The real cost of ‘global warming’
By James Delingpole:
The renewable energy industry is helping to destroy the UK economy and drive up unemployment says a new report. For every one of David Cameron’s “green jobs” created in the renewable energy sector (mainly solar and wind), another 3.7 jobs are being lost in the real economy, says the independent study by Verso Economics. In total, measurable policies to promote renewable energy cost £1.4 billion in the UK and £168 million in Scotland in 2009/10. But this doesn’t take into account the additional economic damage inflicted by the erection of enormous, bird-chopping monstrosities all over some of Britain’s most attractive tourist spots – including, for example, the hitherto unspoilt island of Tiree.(H/T Michael Daly)
Still, it’s not all bad news. Until really quite recently, it was only lonely voices like Christopher Booker’s which were prepared to speak out against the great Wind Farm scam (and related Climate Cons). Now, as the Verso Economics report shows, more and more people are waking up to the horrendous economic and environmental damage being done in the name of “combatting AGW/climate change/climate disruption/fill in fashionable new phrase here”.
Booker lays out the facts yet again in a storming piece in the Daily Mail entitled Why the £250 billion wind farm industry could be the greatest scam of our age. The real villains of the piece, he argues, are our political classes – Tories, Labour and Lib Dems alike – who are completely out of touch with their increasingly sceptical electorate.
[...]
Obama’s economy heads further south
Steve McCann:
Fannie Mae, the now government owned mortgage finance company, has posted a loss of $2.4 Billion for the 4th Quarter of 2010. They have also requested another $2.6 Billion in aid from the Federal Government. Since 2008 Fannie Mae and its sibling company Freddie Mac have taken over $289 Billion in subsidies from the American taxpayer with no end in sight.
Coincidentally Fannie Mae has released new data from a survey they took in January 2011. As compared to a year ago the American people are more pessimistic about the outlook for housing and the economy.
[...]
Bernard Nathanson: A Life Transformed by Truth
by Robert P. George:
A man who made a career of death and lies became a hero for life and truth.
Tomorrow morning in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Archbishop Timothy Dolan will celebrate a Mass of Christian Burial for a giant of the pro-life movement: Dr. Bernard Nathanson.
Few people, if any, did more than Bernard Nathanson to undermine the right to life of unborn children by turning abortion from an unspeakable crime into a constitutionally protected liberty. Someday, when our law is reformed to honor the dignity and protect the right to life of every member of the human family, including children in the womb, historians will observe that few people did more than Bernard Nathanson to achieve that reversal.
[...]
Unions and the Divorcing of Reward from Merit
by Evan Sayet, FrontPage:
Two headlines, running within a couple of days of each other, caught my attention because they are interrelated. The first was from the Milwaukee Journal and it made clear that, for the first time in history, the average compensation garnered by the Milwaukee school teacher exceeded $100,000. The second was found in a variety of places, a statistic coming from no less a source than the Department of Education, which declared that “Two-Thirds of Wisconsin 8th Graders Can’t Read Proficiently.” The reason for both the exceedingly high pay and the exceedingly low scholarship is due, of course, to the unions.
Oh, there are other causes as well – but they, too, are a reflection of the union because the problem with unions is the same problem with our culture in general – the near-complete divorcing of reward from merit.
If students can’t read, then how did they make it to the eighth grade in the first place? The answer is that their grades were inflated and thus they were rewarded with grades they did not merit. They are in the eight grade because they received “social promotions,” rewards given to children obviously not based on their scholastic aptitude but on the Modern Liberal premise that not rewarding them might hurt their self-esteem.
[...]
EPA trumpets dubious shale gas risks – but ignores environmental impacts of wind turbines
By Paul Driessen:
America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and T Boone Pickens’ wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. That was then.
Barely two years later, America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches – as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or “fracking” the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane.
