Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi Flees, Reunites With Family

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After a decade of uncertainty about her life, her safety, and her future, Pakistani Christian mother Asia Bibi can now breath a sigh of relief that she has safely fled to Canada a free woman, according to reports.

On Wednesday morning, a U.K. diplomat told the British Pakistani Christian Organization (BPCO) that Bibi has finally safely left Pakistan following her release from her eight-year stay on the country’s death row last year. Bibi faced possible execution under Pakistan’s notoriously harsh blasphemy law but was acquitted by the country’s supreme court in October.

“It is a big day,” Bibi’s attorney Saiful Malook told The Guardian newspaper. “Asia Bibi has left Pakistan and reached Canada. She has reunited with her family. Justice has been dispensed.”

The mother of 5 was convicted of blasphemy in 2010 following a 2009 incident at her berry-picking job. When she went to fetch water from a nearby well, her Muslim coworkers said that they didn’t want to drink from something that had been touched by a Christian. After the incident, two Muslim women said that she had insulted Mohammed, though that claim has never been verified.

“The United States welcomes the news that Asia Bibi has safely reunited with her family,” said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a prepared statement. “Asia Bibi is now free, and we wish her and her family all the best following their reunification. The United States uniformly opposes blasphemy laws anywhere in the world, as they jeopardize the exercise of fundamental freedoms.”

After being released from death row, Bibi made plans to flee Pakistan, which has a “high” rating for government restriction on religion and for social hostility involving religion, according to Pew Research.

Now in Canada, Bibi is safe from both further persecution by the Pakistani government and retributive violence from those angered by her acquittal.

“Although no one has yet been executed by the state under the blasphemy laws, some persons have been sentenced to death. Several accused under the blasphemy laws have been attacked, even killed, by vigilantes, including while in police custody; those who escape official punishment or vigilante attack are forced to flee the country,” explains the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Others have died in police custody under allegedly suspicious circumstances.”

But while supporters around the world rejoice at the news of Bibi’s newfound safety, the last leg of her road to freedom and safety didn’t come without difficulties. Last month, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Kahn told the BBC that there had been a “little bit of a complication” in her departure.

“It is very good that Asia Bibi is finally safe outside Pakistan,” Farahnaz Ispahani told Blaze Media. Ispahani is a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, senior fellow for South and South East Asia at the Religious Freedom Institute, and a former member of the Pakistani parliament. “It is bad news that it was such a struggle to free her and that thousands of Christians and other religious minority populations still live under threat.” (For more from the author of “Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi Flees, Reunites With Family” please click HERE)

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Media Claimed Israel Was Responsible for Death of Mother and Baby – Here’s the Truth

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Several establishment media outlets have yet to update articles that claimed a pregnant Palestinian mother and her baby were killed by an Israeli rocket over the weekend, even though the story has since proved false.

The deaths were a part of recent tensions that have seen hundreds of rockets being fired from Gaza and an Israeli retaliation, in which 27 people were killed and hundreds injured. . .

“The death toll has risen in the latest wave of cross border Israel-Gaza violence. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported Sunday that nine Palestinians, including a pregnant mother and her baby, were killed in retaliatory airstrikes, according to NBC News,” The Daily Beast wrote, which is linked to a now-deleted story on their website.

More information about their death has been released by the Israeli Defense Force and a local news organization and it has shown that these deaths were caused by a Hamas rocket that didn’t reach Israel.

“A leak from the heroes of the [Islamic Jihad’s] Sarayat al-Quds (Jerusalem Brigades) on the circumstances of the death of the baby Saba Abu ‘Arar indicates that a rocket of the resistance exploded inside the family’s home due to a technical failure, and prematurely exploded,” Hamas’ al-Risala News reported, according to The Jerusalem Post. (Read more from “Media Claimed Israel Was Responsible for Death of Mother and Baby – Here’s the Truth” HERE)

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Trump Sends ‘Clear and Unmistakable’ Message to Iran

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By Daily Wire. The Trump administration is sending a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East to send a “clear and unmistakable message” in response to “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.”

“The deployment comes less than a month after the Trump administration designated Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization,” Fox News reported. “The deployment also comes amid the bloodiest fighting in five years between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.”

“In response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, the United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force,” Bolton said. “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”

Former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror said on Sunday that Iran was behind the increasing escalation in Gaza.

