Putin: ‘Partial Mobilization’ to ‘Liberate’ Ukraine From ‘Neo-Nazi Regime’

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Following two days of feverish anticipation and speculation on Russian media, Vladimir Putin finally gave his Ukraine address on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. Moscow time. . .

Over the course of his 14-minute speech, Putin characterized the Ukrainian government and its armed forces as “neo-Nazis” 10 times.

“Respected friends, the topic of my speech is the situation in the Donbas and the course of the special military operation to liberate it from the neo-Nazi regime that seized power in Ukraine in 2014 as a result of an armed coup,” said the four-term Russian president, who in 2020 ushered in constitutional changes that would allow him to remain in office until 2036. . .

“In order to protect our Motherland, its sovereignty and territorial integrity, to ensure the security of our people and people in the liberated territories, I consider it necessary to support the proposal of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff to conduct partial mobilization in the Russian Federation,” he said.

After laying out an extended reminder of his country’s nuclear capabilities, the Russian commander-in-chief concluded that, “It is in our historical tradition, in the destiny of our people, to halt those who strive for world domination, who threaten the dismemberment and enslavement of our homeland, our Fatherland. That is what we are doing now, and it will continue.” (Read more from “Putin: ‘Partial Mobilization’ to ‘Liberate’ Ukraine From ‘Neo-Nazi Regime'” HERE)

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CEO Arrested Just 1 Day After NYT Profiled His Firm as the Victim of an ‘Election Denier’ ‘Conspiracy Theory’

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Twenty-four hours after New York Times reporter Stuart Thompson attacked an “election denier” claim about an election software firm as a “conspiracy theory,” he was forced to report on its CEO’s arrest on suspicion of stealing data from poll workers and storing it in China.

On Monday, Thompson published a sympathetic portrayal of a Michigan election software company called Konnech and its CEO in an article with the title and subtitle, “How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target: Election deniers catapulted a Michigan firm with just 21 U.S. employees to the center of unfounded voter fraud claims, exposing it to vicious threats.”

Thompson, a technology reporter “covering misinformation and disinformation,” attacked what he called a “conspiracy theory” from “a group of election deniers” over the claim that Konnech has ties to China.

“Using threadbare evidence, or none at all, the group suggested that a small American election software company, Konnech, had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government backdoor access to personal data about two million poll workers in the United States,” Thompson wrote.

One day later, Eugene Yu, the founder and chief executive of Konnech, was arrested for “suspicion of theft” of poll worker information that was found to be stored in China. (Read more from “CEO Arrested Just 1 Day After NYT Profiled His Firm as the Victim of an ‘Election Denier’ ‘Conspiracy Theory’” HERE)

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Confused VP Harris Claims People Don’t Need to ‘Abandon Their Faith’ to Support Abortion

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Americans don’t need to abandon their faith to support abortion rights in the U.S., Vice President Kamala Harris argued Wednesday.

Harris made the statement while speaking at an abortion rights conference in Connecticut, joining a panel discussion alongside Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson and Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn. Hayes pressed Harris to explain how a person might still support abortion rights even if their religious beliefs declare it immoral.

“What would you say to someone who understands why abortion should be a personal decision between a pregnant person and whomever else they decide to include in the conversation, but believes they can’t reconcile it with their faith?” Hayes asked, reading a question from the audience.

“That’s such an important point to raise,” Harris responded. “It is her choice and it should be her choice to make, if she chooses a consultation with a loved one, with a healthcare provider, with her faith leader.” (Read more from “Confused VP Harris Claims People Don’t Need to ‘Abandon Their Faith’ to Support Abortion” HERE)

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Major Holes Found in FBI’s Case Against Pro-Life Father, Documents Reveal

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New documents call into question two key components of the FBI’s charges against Mark Houck, the pro-life father of seven who was arrested by federal agents Sept. 23 for allegedly shoving a Planned Parenthood clinic escort.

The FBI charged Houck with two counts of assaulting a reproductive health care clinic escort in violation of the FACE Act, which makes it a federal crime to interfere with someone “because that person is a provider of reproductive health care.” Houck’s arrest by numerous federal agents made national headlines, but newly unearthed documents undermine some of the FBI’s charges against him.

Houck was praying near an abortion clinic when Bruce Love, who claims to be a longtime clinic escort, approached him and began behaving “extremely aggressively” and harassing Houck’s then-12-year-old son, his attorney, Peter Breen, told the Daily Caller News Foundation; Love was not escorting any patients at the time of the altercation, according to Breen.