Within a year, US recoverable shale gas reserves alone rose from 340 trillion cubic feet to 823 tcf, the Energy Department estimates. That’s 36 years’ worth, based on what the USA currently consumes from all gas sources, or the equivalent of 74 years’ of current annual US oil production. The reserves span the continent, from Barnett shale in Texas to Marcellus shale in Eastern and Mid-Atlantic states – to large deposits in western Canada, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana and other states (and around the world).
Instead of importing gas, the United States could become an exporterInstead of importing gas, the United States could become an exporter. The gas can move seamlessly into existing pipeline systems, to fuel homes, factories and electrical generators, serve as a petrochemical feedstock, and replace oil in many applications. States, private citizens and the federal government could reap billions in lease bonuses, rents, royalties and taxes. Millions of high-paying jobs could be “created or saved.” Plentiful gas can also provide essential backup power for wind turbines.
Production of this much gas would reduce oil price shocks and dependence on oil imports from the likes of Gadhafi and Chavez, while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Talk about a game changer!
What’s not to like? Plenty, it turns out. The bountiful new supplies make environmentalist dogmas passé: the end of the hydrocarbon era, America as an energy pauper, immutable Club of Rome doctrines of sustainability and imminent resource depletion, the Pickens’ Plan and forests of wind turbines.
[...]
Sarah Palin: Even Conservatives Duped by Liberal Media Branding
By Lloyd Marcus:
Conservatives saying under their breath at cocktail parties that Palin isn’t too bright is evidence the liberal media’s branding of her has worked on some level.
Frustratingly, the facts completely prove otherwise. Palin was extremely successful as Governor of Alaska.
For crying out loud, what has His Royal Obamaness achieved qualifying him to run the country? Nothing. Obama was a community organizer. He taught people they were entitled victims of an unfair America and how to extort freebies. He only served 144 days in the senate before running for president.
Obama’s presidential qualifications: He is half black and liberal. This won him 100% liberal media support and 96% of the black vote. Obama is well spoken and looked good in a swim suit.
Remember when Obama said America had 57 states? Immediately to his defense, the liberal media said, “Obama was tired”. Imagine if Palin had said the same thing. The liberal media would have gagged us with at least three days of 24/7 coverage of the story. Every report would parrot the same mantra, “This conservative woman is truly an idiot”.
[...]
One reason why Wisconsin needed union reform: captive benefits
by Ed Morrissey:
The standoff in Wisconsin will stretch into its third week, and the fleebaggers in the state Senate still refuse to return to vote on the bill passed in the Assembly on Friday morning. Legislators say they will remain out of state as long as the bill is on the table, and demand that Governor Scott Walker pull it back. Walker, for his part, has refused to do so, and will have to announce layoffs during Tuesday’s budget address if the budget-repair bill remains stalled in the legislature.
Some have called for Walker to reconsider his push to remove pensions and benefits from collective bargaining with public-employee unions as a compromise, but Gary Gross recalls a Patrick McIlheran column from December that explains exactly why Wisconsin needs to push for PEU reform now. The MSJ columnist wrote about the big stake that the Wisconsin Education Association has in forcing individual school districts to negotiate benefits — because they can demand that their own WEA Trust have a monopoly on health insurance:
[...]
STATES OF THE UNIONS
Mark Steyn:
The Democrat palace guard of America’s dying monodailies are doing a grand job in reporting the current stand-off in Wisconsin. A headline in The New York Times sums up the media’s bizarre enthusiasm for sacrificing what remains of their reputations in order to protect the cause:
Billionaire Brothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Dispute
The dogged John Hinderaker of Powerline is endeavoring to get some answers from the shy and retiring Eric Lipton as to the basis for certain aspects of his story. [UPDATE: New York Times "fact"-checking in action.] But I find the headline alone so perverse you wonder how, even at the Times, it could have wafted up through six layers of editors without someone saying, “Oh, come on…” What’s happening in Wisconsin is all about money: budgets, shortfalls, obligations, perks, pensions, privileges – and the burdens of the beleaguered productive class that pays for it. In a story awash with money, the Koch brothers are the least of it. They’re certainly billionaires, and that’s a lot of dough. Of it, what they inject into the political process is little more than a rounding error. As David Harsanyi puts it:
The libertarian Kochs are super rich and gave less than $2 million to Republicans in the last election cycle, which mathematically speaking amounts to nothing. In fact, Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner dispatched Krugman’s claim that unions were a “counterweight to the political power of big money” by pointing out that “every one of the top ten industries contributing to the 2010 elections gave more money to Democrats.”
