Spain Takes Down Ex-Head of IMF; Dozens of Others Prosecuted in Enormous International Banking Corruption Scandal

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In many other countries, excluding the United States, corrupt bankers are often brought to task by their respective governments. The most recent example of a corrupt banker being held accountable comes our of Spain, in which the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Rodrigo Rato was sentenced to four years and six months behind bars.

According to the AFP, Spain’s National Court, which deals with corruption and financial crime cases, said he had been found guilty of embezzlement when he headed up Caja Madrid and Bankia, at a time when both groups were having difficulties.

Rato, who is tied to a slew of other allegations was convicted and sentenced for misusing €12m between 2003 and 2012 — sometimes splashing out at the height of Spain’s economic crisis, according to the AFP.

The people of Spain were outraged over the scandal as it was discovered during the height of a severe financial crisis in which banks were receiving millions in taxpayer dollars. Bankia was eventually nationalized and given 22 billion in public money.

Although he was sentenced, Rato, who is also a former Spanish economy minister, remains at liberty pending a possible appeal because of highly connected elite status.

Rato was brought down in a massive effort by Spain to get rid of corruption within the banking system. The problem had gotten so bad, that Spain decided to clean house, and 65 people, include Rato, were brought to task.

According to the AFP, they were accused of having paid for personal expenses with credit cards put at their disposal by both Caja Madrid and Bankia, without ever justifying them or declaring them to tax authorities. These expenses included petrol for their cars, supermarket shopping, holidays, luxury bags or parties in nightclubs.

According to the indictment, Rato maintained the “corrupt system” established by his predecessor Miguel Blesa when he took the reins of Caja Madrid in 2010, reports the AFP. He then replicated the system when he took charge of Bankia, a group born in 2011 out of the merger of Caja Madrid with six other savings banks, prosecutors said.

According to the report:

Rato was economy minister and deputy prime minister in the conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar from 1996 to 2004, before going on to head up the IMF until 2007. His subsequent career as a banker was short-lived — from 2010 to 2012 — but apart from the credit cards case, it also led to another banking scandal considered the country’s biggest ever.

Thousands of small-scale investors lost their money after they were persuaded to convert their savings to shares ahead of the flotation of Bankia in 2011, with Rato at the reins. Less than a year later, he resigned as it became known that Bankia was in dire straits.

The state injected billions of euros but faced with the scale of Bankia’s losses and trouble at other banks, it asked the EU for a bailout for the banking sector and eventually received €41bn.

Rato and others were probed, accused of misleading small investors in the listing of Bankia, which has since paid out €1.2bn in compensation.

To highlight the utter corruption within the banking cartel that is the IMF, Rato is the third former chief to be ousted for illegal activity.

For those who don’t remember, Rato’s successor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was tried in 2015 on pimping charges in a lurid sex scandal. Naturally, he was acquitted — in spite of the fact that he admitted to engaging in illicit sex with prostitutes at a series of orgies that supposedly took place at the Hotel Carlton in the northern French city of Lille. The court sided with DSK and agreed that he had no idea the women he repeatedly filled the orgies with were being paid.

Christine Lagarde, who took over from Strauss-Kahn and is the current IMF chief, In December, was found guilty of “negligence” for approving a massive government payout to business tycoon Bernard Tapie during her tenure as French finance minister.

Despite being found guilty of corruption, Lagarde was not sentenced to a single day in jail. She has since been meeting with Trump’s Goldman Sachs-connected Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, noting that they’ve had “some very positive discussions.” (For more from the author of “Spain Takes Down Ex-Head of IMF; Dozens of Others Prosecuted in Enormous International Banking Corruption Scandal” please click HERE)

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ISIS Gains Ground, Targets Egyptian Christians in Sinai

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In the past three days, Islamic State militants in Egypt’s volatile northern Sinai region abducted four men accused of collaborating with the government, three of them during a brazen raid in the middle of a public market. Two of the men have been found slain while the others remain missing; Egyptian officials say that one of the slain men had his eyes plucked out and was set on fire before being shot to death.

Women are being threatened with punishment if they don’t wear the niqab and farmers are being forced to pay financial tribute to ISIS under the guise of the “zakat” mandatory Islamic donation to charity. The militants have set up their own checkpoints especially on the roads around the city of Rafah, which borders the Gaza Strip. Passengers are forced to recite from the Quran before being allowed to pass, according to area residents and tribal leaders.

This recent show-of-strength campaign by ISIS loyalists in northern Sinai comes on the heels of a recent easing of the military campaign against them and represents a move to reassert their control over the local civilian population, according to residents, tribal leaders and officials. (Read more from “ISIS Gains Ground, Targets Egyptian Christians in Sinai” HERE)

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Islamists Just Sawed off a Jew’s Finger. That’s Not Enough Bloodshed for the ‘Tolerant’ Left.

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All these churches working their hearts out for “the religious liberty right” to import Shariah immigration — instead of fighting for religious conscience rights at home for Christians — ought to pay attention to what’s going on in Europe.

The issue of mass Islamic immigration to western countries has become the Waterloo of political correctness that has plagued western democracies in recent decades. That is because under the guise of “tolerance,” they have tolerated the intolerant, importing large numbers of individuals whose value system is irreconcilably against western enlightened values.

When liberals lecture us on the need to bring in record numbers of migrants from the Middle East under the guise of tolerance and compassion, they never discuss the results of such policies that are so vividly on display across the pond in Europe.

