The New York Post reports:

Donald Trump took his act out west Saturday, drawing huge crowds who came to cheer his bizarre, over-the-top claims that Mexico is purposefully exporting criminals in bulk to the United States.

In Phoenix, where immigration has long been a hot-button issue, supporters snapped up all 5,000 tickets to a free rally.

“They’re taking our jobs. They’re taking our manufacturing jobs. They’re taking our money. They’re killing us.”

Trump even promised to charge the government of Mexico $100,000 for every illegal immigrant who crosses into the US.

“Now they make so much money, that’s peanuts,” he told the cheering, laughing crowd.

“I could’ve made it much higher — but I’m nice. I’m in a good mood today.”

Not a bad idea, if it could be done.

And as for illegal immigrants killing us – that’s a hot topic.

Matthew Vadum writes at Front Page:

Left-wingers in San Francisco should be hanging their heads in shame after their borderline seditious, destructive immigration policies allowed an illegal alien felon to murder a young woman randomly in broad daylight.

Nor did gun control laws prevent Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a 45-year-old illegal alien deported five times to Mexico, from allegedly firing one bullet into the upper body of medical device sales representative Kate Steinle on busy Pier 14 … Steinle was cut down in front of her father and mother and died later in hospital.

No motive has been established for the shooting but Lopez-Sanchez is a five-time felon. An hour after the shooting, he was picked up by police roughly a mile away.

Although this violent thug pulled the trigger, progressives, through the laws they have enacted, put this man on the streets which allowed him to murder.

Federal authorities had Lopez-Sanchez in custody in March after he was set free from a federal prison. They transferred him to San Francisco authorities because he was wanted by them on drug-related charges. The feds filed what’s called an “immigration detainer” requesting that the local authorities notify them before releasing the man.

But San Francisco, home of the most militant leftists in America, refused the request because local policy forbids it. The prisoner in effect got a “get out of jail free card” from the left-wing open-borders movement which argues that keeping illegals in jail violates their constitutional rights.

This is how it works. Being wanted for violating immigration laws isn’t enough, in the eyes of progressives, so after they have served their local time illegals go straight from their holding cells to the streets where they are free to murder, rape, and rob the citizens of this country. …

Leftist pressure groups pushed California lawmakers hard to force the state’s jailers to set illegal aliens who lacked serious criminal records free more quickly so federal officials would not be able to detain them for deportation hearings.

Kate Steinle is dead because of the damage the Left has done in its crusade to dismantle what remains of U.S. immigration law.

Whatever discourages illegals from entering the country is bad, and whatever encourages them to hop the fence is good in the eyes of the progressives who are destroying America.

We don’t think the day will ever come when “Left-wingers in San Francisco” will be “hanging their heads in shame” for anything they do. If Leftists were capable of shame, if they had consciences, they would have abandoned their ideology and/or committed mass suicide decades ago when that ideology was fully demonstrated to be the most terrible of any that has ever afflicted poor suffering humankind. We are talking about Socialism of course – both the International Socialism of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, and the National Socialism of Hitler.

Now back to Donald Trump.

We don’t think Donald Trump should be president. But if his bold candor forces others to be bold and candid, then we’re glad he’s in the line-up.

As much as progressives and the Republican establishment hate him, the murder of Kate Steinle would not have made a ripple in the national consciousness were it not for Donald Trump. No, Trump didn’t bring the story to people’s attention, but he did bring the issue to it.

That comes from an article by Derek Hunter at Townhall. Here’s more of it:

When Kate Steinle was murdered by an illegal alien with a felony rap sheet long enough to make him a viable hip-hop star, the world barely noticed. Conservative blogs did. Fox News did. But most of the rest of the world ignored it. When this became impossible, mainstream media covered it … as little as possible.

The murder of Kate Steinle touched a nerve with Americans who are more interested in protecting the lives of innocent people than advancing a political agenda.

Unfortunately, none of those people are elected Democrats. None work in the White House. And only a tiny few can be found in newsrooms across the country.

Kate Steinle’s murder didn’t garner the national media coverage or sympathy given to a drug dealer in Baltimore or a petty thief who tried to kill a cop in Missouri, but it did rekindle a smoldering fire in the American people. Kate was killed for no reason, but she need not die in vain. …

Before Trump’s announcement, the debate over illegal aliens and immigration reform was about amnesty, and far too many Republican presidential hopefuls agreed with the concept, to varying degrees. Trump changed that, much to their consternation.

The Chamber of Commerce, a big money player in politics, wants amnesty; it wants an already saturated employment market flooded with millions of new legal entrants to keep downward pressure on wages.

It’s a myth that big business and Wall Street are “Republican” or “conservative.” They love big government when it subsidizes them or props up their stock price. And they love regulations when they make it nearly impossible for new competitors to emerge. Big business is perfectly happy both to use government as a weapon against competitors and to cry “free markets” when that weapon is aimed at them.

Trump doesn’t need them or their money, so he doesn’t have to soft pedal his talk about illegal aliens to appease them. Every Democrat in the field – and most of the Republicans – willingly cede our national sovereignty to corporate interests, Trump calls a spade a spade. That makes him dangerous. It also makes him wildly popular.

