China Is America’s Biggest Rival, and Russia Isn’t Even Close

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President Trump’s decision to move the remaining American troops out of Syria came under heavy criticism from the mainstream media the day it was announced. Trump’s Syria blunder marks “a win for Putin,” reports The Washington Post. The New York Times labels Russia “a winner” in the Syria decision.

Everything Trump does seems to be giving leverage to a more powerful and hungry Russia, says the media, so much so that Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank is now claiming that Trump singlehandedly “lost [America] the Cold War.”

It is no surprise that the media exaggerates the scale of Russia’s threatening nature whenever given the chance. Many American journalists, relishing the way Trump’s foreign policy dovetails into the media’s narrative of his collusion with Russia over the 2016 election, have an interest in doing so. But all this talk of Russia over the past two years has diminished attention towards the far bigger, more poised, and more capable geopolitical threat America faces today: China.

China easily economically dominates Russia. The gross domestic products of the United States, China, and Russia are mapped in the Google public data graph... The United States still has the world’s highest GDP, but China’s economic growth in the past ten years has doubled that of the United States and put it on track to compete directly for the world’s economic supremacy. Russia, meanwhile, has a GDP lower than that of Italy.

China’s military adventurism, too, outpaces Russian expansionism. In contrast, China’s moves into the South China Sea have made its control over an extremely large portion of East Asian waters practically “a done deal.” Who cares about ocean waters, one might ask? How about maritime traders and aircraft carriers, for a start? It is true that Russia annexed Crimea in a show of force. But while Russia gained access to one strategic port, China’s recent exploits have cemented legions of ports and bases across East Asia for years to come. (Read more from “China Is America’s Biggest Rival, and Russia Isn’t Even Close” HERE)

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Bret Stephens Is Wrong. Donald Trump Is Great for Israel

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Bret Stephens of the Israel-hating New York Times published an absurd column Wednesday denouncing President Trump as “bad for Israel.”

In his piece, titled “Donald Trump is bad for Israel,” Stephens proclaims that Israel is far worse off than ever before with President Trump in the Oval Office.

The piece has been shared widely on social media by NeverTrumpers on the right and people who don’t really care about Israel but now recognize that it might be politically advantageous to pretend to care about Israel.

“What Israel most needs from the U.S. today is what it needed at its birth in 1948: an America committed to defending the liberal-international order against totalitarian enemies,” Stephens writes, adding, “as opposed to one that conducts a purely transactional foreign policy based on the needs of the moment or the whims of a president.”

It is lazy and incorrect to label President Trump’s foreign policy as implementing a “transactional” or “isolationist” agenda. Through his rhetoric and policies, it’s clear that the president rejects Stephens’ preference for nation-building and long-winded intervention in Islamic civil wars, which he masks as “defending the liberal-international order.” President Trump more accurately identifies as a restraint-minded realist, who campaigned on bringing Americans soldiers home from long, unaccomplished wars in the Islamic world. But the president has shown the willingness to deploy kinetic action against our various enemies and adversaries if necessary. Indeed, it is Stephens’ ideology, embraced by past administrations, that led to painful Israeli land concessions, an Iraqi vacuum filled by Iran, and the empowerment of Islamists across the region — that is quite bad for Israel.

Advocating for his U.S. foreign policy preferences, Stephens says:

From that, everything follows. It means that the U.S. should not sell out small nations — whether it was Israel in 1973 or Kuwait in 1990 — for the sake of currying favor with larger ones. It means we should resist interloping foreign aggressors, whether it was the Soviets in Egypt in the 1960s, or the Russians and Iranians in Syria in this decade. It means we should oppose militant religious fundamentalism, whether it is Wahhabis in Riyadh or Khomeinists in Tehran or Muslim Brothers in Cairo and Ankara. It means we should advocate human rights, civil liberties, and democratic institutions, in that order.

“Trump has stood all of this on its head,” he concludes.

Oddly, Stephens is effectively endorsing U.S. foreign policy under President Trump. This president has instituted punishing sanctions against Moscow for its military aggression and has taken direct action against Russia on several fronts. He withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and imposed harsh and effective sanctions against Tehran, and he has endorsed the aspirations of self-government for the Iranian people. He has supported the Saudi monarchy’s battle against Wahhabi forces both domestically and abroad. He has stood with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi against the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. The only legitimate grievance Stephens has in the aforementioned paragraph is President Trump’s friendliness with the regime in Ankara, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood. But on every other issue, Stephens is misleading his audience and/or incorrectly identifying President Trump’s foreign policy.

