir Rice. Baucham similarly walks through misperceptions around the police shootings of Philando Castile, Michael Brown, and Breonna Taylor.

Baucham says that antiracism is a new cult, in competition with, and infecting, Christianity. Like Christianity, antiracism has its own versions of sin, law, gospel, martyrs, priests, means of atonement, new birth, liturgy, canon, theologians, and catechism. Baucham offers examples of each of these. Antiracism is unlike Christianity in that "antiracism offers no salvation;" only "perpetual penance" and "incurable disease." One thing antiracism does not have, does not value, and indeed condemns, is objective fact arrived at through traditional scholarly routes like the scientific method. "The quest for objectivity is tantamount to a quest for white supremacy." Baucham mentions one influential Woke classic, Peggy McIntosh's 1989 essay on "white privilege." Baucham points out that McIntosh's exercise "is a classic example of grievance studies in that it was based entirely on assumptions, anecdotes, and personal observations, and completely devoid of scholarly research."

The religion of antiracism directly contradicts Christianity in multiple ways, and yet Evangelicals are abandoning Christianity and embracing Woke. Except for passing mentions, Fault Lines does not mention Catholicism, but Catholics, too, are abandoning central Christian teachings in favor of critical race theory. America, the Jesuit magazine, is leading the way, for example here. Sojourners is a prominent Christian magazine. It was founded by Jim Wallis, a self-described Evangelical Christian. Unless they confess to "the sin of white privilege," Wallis wrote, "white Christians will never be free." Baucham contrasts Wallis' fiat with Christian scripture, which declares that Jesus Christ frees those who believe in him and repent of their sins.

Baucham points out that antiracism concocts a Kafka trap, that is a rhetorical prison where no matter what any white person says or does, his speech and action will be interpreted to "prove" that he is a white supremacist. Concepts like "white fragility" and "white equilibrium" are tools in this trap. Anyone who disagrees with any aspect of antiracism is met with "That's your white fragility speaking" if they are white, or "That is your internalized racism," if they are not white.

Black people's "lived experience," recounted in anecdotes, is sacrosanct and must be honored, and never examined. Baucham calls this "Ethnic Gnosticism," that is, the belief that being a member of a certain ethnic group endows that group member with knowledge that no one outside the group can ever lay claim to. Ethnic Gnosticism insists that there is a "black perspective" that all black people share. If a black person disagrees with Woke, he is "broken." Baucham, because he criticizes antiracism, is "broken." He is not an authentic black person. The people declaring that he is not an authentic black person are themselves often white. The Woke similarly condemn, Baucham reports, black conservatives like John McWhorter and Thomas Sowell.

Be the Bridge is a self-described "non-profit organization." Non-profit or not, its founder Latasha Morrison has done quite well. She is represented by the same talent agency that represents Olympian Simone Biles, singer Alanis Morissette, and award-winning journalist Bob Woodward. Be the Bridge hosts an online store where one can purchase a $299, eight-course "Whiteness Intensive" indoctrination "taught by a diverse group of Be the Bridge educators;" a $40 "anti-racist hoodie;" and a free webinar entitled "A Discussion on [sic] Self-Care, Lament, & Trauma for People of Color." On its Facebook page, Be the Bridge offers a self-description. "We inspire and equip ambassadors of racial reconciliation to build a community of people who share a common goal of creating healthy dialogue about race."

According to one Amazon review of her bestselling book, Morrison, in a directly un-Biblical manner (see Ezekiel 18:1-4), holds all whites guilty for sins committed by other, long dead white people. Conversely, she does not hold blacks guilty even for contemporary crimes against non-black people, or against their own kin. "She holds Whites' skin color against them and calls them privileged … plenty of white people have not been born into privileged homes and have been labeled derogatory terms such as 'white trash.' Where is her call for Blacks to grieve black gang violence, violent crimes done against non-black people, or the cost of the abandonment of black children by their fathers that leads to societal evil affecting all people? Did I miss where she called for the Blacks whose ancestors were slave owners to lament over their part in slavery? Or for all the African-Americans whose ancestors played a part in selling/trading their countrymen?"

Baucham says that Be the Bridge it is a "go-to resource" for Evangelicals. Baucham, like the above-quoted Amazon reviewer, faults Be the Bridge for an unbiblical view of guilt. "Morrison's work … is replete with references to generational guilt." Baucham quotes the "rules" for white Be the Bridge members. Whites must never speak to non-whites as if they, the white people, are equal. They must always speak and act as inferior, submissive, guilty, and tainted. They must not share their understanding, they must assume themselves guilty no matter what their intentions are, they must never refer to objective facts, and they must remain silent and passive when being publicly cursed, insulted and accused of racism. Truth in advertising demands that Latasha Morrison retitle her work, "Be the Punching Bag." Indeed, Be the Bridge commandments for how white people are allowed to behave are reminiscent of requirements for the accused at Maoist struggle sessions.