“What made Friday’s shooting on the IDF patrol interesting, Amidror said, was that it took place precisely when Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders were in Cairo putting the finishing touches on an agreement drawn up by Egypt that was designed to ease the tension in the South,” The Jerusalem Post reported. “But while its leaders were in Cairo, Islamic Jihad fired on the soldiers. At first, the organization tried to deny responsibility for the attack.” (Read more from “Trump Sends ‘Clear and Unmistakable’ Message to Iran” HERE)

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Trump Sending Navy Strike Group to Middle East to Send ‘Message’ to Iran

By Washington Examiner. The United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Middle East region in response to “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from the Iranian government. . .

The latest move continues to ratchet up tensions between Washington and Tehran. Last month, in a bid to put further pressure on the Iranian government, the Trump administration announced that it would stop providing waivers to countries that import Iranian oil. Also last month, the U.S. designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a foreign terrorist organization. Iran has since labeled the entire U.S. military as “terrorist.” (Read more from “Trump Sending Navy Strike Group to Middle East to Send ‘Message’ to Iran” HERE)

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Survey: One-Third of Guatemala’s Population Would Like to Come to the U.S.

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How much is too much when it comes to illegal immigration, or even legal immigration? At what point do we finally return to the universal principle expressed by Calvin Coolidge in 1925 that “our Government owes its first duty to our own people”? Well, unless the DHS finally slams the door shut, it appears that Central America is a bottomless well waiting to be emptied out into our country, primarily through dangerous smuggling over our land border.

According to a recent survey of Guatemalans conducted by the Association for Research and Social Studies and Barometro de las Americas, 39.2 percent of Guatemalans would like to migrate, 85 percent of them to the United States. Which means that roughly 5.6 million Guatemalans would like to come here, not including the close to one million who already came here in recent years. The survey was reported in a local Guatemala City paper, Prensa Libre, and was picked up by the Daily Caller.

According to the survey, taken of 1,596 Guatemalans and published last Thursday, 58 percent of respondents said they had relatives in the United States. As the Prensa Libre article notes, family reunification and “lack of employment and poverty” are why they desire to come here. It’s self-evident that this has nothing to do with asylum and everything to do with economic reasons. Liberals and many faux conservative supporters of amnesty defend illegal immigration as a natural consequence of a “broken” legal immigration system, where it is impossible to come here legally. The problem with that assertion is that the period of illegal immigration has overlapped with the most protracted period of legal immigration expansion and has originated from the countries that have had a monopoly on our legal immigration. According to Pew, 50 percent of all immigrants since 1965 have come from Latin America, the primary source of illegal immigration. Specific to Central America, before the recent surge, “the number of immigrants from Central America) has grown 28-fold since 1970, from 118,000 to nearly 3.3 million in 2018 — six times faster than the overall immigrant population,” according to the Center for Immigration Studies. In fact, 18 percent of El Salvador’s population is already here, if you add the immigrant population in America to those remaining in their home country.

If anything, it is clear that the liberal premise is contrary to the reality – that the more we hand over the keys to immigration to a particular area, the more people will come through all available channels – both legal and illegal – to join their friends, families, and communities.

Now, in addition to legal immigrant chain migration, we are incurring illegal immigrant chain migration from Central America, whereby illegal aliens who are already here are “sponsoring” Central American teens in their families to be smuggled here by the cartels and resettled as “unaccompanied” refugees to live with families who themselves are supposed to be deported.

The bottom line is that unless the administration begins shutting off all migration requests at the border, the record numbers we are seeing every month with take years to abate. If the same percentage of people who would like to come here from Guatemala hold that view in El Salvador and Honduras, that would be roughly 10.7 million people ready to march north under the right circumstances.

Has anyone given any consideration to the cost of such a migration, much less the cultural, social, and security problems inherent with it? At a $140,000-$150,000 price-tag per migrant, using the input and methodology of the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota to calculate the cost of illegal aliens to the American taxpayer, that would work out to be $1.5 trillion for the net fiscal cost of such a flow.

And those are just the top three countries of origin of those coming here illegally today. Migration from Nicaragua is already picking up. Is that the next shoe to drop? A number of people are coming from Cuba and Haiti in the organized caravans. Then there are numerous individuals from African countries and even the Middle East as well.

The question for the open-borders crowd is, if we have an obligation to accept any economic migrant at our border, our laws notwithstanding, shouldn’t we have a moral obligation to land boats in 100 or so countries and bring in anyone who desires to come? At least in that case, we’d cut out the cartels and smugglers and deny them the revenue to propagate evil.