Stephens continues:

He shows no interest in pushing Russia out of Syria. He has neither articulated nor pursued any coherent strategy for pushing Iran out of Syria. He has all but invited Turkey to interfere in Syria. He has done nothing to prevent Iran from continuing to arm Hezbollah. He shows no regard for the Kurds. His fatuous response to Saudi Arabia’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi is that we’re getting a lot of money from the Saudis. He speaks with no authority on subjects like press freedom or religious liberty because he assails both at home. His still-secret peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians will have the rare effect of uniting Israelis and Palestinians in their rejection of it.

It’s odd that Stephens is lighting up the president for his Syria policy, when just last week, he was singing the praises of Defense Secretary James Mattis, who is largely responsible for implementing the Syria policy. It was Mattis, hell-bent on his “only ISIS” approach to the Syrian civil war, who showed no interest in pushing back against Tehran, Moscow, or Ankara.

In fact, Mattis’ “only ISIS” approach to the war in Syria is hurting Israel and paving Iran’s land bridge from Tehran to Beirut. By solely focusing on the Sunni insurgency, Secretary Mattis was doing the heavy lifting for Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime. If Stephens is indeed concerned with who is best for Israel, he should be thanking the president for ending the broken Syria military policy that continued to empower Israel’s and America’s shared adversaries.

As for Jamal Khashoggi, it’s interesting that Stephens is bringing him up in an article about Israel, considering that the non-journalist Saudi operative-turned-Qatari asset hoped Israel would “die by force” at the hands of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Stephens then turns completely delusional on “press freedoms” and “religious liberty,” considering the fact that President Trump has done absolutely nothing to censor either of these fundamental rights, unless you consider temporarily revoking Jim Acosta’s hard pass an urgent press freedom issue.

Yet the columnist from the Israel-hating New York Times presses on. “Is any of this good for Israel?” he asks.

He begins by recycling his aforementioned shoddy arguments against Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Then Stephens badly exposes the lack of intellectual depth in his piece.

“If you think that another grave threat to Israel is the inability to preserve at least a vision of a future Palestinian state — one that pursues good governance and peace with its neighbors while rejecting kleptocracy and terrorism — the answer is no,” he concludes.

In his endorsement of a two-state solution for Israel and a “future Palestinian state,” Stephens is essentially calling for the reality of a terrorist state next to Israel. The Palestinian national movement began as a reaction to the Zionist movement that brought about the modern state of Israel. Since its beginnings, the Palestinian movement has been led by jihadi terrorists who committed themselves to Israel’s annihilation. Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, have a long history of inciting terrorism, directing terrorist attacks, and widely endorsing all forms of violence against Israel and its people.

Stephens ends his piece by proclaiming that President Trump is worse on Israel than President Barack Obama:

During the eight years of the Obama presidency, I thought U.S. policy toward Israel — the hectoring, the incompetent diplomatic interventions, the moral equivocations, the Iran deal, the backstabbing at the U.N. — couldn’t get worse. As with so much else, Donald Trump succeeds in making his predecessors look good.

Utter nonsense. President Trump’s foreign policy has helped reinforce a bond between Israel and the United States government that was badly damaged under the Obama regime, when top officials were constantly threatening and harassing Israel and seemingly endorsing its enemies’ ambitions against it.

By moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, President Trump helped the Jewish state restore its rightful claims to sovereignty over its lands. President Trump’s leadership on the Jerusalem issue, coupled with his unapologetic defense of the U.S.-Israel alliance, has encouraged other countries — even Arab-Muslim states in the region — to forge diplomatic cooperation with Israel, some for the first time. That only increases Israel’s economic independence.

Israel still faces many diplomatic and military challenges. Hezbollah and the Iranian regime continue to encroach on its borders, heightening the prospect of a coming regional war of unprecedented proportions. However, should Israel once again be forced to defend itself against radical Islamist actors, it will find that it has no greater friend than President Trump in the White House. (For more from the author of “Bret Stephens Is Wrong. Donald Trump Is Great for Israel” please click HERE)

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Bombshell: New Info Says Khashoggi Was a Foreign Influence Agent

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The Washington Post has caused itself a major scandal since it has come to light they and their martyred “reformer” Jamal Khashoggi were publishing anti-Saudi propaganda for Qatar. They tried to bury this in a pre-Christmas Saturday news dump, but that can’t stop the damage this will do to their reputation.

“Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government,” the Post wrote December 21.