What the GOP establishment doesn’t understand, and never has understood, is its lip service, half-measures and phony compassion are not popular. We see through it. They can cite all the convoluted polls in the world claiming to show support for amnesty should certain hurdles be met, but everyone knows those hurdles will be ignored should they become law. …

Trump isn’t my candidate – I don’t have one yet. But the reason for his current popularity is obvious to anyone who isn’t surrounded by lackeys or those with a vendetta against him: He’s unapologetically himself.

Think what you will of Trump, but if you’re going to hit him be prepared to get hit back, and hard. If you’re going to ask him a question, expect to get an answer unlike one you get from a politician. And people feel he’s telling them the truth, not regurgitating poll-tested, focus-group-approved pabulum.

The establishment is starting its usual “which candidate is electable” dance marathon, but in the last two presidential elections, that marathon has produced John McCain and Mitt Romney. How’d that work out again?

Part of that dance is telling us who can’t win. In 1980, the establishment was certain Ronald Reagan couldn’t win. He was too conservative, too radical, too old, too much of a wild card.

To be clear, Trump isn’t Reagan. But he is Reaganesque in the sense that people believe he’s telling them what he really thinks with a real passion, and he doesn’t bow to pressure to temper it or tell them something else. During an interview with CNN this week, he didn’t tolerate the usual liberal media garbage; he called it out and batted it away.

If one or more of the other candidates don’t find that voice, that honest way of speaking … Trump could be the nominee. Or Hillary Clinton could be president.

And finally, we select some remarks by Mark Steyn. But enjoy the whole thing here. To tempt you – he calls Hillary Clinton “a sleazy, corrupt, cronyist, money-laundering, Saud-kissing liar”, “a dud and a bore”, “a wooden charmless stiff”. He also brings Obama into his range and scores a hit by stating: “the Bernie Sanders surge is a strong sign that, while [the Democrats] are relaxed about voting for an unprincipled arrogant phony marinated in ever more malodorous and toxic corruption, they draw the line at such a tedious and charisma-free specimen thereof”. [Great stuff – but do they?]

Trump is supposed to be the narcissist blowhard celebrity candidate: He’s a guy famous for erecting aesthetically revolting buildings with his “brand” plastered all over them, for arm-candy brides, for beauty contests and reality shows. The other fellows are sober, serious senators and governors.

And yet Trump is the only one who’s introduced an issue into this otherwise torpid campaign – and the most important issue of all, I would argue, in that ultimately it’s one of national survival. And so the same media that dismiss Trump as an empty reality-show vanity candidate are now denouncing him for bringing up the only real policy question in the race so far.

What he said may or may not be offensive, but it happens to be true: America has more Mexicans than anybody needs, and then some. It certainly has more unskilled Mexicans than any country needs, including countries whose names begin with “Mex-” and end in “-ico”. And it has far more criminal Mexicans than anybody needs, which is why they make up 71 per cent of the foreign inmates in federal jails.

Just to underline that last point, a young American woman was murdered for kicks in a supposed “sanctuary city” on the eve of the holiday weekend by an illegal immigrant from Mexico. He had flouted US immigration law for years – or, to be more precise about it, local, state and federal officials had colluded with him in the flouting of US immigration law, to the point where San Francisco’s sheriff actively demanded the return of this criminal to his “sanctuary city”, thereby facilitating the homicide of an actual citizen, taxpayer and net contributor to American society.

This would be quite an interesting topic to air in a US election campaign, don’t you think? Certainly, a segment of voters seems to be interested in it. But bigshot media like NBC and Univision and craphole emporia like Macy’s are telling Trump and everybody else: you can’t even bring this up; this is beyond discussion. The “acceptable” Republican candidates are now obliged to denounce the guy who mentioned the unmentionable: “Will you distance yourself from Trump’s controversial remarks? Do you agree such views have no place in your party?” Needless to say, Reince Preibus and the other jelly-spined squishes of the GOP establishment are eagerly stampeding to do the Macy’s-Univision-industrial complex’s work for them. …

Kate Steinle is dead because the entire Democratic Party, two-thirds of the Republican Party and 100 per cent of the diseased federal-state-municipal bureaucracy prioritizes myths over reality.

Yes, it’s distressing to persons of taste and discrimination that the only person willing to address that reality is Donald Trump. But that’s because he’s not the reality-show freak here. The fake-o lame-o reality freakshow is the political pseudo-campaign being waged within the restraints demanded by the media and Macy’s. So, if Donald Trump is the only guy willing to bust beyond those bounds, we owe him a debt of gratitude. If, as Karl Rove proposes, other candidates are able to talk about the subject in a more “inclusive” way, so be it. But, if “inclusive” is code for not addressing it at all, nuts to that. …

Be honest, which would you prefer and which is a bleaker comment on the political health of the republic – Bernie vs the Donald? Or Hillary vs Jeb?

Yesterday (March 9, 2015), on Fox TV, Charles Krauthammer pointed out to Bill O’Reilly that the Left now has control of almost all the institutions that shape our culture. He is right.

The chief disseminators of ideas – the universities, the entertainment industry, and almost all the press and TV news media – accept and propound Leftist values and aims almost as naturally and unquestioningly as we breathe air. The only exceptions, as Krauthammer pointed out, are Fox News, “three pages of the Wall Street Journal”, and talk radio. Of course the intolerant dictatorship of the Left wants to silence them. The Left brooks no dissent.