Love only mentioned being shoved once in a prior criminal complaint about the incident, according to a copy of his private criminal complaint first obtained by the Federalist, but Houck’s federal indictment is for two instances of assault. The fact that Love only later mentioned a second shoving undermines the federal government’s decision to charge Houck with two counts of assault, according to Breen.

“Apparently Mr. Love is now claiming a second instance where he says he was knocked to the ground,” Breen said. “That is false. We look forward to some sort of evidence of that alleged other instance because if a crime had actually taken place we assume that Mr. Love would have put it in his private criminal complaint he brought to the Pennsylvania state courts.” (Read more from “Major Holes Found in FBI’s Case Against Pro-Life Father, Documents Reveal” HERE)

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Elon Musk Is Right, the Russia-Ukraine War Needs to End

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As if to burnish his reputation as a super-villain in the eyes of the corporate press, Elon Musk this week floated an idea on Twitter for a possible resolution of the Russo-Ukrainian war. For his trouble, he was swiftly accused of being a pro-Putin stooge by guardians of the Official Narrative. His suggested peace plan was dismissed out of hand as “Russia-friendly” and, as The Washington Post’s Olivier Knox put it, “designed to lock in Russian territorial gains.”

But Musk’s idea shouldn’t be so quickly dismissed, not least because it has the virtue of being grounded in reality, but also because broadly speaking the billionaire mogul is right: It’s time for the war in Ukraine to come to an end. One need not be “Russia-friendly” to recognize that this war will most likely end in one of two ways. Either there will be a negotiated political settlement, in which both Russia and Ukraine get some of what they vitally need, or the thing will escalate into a worldwide nuclear war.

Given the options, the responsible thing to do is think through how a settlement might be reached — something our political leaders and media elites, wedded as they are to a maximalist Ukraine policy that seeks the total defeat of Russian forces and regime change in Moscow, have thus far been incapable of doing. . .

The plan isn’t perfect, obviously, but it’s a far cry from Kremlin propaganda. It recognizes something that sharp observers of the conflict could see even before Russia’s invasion in late February: With its current borders, Ukraine can have territorial integrity or political independence, but it can’t have both.

My friend Mario Loyola made precisely that argument in these pages weeks before the war began, noting that Ukraine’s present-day borders date from 1954, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev “gave” Ukraine nominal control over strategic swaths of territory that had not been traditionally considered part of Ukraine, such as the Crimean Peninsula, along with a formidable Soviet nuclear arsenal. The point was to make it seem like the Warsaw Pact was something other than a Soviet concoction designed to give Moscow more seats in the U.N. General Assembly. (Read more from “Elon Musk Is Right, the Russia-Ukraine War Needs to End” HERE)

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Regime Evangelicals Are Terrified of Christian Nationalism

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One of the most influential leaders in American evangelicalism has signaled how terrified he is that Christian Nationalism is gaining ground among the very people he is supposed to represent.

Russell Moore is one of the most influential leaders in institutional evangelical America. He was one of the top professors at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, influencing countless pastors in the largest denomination in the country, before becoming the head of that denomination’s lobbying group, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, before leaving that post and the denomination altogether to be the Editor-in-Chief of Christianity today.

He became the regime’s pointman to both oppose President Trump and to push the leftist agenda on conservative churches. Before anything else, it must be understood that this man was and is a political operative within conservative evangelical institutions. There are many just like him, but he is at the top of the regimevangelical hierarchy. All the pastors and Christian social media influencers with masks in their profile picture and a Ukraine flag and pronouns in their bio want to be just like him.

We should look in detail here how this operative wheels and deals in his latest piece. First he starts out by claiming the idea of Christian Nationalism is spreading worldwide, but conveniently refuses to define precisely what Christian Nationalism is other than a boogeyman for lib Christians to lump together everything they do not like.

Just as some North Americans are explicitly claiming the label of “Christian nationalism,” the ideology is advancing around the world.

What are some examples of this undefined ideology advancing around the world? Well Putin’s Russia is apparently Christian Nationalist.

The ongoing near merger of the Russian Orthodox Church with Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian government made headlines when the church’s patriarch declared that dying in Ukraine as part of Putin’s invading army “washes away all sins.”

And Moore cannot help himself but conflate new Italian PM Giorgia Meloni with Benito Mussolini!