The Post says they were unaware of this, although Khashoggi’s Qatar connections were well known. They will have to answer for what is either incompetence in connecting these dots or simply not caring as Khashoggi’s attacks on President Trump and the Saudis fit right in with their narrative. The Qatar Foundation denies they were paying him to produce the anti-Saudi material.

But during Security Studies Group research for our report on the information operation after his death, we heard from reliable sources familiar with the investigation that documents showing wire transfers from Qatar were found in his apartment in Turkey. They were immediately put out of reach by Turkish security services, so they did not show the collusion between Khashoggi, Qatar, and Turkey prior to his death. We have published a new, unredacted set of findings about the case. It is damning to Qatar, Turkey, and the Washington Post.

Khashoggi may have been operating in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by doing this on behalf of Qatar. This is the same law that caused both Gen. Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort legal jeopardy by not filing their attempts to influence the U.S. government on behalf of a foreign entity. The op-eds published in the very influential Washington Post certainly qualify as attempts to change U.S. policy against Saudi Arabia and in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Qatar supports in spite of its status as a terrorist organization with most other Gulf countries. (Read more from “Bombshell: New Info Says Khashoggi Was a Foreign Influence Agent” HERE)

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Globalist Insanity: German Supreme Court Rules Anti-Child Marriage Law Unconstitutional

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The Federal Supreme Court of Germany ruled earlier this month that child marriage is constitutional so long as it takes place prior to entering the country. . .

“In the specific case, it was about a Syrian refugee couple, who had fled in August 2015 over the Balkan route because of the war to Germany,” reports the outlet. “The couple had previously been legally married on 10 February 2015 in a Syrian Sharia court. The husband was 21 years old on his wedding day, his wife was at the age of 14.”

Upon immigrating to Germany from Syria, the couple was separated following registration in the Schweinfurt facility. The 14-year-old girl had been placed in a youth welfare facility for female underage refugees; her appointed guardian was the Aschaffenburg youth welfare office. Her 21-year-old husband had no contact with her and was not even informed of her whereabouts.

The Gatestone Institute reports that a family court in Aschaffenburg ruled against the husband after he filed suit; a Bamberg appeals court later overturned that ruling in 2016. Alarmed by the obvious consequences, the German parliament passed legislation in 2017 banning child marriages after German Interior Ministry revealed in 2016 that “1,475 married children — including 361 children under the age of 14 — were known to be living in Germany as of July 31, 2016.” . . .

The Federal Supreme Court has now ruled that law unconstitutional, arguing that it violates Germany’s Basic Law. Future child marriages will be examined on a case-by-case basis and will no longer be given a blanket ban. The court stated that the ban on child marriage violates Articles 1 (human dignity), 2 (free development of personality), 3 (equal protection) and 6 (protection of marriage and family) of the Basic Law, which serves as the German constitution. (Read more from “Globalist Insanity: German Supreme Court Rules Anti-Child Marriage Law Unconstitutional” HERE)

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Archaeologists Discover Pontius Pilate Reference on Ancient Ring

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New analysis has revealed an unusual inscription on a copper-alloy finger ring uncovered at Herodium 50 years ago. Documented by a team of archaeologists in Israel Exploration Journal, the ring briefly caught the media’s attention last month.

Based on the surrounding material, the ring was presumably deposited towards the latter half of the first century, probably about the period of the first Jewish revolt against Rome in AD 66-71. The broken hoop has a diameter of two-thirds of an inch, while the oval bezel measures one-half inch by one-third inch. The bezel relief features a krater (mixing vessel) as the motif, flanked by inscribed letters “PI” on the left and “LATO” on the right.

As this constitutes an unusual historical name in the Levant, it thus has been attributed to Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea from AD 26-36 who ordered the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth outside Jerusalem, probably in AD 33. . .

The ancient historian Josephus reports Herod’s burial there in War 1.673, and his tomb has also been reported there from excavations by Ehud Netzer. Before his death in 2010, Netzer published an extensive guide of the site. Based on excavation evidence, the area was substantially abandoned after Herod’s reign, except for brief intervals until the Jewish Revolt, and subsequently destroyed by the Romans in AD 71.

The incised inscription and central motif indicate the ring functioned for stamping bulla (clay seals) with an official insignia, although Romans typically preferred affixing wax rather than clay. Analysis of the ring indicates its manufacture was likely by a smith in Jerusalem. Its common ornamentation and lack of precious gem suggests its original use by someone a name similar to the Roman governor’s, or as a low-level official acting on Pilate’s behalf, rather than the prefect himself. (Read more from “Archaeologists Discover Pontius Pilate Reference on Ancient Ring” HERE)

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China Cancels Christmas: Celebration Gets Pushed out as China’s Leaders Emphasize Tradition

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By AP. It took less than 24 hours for all the Christmas trees, lights and bells to disappear from a 27-story shopping and office complex in the Chinese city of Nanyang. . .

