The Church of the Holy Sepulcher has closed in Jerusalem to protest the Israeli Government's persecution of Christians. The Church is jointly administered by the Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Church.
The Israeli Government is currently considering a proposal allowing the State to seize ecclesiastical properties; and to tax churches retroactively to the tune of an estimated $186 million. Cardinal O'Brien of the Jerusalem Diocese stated the crisis in no uncertain terms:
"Betraying international treaties and centuries of practice, all Christian properties, except churches themselves, are being taxed tens of billions of dollars. This includes hundreds of agencies including Christian schools, hospitals, homes for the needy, health-care centers, and pilgrimage centers such as the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem. Many church assets are being frozen, fines threatened, and hundreds of thousands of dollars seized from Christian churches in actions that will curtail freedom of worship."
His Eminence also requested prayer in this "unprecedented discrimination against Christians."
Most American Christians are under the mistaken impression that Israel is some oasis of religious freedom in an ocean of intolerance. That description actually fits Israel's neighbor Lebanon, more accurately. The Pew Research Center actually ranks Israeli religious freedom as lower than Cuba and Somalia. It's well-known that the Israeli authorities look the other way to desecration of Christian sites and other more aggressive acts against Christians.
An important question here is why the US Government not only continues to support countries like Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia but opposes governments tolerant of Christianity like Syria and Iraq. The Trump Administration even recently declared Hezbollah an 'Islamic terrorist group' in spite of the fact that Christians serve in Hezbollah and that they are fighting the aggression of the Wahhabi Cult. Who is giving Trump advice on the Middle East? Oh yes:
The former CEO of Exxon, who gave the Boy Scouts to the Gay Mafia; 'Rainbow Rex' Tillerson. Rainbow Rex is more loyal to the drug addicts and perverts in Wahhabi-run Saudi Arabia than he is to the U.S. He had not a peep of criticism for the recent Saudi purges; and in fact, today praised their humanitarian efforts in Yemen. Which includes ethnic cleansing of Yemeni Christians, incidentally.
Rainbow Rex also hasn't had a word to say about Israeli seizures of Christian properties, nor for that matter, about the ongoing church-seizures in Turkey. He has never said anything in praise of Russian humanitarian aid in Syria; nor about Syrian Christian churches reopening after the fall of ISIS. In fact, Tillerson gave Trump the false intelligence of a chemical-weapons attack leading the President to kill innocent people in a cruise missile attack on Syria last April.
Tillerson deserves to be impeached. He never should have been appointed to Secretary of State in the first place. And Israel doesn't deserve a free pass simply because it is a US ally. We need an Administration willing---like Russia---to stand up for Christians and do the right thing.
Among the Red Pill/Alt-RINO crowd, Michael King is actually considered a great journalist. Mostly because he proclaims at his website, Tomato Bubble (OK, we'll let the readers psychoanalyze that title for themselves) that he is countering the disinformation put out by The New York Times.
Granted, 'the Grey Lady' puts out lots of fake news. So what has King decided to attack? An article covering Ivanka Trump's visit to the Winter Olympics as Goodwill Ambassador.
The Red Pills have really outdone themselves this time. Actually making the New York Times sound credible on a Trump-related story is a monumental non-achievement. Here's a specimen of what King actually thinks is stellar reporting:
"Thankfully, if the 'inside baseball' coming out of the White House is to believed, this bratty little New York libtard and her goofy Jew husband have had their roles diminished to symbolism only."
"When your last name is Trump, you get plugged into Big Jewry through your husband...Spoiled Jewish princesses (even converted ones) never quit until they get their way. "
And what's worse, this is supposedly a Conservative critique, according to King.
All of this proves once again that the Alt-Right is not our friend. We Conservatives need to go back to William F. Buckley's policy of publicly disavowing these kinds of kooks. King's whole 'rebuttal' of the NYT article is more vile and vulgar than what the Whacko Left Wing usually says about Ivanka.
Just listen to this: "Baby girl Ivanka Trump arrived in Seoul for the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics. President Trump, noting her arrival, loving tweeted out about his dipsy baby girl, 'We cannot have a better, or smarter, person representing our country." Then King goes on to compare Trump's message to a father praising his kindergarten-age children's drawings.