Or, of course, we can preserve America as a beacon of light with responsible levels of lawful immigration that work, first and foremost, for those already here. (For more from the author of “Survey: One-Third of Guatemala’s Population Would Like to Come to the U.S.” please click HERE)

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Ilhan Omar, Tlaib Attack Israel Shamelessly, Defend Palestinian Terror Attacks

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Far-left Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) attacked Israel on Sunday and defended the Palestinian terrorist attacks that targeted Israel over the weekend. . .

“Terror groups Hamas and Islamic jihad in Gaza have fired over 700 rockets at Israel since Friday, killing four Israelis and wounding dozens,” The Jerusalem Post reported, adding: “Defiant Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials said on Sunday that they don’t rule out the possibility that the current round of fighting in the Gaza Strip could lead to an all-out war with Israel.” . . .

Omar and Tlaib, who are both well-documented anti-Semites, rushed to attack Israel and defended the terrorism that was being carried out against Israel.

In response to a New York Times headline that stated that Palestinian terrorists had fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, Tlaib wrote on Twitter: “When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free? Headlines like this & framing it in this way just feeds into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel who unjustly oppress & target Palestinian children and families. #FreePalestine”

Omar took a more aggressive stance defending the terrorists, writing: “How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends? The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.”

(Read more from “Ilhan Omar, Tlaib Attack Israel Shamelessly, Defend Palestinian Terror Attacks” HERE)

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Fourth Israeli Killed as Rocket Onslaught Continues

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By Breitbart. An Israeli man was killed when a rocket landed in the coastal city of Ashdod, bringing the civilian death toll to four as population centers continue to be pounded with more than 700 projectiles launched by terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

Twenty-three-year-old Pinhas Menahem Pashwazman died after being struck by shrapnel while running to a shelter in Ashdod.

Earlier in the day, Moshe Feder, 67, was killed by an anti-tank missile near the Gaza border in an attack claimed by Hamas. A Bedouin factory worker, who has not been named, was killed in Ashkelon, and Moshe Agadi, 58, was killed in the same city.

80 injuries have been reported and more than 650,000 Israeli civilians under the threat of rocket attacks are running to bomb shelters. Schools, public transportation and businesses have mostly shut in southern Israeli towns. . .

Earlier on Sunday, the terror groups released a joint statement threatening to extend the range of the projectiles. Later on, missiles struck as far north as Rehovot but still did not hit the central region of Tel Aviv. (Read more from “Fourth Israeli Killed as Rocket Onslaught Continues” HERE)

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More Than 20 Reported Dead in Gaza, 4 in Israel After Hail of Rockets and Airstrikes

By CNN. There is a dispute over the cause of the deaths of one of the infants and one of the pregnant women — Gaza health officials say both died in an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military says they were killed when a militant rocket misfired on launch.

In Israel, a 58-year-old man was killed by rocket fire in Ashkelon overnight Saturday into Sunday, according to Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon. A 50-year-old Israeli man was killed when his car was hit by a Kornet anti-tank missile near Sderot on Sunday afternoon, according to emergency response services.

A foreign worker was killed by a rocket that landed on a factory in Ashkelon on Sunday according to Barzilai hospital. A fourth man was killed when a rocket struck a car next to him in Ashdod on Sunday evening, according to ZAKA, an emergency volunteer response service. (Read more from “More Than 20 Reported Dead in Gaza, 4 in Israel After Hail of Rockets and Airstrikes” HERE)

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Trump Just Threatened HUGE Tariffs on China

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China may back out of trade talks scheduled for this week with U.S. officials after President Donald Trump threatened Beijing with increased tariffs.

Trump said in a Sunday afternoon Twitter post that the current 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods will rise to 25% on Friday. He also threatened to impose 25% levies on an additional $325 billion of Chinese goods “shortly.”

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He had planned to bring a large delegation to Washington on Wednesday to hash out a trade deal — and there’d been talk in recent days that something resembling a deal could result. Instead, two sources briefed on the talks said the Chinese side may back out of this week’s negotiations.

That was pegged to Trump’s new threats, they said, which abandon a six-month truce after Beijing waffled on some previously discussed commitments.