Christmas continues to be a shopping festival across most of China, with huge trees adorning shopping malls in Shanghai and Beijing, but a growing emphasis on traditional culture by the ruling Communist Party and the systematic suppression of religion under President Xi Jinping are imperiling Santa Claus’s position.

At least four Chinese cities and one county have ordered restrictions on Christmas celebrations this year, according to official notices and interviews. Students, teachers and parents from 10 schools around China told The Associated Press that Christmas celebrations have been curtailed. (Read more from “Christmas Gets Pushed out as China’s Leaders Emphasize Tradition” HERE)

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China Cracks Down on Christmas Celebrations

By The Guardian. China is cracking down on Christmas. Several cities, schools, and government institutions have ordered citizens not to celebrate the holiday and to instead focus on promoting traditional Chinese culture.

In the northern city of Langfang in Hebei province, city officials ordered all Christmas decorations to be cleared and forbade shops from selling Christmas-themed goods. Officials said the measure was aimed at “maintaining stability” and controlling street hawkers.

In Changsha, in central Hunan province, the education bureau last week issued a directive to schools not to celebrate “western festivals” such as Christmas, including putting up decorations, posting related messages or exchanging gifts. At least four Chinese cities and one county have issued a ban on Christmas decorations, according to Associated Press.

A teacher in Huangshan in Anhui province issued a reminder on Weibo on Christmas Eve to follow a recent notice from the propaganda department not to attend Christmas parties, post related messages on the popular messaging apps WeChat or QQ, or give teachers “peace apples”, a tradition in China. The term for Christmas Eve, pinganye, or peaceful night, is similar to that of the world “apple”.

Teachers should “strengthen the education of Chinese traditional culture for students and guide students to refuse overseas festivals such as Christmas”, the teacher posted on Weibo. (Read more from “China Cracks Down on Christmas Celebrations” HERE)

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Border Patrol: Guatemalan Boy Died in Custody on Christmas

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A young boy from Guatemala died while in the custody of the federal government, U.S. immigration authorities said early Tuesday, the second death of an immigrant child under detention in December.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the 8-year-old died at Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center in New Mexico shortly after midnight on Christmas Day.

According to initial reporting, a Border Patrol agent noticed the child had “showed signs of potential illness,” and he and his father were transferred to the hospital in Alamogordo, N.M.

There, he was diagnosed with a common cold and a fever, was given prescriptions for amoxicillin and ibuprofen, and then released Monday afternoon, the agency said.

On Monday night, he returned with nausea and was vomiting, and died hours later after being admitted. (Read more from “Border Patrol: Guatemalan Boy Died in Custody on Christmas” HERE)

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New York Times Praises Terrorist Group Hezbollah

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The New York Times has faced backlash online for running a Christmas Eve piece that many called pro-Hezbollah propaganda.

The piece, which ran in the New York Times’ World News section, was widely criticized as a puff piece that made the Islamist terrorist organization appear sympathetic.

The article highlighted efforts by the Iranian-backed organization to bring a Christmas Santa to a shopping mall in Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. According to the Times, the Iranian cultural attache kicked off the event by saying, “Today, we’re celebrating the birth of Christ… and also the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.”

The Times went on to say that one of the speakers at the event proposed that Christians and Muslims “are one family, against corruption, with social justice, against authority, against Israel, with the Lebanese Army and with the resistance.” The article went on to describe the other Christmastime celebrations attendant to the event, and claimed that “few seasons frame the everyday give-and-take of religious coexistence quite like Christmastime in Lebanon.”

(Read more from “New York Times Praises Terrorist Group Hezbollah” HERE)

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Israeli Company Claims It Has Created New Technology That Can Destroy Cancerous Tumors

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By The Blaze. An Israeli company says it has developed a targeted radiation treatment that it claims can cure cancerous tumors.

“This is the first time in the world that you can treat solid tumors with alpha radiation,” Alpha Tau Medical’s CEO Uzi Sofer told the Times of Israel.

The technology called Diffusing Alpha-emitters Radiation Therapy, or DaRT, uses a needle to inject tumors with a radioactive seed that releases a high-energy dose of alpha radiation that destroys the tumor. The healthy tissue surrounding the tumors is left unharmed.