[...]
Unscientific hype about the flooding risks from climate change will cost us all dear
By Christopher Booker:
As the great global warming scare continues to crumble, attention focuses on all those groups that have a huge interest in keeping it alive. Governments look on it as an excuse to raise billions of pounds in taxes. Wind farm developers make fortunes from the hidden subsidies we pay through our electricity bills. A vast academic industry receives more billions for concocting the bogus science that underpins the scare. Carbon traders hope to make billions from corrupt schemes based on buying and selling the right to emit CO2. But no financial interest stands to make more from exaggerating the risks of climate change than the re-insurance industry, which charges retail insurers for “catastrophe cover”, paid for by all of us through our premiums.
[...]
Has Anyone Told Ambassador Rice There’s a Crisis In Libya?
by Claudia Rosett:
When President Obama made Susan Rice his ambassador to the United Nations, in 2009, he thought the job was so vital that he gave her cabinet rank. Now, here we are, with the Arab world in tumult, two dictators gone in the past two months, and the UN aflutter over scenes of Libyans dying this past week by the hundreds, or thousands, in outright rebellion against a raving Moammar Gaddafi — who has been vowing to “fight to the last drop of blood.” Gaddafi’s atrocities are so visibly horrific that the UN Security Council has been meeting on Libya in emergency session. In Geneva, the Human Rights Council interrupted its usual anti-Israel programming to hold its own emergency session on Friday, and engage in the novel activity of demanding the suspension of Libya from its ranks and a probe into Gaddafi’s abuses in Libya. Even Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon cut short a UN public relations recruiting trip to Hollywood early this week, in order to phone Gaddafi and dash back to New York.
Where’s Susan Rice, the cabinet rank ambassador of the free world’s superpower? On the day Hosni Mubarak stepped down as dictator of Egypt, Feb. 11, she was visiting Oregon to give a talk on “Why America Needs the United Nations.”
[...]
The Global Caliphate and the Universal Delusion
by Diana West:
[...]
Here is what is “delusional”: the belief that American principles — freedom of religion, freedom of speech, equality before the law — have a natural place as “universal principles” in a culture grounded in Shariah principles. This is the pure fantasy that has driven our foreign policy through a decade of “nation-building” wars. Meanwhile, the only way I know how to get to anything you might call “universal principles” into the Islamic world is through the establishment of … a caliphate.
A Weak Horse in the White House
By LEE SMITH:
Here’s a mismatch: While Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is flying in mercenaries from around Africa to ensure the survival of his regime, President Obama is dispatching his diplomatic corps to Europe and the Middle East for consultations regarding the impending civil war in the North African state.
[...]
We cheer the toppling of dictators, but ignore fanatics poised to take their place
By Charles Moore:
In Israel this week, I flew to the northern border with Lebanon. From a military outpost, I looked over the barbed wire which separates the two countries, and surveyed the attractive, rocky country beyond. In the far distance, Mount Hermon rose, snow-capped and remote.
A thin, shy, clever officer from Israeli military intelligence explained to us what we could see. There, in the middle of a village, was a large white house. It is a home for the physically handicapped, but inside is concealed a Hizbollah observation post, which cannot be attacked without injuring the innocent inmates. To the right were several Christian villages, and a Sunni one, but most of these are now dominated by the Shia, from whom Hizbollah is drawn. A Lebanese army border post was visible to the far right, but neither its soldiers, nor those of the UN force, Unifil, have any serious power.