Baucham mentions Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor and author Jarvis J. Williams. In a shocking YouTube video, Williams claims or insinuates that white people have never been lynched, that white people invented slavery, that white people were never enslaved, and that the Confederate flag can mean only one thing to those who brandish it: white terror against black and brown people. Williams said he was so afraid when he saw a Confederate flag in Tennessee that he had to leave the area. In fact if Williams were open to actual facts, I could show him archival photographs of lynched whites, I could show him numbers proving that these lynchings of white Italian and other immigrants, including German immigrant Robert Prager were no one-offs, that white people have in fact been enslaved, in their millions, by Muslims, that there were white slaves in the US, see, for example, here, that the indenture system of whites was slightly better than, but in many respects comparable to, slavery, and that there are abundant images of African Americans wearing, flying, or otherwise embracing the Confederate flag, which suggests that not all black people interpret it as he does. One response to Williams' comments on YouTube reads, "I’m Hispanic  and brown when I see a confederate flag I think Dixie, a war that was won for freedom, the dukes of hazard and gone with the wind! Im not offended never have never will ! I recognize history and learn from it! I don’t dwell in it !" Finally, it is very disturbing to hear a Christian preacher insist that no whites were ever lynched, given the notorious history of the lynching of the Jewish man Leo Frank.

Baucham details behind-the-scenes politicking around critical theory and the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention. Concerned Baptists put forward a resolution on critical race theory and intersectionality. The original document boldly asserted that "critical race theory and intersectionality are founded upon unbiblical presuppositions descended from Marxist theories and categories, and therefore are inherently opposed to the Scriptures as the true center of Christian union." The rest of the document was equally forceful and clear. Politicking watered the document down and that watered down document was all the public saw. Baucham fearlessly names the names of those who promoted Woke at the expense of the Bible, and engaged in what he calls a "deliberate act of duplicity." It is never more clear than in this account why Baucham titled his book Fault Lines. Clearly, his own life will be quite challenging because of this book's forthrightness. As in the wider society, congregants at Christian churches are being separated by an ideological divide as difficult to mend as the fault line ripped into the earth after a large quake.

Baucham speaks to black people as his own mother spoke to him. Baucham's mother emphasized personal responsibility. Baucham, too, emphasizes personal responsibility. Like so many other conservatives, he cites the importance of fathers. He also emphasizes the importance of education and he is not afraid to talk about the statistics that indicate that African Americans commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes, and that most of those crimes are committed against fellow African Americans. Baucham points out the folly of many voices, like that of Lebron James, who insist that African Americans are afraid to leave their homes because white people might hunt and kill them. Rather, African Americans are much more likely to commit a violent crime against a white or Asian person than vice versa. "Black people are overwhelmingly more likely to victimize white people than the other way around … a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black assailant than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a cop." Black people themselves support the presence of police in their communities, and black voters and black politicians participated in tough-on-crime measures during the crack epidemic that devastated black communities.

Baucham believes that the deadliest destroyer of black lives in the US is abortion. "Though black women make up less than 13 percent of the population, they account for 35 percent of all abortions. In major cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, more black babies are aborted than born … nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthood's abortion clinics are in minority neighborhoods."

Again, Baucham does offer hope. His hope is distinctively Christian, and it entails features that used to be part of everyday life in the West: repentance, forgiveness, starting anew, a belief in progress, a belief that all of us were created by one loving, creator God, and that we are all connected by that shared creation. Tom Holland, author of Dominion, and Douglas Murray are both atheists, and they are both astute observers who recognize that society needs routes out of resentment, recrimination, and the lust for revenge, and Christianity provided those routes. Baucham, a Calvinist, does not expect his every reader to become Christian. We must, therefore, find some way to respect these Christians traditions in a post-Christian society. Otherwise, the Pagan tribalism that Baucham labels "ethnic Gnosticism" and the no-exit, permanent struggle session mandated by critical race theory will destroy the bonds that hold Americans together.

"There can be no reconciliation without justice," Black Lives Matter claims. Baucham replies, and the all caps are in his original reply, "YES! AND THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THAT JUSTICE! … Antiracism offers endless penance, judgment, and fear … I am not an African. I am not an African American. I am an American, and I wouldn't want to be anything else. America doesn't owe me anything. America has blessed me beyond measure. If anything I owe America. More importantly, I owe my Savior, and, by extension, I owe my brothers and sisters in Christ." What can one say except "Amen"?

 

Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/fault-lines-new-bestseller-exposes-critical-race-danusha-goska/

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Thursday, August 5, 2021

Timing exposes China's weaponization of virus - Steve Stockman

 

​ by Steve Stockman

It appears that the Chinese vaccine was made months before the virus was set loose on the world.