Generation after generation is growing up and becoming the workers and welfare-dependents, the rulers and bureaucrats, the parents and teachers, the writers and preachers of what used to be the free world, convinced to a man and woman – and every one of the other 70-plus genders now compulsorily recognized by the Left – that there is such a thing as “social justice”, that it is supremely desirable, and that it can be attained by government controlling the economy, pretending to control the climate, and tightly regulating how and where and for how long people live their lives.

Leftists really do believe that their dogma is “the truth”, and the only good. Just like religions. Which is why we say that the creed of Leftism, though it does without a traditional divinity, is a religion. It has a god of sorts in History, which it holds to be the uber-director of our destiny, warning us, like the Borg in Star Trek: “Resistance is futile.”

Those of us who still cling to the quaint old-fashioned notion that individuals should be free to live and think and act as they choose, and that their freedom should be protected by the rule of objective law, are a fast diminishing minority. Our own descendants will consider us cranks.

America was founded on the idea of individual freedom protected by the rule of law. Because its people were safe and free, they made the United States the mightiest and the most prosperous country of all time.

It was good while it lasted.

This opinion column appears today , March 3, 2015, in The Times of London.

It points out that there is a necessity to oppose the deal that Obama is making with the monstrous Iranian regime.

The defiant decision of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to plead direct to the United States Congress against rushing into a nuclear deal with Iran represents a watershed in the dismal relations between Jerusalem and the Obama administration. A foreign leader is being invited by Republicans to denounce the president on American soil. It is a speech that even before its delivery today has split Israel and the Jewish community in America, and is being presented by the Obama team as crude electioneering and provocative mischief-making on the part of Mr Netanyahu. Yet it is a necessary speech. All the signs are that the US, flanked by five other powers including Britain, is accelerating towards a deal with Tehran that will allow it to retain significant capacity to enrich uranium. The arrangement would in theory allow the West to spot and block one year in advance any attempt to build a bomb. That presumes easy access to the most sensitive nuclear sites and a quick and efficient verification system. Israel does not trust Iran. It sees a regime that is so desperate to have sanctions lifted it is willing to fabricate concessions. The negotiations do not include Iran’s ballistic-missile programme, whose prime function can only be the delivery of a bomb. Mr Netanyahu therefore comes to Washington full of suspicion not only about Iranian intentions but also those of the Obama administration. He fears the nuclear treaty would be the first step towards projecting Tehran as a de facto ally and a regional power-broker. A nation that is so often challenged by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias and the Iranian-supplied weaponry of Hamas has a right to be concerned. Mr Netanyahu has, however, talked himself into an awkward corner. The calendar creates an unfortunate linkage between the Israeli election on March 17 and the next deadline for a settlement with Iran on March 28. Fear of Iran is thus being played out in the Israeli campaign against the fear of losing its most powerful ally, the United States. Almost 200 retired Israeli security officials have warned Mr Netanyahu that he risks not only a rupture with Washington but also advertising Israel’s weakness. President Obama has needlessly aggravated relations with the Israeli government by making it public that he is angry with the prime minister. More, he seems ready to veto the bipartisan Kirk-Menendez bill that would impose further sanctions on Tehran if it failed to sign an accord. This saps the negotiating power of the West. The relationship between the United States and Israel is too important, too fundamental to Middle Eastern peace, to be drawn into partisan feuding. Relations between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu have never been warm but the US should recognise that Iran cannot be blindly trusted. Tehran is already a leading sponsor of terrorism in the region; it is alarming to contemplate how nuclear weapons would transform this status. There is still time to build cheat-proof assurances into a future accord. This must be done to reassure Israel and all of Iran’s rightly nervous neighbours. Rigorous inspection, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency, must become the norm. Any attempt to conceal should be punished. Washington cannot deny itself the option of escalating sanctions. Iran, though ready for its own reasons to sit down with the West, remains a hostile power rather than a putative ally. *Adam Levick* Managing Editor, UK Media Watch.

 

The Independent reports:

At least 12 people have been killed in a shooting incident at the Paris office of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, police have said.

Witnesses and police officials said that two or three gunmen were involved, and that they were seen armed with AK47s and pump action shotguns. According to France’s AFP news agency, the men were also armed with at least one rocket launcher.

Four of France’s best-known satirical cartoonists, including the magazine’s editor, were among the dead. A further 12 people were injured, some gravely, in what is the worst terrorist incident in France for 40 years. …

As the gunmen left in a black car, they met with a police car which was part of the permanent protection given to the magazine after it was firebombed in 2011. The attackers got out of their vehicle and opened fire, killing two officers.

Paris has raised its terror alert to the highest setting in the aftermath of the attack, while the gunmen themselves are still reported to be on the run.

Video footage posted to social media showed armed gunmen running through the streets of Paris, shooting with automatic weapons and shouting “Allahu Akbar”. According to an eye-witness, one of the gunmen shouted: “The Prophet is avenged.”

Police confirmed to French media that the dead included the magazine’s editor and chief cartoonist, Stéphane Charbonnier, known as “Charb” and Jean Cabut or “Cabu”, a veteran of several French newspapers and reportedly the highest paid cartoonist in the world.

Charb had previously defended a controversial series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in 2012, saying: “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me. I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don’t live under Koranic law.”

A year earlier, the magazine’s offices were firebombed after a spoof issue featured a caricature of Mohammed on its cover. The edition “invited” Mohammed to be its guest editor.

According to one report, journalists were discussing a new Islam-themed edition on Wednesday when the gunmen burst in.