One source said the Chinese vice premier will likely cancel the trip he’d planned for himself and a 100-person delegation for the final round of talks that U.S. officials had previously said could yield a deal by Friday. Chinese officials canceled a trip in late September 2018 in similar circumstances. (Read more from “Trump Just Announced HUGE Tariffs on China” HERE)

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The Next Islamic State Battlefield Will Be in South Asia

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How did a small, fringe Wahhabi splinter group, led by a fiery speaker with a sixth-grade education, known mainly for defacing Buddhist symbols, carry out a coordinated and sophisticated terrorist attacks on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka?

The answer is, it didn’t, not without external support, both direct and indirect.

The Sri Lanka attack reinforces the notion that the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack, is more a brand around which forces with overlapping goals coalesce to exploit local or regional opportunities than an entity.

The events in Sri Lanka were soon followed by the propaganda video reappearance of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who, acknowledging defeat in Syria and specifically citing the Sri Lankan attack, exhorted his followers to expand the fight.

Defeat in Syria has triggered a diaspora of Islamic State fighters either to their native lands or to targets of opportunity such as the thriving extremist networks in South Asia.

The instigators of that extremism and operating continuously in the background are the global promoters of austere and often intolerant forms of Islam such as Wahhabism-Salafism, financed either by wealthy individuals or nation-states that offer forums for radicalization and sources for potential jihadi recruits.

The main group behind the Sri Lankan bombings, the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ), is an ideological offspring of the rapidly growing, Saudi-funded Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath (TNTJ), which has a headquarters in Chennai, India. The TNTJ, a Wahhabi-based organization, helped establish the Sri Lanka Thowheed Jamath, from which the NTJ emerged as a splinter.

It is a now well-known fact that some Islamic clerics and preachers play a significant role in the radicalization of young Muslims and their recruitment for terrorist attacks.

As the late Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew said about preventing terrorist attacks:

“You must use force. But force will only deal with the tip of the problem. In killing the terrorists, you will only kill the worker bees. The queen bees are the preachers, who teach a deviant form of Islam in schools and Islamic centers, who capture and twist the minds of the young.”

Today, drug trafficking not only provides funding for terrorism, but there is a growing use of the organizational and logistical capabilities of criminal cartels to support terrorist operations, some of which contribute to the geopolitical ambitions of nation states.

In the South Columbo Muslim area of Dehiwala, a drug trafficker named Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, who was designated by the U.S. Department of Treasury as a terrorist supporter in 2003, reportedly set up a distribution hub. In 2018, authorities seized 736 kilograms of Dawood’s heroin.

According to one article, Dawood’s D-Company cartel obtains opium from Afghanistan, where production is overseen by the Taliban. From there, logistics and transportation are arranged by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), which provides protection for Dawood in his Karachi base and stipulates the distribution of a portion of the profits to various jihadist and militant groups.

There is much concern about the growth of the Islamic State in Afghanistan. There are reports that Islamic State jihadis, who fought in Syria and Iraq, are migrating to Afghanistan, joining disaffected Taliban fighters seeking greater Islamic purity.

Although Afghanistan offers a potential power vacuum, which the Islamic State can fill, a far more fertile ground for expansion is in Pakistan.

It is a little-known fact that the Islamic State now operating in Afghanistan, originated in Pakistan.

Members of the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan or TTP began migrating to Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province as “refugees” in 2010 after Pakistani military operations against the TTP in Orakzai and Khyber Agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

It was those “refugees” who provided a foundation for the Islamic State. That base support was augmented by thousands of Pakistanis who fought for the Islamic State in Syria and returned starting in 2013.

In January 2015, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) was declared with former TTP commander Hafiz Saeed Khan of Orakzai as the leader, whose twelve-member Shura had nine Pakistanis.

It is the growing level of extremism and intolerance in Pakistan that should be of concern, which has been a threat to Afghanistan and will be the main contributor to instability in South Asia.

It is the direct result of official Pakistani policy and the activities of Pakistan’s ISI.

The “Islamization” program initiated by Pakistani President Muhammad Zia ul Haq in the late 1970s, which involved the proliferation of Islamic schools, “madrasas” and the promotion of Islamic law “Sharia,” was specifically designed to create national unity by suppressing ethnic separatism and religious diversity.

Not surprisingly, radical groups have proliferated in Pakistan, becoming increasingly more extreme and intolerant.

The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), a Deobandi anti-Shia organization was created in the wake of the Iranian revolution to counter Shia influence in Pakistan. The rapid spread of fundamentalist Deobandi ideology in Pakistan has been widely attributed to funding from Saudi Arabia.