Further off, straight ahead of us, was the town where the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, popped up last October, using a stadium rally to denounce Israel and display Iranian strength. Since then, that strength has grown. Hizbollah, which depends on Iran for its money and training, and on Syria for refuge and political support, has taken effective control of the government of Lebanon.
Within one sweep of the eye, then, we could see the difference between hope and reality.
[...]
Obama to God and America: You’re Wrong About Marriage
By Robert Knight, The Washington Times:
It’s a good thing Barack Obama is not in charge of defending the law of gravity, or we’d all be floating up to an airless death. Allow me to take off the gloves. As one who helped draft the first version of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), I regard Mr. Obama’s order to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to abandon DOMA’s legal defense as lawless, reckless, arrogant and a violation of his oath of office. I think it is an impeachable offense.
I’m just warming up.
[...]
Ignore the smears – Klein was great for Alberta
By Rod Love, Calgary Herald:
As Alberta struggles with it’s current financial problems, a lot has been written and said lately about a guy named Ralph Klein, who apparently is at the root of many of our problems.
Apparently under his watch, infrastructure was ignored, billions of dollars in royalty payments were missed, health and education deteriorated, and our finances were too focused on debts and deficits and not enough on “re-investments,” code for: “spending.”
This is all news to many Albertans.
We were under the apparently mistaken belief that Ralph Klein actually did a lot of good things for Alberta.
As a service to the many thousands of newcomers to Alberta who are perhaps not aware of Alberta’s recent fiscal history, allow me to explain.
In the winter of 1992-93, Alberta was an economic basket case, trying to spend its way out of a recession.
[...]
While I had my issues with Klein, mostly over social issues [he was a social liberal when premier], I did support his fiscal policies which, in my opinion, secured Alberta’s future and which has saved us during these recession years. Sadly, Stelmach undid everything Klein did and we are again facing a growing fiscal crisis.
Defunding Obama’s Union Led Regulatory Army
by Warner Todd Huston:
You might recall that with great fanfare and the slobberingly positive coverage by the Old Media, President Obama made Reagan-like and claimed that he thought it was time to get rid of the regulations strangling American business. Since that time he’s met with businesses and pretended to suddenly be a pro-business, pro-economic growth president. His actions, however, give the lie to his sudden turn around from anti-business to pro-business man. Thankfully the GOP is making to help the president become what he’s selling himself as, despite his best intentions.
[...]
Jailed Christian Convert Is Freed in Afghanistan
NEWSMAX:
An Afghan man who was jailed for nine months for converting to Christianity has been released after an intense campaign by international diplomatic missions and Christian activists, an official said Friday.
Sayed Mussa, a 46-year-old father of six, left a Kabul jail earlier this week and was taken to see Afghan prosecutors, who did not have enough evidence to charge him, said Gen. Abdul Qayum Safi, director of the detention center.
Aidan Clay, regional manager for International Christian Concern, cheered Mussa’s release but said another convert, Shoaib Assadullah, was still in detention in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Assadullah was arrested in October after allegedly giving a copy of a Bible to a friend.
Read more: Jailed Christian Convert Is Freed in Afghanistan
[...]
Jack Cashill’s Deconstructing Obama
By Jack Kerwick:
In Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of the First Postmodern President, Jack Cashill echoes this sentiment of “the Caped Crusader’s,” yet, lamentably, the characters to which he speaks are not the stuff of fantasy. And, unlike Nolan’s Batman, Cashill invokes it as a justification, not for any deception in which he plans on engaging, but, rather, for that of which Barack Obama and his cohorts are guilty.
The real Obama, you see, just isn’t good enough, for he bears few if any similarities to “the Obama myth,” as Cashill describes the fiction that an exceedingly Obama-friendly media has labored inexhaustibly to perpetuate. The author has no doubts — or, if he does, he doesn’t express them — that the real Obama is “a reasonably bright guy”; he is certain, however, that the mythical Obama is “not nearly as ‘brilliant’ as white liberals thought him to be.”