The latest post sent by the Charlie Hebdo Twitter account was a picture of the Isis militant group leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Our question is – how did they get away with it for so long?

On September 19, 2012, we posted this, under the heading Freedom tested in France:

Reuters reports:

A French magazine ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday by portraying him naked in cartoons, threatening to fuel the anger of Muslims around the world who are already incensed by a film depiction of him as a lecherous fool.

A video film made by a Californian Coptic Christian which mocks  Muhammad and which the Obama administration is absurdly blaming for the Islamic world going up in flames and al-Qaeda murdering a US ambassador in Libya.

The drawings in satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo risked exacerbating a crisis that has seen the storming of U.S. and other Western embassies, the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and a deadly suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

Riot police were deployed to protect the magazine’s Paris offices after it hit the news stands with a cover showing an Orthodox Jew pushing the turbaned figure of Mohammad in a wheelchair.

On the inside pages, several caricatures of the Prophet showed him naked. One, entitled “Mohammad: a star is born”, depicted a bearded figure crouching over to display his buttocks and genitals.

The French government … had urged the weekly not to print the cartoons …

“We have the impression that it’s officially allowed for Charlie Hebdo to attack the Catholic far-right but we cannot poke fun at fundamental Islamists,” said editor Stephane Charbonnier, who drew the front-page cartoon.

“It shows the climate – everyone is driven by fear, and that is exactly what this small handful of extremists who do not represent anyone want – to make everyone afraid, to shut us all in a cave,” he told Reuters.

We like what Charlie Hebdo have done (though we don’t think the cartoons are great). We applaud their courage. But  – only a “small handful of extremists”? Are most of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world serenely tolerant of criticism?

One cartoon, in reference to the scandal over a French magazine’s decision to publish topless photos of the wife of Britain’s Prince William, showed a topless, bearded character with the caption: “Riots in Arab countries after photos of Mrs. Mohammad are published.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius criticized the magazine’s move as a provocation.

So much for the Liberté part of the French national motto, Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

“We saw what happened last week in Libya and in other countries such as Afghanistan,” Fabius told a regular government news conference. “We have to call on all to behave responsibly.”

Except Muslims. They can behave as irresponsibly as they like. Because the French government is afraid of them.

Charlie Hebdo has a long reputation for being provocative. Its Paris offices were firebombed last November after it published a mocking caricature of Mohammad, and Charbonnier has been under police guard ever since. …

The French Muslim Council, the main body representing Muslims in France, accused Charlie Hebdo of firing up anti-Muslim sentiment at a sensitive time.

“The CFCM is profoundly worried by this irresponsible act, which in such a fraught climate risks further exacerbating tensions and sparking damaging reactions,” it said.

It is the expression of opinion that must be stopped, you see, not the “damaging reactions”.

Well, that may not be entirely fair:

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the authorities had rejected a request to hold a march against the Mohammad film in Paris.

We wait to see what will happen to the Charlie Hebdo offices, and to Stephane Charbonnier. We hope for his safety. But the savage war of Islam against the rest of us will go on until the West uses all its weapons, of law, argument, wealth, political and military power, and mockery to crush the murderous Muslim hordes storming out of the Dark Ages.

We were foolish to hope for the safety of anyone in Europe who dares to defy Islam. We know better now.

At last! The comment on the shooting of black men by police officers in America that the world needs to hear.

It  is from PowerLine, by John Hinderaker, who supports his case with an important quotation from Heather Mac Donald:

One of this morning’s big news stories is the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Antonio Martin by a policeman in Berkeley, Missouri – a place that, the Associated Press tells us helpfully, is “just a few miles from Ferguson.” The Antonio Martin shooting is currently the top story on Google News, and it is being headlined on pretty much every newspaper’s website.

But why? What makes this a major news story? The Michael Brown and Eric Garner stories that preceded it, obviously. But what made them worldwide news? Or, to go back in time, what made the Trayvon Martin case a cause célèbre, commented on by the President of the United States and followed breathlessly by millions?

The Antonio Martin case won’t be as big a story as Brown’s and Garner’s deaths. Rather than being your typical “unarmed” 300-pounder, Martin apparently pulled a 9 mm. pistol on the policeman who responded by shooting him. But every shooting of a civilian by a police officer is now deemed an important news story – with the critical qualification that the civilian, but not the officer, be black.

Are these shootings worldwide news because of an epidemic of racist murders being carried out by American policemen? That is what Eric Holder, Bill DeBlasio and Al Sharpton would have us believe. But it obviously isn’t true.

Heather Mac Donald writes:

Police killings of blacks are an extremely rare feature of black life and are a minute fraction of black homicide deaths. The police could end all killings of civilians tomorrow and it would have no effect on the black homicide risk, which comes overwhelmingly from other blacks. In 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the U.S. — almost all killed by black civilians — resulting in a death risk in inner cities that is ten times higher for blacks than for whites. None of those killings triggered mass protests; they are deemed normal and beneath notice. The police, by contrast, according to published reports, kill roughly 200 blacks a year, most of them armed and dangerous, out of about 40 million police-civilian contacts a year. Blacks are in fact killed by police at a lower rate than their threat to officers would predict. In 2013, blacks made up 42 percent of all cop killers whose race was known, even though blacks are only 13 percent of the nation’s population. The percentage of black suspects killed by the police nationally is 29 percent lower than the percentage of blacks mortally threatening them.