In the world of reality, however, the President was correct in sending Ivanka to Seoul. What King and his bitter woman-hating confederates fail to understand is that Ivanka is very popular in Asia. Even the Chinese government's official news outlet has Ivanka ranked as one of the top foreign figures most admired in China. Ivanka also has fans in both Koreas, Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
But King is no stranger to saying stupid things like these. He believes not only that the Holocaust was a hoax; but also that there was no such organization as ISIS. The video footage of ISIS atrocities, he claims, were staged by 'crisis actors'---sort of like Sandy Hook and Parkland on a more massive scale.
King sometimes pontificates on history and, among his other revisionism, argues that France actually started WW2, and that the US Civil War was instigated by Jewish bankers---whose schemes fortunately were foiled by Russian intervention. We don't remember anything about Russians in the Civil War; but that only shows how deep the conspiracy goes. He said the same about Charlottesville, claiming that James Fields---recently indicted for murder committed during the rally---was hired by the Jews to commit the crime.
"Adolf Hitler was great, because Adolf Hitler was good." King explained about the aspersions cast on the Nazi leader's memory, "He was a man for all ages and his noble philosophy is for all races. Hitler's legacy should serve to unite all the diverse peoples in the world in the common cause of liberation from the predatory gangsters who work ceaselessly to enslave and torture the people of this planet. His great name will be restored one day, but, like Jesus, only after many years of being dragged through the Marxist mud."
In the same article, King goes on to explain why Hitler was a deeply Christian man who was fighting for the Christian West. With sources like these, it's no wonder the Red Pill sites have turned into such havens for raving maniacs.
Frankly, I didn't follow much of the Winter Olympics. But the highlight for me was seeing the lovely Ivanka representing what American women should be. But if we want to stay on this positive course, we can't let crackpots like King define our movement.
President Trump's Administration has thus far been remarkable in the way that it has met and solved problems. Trump has accomplished significant tax reform; is bringing us out of recession; and is well on the way to beating the Energy Crisis and the Opioid Epidemic. One of the ways that has accomplished these things---along with many other matters---is because he by-passes the Beltway Punditocracy and sleazy Corporate Media and goes directly to the people involved. A sort of modern variation of FDR's Fireside Chats on early radio.
Last Friday, the President and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos held a conference with 40 educators and current and former students who had experienced mass murders in our public schools. Since the mid-1990's, these incidents have been occurring with frightening frequency. President Trump, however, rejected the idea that we should accept this as a New Normal, like the previous three administrations have done.
"I listened to their heartbreaking stories and asked them for ideas; and I pledged to them to take action. Unlike---for many years---the people in my position did not take any action. They didn't take proper action. They took no action at all. We're going to take action." the President said.
Trump also mentioned his visit to the Broward County Hospital (which went unnoticed by the Corporate Media): "People don't talk about the injured in these shootings. And they have to go through life with the horrid consequences of that situation that they were put in unnecessarily.
Some of the ideas floated around were very good ones, like re-opening the process of committing potential criminals to psychiatric hospitals and/or drug rehabilitation centers. Others, like extending various gun-control schemes, were more controversial. The President emphasized that---above all---partisan politics has to stop hamstringing any action.
Sheriff Scott Israel of Broward County has initiated a new model of training and response to mass-shootings. His approach took down an airport shooting last year---and probably would have saved more lives in Parkland were it not for the cowardice of one of his deputies.
Be that as it may, while Sheriff Israel's model is an efficient reaction to the do-nothing attitudes of politicians, it doesn't address the root of the problem. As the late Jack Webb said on an episode of Dragnet,: "Our laws are better for dealing with dogs---we don't wait for a mad dog to bite somebody before we take it off the streets." Very well put. By Sigmund Freud's own definition, in the inability to participate in a civilized society; to behave according to civilized social norms---is mental illness. Thus, the mentally ill should be taken off of the streets and treated.
The Whacko Left opposes doing this, however; for obvious reasons. It's no accident that the most Left-leaning cities have the highest numbers of mentally ill, sexual deviants, and drug addicts. Yet the Left is being hypocritical when it demands that guns be taken away from the mentally ill. Why is this hypocritical? Because the Left also argues that the mentally ill shouldn't be judged and shouldn't be considered potentially dangerous. They are entitled, according to the Left, to all the same rights has the rest of us. So, by that logic---why should the mentally ill be denied access to weapons?