According to Cashill, it is our president’s first memoir, Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, from which this fiction of Obama’s unrivaled precociousness springs and which put him on the path to the presidency. The only problem, though, is that Obama played, at best, a subordinate role in its authorship.
This is Cashill’s main thesis. Unfortunately for Obama and his followers, he makes a compelling case for it.
[...]
Iranium
by Mark Tapson, FrontPage:
Since Iran’s world-changing 1979 revolution, the Iranian mullahcracy has been at the forefront of Islamic terror against the West. Thumbing its nose at the disapproval of an impotent international community, it has proceeded full-bore to acquire the ultimate tool of terror: nuclear weapons capability. Iran’s imminent success in this regard would mean, at best, a disastrous reversal of the balance of power in the Middle East, and at worst, Iran’s promised destruction of Israel and an apocalyptic threat to the United States as well.
In the shadow of this impending menace, the Clarion Fund has released Iranium, an hour-long documentary highlighting the danger of a nuclear-armed Iranian regime. I attended a packed screening of the film in Los Angeles last month, and afterward the busy filmmakers agreed to discuss the project. Producer Raphael Shore is Clarion’s founder. Director Alex Traiman is a journalist and former radio personality covering news in the Middle East. He has also worked in marketing, and public relations.
[...]
Hey, What Happened To That Maxine Waters Ethics Trial?
by Patrick Richardson:
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) was supposed to have faced trial for ethics violations last year, but the trial was suddenly delayed until after the November 2010 elections.
Waters stands accused of obtaining $12 million in TARP money for the bank OneUnited, on whose board her husband Sidney Williams once sat, and in which he owned more than $350,000 in stock. According to a story by the Washington Post in September of last year, Waters — together with Rep. Barney Frank, (D-MA) who was then the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee — changed a law and obtained the financing.
Her trial was delayed because new evidence had supposedly come to light. What that evidence is was not specified. But according to a story on SFGate.com, at least part of that evidence was an email from her grandson Mikael Moore, who is also her chief of staff:
[...]
The Global Union Movement
Ann Kane:
With all the union activity in places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Algeria lately, one might think there’s a conspiracy afoot. Actually, the global unionists’ plans are well documented, so it’s no secret what they’re up to: total economic control all in the name of worker’s rights, unity, justice and universal equity.
The global union movement began in earnest back in the summer of 2005 when the SEIU and Teamsters broke from the AFL-CIO. They put together a new coalition, Change to Win, to emphasize organizing as opposed to political activism. AFL-CIO had been losing membership, and Andy Stern who took over SEIU at the time had plans to increase membership and organize international unions.
In 2005 a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune laid out the foundations of the uprisings we are witnessing in the world today. They are being fueled by activist unions and they were foreshadowed in that article. Read which big names were involved in globally organizing unions to take down governments.
[...]
Glenn Reynolds asks a good question
WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: Police in Weare, NH arrest man for recording traffic stop. My message to the Weare police: What are you afraid of? Do you have something to hide? If you’re innocent, you should have nothing to fear . . . .
Where Is The Outrage Now?
by Khaled Abu Toameh:
Obama and many others in the international community have been quicker in condemning settlement construction in Israel than atrocities by Arab dictators against innocent civilians.
Has retired South African judge Richard Goldstone considered the possibility of heading a special commission of inquiry to look into the war crimes that are being perpetrated against Libyans and other Arabs?
Settlements may be a problem, but they are not more dangerous than the massacres that are being perpetrated against Arabs.
It took President Barack Obama nine days to condemn Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s massacres in Libya as “outrageous” and “unacceptable.”
It took the UN Security Council more than a week to hold a closed-door meeting and issue a tempered statement condemning the violence in Libya and calling for its immediate end and for those responsible to be held accountable.
This is the same Security Council that one week earlier held a special and open session to condemn construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
[...]