These stories about the killings of African-American men by police officers (or by a “neighborhood watch captain,” in Trayvon Martin’s case) are … plucked from a nearly endless supply of sad events that occur daily in a nation of 315 million, and are promoted because they further a political narrative.

An unholy alliance of activists and newspaper reporters and editors tries to distort our perception of reality by giving undue emphasis to them. Then, of course, reality begins to catch up with perception, and we have riots, murders of police officers, and so on. But understand that the decision to promote these stories, in preference to others that are equally or more newsworthy, is a choice that is consciously made by people with a political agenda.

As the current wars of religion rage on, the mainstream media are chiefly reporting the war in Gaza. They put much stress on the number of Palestinian deaths – information they get only from Hamas, which has every reason to claim as many deaths as possible. Hamas’s tactic is to provoke attack and then show the wounds – the deaths of the women and children it uses as shields – and cry loudly until “the world” rescues them from defeat.

Is “the world” really concerned about the deaths of civilians in the Middle East? Or only concerned when they die because Israel strikes back at the Arab enemy after years of rocket attacks?

Is “the world” moved by Arab deaths if Israel can’t be blamed for them? Not so much. Shall we say Muslim deaths then? Also not so much.

What about Christian deaths at the hands of Muslims? The oppression and intense persecution of Christians? Christians being stripped of all they possess and expelled from lands their ancestors have lived in as Christians since the second century C.E?  Hardly at all.

No outcry about their treatment from Christian America? No. Not a word from those Presbyterians who have lately evinced so much interest in boycotting Israel? No.

The Pope? He’s praying for their persecution to end. No persecutor named. If he was expecting a quick response from his God now that Omniscient attention has been drawn to the issue, is he disappointed?

The Archbishop of Canterbury?  No –  the Anglican clergy likes Islamic sharia law and helped introduce it into Britain.

What about the UN? You must be joking! The UN is an agency of the Arab states.

David Singer writes at Canada Free Press:

The Syrian civil war has claimed 170,000 lives in three years; this past weekend’s death toll in Syria was greater than what took place in Gaza. By some accounts, the past week may have been the deadliest in the conflict’s grim history. Meanwhile, the extremist insurgents of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), have continued their ravages over a swath of territory stretching from eastern Syria to the environs of Baghdad, Iraq’s capital; the spike in violence in Iraq has led to more than 5,500 civilian deaths in the first six months of this year.” …

The newly-declared Islamic State (IS) – which includes Mosul – Iraq’s second largest city – already exceeds the area of Great Britain. …

Christians were given 24 hours to leave Mosul or convert to Islam and pay a tax – or die.

Nuri Kino – reported on Fox News – confirms the tragic situation in Syria and identifies those engaged in persecuting these ancient Christian communities:

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, also has been nearly emptied of Assyrians, Armenians and other non-Muslims …

The prideful tone in which the perpetrators speak whenever I have interviewed them — both Al Qaeda and IS — is equally shocking. These are mostly disgruntled young men who were teetering on the edges of society in their own homelands, often in European suburbs, and now believe they have the power to do whatever they want in the name of Islam. They can claim any house in IS-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria as their own, and tell the owners to either leave or risk being killed. They can take any woman as their wife …

At least 700, 000 non-Muslims — Christians, Mandeans, Yezidis and others — have left Iraq by now. No one knows how many have left Syria.

Nina Shea reports in Fox News:

ISIS has set out to erase every Christian trace. All 30 churches were seized and their crosses stripped away. Some have been permanently turned into mosques. One is the Mar (Saint) Ephraim Syriac Orthodox Cathedral, newly outfitted with loudspeakers that now call Muslims to prayer. The 4th century Mar Behnam, a Syriac Catholic monastery outside Mosul, was captured and its monks expelled, leaving behind a library of early Christian manuscripts and wall inscriptions by 13th-century Mongol pilgrims. Christian and Shiite gravesites, deemed idolatrous by ISIS, are being deliberately blown up and destroyed, including on July 24, the tomb of the 8th-century B.C. Old Testament Prophet Jonah, and the Muslim shrine that enclosed it.

Patrick Coburn does not mince his words in The Independent:

It is the greatest mass flight of Christians in the Middle East since the Armenian massacres and the expulsion of Christians from Turkey during and after the First World War.

Yet the media show little interest in exposing the decimation and dispersal of the Christian communities in Syria and Iraq.

And here’s Mark Steyn:

Baghdad used to be 40% Jewish. Tripoli used to be 40% Jewish. And the Jews were all chased out there. And now it’s the turn of the Christians. … ISIS are effectively doing every day what the European media and American campuses accuse Israel of doing. Everyone thinks Israel is slavering with blood and wants to eliminate every last Muslim in Gaza. No, they don’t. They just want to live with them. The difference is ISIS actually wants Iraq cleansed of Christians in the way it was cleansed of Jews, just as the Muslim Brotherhood wants Egypt cleansed of Coptic Christians the way it was cleansed of Jews.

But still the West, Christian by tradition if not in belief or observance, shows little concern.

This can be seen not only in the dearth of comment from governments and churches, but also among the people who seek their information and spread their opinions on the “social media”.

David Singer adds this statistic to his article:

Google reports on the Israel-Gaza war outnumber reports on the ISIS-Christian conflict by about 20:1.

“Nudging” the nation towards acceptance of unfreedom is the declared plan of the Obama gang.