The Left can't have it both ways. Either the mentally ill aren't potentially dangerous and should have access to guns; or they are potentially dangerous and should be taken off the streets. It's time for a commonsense discussion about controlling crazies, not guns,
The dunces in the Corporate Media and their confederates in the Deep State are facing a serious problem during the run-up to the Midterm Elections. The sheer number of their supporters---and even a few at the top--- who've been exposed engaging in violent, anti-social, and often just strange behaviors is taking its toll among normal people, who are typically Independent voters.
This problem has become especially bad online since the mass-murder in Parkland last week. The Media has tried to deflect attention from the bad behavior of the Left by focusing on Right-Wing crackpots who say that the shooting was false-flag. However, President Trump doesn't hold those views; so smearing him with the 'kook' label was unsuccessful. In fact, Trump's actions have distanced him even further from the Alt-RINOs in the public eye.
So, now the Left is playing the 'Russia Card'. They're trying to accuse Russia by dragging out the long-discredited myth of 'Putin's Troll Army'. They say that these offensive comments by Leftist trolls are really Russian agents; and the upvoting of offensive Alt-RINO material comes from the same source.
Looking at RT News' national news section, there's more concern about Western interference in Russia's elections next month. There's also concern about a crisis in Donbass, requiring more Russian aid; and some stories about military and humanitarian progress in Syria. It would seem that Russia has a few more pressing matters than trolling the American internet.
The American Media has been lying about President Putin even before they started in on Trump. During the Obama Era, Putin was the one world leader fighting both Wahhabi Terrorism and Western Cultural Marxism. The Left hates Putin for the same reasons that it hates Trump: his stance for Christian values; his unapologetic masculinity; and his commitment to freedom and services to the world and country. Putin, like Trump, stands for everything the effete Beltway 'elite' despises. And there's a considerable amount of envy thrown in for good measure.
Actually this kind of fake news---blaming Russia for the obnoxious behavior of American Liberals---is just as bad as those Red Pill cranks who are spreading fake news about Parkland being staged. They're probably actually feeding off of each others' paranoia to a large degree..
The whole Parkland incident is, or should be, something to make us do some national soul-searching. The authorities knew of a human time-bomb, yet took no action. The school took appropriate action expelling Cruz; but they should have security-guards. The Media and various other scum have exploited the incident to promote their anti-2nd Amendment and anti-Russia agendas. The Red Pills calling it by turns either a false flag or praising Cruz as a hero. And Cruz bears the ultimate responsibility for this; and ought to be hanged as soon as possible, without the Legal and Media Establishments putting on a show-trial for profit and ratings.
Catholic scholar Matthew Rose has written a thesis explaining and outlining the anti-Christian underpinnings of the so-called Alt-Right. The thesis is remarkable for its depth of research, and also for explaining the often convoluted theories spun by this insidious movement in layman's terms. Rose's article is also very timely, with the approaching Vatican Synod on Youth scheduled this Spring. Readers may recall that, last Summer, American Bishops drafted a consensus on the radicalization of American youth---particularly its young men. Professor Rose's thesis is an excellent synopsis of the poisoned ideas from whence much of this radicalization springs.
"Almost everything written about the Alt-Right in mainstream outlets is wrong in one respect," he says, "The Alt-Right is not stupid. It is deep. It's ideas are not ridiculous. They are serious. To appreciate this fact, one must inquire beyond its presence on social media, where its obnoxious use of insult, obscenity, and racism has earned it a reputation for moral idiocy. This reputation is deserved, but do not be deceived. Behind its online tantrums and personal attacks are arguments of genuine power and expanding appeal. "
This is a point which we have frequently made here as well. In fact, we go further and say emphatically that the movement is a cult. The thing to be remembered about most of these various leaders---both on the Internet and radio---is they are primarily autodidacts. There's nothing wrong with self-learning, but one of the weaknesses of not having a traditional education is lacking critical thinking abilities. Professor Rose cites Julius Evola as one writer frequently quoted by the Red Pills, for example. It's not difficult to read and study Evola---but one should also read his critics and balance their opinions against what they have read. Autodidacts often make the mistake of accepting scholarship at face value.
The Alt-Right also holds several positions as though they were self-evident truths. This is one of their most cultish features: they are forever concocting neologisms, maxims, commandments, rules, etc. which are not open to any question and ---more importantly---not open to any analysis. The obnoxious slurs referenced by Professor Rose are ways by which they reinforce their principles to their disciples---by ridiculing others with different opinions or facts.