Does the “J” in “J Street” Stand for “Jihad”?
by Steven Plaut, FrontPage:
J Street, which pretends to be a pro-Israel lobbying group, describes the “Giving Voice to Your Values” conference in Washington D.C. (February 26-March 1) as a “bold vision of diversity and tolerance, compassion and justice.” But the “voices” that will be featured show, once again, that J Street, funded by George Soros (whose participation it tries to hide), and others involved in the boycott and divestment and sanction movement actually want to coerce Israel into capitulating to the demands of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other anti-Israel terror groups.
[...]
The Left’s Ends Justify Any Means
by Rich Trzupek, FrontPage:
Illinois’ economy has suffered more than most during the recession, but the Prairie State is now the home to at least one growing industry: that of providing sanctuary to Democratic legislators running away from neighboring Midwestern states. Thirty-seven of forty Democrats in the Indiana House fled across the border to prevent the Republican majority in the chamber from passing a right to work bill. They joined the fourteen Wisconsin Democrats who took flight from their state rather than fulfilling their responsibilities as elected officials. It’s clear that Democrats understand that if the power of big labor is diminished, their party will suffer. Without union votes, and most importantly, union cash, the party will face the unpalatable choice of moving toward the center or finding itself marginalized on the far left fringe of American politics. And so the party has responded with these incredibly childish tactics in both Indiana and Wisconsin.
[...]
Obama and Leftist Media Silent as Egyptian Military Attacks Christian Monasteries
by Lisa Graas:
As the Muslim Brotherhood sits at the table of “democracy” in Egypt, Christian monasteries are under assault by the Egyptian military. Does anyone know where President Obama stands on Christian slaughter?
From the Coptic Martyrs comes video and a report on what is happening to the Christians of Egypt:
[...]
Santorum: Liberals ‘Hate Christendom’
NEWSMAX:
“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” Santorum said. “And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.”
Liberals “hate Western civilization at the core,” Santorum added. That’s the problem.”
[...]
After Obama, the Deluge
By Victor Davis Hanson:
President Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission — and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts. His first two budgets led to the largest deficits in U.S. history. The ensuing $3 trillion dollars in red ink prompted the tea party movement and led to the largest midterm defeat of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives since 1938.
No matter. The president has proposed a new budget with an even larger, $1.6 trillion deficit. That record federal borrowing prompted columnist Charles Krauthammer to describe it as Louis XV indulgence, an allusion to the wild royal spending that brought about the French Revolution. Even Newsweek editor at large Evan Thomas, who once gushed that Obama stood “above the world” as some “sort of God,” called the president’s new budget a “profile in cowardice.” After Obama leaves office, a perfect storm of rising international interest rates, an anemic dollar and panic on the part of foreign lenders may force an end to this unhinged American rush to borrow and blow what it has not earned.
[...]
The Persecution & Prayer Alert
The Persecution & Prayer Alert
The Voice of the Martyrs, Canada
http://www.persecution.net
Thursday, February 24, 2011
“Once we serve God surely we must go the way of the cross,
so I will not quarrel against the Lord for what has happened.”
– Pastor Quang, Vietnam
Sign up now to receive our free Monthly Newsletter at
http://www.persecution.net/nlorder.htm
.
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In this week’s edition: reports from Vietnam, China, India, Cuba and
Egypt
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1. Update: Vietnamese priest facing imprisonment again
(Source: VOM-USA)
Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Vietnamese priest who has spent more than 15
years in prison, including time in solitary confinement, could soon be
imprisoned again. The 64-year-old’s last arrest was in February 2007,
when he was detained for distributing material “harmful to the state.”
In March 2010, he was released to undergo a year’s medical treatment
after suffering two serious strokes that left him partially paralyzed
(see http://www.persecution.net/vn-2010-03-18.htm
for more). During his medical leave, authorities prevented him from
giving interviews or meeting with activists. Police reportedly roughed
up a U.S. diplomat who attempted to visit with him. Father Nguyen is
scheduled to be re-admitted to prison on March 15. He has said that if
he is indeed forced to return to prison, he will go on a hunger strike
and refuse medical treatment as a means of protesting the injustice.