Now comes an idea of how to “nudge”  Americans towards accepting state-controlled news and comment.

This is from an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily:

The FCC [Federal Communications Commission] has cooked up a plan to place “researchers” in U.S. newsrooms, supposedly to learn all about how editorial decisions are made. …

As if illegal seizures of Associated Press phone records and the shadowy tailing of the mother of a Fox News reporter weren’t menacing enough, the Obama administration is going out of its way to institute a new intrusive surveillance of the press, as if the press wasn’t supine enough.

Ajit Pai, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, warned this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that a plan to dispatch researchers into radio, television and even newspaper newsrooms called the “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” is still going forward, despite the grave danger it presented to the First Amendment.

Pai warned that under the rationale of increasing minority representation in newsrooms, the FCC, which has the power to issue or not issue broadcasting licenses, would dispatch its “researchers” to newsrooms across America to seek their “voluntary” compliance about how news stories are decided, as well as “wade into office politics” looking for angry reporters whose story ideas were rejected as evidence of a shutout of minority views.

Pai questioned if such a study could really be voluntary, given FCC’s conflict of interest (and, he might have added, the Obama record of going after political opponents).

The origin of the idea is a recrudescence of the Fairness Doctrine, inoperative since 1987 or so, to provide equal time to leftist points of view in broadcasting and other media that otherwise wouldn’t have a willing audience in a free market.

It’s an idea so fraught with potential for abuse it ought to have news agencies screaming bloody murder. The very idea of Obama hipsters showing up in newsrooms, asking questions and judging if newspapers (over which they have no jurisdiction), radio and TV are sufficiently diverse is nothing short of thought control.

The FCC now says it will be “closely reviewing the proposed research design to determine if an alternative approach is merited,” as a result of Pai’s warning. Adweek actually reported that as a “retreat.”

It’s because of this don’t-rock-the-boat attitude that Reporters Without Borders said the U.S. had “one of the most significant declines” in press freedom in the world last year, dropping 13 places to a wretched 46th in its newly released global ranking.

If the FCC has its way, it can drop even further.

Could this menacing move wake up the media toadies of the Left at last? Will they now rise in fury against the spreading tyranny of the Obama government?

Seems not –

The reaction from the National Association of Broadcasters was mealy-mouthed. The FCC “should reconsider” “qualitative” sections of its study, it wrote.

So the Fourth Estate will squirm a little and then lie back and think of Cass Sunstein, Saul Alinsky, and – ah! – Barack Obama.

Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, they’ll keep the Red Flag flying here.

A big effort is underway to let former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (in particular, we surmise, since Democrats want her to be their 2016 presidential candidate), and President Obama, and former US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice off the hook for lying about the Obama terrorist attack that killed the US Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans on 9/11/12.

The New York Times has done its bit with an “in depth” investigation. It tries, first, to make critics of the Banghazi fiasco seem to have lied by suggesting that they blamed al-Qaeda, and the NYT finding is that “al-Qaeda was not involved”. But al-Qaeda affiliates were involved. And in any case the involvement of al-Qaeda was not the most vital point in the case against the administration, above all the State Department, for their mishandling of the whole tragic affair.

More urgently the NYT claims that no lie was told by Hillary Clinton, Obama and Rice because the obscure video they blamed for provoking a “spontaneous” attack by sadly hurt Libyans was the cause of the onslaught. If the attackers are suddenly telling that story now to the NYT, which clearly wanted to elicit that answer, how likely is it they are telling the truth?

Here is a discussion of the issue on NBC news.

Are the Christian churches doing anything about the bloody, growing, relentless persecution of Christians in Arab and other Islamic countries?

No.

The Pope?

No.

The Archbishop of Canterbury?

No.

Some at least of the innumerable Christian denominations in America?

No.

The primates of the Russian Orthodox Church?

No.

Are priests and parsons at least preaching against it from their pulpits?

No report or even a rumor of any such sermon has reached our ears.

Why not, we wonder. And then we recall that Christians make a virtue out of being persecuted. But of retribution, judgment of the persecutors, stopping the evil – nothing. Maybe because their man-god, in a sermon on a mountain or a plain, reputedly enjoined them not to resist evil. Thus giving evil a completely free hand.

Surely the United States is doing something about it? At least objecting to it verbally?

No.

What about diplomats and churchmen in the countries where the persecution is happening?

Never! No Western diplomat would risk being caught criticizing anything Muslims do. And Middle  Eastern churchmen, who cannot help noticing the dwindling numbers of their flocks and even hear cries in the endless night of their consciences, have found ingenious ways to blame Israel – ie the Jews. It’s an old tradition that they’re comfortable with.

Try Googling the subject. Dig hard and you’ll find some crumbs.

You’ll find Pakistani Christians have protested recently over the massacre of some 85 of their number, killed coming out of church by a couple of Muslim suicide bombers. Some of the protestors have since been beaten up by their Muslim neighbors for daring to complain.

And you can, if you search, find reports of thousands of Nigerian Christians being killed by Muslims in regular weekend raids – and on some week days too. The Muslims – who are passionately against literacy – cut up their victims with machetes and throw small children on to fires. (See also our posts: Christians murdered by Muslims, March 9, 2010; Muhammad’s command, March 30, 2010; Suffering children, May 11, 2011; Victims of religion, October 16, 2011; Acts of religion in Nigeria revisited, October  16, 2011; Christians slaughtered by Muslims in Nigeria, October 17, 2011; Boko Haram, the Muslim terrorists of Nigeria, November 10, 2011; More acts of religion in Nigeria, January 19, 2012; More Christians burnt to death by Muslims, July 11, 2013.)