When the SSP proved insufficiently militant for its growing population of zealots, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) was formed as a splinter group of the SSP.

In the search for ever purer forms of Islam, the ever more violent and intolerant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami (LeJ-A) was created out of the LeJ which, over the last two years, has claimed responsibility for several bloody atrocities in Balochistan, Pakistan’s southwest province. It has been reported that elements of the LeJ-A now comprise the senior cadres of the Islamic State in Pakistan.

Another so-called Islamic State affiliate operating in western Balochistan out of the city of Turbat, also known as a center for drug trafficking, is Laskar-e-Khorasan, a group accused of killing religious minorities.

Saudi support gradually shifted from the Deobandi to the more radical Ahle-Hadith movement, the Pakistani equivalent of Wahhabism. It is a small ideological step from Ahl-i-Hadith to the Islamic State, which explains the growth of its affiliates in Pakistan.

Among such Sunni-supremacist groups believed to have received Saudi funding is Jaish al-Adl, which has carried out attacks on Iran from safe havens in Pakistan and reportedly has links to the Islamic State.

While downplaying the Islamic State threat in Afghanistan, U.S. officials have virtually ignored the explosive potential of Islamic State influence in Pakistan, which will only accelerate in the expected power vacuum left after a U.S. withdrawal. (For more from the author of “The Next Islamic State Battlefield Will Be in South Asia” please click HERE)

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel, an international IT businessman and a veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq and a humanitarian mission to West Africa. He receives email at [email protected]

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Things Are Going So Great in Afghanistan That the Government No Longer Wants to Share the News

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Remember that troop surge announced in August 2017 to finally win the undefined Afghanistan tribal war after 16 years? Well, it must be succeeding so well that now the Defense Department has placed a complete gag on any reports of how many provinces the “Afghani military” controls, once touted as the key metric of success or failure. But at least 14,000 of our best soldiers remain entangled in this undefined and untenable mission, with young soldiers now serving in a dangerous nation-building operation that began before they were born! Meanwhile, our own border remains in control of narco-terrorists who are just as evil as the ones in Afghanistan, except they actually directly affect us.

From 2015 to October 2018, the number of districts in the hands of the Afghani military dropped from 72 percent to 54 percent. And the definition of “control” is quite tenuous, to say the least. Now, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the last beacon of truthful government reporting on this quagmire, the Afghanistan mission “formally notified SIGAR that it is no longer assessing district-level insurgent or government control or influence,” because the command no longer believes the data has decision-making value.

Don’t shout all the good news from the rooftop at once.

Indeed, just 17 months ago, General John Nicholson, former commander of our operation in Afghanistan, referred to this measure as “the most telling” metric of success.

Thus, after 17-plus years refereeing tribal warfare rather than exacting retribution, leaving, and then securing our borders and visa system, we have nothing to show for the war effort but $840 billion wasted, 2,400 dead soldiers, roughly 20,000 wounded or psychologically disabled from trauma, and nearly 100,000 Afghani immigrants to our shores!

We still spend $45 billion a year propping up the Islamist Afghani government and military when we could be using that money for Americans, or at the very least to build up allies in our own backyard in Latin America. We could have built an enormous military and diplomatic deterrent with potential allies in Latin America to block Russia, China, and Iran from invading our backyard and fueling the “Bolivarian” revolutionaries in countries like Venezuela. But we cast our lot halfway around the world to prop up a military in which there is nothing but incompetence, corruption, radical Islamism, and even pedophilia.

In SIGAR’s quarterly report released Wed., Inspector General John Sopko noted that we’ve spent $133 billion just on reconstructing Afghanistan and that despite our efforts, there has been a 33 percent increase in casualties among Afghani security forces. Our soldiers remain in mortal danger while our government continues to negotiate with the Taliban and knows there is nothing left to do in the country.

The report further found that 40 percent of Afghanis who were brought to Fort Worth to train in flying light combat aircraft went AWOL, so the program had to be discontinued. It was unclear whether our government has ever tracked down the missing Afghanis in our country. Wait … tell me again why we went overseas … to fight the enemy there so potential terrorists don’t … err … come here??

It would be tragic enough to continue this ill-fated operation if all was good on our home front and we had the luxury of callously expending our lives and money on refereeing a 1,300-year tribal war across the world. But the sad reality is that we have drug cartels, mass migration, and transnational gangs pouring over our border. That is precisely where we need our military. And no, not just to serve as bus drivers and cooks.