One example to which Professor Rose alludes is that the Alt-Rightists sneer at traditionally Conservative positions. They use the term 'Cuckservative' against us and accuse Conservatism of having failed by, in Rose's words "regarding them as principles which currently abet White dispossession." But the central question should be whether Conservatism actually has failed. Until 2017, we have been without a Conservative White House since 1989. Conservatism seems to be on a political upswing.
Then, in Rose's article, he gets to the heart of the matter: "The Media takes such statements as proof of the Alt-Right's commitment to White Supremacy. But this is misleading. For the Alt-Right represents something more nefarious, and frankly more interesting than White Identity Politics. The Alt-Right is Anti-Christian. Not by implication or insinuation, but by confession. Its leading thinkers flaunt their rejection of Christianity and their desire to convert people away from it." (emphasis ours).
The point of conversion was the giant Red Flag signalling that we are dealing here with a cult. Now, true, the Red Pills profess Christianity occasionally, but they veil their anti-Christian positions by attacking organized churches. They say that the churches have been 'converged' and 'feminized' and assert that churches are toxic environments that are in a state of apostasy and working hand-and-glove with 'Social Justice Warriors' to overthrow civilization (as they define it). Rose quotes a young man who has left the Faith for the Red Pill Heresy as saying, "Soon the only people left in Christianity will be Third-World immigrants, and a handful of self-hating Whites."
A second Red Flag, also noted by Rose, are the number of outright Atheists in this purportedly 'Christian' movement. The fact that Atheists are in sympathy with the cult and churches are generally opposed to it ought to give one serious pause to consider their actual motives.
Professor Rose's conclusion is brilliant: "The temptation to dismiss the Alt-Right should be resisted...they distort many truths through both malice and ignorance, and lead young men into defending views and espousing authors whom they scarcely understand. Yet we can learn from their distortions how Christian Theology, whose failings have led to the movement's rise, might also be its remedy."
Which echoes what we've also said for a long time: that it will take Christian men--- like Professor Rose and the Catholic Bishops---to stop ignoring the threat and start speaking out. A handful of Protestant leaders have starting doing so---most notably the Southern Baptists---and the Catholic Church is starting to move too. This is a positive sign because the Baptists and Catholics combined make up the majority of American Christian churches.
The article itself has much more to offer than our brief summary; so be certain to read it as well.
A blog to which we link, Moonbattery, had an article up the other day about this post on Twitter:
The man pictured is named Andrew Pollack, and he lost a family member in last week's Parkland School shooting. The comments which followed are revolting. Here are a specimen of a few, posted at Moonbattery:
"I have zero sympathy for this man. Look at the shirt he's wearing. He helped murder his own daughter."
"His shirt, then the photo of his murdered daughter? It came full circle on him. Your beliefs effect everyone."
"I'm sorry that he lost his daughter, but he voted for Trump and now is suffering the consequences of his actions."
"The shirt: I'm sorry, but I have to laugh."
There are more such disgusting statements for anyone interested, but we feel that this sample is about as much as any sane person can tolerate. But that is the point.
We expect this kind of behavior out of the Left. Most people reading such statements are filled with repugnance at the coarseness of character they display. But if it is disgusting for the Left to stoop to these levels, it doesn't justify the same stooping from the Right. The Red Pill/Alt-RINOs believe that it does. It's not uncommon on many of their sites to see similar things written about tragedies.
Conservatives should always seek to be held to a higher standard. There's nothing wrong with using rhetorical devices like humor, sarcasm, memes, etc. in their proper place and context; but the average person is just as repelled by Right-Wing vulgarity as they are from the Left. Remember that the average person in America is not philosophically political. Most Americans cluster somewhere in the Middle between ideological Left and Right. Probably the majority lean slightly Conservative while still favoring a number of Liberal policies. One of the ingenious political tactics of the late William F. Buckley was to juxtapose the confidence and stability of Conservatism against the extremism of Liberalism. The Reagan Revolution was largely shaped by Buckley's coolness while Liberalism self-destructed. And, frankly, in geopolitics, the Soviet Union collapsed without WW3 by a broader extension of the same philosophy.