What about those great humanitarians, the Communists, who fill Western universities and run a few countries? After all, the professed essence of their creed is concern for the underdog. But no, the butchery, the torture, the abduction of children – none of it bothers them. To their way of thinking, Christians can never be authentic underdogs. But all Muslims are, however rich and powerful many of them may be.

What about the media? At least the Christian media surely …?

Here’s a fine example from a Christian website. It starts off promisingly, but soon gets round to denying that the persecutions are due only to religious intolerance and explaining that the police who should protect Christians are unfortunately otherwise engaged; then seems to criticize Western Churches for find a Christian bright side to look on – the mistaken idea that converts can be won from among observers of the tortures and killings – but drops suddenly into pious reflections of its own.

I have been surprised that the media has actually covered many of the church burnings that have taken place. The reason that I am surprised is because in most of the uprisings and protests that have taken place throughout the Middle East, church burning and persecution of Christians has taken place without the media reporting on it. In Egypt’s case, the Muslim Brotherhood has used the crackdown on the protests as an opportunity to loot and burn churches and Christian businesses. The Daily Star, Lebanon’s English language newspaper said attacks on churches coincided with assaults on police stations, leaving most police “pinned down to defend their stations or reinforcing others rather than rushing to the rescue of Christians under attack”.

The reality is that the persecution in Egypt is just the most popular of a long list of these things happening currently all over the world. Statistics show that this year alone 163,000 people will die because of their faith. It is estimated that by 2025 that number could rise to 210,000 per year.

So they’re expecting a further increase in the productivity of this appalling industry? Is this an example of pessimism or optimism?

There is any number of reasons for persecution, and it is not just because of religious differences, although that usually plays a major role. Other reasons include politics, finances, anti-Western bias, and racism. Many times all of these issues are rolled up into one that supports the persecution taking place. There is also a disturbing myth among Western Christians that persecution causes the church to grow. In fact, since persecution in the country of Turkey began the percentage of Christians has dropped from 32% to 0.2%. Syria has seen a drop from 40% to 10%. Iran saw a drop of 15% to 2%. Persecution is something that will always be with the church and will even ramp up as the Great Commission comes to completion, but it is not good. Persecution is the result of a fallen world and a real enemy that must be fought against. This enemy is not flesh and blood, though, so our fight must take place in the heavenly realm through prayer.

Yeah, good idea. That always helps.

The atrocities that we are seeing on television should prompt us to fight the spiritual battle. We must first pray that God would be glorified. God is not surprised by what is taking place in Egypt. We need to pray that the believers and Christian workers there would have faith and use this as an opportunity to share the love of Christ with others. We also need to use this as motivation for ourselves individually to get better informed and learn about the persecuted church so that we would know how to pray. Lastly, I would challenge you to consider going to these places. There is nothing quite like a real, physical hug to encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ. It could be your visit and encouraging words that gives strength to the church to continue fighting the good fight.

So if prayer fails, a hug may do it.

There are a few honorable exceptions among journalists. Raymond Ibrahim, the Front Page Magazine columnist, and himself a Copt from Egypt, is keeping the record and writing regularly and fully about the subject. His articles are well worth reading.

And an atheist, Nat Hentoff, writes:

Largely absent from nearly all our sources of news and commentary is deep, continuing coverage, if any, of the horrifying massacres of Christians in Egypt and especially Syria and the burning down of their churches.

The world’s most prominent Christian, Pope Francis, has denounced the violence, but our media has mostly ignored him [on this subject] …

One of the few penetrating protesters of this violence is Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review:

For the first time in 1,600 years, they didn’t pray this past Sunday at the Virgin Mary and Anba Abraam monastery in a village in southern Egypt. Islamists firebombed and looted the monastery, which dates back to the fifth century. For good measure, they destroyed a church inside. They then announced that they would be converting the monastery into a mosque. (Egypt’s Anti-Christian Pogrom, Lowry, National Review, Aug. 20).

… And as for our president: “In his remarks after the bloodshed began in Egypt, President Barack Obama relegated his concern over the anti-Christian attacks to a three-word dependent clause at the end of one sentence.”

As for daily life in Egypt, Morning Star News reported that earlier this month, “a Coptic Christian girl walking home from a Bible class at her church was shot and killed … in Cairo by an unidentified gunman, human rights activists said.” The girl’s uncle, a church pastor, said “he didn’t know for sure if the shooting was religiously motivated but quickly added that violence against Christians ‘seems to be normal’ in Egypt now” (Coptic Christian Girl Shot Dead in Egypt, Morning Star News, Aug. 9).

Meanwhile in Syria, “the nation’s 2 million-plus Christians are caught in the middle of a Muslim war. Jihadist rebels threaten and kidnap them while coercing others to become Muslims. Government troops loyal to President Bashar Assad order them to fight the opposition or face death” (Christians are in the crosshairs of bloody Muslim wars in Mideast, Rowan Scarborough, the Washington Times, Aug. 1).