Analyzing Giorgia Meloni’s win, commentator Damon Linker noted that her Brothers of Italiy party—with roots in the World War II remnants of the fascist strongman Benito Mussolini’s political movement—has significantly moderated its rhetoric in recent years.

And that she has the audacity to point out megacapitalist banks and transatlantic corporations have eroded Italian national sovereignty is forbidden by Moore. It doesn’t matter that what Meloni describes is undeniably true (in Italy and in the United States), no, what really matters is people might think she is talking about Jews. Moore immediately plays the antisemitism card to shut up any criticism of the global financial order that he has devoted his entire career to protecting.

Some might view that with suspicion given Meloni’s post-election speech in which she blamed “financial speculators” for robbing Italians of their roots and identity—language that throughout history has almost always been equated with Jews.

Moore goes on to cite the political theory that in Italy the largest demographic group are the nominally Catholic, those who don’t regularly practice their faith or attend mass, but who see recognize their identity as Italians is inextricably linked to Roman Catholicism. Moore, of course, sees this as a bad thing, but a culture that has at least a modicum of respect for Christian tradition is at the very least fertile ground for evangelization and clearly far better than a culture that has nothing but antipathy for the Christian religion.

“Moore rightly sees Kirill as a religious propagandist for an authoritarian regime… The closest parallel to Kirill in America is Russell Moore himself.”

Halfway through this article, Moore finally gives a definition of Christian Nationalism or at least gives us a muddled word salad in lieu of a definition.

The term Christian nationalism refers to the use of Christian words, symbols, or rituals as a means to shore up an ethnic or national identity. As with every other ideology, it exists along a spectrum.

Clearly, Moore thinks using Christian symbolism to shore up a national identity is very bad. But the entire world just watched as the English national church laid to rest its queen. Is Anglicanism an evil ideology that uses Christian symbolism for cynical political ends?

Moore goes on to explain the spectrum, with Meloni on the more benign side and Patriarch Kirill on the most extreme. Moore is determined to force the association between Kirill’s ridiculous pronouncements with Christian Nationalism in America. He wants to tie Kirill’s blasphemy to any Christian here in the US who loves his country and wants to see it return to Christ.

Moore rightly sees Kirill as a religious propagandist for an authoritarian regime. What Moore does not recognize is the closest analog for Kirill in America is not the Trump-supporting dad who faithfully takes his family to church every Sunday. The closest parallel to Kirill in America is Russell Moore himself.

This is not hyperbole. Every outrageous thing our authoritarian regime does to us Moore has outspokenly supported. Open borders? Endless war? Lock you in your home for months? Shut down your churches? Force you to wear a face diaper? Allow organize communist cells to burn and loot every major city in America? Run an entire season of ballot harvesting for months and decry anyone who calls foul as a lunatic conspiracy theorist? Be forced to submit to a dangerous medical experiment just to be able to feed your family? Moore has not only supported all these monstrosities, he has denounced any Christians who give anything other than full-throated support of them as sub-Christian. And he did this as the most influential evangelical public thinker in America from the lofty heights of CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Russell Moore is the Patriarch Kirill of the American Regime.

After spending half the article denouncing his Russian counterpart, Moore then begins to play even more bait-and-switch with his definitions of Christian Nationalism. Out of nowhere, he insinuates that Christian Nationalists believe that one’s salvation is tied to their ethnic identity.

Additionally, the truth of the gospel according to Jesus means that less bloody forms of Christian nationalism are also one birth short of the kingdom of God.

Indeed, the argument of the entire New Testament is that people cannot stand before God on the basis of ethnic, cultural, or even moral solidarity (Luke 3:8–9; Col. 2:16–22). No one stands justified even by the works of the law given by God, much less by the flesh of one’s temporal ethnic or national identity (Gal. 3:15–16). Each person must be joined to Christ by personal repentance and personal faith—not by living in a culture conformed to some external definition of “Christian values.”

There is not a single person of any note who describes himself as a Christian Nationalist who would say that anything but personal faith in Christ is the basis for his salvation. Yes, we want our nation to repent of its apostasy and return to the faith. We want our cultural habits to be formed by faith in Christ once again. By conflating living in a society discipled by the gospel of Jesus Christ with salvation, Moore demonstrates that either he doesn’t know what we believe (unlikely) or that he is a lying subversive whose job it is to attack any Christian effort that opposes the regime.