Pray authorities will not send Father Nguyen back to prison. Pray for
continued healing for him. Ask God to equip him to stand firm in his
faith in the face of oppression and to demonstrate unfailing trust in
his Saviour. Pray he and Vietnamese believers facing similar trials
will rest in the knowledge that the Good Shepherd walks with them at
all times (Psalm 23).
To learn more about persecution in Vietnam, go to the Vietnam Country
Report at http://www.persecution.net/vietnam.htm
.
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2. Chinese Government planning increased regulations on Christian
worship
(Sources: VOM-USA, China Daily Newspaper)
The Chinese government is reportedly planning to tighten regulations
on Christian worship this year. China’s State Administration for
Religious Affairs (SARA) has announced that it will “guide Protestants
worshiping at unregistered churches into worshiping at
government-sanctioned ones.” A VOM source in China confirmed that
during a detention in 2010, police told him they would stop being
“nice” in 2011. The report also stated, “SARA will strengthen
regulation of foreign nationals’ group religious activities in China
and resist foreign infiltration under the pretext of religion.” This
new policy could mean increased persecution of Christians in China,
especially those who worship in unregistered churches. Christians
faced similar pressure from the government before the 2008 Olympics,
when several Christians were detained, forced from their homes and put
under house arrest.
Pray Chinese Christians will continue to look to their God, knowing
that He will give them courage and resolution in trial and opposition.
Pray a new wave of intense pressure will not deter followers of Christ
in China from proclaiming God’s Word. Pray believers unjustly
imprisoned will persevere in faith.
VOM’s April newsletter will provide a special focus on China. If you
do not already subscribe to our newsletter, you may do so by visiting
our website at http://www.persecution.net/nlorder.htm
or calling our office at 1-888-298-6423. You can learn more about the
persecution of Christians in China by visiting the Country Report at
http://www.persecution.net/china.htm
.
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3. Pastor viciously assaulted in India
(Source: Compass Direct)
A 65-year-old pastor was recently the victim of a brutal assault by
Hindu militants in Rajasthan state, India. On February 1, Pastor Hari
Shankar Ninama was visiting his daughter in Ambarunda when her
neighbor requested he pray for his 8-year-old son, who was ill. While
Pastor Hari was praying, at least 10 Hindu militants stormed into the
home. The militants beat the pastor, used abusive language against him
and accused him of forcibly converting people. They also slapped his
daughter and beat the sick boy’s father. The militants forced the
pastor onto a motorbike and drove to a location outside the village.
There, they stripped off the pastor’s clothes and beat him with wooden
clubs. They threatened to kill him if he continued to spread
Christianity. After stealing his watch, cell phone and a small amount
of money, they fled, leaving him naked on the road. He walked five
miles to the police station, where he filed a report. He was
hospitalized and released on February 11, emotionally traumatized and
still suffering bodily pain.
When the militants reportedly threatened to burn down the home of the
pastor’s daughter if police prosecute, the family dropped the
investigation. The attack has caused fear among Christians in the
village, and Pastor Hari’s church has not held services since he was
attacked. Pastor Hari, however, has said that even in his feeble
state, he is determined to evangelize and pray for people wherever and
whenever called.
Pray Pastor Hari will find strength in the tenderness and lasting care
of his Heavenly Father as he recovers. Praise the Lord for his
steadfast faith and commitment to sharing Christ, even amid great
opposition. Pray God’s protection on him and his family. Pray a spirit
of power, love and trust, not fear, will govern Christians in this
area and throughout India (2 Timothy 1:7).
You can learn more about the trials facing followers of Christ in
India at http://www.persecution.net/india.htm
.