But in spite of all this, says John Hayward of Human Events, “the international community never seems terribly exercised about the persecution of Christian minorities. … The same advanced democracies that had agonized internal discussions about whether freedom of speech should be curtailed, in order to avoid offending Muslims, don’t seem particularly angry about the destruction of Coptic churches, and other Christian property. Egyptian mobs are targeting Christian property for destruction by writing Islamist graffiti on the walls.”

But, thankfully, there are still those who are angry and vocal about this violence toward Christians. One of these media commentators who persistently denounce the absence of sustained American outrage at this merciless pogrom is Michael Savage, host of the Cumulus Radio program “The Savage Nation”.

Meanwhile, in this democratic country, will our Congress’s cold indifference continue? And will the nation’s religious leaders and activists – not just Christians – be confronted by those they lead? Will they say something and try to save what’s left of those Christian minorities in Egypt and Syria? …

No.

As for the rest of us, are there any street demonstrations coming in front of the United Nations? Or does the very idea of insistent involvement from the U.N. – its reason for being – provoke anything but sardonic laughter at the prospect that its members will do anything lasting at all?

No.

Who gives a damn for the brave dead of Benghazi?

Neal Boortz wrote this yesterday, being realistic, but also bitter:

Here we go. The House Oversight Committee hearings on Benghazi begin today, and do you know what we’re going to learn? We’re going to learn that 0bama and Hillary Clinton were informed almost immediately that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was being waged by Islamic jihadists connected to al Qaeda. Then we’re going to learn that 0bama and Hillary immediately went into protective mode … protecting 0bama’s reelection efforts and Hillary’s chances for 2016.

His spelling of the President’s name with a small “o” as “obama” – so insistently that even when the “o” comes at the begining of a sentence it remains in the lower case – suggests that it might become a common noun, as occasionally happens with a name when its owner is identified with a particular idea or invention (eg. “orwellian”, “a clerihew”, “a crapper”.)  What might “an obama” be? Perhaps it might come to be said that when a nation “commits an obama” they give an enemy in their midst supreme power over them.

0bama had a narrative to protect. His diplomatic efforts in the Middle East had brought about a new era of cooperation and peace, right? Al Qaeda was on the run and all but decimated, right?

About (former) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton he is kinder than perhaps he need be. We think she is guilty not only of incompetence but actual malfeasance; that she was in on the rotten plans the President had for the Arab states and liked them as much as he did. We strongly suspect it was her idea to hire terrorists to protect the US mission in Benghazi (the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, affiliated with al-Qaeda), and that she it was who wanted to avoid any appearance of US counter-force against any Arab force, and so had rescue teams that could have saved the mission and the men ordered to stand down.

Neal Boortz writes:

Hillary? She had incompetence to cover up. Almost immediately she came to understand that this consulate had requested additional security and protection, and that her chain of command had said no. Now she had four dead Americans, including one dead Ambassador to deal with. The 3:00 am phone call came, and her phone was turned off.

There was one current and one future presidency to be saved here, so a narrative had to be developed and presented to the American people that would clear 0bama and Hillary of any culpability. So not only did they come up with this phony YouTube video lie, they actually used the police power of the Executive branch of government to take an American citizen, an unknown video producer from California, and jam him in jail on spurious (at best) charges in order to support their phony and entirely contrived YouTube video narrative.

Now, as the hearings begin, we have luminaries such as Senator Lindsey Graham, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and my friend Mike Huckabee all predicting, to one degree or another, dreadful times ahead for 0bama. The predictions range from a Watergate-style scandal to outright impeachment.

And we have been happy to hear them.

But we should brace ourselves for disappointment:

Forget it. Ain’t going to happen. You’re dreaming.

But why, when their guilt – at the very least as callous swine and outrageous liars – has been proved?

Because …

Only a minority of Americans give a flying widget about any 0bama cover-up of the Benghazi matter. They are more likely to buy into White House Spokesman Jay Carney’s “That was a long time ago” narrative, or Hillary’s “What difference does it make” rant than they are to actually care about a deliberate, lying cover-up of the reasons behind the death of four Americans.

Which, if true, is a very sad verdict on most Americans.

Watergate? Gimme a big league break here. There’s a HUGE difference between 0bama’s problems with Benghazi and Nixon’s Watergate mess.

What is so different?

When the Watergate scandal broke we had a New York and D.C. press corps with a burning desire to destroy Richard Nixon. With 0bama and the Benghazi scandal we have the very same press corps ready to do anything it can reasonably expect to get away with to protect their God-like hero and preserve his presidency.

“But people died in Benghazi!” you say? And you think that’s enough to stop the 0bama hero-worship among the Fourth Estate?

But what about the American people? Really? Think about that for a few moments. Now … you’re not telling me that the same people who put this colossal failure back into the White House for four more years is going to get worked up over Benghazi, are you?

Ah! – now we feel the cold clutch of despair on the political section of our heart!

Let me tell you what the American people are concerned with right now – and we’re talking about those who aren’t gunched up with 24/7 discussions about college football recruiting and gay NBA players. In a nutshell (and thank goodness for the few exceptions we DO have) the majority of the American people are more worried right now about acquiring and keeping their monthly checks from the government than they are about 0bama’s lies or foreign policy failures. They think a Benghazi is a small yappy dog. …

Benghazi 0bama’s Watergate? For that to happen you need concerned citizens who actually care and a media that will do it’s job objectively. Both ingredients are in short supply.

It’s going to be a great show, to be sure. But in the end it adds up to nothing.