The procedure is minimally invasive and can be performed using local anesthesia in two hours or less, the company said. Sofer told the Times that for superficial tumors it’s much “like going to a dentist.” (Read more from “Israeli Company Claims It Has Created New Technology That Can Destroy Cancerous Tumors” HERE)

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Anti-Tumor DaRT Could Point the Way to New Arsenal in Battle Against Cancer

By The Times of Israel. Tel Aviv-based startup Alpha Tau Medical claims it has developed a technology that can cure tumors by injecting them with radioactive material that attacks and destroys the cancer cells. The procedure takes two hours or less and can be performed anywhere, the company says.

In the treatment, called Diffusing Alpha-emitters Radiation Therapy (DaRT), a needle containing radium-224, a radioactive isotope, is inserted into the location of the tumor. Once positioned, it emits alpha particles that have the capacity to exterminate the cancer cells. These particles are known to have the ability to cause irreparable breaks in the DNA of these cells.

The problem with using alpha cells in cancer treatment is that they decay and lose effectiveness very quickly. So the Israeli firm came up with a system that uses a needle armed with radium-224. This needle is injected into the tumor, where it releases the radium. As the radium decays, after about four days, it releases “daughter atoms” that spread within the tumor and emit high-energy alpha particles, which target the cancer cells.

(Read more from “Anti-Tumor DaRT Could Point the Way to New Arsenal in Battle Against Cancer” HERE)

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This Christmas, Pray for Those Persecuted in the Region of Jesus’ Birth

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By Washington Examiner. At Christmastime, writers have in recent years labored to make the nativity into a story about immigrants or refugees. After all, the Holy Family did seek refuge in Egypt.

But there’s little beyond that to justify such a facile comparison. There are Biblical passages about the treatment of strangers and foreigners that fit that topic much better (“for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt”). But the story of Jesus’ birth, if it has any political analog, looks less like a story of migration than a story of political and religious repression by bad governments. It does not resemble America’s civilized politics at all, but sadly it looks a lot like what we see today in the region of the world where Jesus was born.

In the time of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the various secular powers refused to leave them alone. The Romans first saddled the Holy Family with a census designed to maximize tax revenue from their empire. Added to their bureaucratic indifference was the psychopathic, paranoid behavior of the local ruler, who sought to kill the baby Jesus. . .

In the Middle East specifically, roughly half of Syrian Christians have been forced to flee that country since 2011. An estimated 80 percent of Christians have been forced to flee Iraq since 2003. Smaller communities of Christians in Egypt and Libya have been ground between the same two millstones — the violence of fanatics and the indifference or hostility of secular authorities.

Nor are Christians the only religious group suffering persecution in that region. ISIS has been especially murderous toward their fellow Muslims (either those of the wrong sect or those not sufficiently observant) and toward Yazidis. And closer to the vicinity of Jesus’ birth, the visceral hatred of Jews and the total destruction of Israel have become institutionalized as a form of nationalism, to which even some Americans try to lend legitimacy with boycotts and sanctions. (Read more from “This Christmas, Pray for Those Persecuted in the Region of Jesus’ Birth” HERE)
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This Christmas, Don’t Forget to Pray and Take Action for the Persecuted Christians Around the World

By Fox News. Christmas is a cheerful season in the West. Families and friends gather together, decorate Christmas trees, drink hot chocolate and cherish each other’s company. Most importantly, it is a warm and joyous opportunity to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

Yet we are lucky in this regard. Tens of millions of Christians around the world are being actively persecuted by authoritarian governments and terrorist groups. This Christmas, we must not forget to pray and take action for the persecuted Church.

Whether it’s the Assyrian community in Iraq or evangelicals in North Korea, many Christians face significant barriers to worshipping Jesus. From China to Iran, believers can be met with death and intense persecution for sharing their faith or celebrating Christmas.

Astonishingly, despite all of these atrocities happening in real time, many in the West remain uninformed about the dangers facing Christian communities worldwide. Many deride articles like this as simplistic paeans to Christian sensibilities. They see Christendom’s dominant status in the West and assume this situation holds worldwide. . .

To this day, Christians remain the most persecuted religious group in the world. Nowhere is this rise in ill-treatment better illustrated than in China. As we have previously highlighted, President Xi perceives Christianity as both a philosophical and political threat to his revisionist agenda. (Read more from “This Christmas, Don’t Forget to Pray and Take Action for the Persecuted Christians Around the World” HERE)

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