The Red Pills and the Alt-RINOs share with the Left a disbelief in humanity's potential for goodness. They both believe that people generally need to be ruled over by an elite who manipulates society for society's supposed own good. They only disagree on whom this elite should be: either superior Alpha Males from the Master Race or superior Commisars from the Master Universities. Both are at complete variance with the fundamental Conservative doctrine that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
The commentaries following Mr. Pollack's post are not only disrespectful to his humanity, but reflect the kernel of the intolerant spirit that brings about totalitarianism in a society. People who believe that man's daughter deserved to die because of the man's politics are a stone's throw from the Paris mobs who used to watch gleefully as whole families were wiped out on the Guillotine. If the Conservative Movement comes that---as the Alt-RINOs wish it to---then it ceases to be Conservative at all. That has already happened to American Liberalism: extremism has turned the Democrats into a party that Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, or Johnson wouldn't recognize if they were alive today.
Let's not let it get to that point. Faith also implies faith in our fellow-man.
Mick West, of the Metabunk site predicted---on the same day as the Florida shooting---that there would be theories flying around that the whole thing was a false-flag. And, sooner than expected, West turned out to be right, as he usually is.
The whole phenomenon of believing that these mass-murders are nothing but hoaxes really surfaced around the Sandy Hook Massacre in December, 2012; though there were some very few surrounding the Aurora Theater shooting earlier that year. The Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013 had the same doubters. Even though there were no casualties, the 2016 Pizzagate shooting also was said to be a hoax.
All of these theories are essentially the same: they assert that these events never happened, but were staged by the Media in collusion with local police, government, and various vested interests. It's well-known to the FBI and others in law enforcement, however, that criminal conspiracies become less secure the more people who are involved in it. And this is one of the glaring problems with these theories.
How does it happen that these things could be staged and none of the locals know anything about it? They don't notice groups of actors, truckloads of stage-props, and ominous-looking guys in trench-coats suddenly hanging around the neighborhood?
Because what we're essentially talking about here is roughly the time, planning, and personnel involved to shoot a movie. This just doesn't happen in places like Sandy Hook and Parkland without being noticed. And doing it covertly during the Boston Marathon is even more problematic.
Speaking of movies, has anyone seriously considered the cost of staging a hoax like this? I thought of the 1976 movie Raid on Entebbe, which re-created an Israeli rescue mission of a hijacked airliner in Uganda, In 2018 dollars, production costs for that film would be around $16 million. That's roughly what it would cost to film a staged incident like the Parkland Shooting. Not counting of course the massive blackmail and extortion costs which would have to be paid to ensure all the participants' silence.
Last but not least, if any Corporate Media outlet tried faking something like this, Trump, Pence, and Sessions would be the first to uncover the hoax and the first to expose it. This Administration hasn't been the least bit reticent about calling out fake news whenever its happened; and finding out Parkland and Sandy Hook were staged would be the Golden Opportunity for the Administration to discredit the Corporate Media permanently.
The people who believe these types of theories usually fall into the logical fallacy of believing that causes and consequences of a certain action are necessarily correlated. The fact that anti-gun interests cynically exploit these tragedies lead some to believe that these same interests must have caused the tragedy in the first place to bring about the desired end.
At a blog called The Thinking Housewife, we read the following as an example. The authoress writes: "The convergence of Ash Wednesday and St. Valentine's Day was too much for the gun-grabbing massacre mimics to pass up." (Why not that a psycho could pick the same date to make a dramatic statement?) "Yesterday's supposed shooting of 17 students has all the hallmarks of another Sandy Hook Hoax." (Why? The dynamics of the two incidents have nothing in common other than that they both targeted schools.) "Could it be real? The burden of proof is upon those who say that it was." (Actually, no: the burden of proof is upon those who deny it.)
She goes on to say that the whole incident seemed scripted, while ironically saying that "Mere photos of parents and children crying do not prove that any murders occurred." To this, we would add that modern journalists reading off scripts and faking grief doesn't disprove that they occurred. All that it does prove is that our Media is made up of idiots and incompetents who are competing to be the biggest drama-queens to get ratings. It's what's cynically called by media insiders milking a tragedy.
The Corporate Media itself though is also guilty of spreading hoaxes about the shooting. The Moonie-affiliated Newsweek and the Daily Beast swallowed a troll's story that Nicholas Cruz was a White Supremacist---the fact that he's Hispanic and not White never occurred to these brilliant media minds. Currently they're spreading the equally ridiculous hoax that Russian hackers are trolling stories about the shooting, rather than admit the embarrassing truth that the worst comments are coming mostly from American Liberals.
All of this nonsense prevents us, as a society, from focusing on the central problems that actually lead to these tragedies. Which will end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy for those faking the news.