Look at the twisted priority of how hard we work to secure the sovereignty of an undefined and unworthy foreign government from enemies that are similar to the ones on our own border, which we ignore. According to a new Fox News report, the elite Task Force ODIN — Observe, Detect, Identify, Neutralize — has been deployed there with “a complex mix of interwoven variables — to include networked drones, fixed-wing intelligence aircraft and helicopters coordinating real-time video feeds with target analysis and aircraft-mounted electro-optical sensors.” Their job is to “find and destroy enemy targets and weapons in the austere, mountainous terrain of a war-weary country.” The operation is described as “extremely active and successful.”

As one listener of my podcast noted, “Seems like a shame they have to go all the way to Afghanistan to do that stuff. Hmm, where else might there be a mission just waiting for Task Force ODIN, any ideas? Rugged terrain, remote international borders, paramilitary militias, narco-terrorists… nope, I’m drawing a blank. Well, if you think of anywhere please let the Pentagon know.”

There are cartel members crossing our border with AK-47s to orchestrate a flow of migrants, drugs, gangs, and criminals (and likely terrorists) into our country, yet we will do nothing to eliminate or apprehend them or empower the military to do so. We all understand that the military-industrial complex is keeping this mission in Afghanistan alive because they get a lot of money for making cool war toys, but they can actually have their cake and eat it too, and benefit our country to boot, if our soldiers were to be deployed against the enemies that directly threaten our homeland and irrevocably bring crime and mayhem to our communities and our border.

Which raises the question: For whom does our military exist? (For more from the author of “Things are going so great in Afghanistan that the government no longer wants to share the news” please click HERE)

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Venezuela’s Freedom Demonstrators Join a Long Line of Oppressed People Who Were Stripped of Their Guns

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“You have to understand, in Venezuela, gun ownership is not something that is open to everybody. So if the military have the guns, they have the power, and as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country.”

That was a statement from MSNBC’s Kerry Sanders Tuesday as Venezuelans took to the streets to demand an end to the tyrannical socialist regime of dictator Nicolas Maduro. His words, while they might have very well raised some blood pressure among the hosts and higher-ups at the network, are a stark reminder for freedom-loving people everywhere of how critical the right of self-defense is to human liberty.

Sanders’ admission happened on the same day that unarmed civilian protestors were plowed over by one of Maduro’s armored vehicles and as defected military members fired back on Maduro forces in order to protect protesters.

And this all happened to a people who were stripped of their ability to defend themselves against their own government. In 2012, the country’s legislature passed a sweeping gun ban that outlawed private firearms ownership.

“Venezuelans are now defenseless against a government that runs roughshod over their civil liberties, while also destroying their economic livelihood,” reads a January post from the Mises Institute. “As if it weren’t enough, everyday Venezuelans must put up with rampant crime and the constant threat of colectivos, Venezuela’s infamous pro-government paramilitary units.”

A 2018 report from Fox News found that several oppressed Venezuelans regretted their country’s gun ban after years of socialist oppression. “Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” a 28-year-old English teacher told the outlet.

But, lest we forget, what the world watched happen on Tuesday isn’t without historical precedent.

The Soviet Union confiscated and banned guns to consolidate its control over multiple Eastern European countries. The Third Reich’s genocide was largely assisted by Nazi Party gun control measures in the 1930s. The Cambodian genocide was also preceded by strict gun control policies. The Armenians slaughtered in 1915 were rendered largely defenseless by Ottoman Empire gun laws.

That is not to say that what’s happening in Venezuela is equivalent to genocide (there are the legal thresholds for that), and it’s not to say that gun control always precedes tyranny or crimes against humanity as a rule. But what history does show us, time and time again, is that people are a whole lot easier to oppress when there’s zero chance they’ll be able to fire back when you send in government agents to oppress them.

This is the kind of easy-to-oppress population that King George III’s forces were trying to create for themselves when they went searching for patriot weapons and powder caches at Lexington and Concord in 1775. And that’s precisely why they were met with gunfire from privately owned muskets when they showed up and demanded that the patriot militiamen drop their weapons and disperse.

And that’s why we have the right to keep and bear arms codified into our Bill of Rights, no matter how much the rest of the world or how many of our own citizens scoff at its existence, and it’s why any freedom-loving people should think twice before doing anything to disarm themselves. (For more from the author of “Venezuela’s Freedom Demonstrators Join a Long Line of Oppressed People Who Were Stripped of Their Guns” please click HERE)

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