Moore goes on to reference Mark 7:14-23 to attack the effort to disciple the nations, as though external cultural habits of a people cannot bring the judgment of God. “Only the heart really matters” says Moore. Any application of the gospel to all of life, including politics, culture, and economics, that’s just externals that don’t matter and “using the gospel for political liberation or for material prosperity.” Would Moore say this to the Hebrew judges and prophets who preached repentance to the nation of Israel, that they must stop serving other gods, and when they do so God would liberate them from foreign oppressors and bless the work of their hands and produce of the land? Jesus Himself, in His earthly ministry, came specifically to a singular nation, Israel, and preached that they must repent or be destroyed. They rejected Him and were indeed destroyed, and His kingdom went on to conquer the very empire that destroyed Israel. Does Moore see the slow, patient evangelization of the Roman Empire and Greco-Roman world, and the political and cultural benefits which resulted from majority Christian culture as a bad thing? Apparently.

Jesus taught us that nothing coming in from the outside can defile a person; rather, it’s what is within a person’s heart defiles him or her (Mark 7:14–23). That’s why he specifically walked away from those who wanted to use his gospel for political liberation (John 6:15) or for material prosperity (vv. 26–27).

Moore then makes an analogy between leftwing social gospel and Christian Nationalism. Instead of manufacturing utopia on earth, according to Moore, Christian Nationalism seeks to “build a social order in step with national or ethnic identity.” Think about the meaning of what Moore says here. When a nation becomes overwhelmingly Christian, how exactly are they supposed to live? Does God’s Word give any instruction on how their social order should operate? And does a nation becoming Christian mean that the grace of God eradicates nature, and they cease to recognize themselves as a distinct people?

If over the next 200 years Iran was rapidly evangelized, in Moore’s world, what are they supposed to do? Just adopt Moore’s preferred homogenized globalist social order where there are no distinctions between nations and peoples and we are all an undifferentiated blob whose only allowable identity is whether we are Marvel or DC comics fans? No, when nations become Christian they retain what makes them a distinct people. At the very end of Revelation, at Christ’s Second Coming, we don’t see an undifferentiated, homogenized blob of nameless, faceless people, we see every tribe, tongue, and nation confessing Christ as Lord. As you read what Moore writes, the unstated alternative that he is implicitly defending is the Global Empire of Babel.

And that is why he offers the most disgusting slander of faithful Christians who desire their nation returns to Christ: “Christian nationalism is a liberation theology for white people.” He compares faithful god-fearing men and women who love their country to marxist revolutionaries who wear a hollowed out Christian faith as a skinsuit. That is what regime theologians think about you.

Moore doesn’t care what actual Christian Nationalists actually believe. He is a political hack. He doesn’t care that we read the Great Commission as a charge from Christ to disciple our nation into obeying all that Christ has commanded. He projects onto faithful Christians his own cynicism and desperation for political power. His ideology seeks to reverse the Great Commission and disciple the nations in globalist liberal democracy, using Jesus’ authority to baptize the nations into a homogenous blob of megacorporate consumers. And he projects this cynicism onto sincere Christians who are watching the people Moore exists to defend destroy the country they love.

And in doing so Moore denies the implications of the gospel

The gospel is a means to no other end than union with the crucified and resurrected Christ who transcends, and stands in judgment over, every group, identity, nationality, and culture.

There are no other ends, for the announcement of Christ’s kingdom arriving in the world (the literal definition of that Greek word translated as “gospel”)? The Gospel is the announcement that Jesus Christ is King of this world, that you are invited into His kingdom, that you are forgiven for your rebellion against Him, and you are made to sit at His table and rule with Him. Moore doesn’t think King Jesus standing in judgment over the nations has any implications on how those nations conduct themselves?

Moore concludes with a statement that is astoundingly absurd:

Christian nationalism cannot turn back secularism, because it is just another form of it. In fact, it is an even more virulent form of secularism because it pronounces as “Christian” what cannot stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

Christian nationalism cannot save the world; it cannot even save you.

The idea that the nations must become Christian is “secularism.” This is the leading evangelical public intellectual in America. The regime is not sending their best. Quite obviously, the call for America to return to Christ is the antithesis of secularism. Moore could not be more wrong if he tried.

This is the reality: Christ commanded His people to go to all the nations of the world, to disciple them, to baptize them, and to teach them all that He has commanded. The very mission of the church is to make the nations Christian. And that mission is going to save the world. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

All quotes and reference from the article published on Christianity Today by Moore.