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4. Cuban Christians facing intense pressure
(Source: Christian Solidarity Worldwide)
Christians continue to face opposition in Cuba. The government has
reportedly shifted away from higher profile forms of oppression, such
as threatening to destroy churches, to pressuring pastors and other
Christian leaders. Church leaders — both in and outside of the Cuban
Council of Churches (CCC) that represents the Protestant Church –
report receiving frequent visits from state security agents and Cuban
Communist Party officials. These visits and meetings seem to have the
intent of intimidating church leaders by making them aware they are
under close surveillance.
In October 2010, Pastor Homero Carbonell resigned as leader of La
Trinidad First Baptist Church in Santa Clara after prolonged
government pressure and threats. While he hoped giving up his
leadership position would alleviate the demands on the congregation,
there has reportedly been no change in the government’s treatment.
Pastor Carbonell, a respected high-level denominational leader, has
denounced the government’s spurious accusations against him in an open
letter. He also wrote of the Religious Affairs Office’s unjust
treatment of the church over the past three years. It is suspected the
intensity of the government pressure on the pastor and his
congregation is related to the church’s refusal to expel family
members of political prisoners and members of human rights or
pro-democracy groups.
Pray for boldness and endurance of faith for Christians in Cuba. Ask
God to give them wisdom as they minister in an environment of pressure
and opposition against Christ’s followers. Pray religious freedom will
be truly respected in Cuba.
You can learn more about opposition facing Christians in Cuba at
http://www.persecution.net/cuba.htm
.
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5. Muslims abduct daughter of church contractor in Egypt
(Source: Assyrian International News Agency)
Muslims recently abducted an 18-year-old Egyptian Christian from her
home. On February 19, a group of Muslims broke into a house belonging
to a building contractor who constructed the St. Mary and St. Michael
Church in the city of Giza. In November, the church was the site of
severe clashes between State Security forces and Copts protesting over
the closure of their church. Three Copts were killed and hundreds were
injured and arrested. After barging into the family’s house, the
intruders wrote messages on the wall, including “Islam is the
solution” and “The Church has to be demolished.” They also wrote the
names of the other family members on the wall before abducting the
church contractor’s daughter. Blood was later found on the stairs in
the flat. There is considerable fear that the rest of the family will
be targeted in further violence.
Pray this young Christian woman will be safely returned home. Pray her
family will continue to look to Christ, entrusting all their cares and
anxieties to Him in this time. Pray Christians in Egypt will be
clothed in the Spirit of the Lord, reaching forth their hands in love,
even to those who seek to harm and oppress them.
Find out more about the situation facing Christians in Egypt at
http://www.persecution.net/egypt.htm
.
***********************************
The Persecution & Prayer Alert is a ministry of The Voice of the
Martyrs, Canada. (Mailing address: P.O. Box 608, Streetsville,
Ontario, L5M 2C1)
Tel. (905) 670.9721. Website: http://www.persecution.net
Prime Time CBS Drama ‘The Good Wife’ Impugns Tea Party as ‘Racist Organization’
By Brent Baker:
Tuesday night’s episode of The Good Wife on CBS gave prime time legitimacy to the presumption the Tea Party is racist as a lawyer in a courtroom tried to discredit an expert witness (Gary Cole as Sarah Palin supporter “Kurt McVeigh”) who testified against a since-exonerated black defendant, by demanding he admit he’s “a member of the Tea Party.” The lawyer asserts “it is our contention that my client’s prosecution was racist,” citing McVeigh’s “membership in a racist organization,” namely the Tea Party.
To illustrate, the program created a photo taken at “a Tea Party rally in Milwaukee last January” showing a man near “McVeigh” holding up a “Go Back to the Jungle” sign which the lawyer asks McVeigh to confirm “refers to our current President.” (large jpg image of the picture)
[...]
UNION VIOLENCE VS. THE TEA PARTY
Posted by Glenn Reynolds:
UNION VIOLENCE VS. THE TEA PARTY: The News Hounds That Didn’t Bark.
Note that the Newspaper Guild is part of the Communications Workers of America.
And guess what:
[...]
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