'Whenever They Want to Kill, They Kill': The Persecution of Christians, August 2023

by Raymond Ibrahim  •  October 1, 2023 at 5:00 am

• Muslims surrounded and murdered a Christian man. — newsintervention.com, August 22, 2023, Pakistan.

• Around 2 a.m., Muslim Fulani herdsmen launched a raid—the third of its kind on the same Christian majority village where people were sleeping after a long day's work. They slaughtered 21 villagers. — International Christian Concern, August 10, Nigeria.

• "Nigeria's Middle Belt region that has been rocked by violence with tens of thousands of Christians killed over the past 20 years." — International Christian Concern, August 10, Nigeria.

• Muslims began yelling "Away with him!" Others grabbed the microphone from the pastor and "started tearing off pages of the Bible and Christian literature." Now, gathered together, the Muslims began stoning him. — Morning Star News, August 1, 2023, Uganda.

• "Others were saying that Allah has granted to them authority to kill all infidels. Another Muslim sprayed what looked like acid [on Pastor Robert], while another hit him with a thorny object and stepped on the evangelist's back and the stomach." — Eyewitness, Morning Star News, August 23, 2023, Uganda.

• "[I]nfidels" cannot "preach in this town or come and mislead our people here... We are going to fight in the cause of Allah to kill all of you." — Sheikh Hiisa Mubaraka, Morning Star News, August 23, 2023, Uganda.

• "There is an ongoing Genocide against 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh.

• The blockade of the Lachin Corridor by the Azerbaijani security forces impeding access to any food, medical supplies, and other essentials should be considered a Genocide under Article II, (c) of the Genocide Convention: 'Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.'" — Luis Moreno Ocampo, former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, concerning Artsakh, an ancient Christian region under Azerbaijani control, August 4, 2023, Azerbaijan.

• "Starvation is the invisible Genocide weapon. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks." — Luis Moreno Ocampo, August 4, 2023, Azerbaijan.

• "[T]he neighbors told her that they should let her [teenage] daughter marry their son so that she could convert to Islam and be led from the 'delusion of their faith to the true religion,' but if she refuses to convert, they have the right to do whatever they wish to her daughter." — International Christian Concern, August 11, 2023, Egypt.

During a Muslim demonstration against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, on Sunday, Aug. 27, in Vienna, Austria, a man, armed with two hammers, smashed and destroyed the new glass door of Saint Stephan's Cathedral. Pictured: Saint Stephan's Cathedral. (Photo by Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images)

The following are among the murders and abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of August 2023.

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Pakistan: All hell broke loose on Aug. 18, after some Christians were accused—falsely, it was quickly revealed—of desecrating a Koran in Jaranwala. Thousands of enraged Muslims rampaged against the region's Christians, prompting hundreds to flee their homes. Among other damage, the rioting Muslims set 25 churches aflame, destroyed or damaged 400 Christian homes, and desecrated at least one Christian cemetery. According to the Rev. Deacon Daud Irshad:

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From Oligarchs to Plutocrats

by Amir Taheri  •  October 1, 2023 at 4:30 am

• The disastrous consequences of oligarchs meddling in politics are too well known to need more attention here. But what about the plutocrats' record? The question merits attention, because right now two American plutocrats are engaged in erratic attempts at solving two of the hottest international problems. Elon Musk, the owner of X (Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX, and reputed to be the richest on the man planet, says he has a plan to end the Russian war in Ukraine. For his part, George Soros, now operating through his son Alexander, is busy campaigning for a deal between Tehran and Washington to give President Joe Biden's forthcoming election campaign the boost it badly needs.

• George Soros has been engaged in his grand plan for bringing the Islamic Republic of Iran into the fold for almost three decades.

• The scheme reached the peak of its success when the so-called "New York Boys" seized control of the executive branch of government in Tehran under President Hassan Rouhani, a British-educated junior cleric dreaming of leading the Islamic Republic into the "modern world".

• However, as might have been expected, the Soros scenario ultimately failed because "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has bigger dreams for the Islamic Republic. Khamenei believes that the West is heading south to decline while China, Russia and Iran have emerged as leaders for a "New World Order". Now, however, we know that Khamenei's leadership troika exists only in his fantasies. China and Russia treat Iran as an untouchable to be kept at arm's length.

• Will the plutocrat's peace scenario work? I doubt it. Being anti-American and anti-Israel form the Iranian regime's core identity.

• In the 1920s, the American plutocrat Armand Hammer orchestrated a similar scenario with the newly-born Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin. He persuaded Washington to give the Bolsheviks a chance to learn the beauty of getting rich through capitalism and trade. Hammer won the argument and Lenin won the civil war that without the "Great Satan " pumping money into his war machine, he would have lost.

• The USSR survived for six more decades, challenging the US for world leadership.

• In the 1930s, other American plutocrats tried to tame Germany's Adolf Hitler in the name of saving the peace in Europe.

• Almost 20 years ago, a group of British plutocrats assembled at the home of the Kuwaiti Ambassador in London told the guests that the "Palestine problem" would be resolved by pumping £200 million into the West Bank's economy, providing "decent housing and modern shopping malls" for Palestinians.

• The man orchestrating the miracle was Peter Hain, Minister of State for Africa, the Middle East and South Asia in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government.

• Well, Hain is gone, along with the £200 million which, god forgive us, may have ended up in the accounts of corrupt Palestinian Authority officials and their own plutocrats in Western banks.

• If war is too serious a matter to be left to generals, international politics is even more so if left to oligarchs in the east and plutocrats in the west.

The disastrous consequences of oligarchs meddling in politics are too well known to need more attention here. But what about the plutocrats' record?

By now anyone interested in international politics knows who the oligarchs are. They are super-rich individuals who, by taking advantage of special political circumstances, have amassed big fortunes, often undeservedly, as a trampoline for political influence. The breed is most visible in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine, where their presence extends to the top echelons of power. However, oligarchs can also be found in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

At the other end of the political spectrum, in traditional Western democracies, we have plutocrats who play a similar hand, albeit within slightly stricter legal and political limits. Western plutocrats often owe their fortunes to their innovative genius and business acumen. But they, too, benefit from close ties to the ruling elite through financial support for election campaigns and, in some cases, outright bribery or insider information advantages.

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Concerning the Fate of Our Nation

by Lawrence Kadish  •  October 1, 2023 at 4:00 am

(Image source: iStock)

It appears the Federal Reserve is playing Russian roulette with our nation's interest rates.

JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon has looked at the potential future of Fed actions and is deeply concerned that it could raise rates as high as 7%. A Bloomberg News report observed:

"If the key rate climbed to 7%, it would have serious implications for American businesses and consumers. Already, economists put the probability of a US recession over the next 12 months at 60%."

Suggested Plan of Action by U.S. Congress:

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