(For more from the author of “Regime Evangelicals Are Terrified of Christian Nationalism” please click HERE)

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Black Rapper Calls Black Lives Matter a ‘Scam’

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Kanye West took aim at the Black Lives Matter movement Tuesday, just a day after causing a stir by wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt to his Paris fashion show.

The rapper posted a picture on his Instagram story that read “Everyone knows that Black Lives Matter was a scam. Now its over. You’re welcome.”

Mr. West, 45, was seemingly referring to reports that multiple movement organizers spent millions of dollars in donations on extravagant personal purchases in 2020 rather than on community aid.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors was the only voting board member in 2020 when the organization raised $90 million, but ended the year with $42 million, according to a report from the New York Times. The newspaper said that the money was spent on consultants, real estate and small organizations.

For example, funds collected by the movement’s administrative arm, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, were used to purchase a $6 million home in Southern California, according to NPR. (Read more from “Black Rapper Calls Black Lives Matter a ‘Scam’” HERE)

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Justice Department Scores Win Against Trump in Mar-a-Lago Raid Case on Special Master Appeal

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An appeals court has granted the Justice Department’s request to speed up its appeal of the appointment of the special master examining the documents obtained during the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Trump opposed the DOJ’s efforts to expedite its circuit court appeal, with the former president’s lawyers saying this week that the timeline for DOJ’s appeal should be broadened and that oral arguments shouldn’t happen until January at the earliest. The appeals court panel appeared to reject much of that in siding with the Justice Department.

U.S. Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan ruled Wednesday that DOJ’s “motion to expedite appeal is granted” and that the court clerk was directed “to expedite the appeal for merits disposition purposes.” A special merits panel will decide “when and how to hear oral argument,” but for now, the Justice Department’s initial brief is due Oct. 14, Trump’s response is due Nov. 10, and the DOJ’s reply to that is due Nov. 17.

The Justice Department argued to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Friday that its alleged inability to access nonclassified documents seized in the raid in early August was hampering its investigation into whether Trump improperly moved classified information out of the White House during his presidency. (Read more from “Justice Department Scores Win Against Trump in Mar-a-Lago Raid Case on Special Master Appeal” HERE)

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Woke Army General Rebuked for Twitter-Trolling Tucker Carlson, Right-Wingers

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An Army watchdog report has found a top general broke social media protocol by taking on Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other right-wingers on Twitter last year.

An investigation by the Army’s Office of the Inspector General found Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, the former commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Ga., brought “negative publicity” to the Army for engaging in social media arguments over the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for troops and criticizing Carlson’s critique of gender-based military reforms, according to the Washington Post and Task & Purpose.

Donahoe first clashed with Carlson in March 2021 after the top-rated TV personality criticized the Pentagon for making a “mockery of the US military” by introducing new hairstyles for women and flight suits for pregnant service members.

“While China’s military becomes more masculine as it has assembled the world’s largest navy, our military needs to become as, Joe Biden says, more feminine — whatever feminine means anymore,” Carlson said at the time.

In response, Donahoe posted a video of himself re-enlisting a female staff sergeant with the caption: “Just a reminder that @TuckerCarlson couldn’t be more wrong.” Several other Army leaders tweeted in agreement, leading Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to write Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin regarding Donahoe and other military leaders’ public criticism of Carlson. (Read more from “Woke Army General Rebuked for Twitter-Trolling Tucker Carlson, Right-Wingers” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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Health Care Worker Illegally Fired for Christian Beliefs About Gender Identity, Lawyers Say

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After longtime physician assistant Valerie Kloosterman disclosed her religious beliefs about gender identity, a diversity program leader called her “evil,” her lawyers say.

Shortly thereafter, Kloosterman’s employer fired her, despite her unblemished 17-year record of conscientious patient care at a clinic.

Kloosterman’s attorneys are asking the University of Michigan Health-West (UMH-West) to reinstate her, grant a religious accommodation, and spare others from “similar discrimination.”

First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit public-interest law firm, represents Kloosterman. This summer, First Liberty won two U.S. Supreme Court rulings upholding religious freedom and has asked the court to consider hearing two more such cases this fall.

Kloosterman, a 42-year-old married mother of four (including triplets), was dismissed more than a year ago. She turned to First Liberty in a last-ditch effort to get her job back, said Jordan Pratt, senior counsel at the firm’s office in Washington, D.C. (Read more from “Health Care Worker Illegally Fired for Christian Beliefs About Gender Identity, Lawyers Say” HERE)

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