Recently, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aggressively rejected the call of the World Health Organization (WHO) for a fresh investigation into the deadly global virus.  But a closer look raises more questions and serious problems for the CCP.

Anyone who watches the television series Forensic Files knows that the criminal hides his crimes in order to escape punishment.  Such actions as hammering phones, destroying emails, scrubbing the online archives, and forcing medical experts to change or delete publications all make cover-ups possible.  But, as in TV, the criminal leaves a trail, and any determined reporter can uncover the tailings. 

Unfortunately, too many reporters are lazy or are just following the hand-fed press releases, repeating the narrative dictated to them.  Here is a disturbing case in point.  It is a story of international intrigue and a global plot to divide the forces of freedom versus the overlords of captive peoples.

Brazil 

A little footnote in a press account of a spat between two political rivals in Brazil raises a twofold flag.  João Doria, the Brazilian governor of the state of São Paulo, is a potential opponent of the populist Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

The governor wanted to embarrass the president and appear as if he were taking action to defend his state from the Wuhan Virus.  On the other hand, the president did not want to blindly risk the health of his nation's citizens to the circumspect and dubious actions of the Chinese communists.

In this fight, the Chinese communists saw an opening to divide support for the popular president.  After all, President Bolsonaro is no fan of the communists in China.  In an attempt to add fuel to the fire, China offered its vaccine to Governor Doria.

This offer reveals two things.  It raises the question of how China had a COVID vaccine in a timeframe all pundits said was impossible, but it also shows China's use of the virus and vaccine to ingrain their influence in other nations — something to which the U.S. should not turn a blind eye. 

What might a sleuth pull from all these actions by China?

Upon further investigation, it turns out that CNN reported in the summer of 2020 that the Chinese were constructing a massive building to produce the vaccine.  In the same general timeframe, the Chinese were giving the vaccine to their own citizens.  The timing here pulls apart much of the drummed-up narrative hoisted upon the world by communist China.  Hard evidence of timing is not fudgeable. 

America

Most of us Americans lived through the tortuous election of 2020 and can remember the calls and mockery by renowned medical experts denouncing as lies President Trump's claims that the vaccine would be developed by the end of the year.  

But President Trump tore apart the rule book.  He cut red tape and lavished billions of dollars on free enterprise.  He called for a new way to make vaccines.  The political class and the "science experts" saw his efforts as laughable and outrageously ignorant.

The bellicose critics continued their loud opposition.  Indeed, in 2020, candidate Biden promised that he would not take the vaccine because of its association with Donald Trump.  And "expert" Dr. Fauci said there was no way we'd have a vaccine in 2020 — that, at the earliest, it wouldn't be developed until 2021. 

China

As Biden's spokesman says, "let us circle back" to China and do simple calculations.  A reporter can ask any scientist or medical expert if the vaccine could be made in weeks or days.  Still, to this day — it's clear. 

The world did not have the skills or the knowledge to speed the development of the vaccine.  Even with President Trump's Warp Speed initiative, it would take the better part of a year, billions of dollars, and a network of global scientists to make the vaccines.  Everyone said it was an impossible task to do quickly.  The task was like the Manhattan Project.  More importantly, the Chinese chose to use the longer traditional method of making the vaccine. 

That brings us to the timing and math.  How did China possibly research, develop, and produce a vaccine in less than 2–3 months? 

The sale to Brazil was in July 2020, just 10–20 weeks after the CCP said the virus was found.  China was administering the vaccine to its citizens in the summer of 2020, just a few months after the CCP's declaration that they had the virus. 

This timing presents a conundrum raising many disturbing questions.  Who made the Chinese vaccine?  When exactly was it developed?  And, most importantly, why?  But there are no reporters investigating this miracle.

Given most experts' estimates, the Chinese vaccine would have had to be under development by 2019, 2018, or even earlier.

It appears that the vaccine was made months before the virus was set loose on the world, calling into question the Chinese narrative and pointing directly at a deliberate release of the virus — a weaponization — germ warfare. 

This also exonerates the much-maligned and courageous whistleblower, Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan, who all along said it was the Chinese military who developed, released, and spread the virus.  Most reporters, let alone the World Health Organization, will not ask the hard questions, including, how did the communist Chinese have the vaccine before the virus was released? 

Any claim that the vaccine was made in days or weeks is absolutely impossible according to the experts, who in 2020 said vaccine development would take 2–10 years.  Thus, leftists are left with the dilemma: do they continue embracing "experts" who say a lengthy development time is required, or do they acknowledge that China was developing the virus and vaccine at the same time long before the virus was ever released?

This timing points directly to the weaponization of the virus by the CCP.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Steve Stockman

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/timing_exposes_chinas_weaponization_of_virus.html

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