It is well known that Jews cannot live safely in many parts of Europe thanks to the suicidal immigration policies they have pursued over the past 50 years; policies, by the way, we have mimicked in recent years, placing us just one generation behind the tipping point they are experiencing today. Just to get a flavor of what has become so commonplace in Europe (that it is no longer newsworthy), here is a story of the most recent attack on Jews in France:

The kippah-wearing brothers, whose father is a Jewish leader in Bondy, were forced off the main road by another vehicle on to a side street, according to the BNVCA report. While the vehicle was in motion, the driver and a passenger shouted anti-Semitic slogans at the brothers that included “Dirty Jews, You’re going to die!” the father told BNVCA based on the complaint filed by his sons.

The vehicle forced the brothers to stop their car, and they were surrounded by several men whom they described as having a Middle Eastern appearance. The men came out of a hookah café on to the side street, according to the case report published by the news website JSSNews.

The alleged attackers surrounded the brothers, then kicked and punched them repeatedly while threatening that they would be murdered if they moved. One of the alleged attackers then sawed off the finger of one of the brothers.

This particularly gruesome incident is not an aberration. Jews need armed guards at all their major institutions, reminiscent of what Israel had to do for years during the intifada. The chief rabbi of Belgium said last year there is no future for Jews in Europe. It is actually safer for Jews living in Judea and Samaria near Middle Eastern Arabs than those living in parts of Europe because European countries don’t have a security apparatus to deal with suicidal immigration policies into western countries.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise everywhere in the world commensurate with the rise of Islam in western countries and the prominence of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups operating on campus and in other areas of society. Liberals, including Hillary Clinton, are suddenly discovering the growing anti-Semitism, but they are obfuscating the root cause of it and trying to pin it somehow on the few weeks since Trump assumed office.

Liberals refuse to recognize the common sense that our founders understood when they were so careful to bring in only individuals who championed our “republican values,” as Jefferson wrote in his essay on immigration in the “Notes on the State of Virginia.” Yet liberals are now importing the values of the Middle East.

According to Pew, most individuals in predominantly Muslim countries harbor virulent hatred for Jews. Obviously, if we bring in small numbers from these countries, it’s possible to assimilate some of them, but when admitted in such large quantities, we are invariably importing the values of the Middle East.

It’s amazing watching both liberals and pseudo-conservatives espouse a view on immigration completely divorced from our history and founding. It’s as if there is a default right for anyone to come here unless we can demonstrate up front that the individual is a known terrorist. The reality is that most of these attacks in Europe come from radicalized Shariah Muslims that either immigrated from North Africa or are children of immigrants that, at the time they came in, there was no way to “vet” their behavior aside from looking at their values system.

Why should we let in anyone with values antithetical to our universal values of enlightenment and true tolerance? While many of them won’t necessarily commit terror attacks, their cumulative growth in numbers cultivates the climate for those who do. Moreover, many of them grow up hating Americans and hating our values. Leo Hohman did a terrific job chronicling the cultural problems and the sexual harassment emanating from members of the Minneapolis Somali community in his new book, “Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and the Resettlement Jihad” (Listen to my podcast interview with him here.)

To be clear, everyone who is in America has a right to be hateful and harbor a supremacist mindset as long as they don’t break the law. But there is no right to immigrate. The same way we should be careful about bringing in large numbers of immigrants from hypothetical parts of the world that are saturated — albeit not exclusively populated — with white supremacists. Shouldn’t the same apply for Islamic supremacists who are at war with our entire culture and pose a greater security threat than any other hateful ideology?

Amazingly, liberals have the nerve to compare not importing Shariah values to countries that refused to admit Jews in before the Holocaust. Well, maybe they should look at what’s going on in Europe, and they will understand that it is more analogous to not letting in the Nazis. Scandalously, these same liberals are the ones who want Israel to commit suicide, thereby eliminating the one safe harbor for European Jews fleeing anti-Semitism … thanks to their suicidal immigration policies in the West!

During the debate in the House of Representatives over the Naturalization Act of 1790, Theodore Sedgwick explained that Congress was handed the keys to immigration so that it would use discretion to “admit none but reputable citizens, such only were fit for the society into which they were blended.”

Madison expressed his desire to bring in only those who would be “a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States.” This was a point he made 26 years earlier at the Constitutional Convention when he declared we should only admit “foreigners of merit & republican principles among us” in order “to maintain the character of liberality which had been professed in all the Constitutions & publications of America.”

And remember, their concerns about undesirable immigration was about Europe, not the Islamic world. They could never have envisioned the self-immolation of today’s “leaders.” They are rolling over in their graves. (For more from the author of “Islamists Just Sawed off a Jew’s Finger. That’s Not Enough Bloodshed for the ‘Tolerant’ Left.” please click HERE)

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Christian Group: Israel Is Key to Christian Presence in Middle East

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In the past decade, millions of Christians have fought to escape persecution and violence in the Middle East. Many have died, while others have traveled to Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere in search of safety.

According to Robert Nicholson, Executive Director of The Philos Project, two of the keys to a continued Christian presence in The Holy Land include a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq and a thriving Israel.

“It is imperative that the United States continue to support the existence of the State of Israel,” Nicholson told The Stream at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). “It is imperative that we not withdraw from Iraq after its liberation, as that will create a power vacuum which will be filled by another insurgency.”

The U.S. has led a coalition of nations against terrorist actors and others in Iraq for nearly 15 years. Some say the terrorist group ISIS, which in recent years has been the focus of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, arose because former President Barack Obama drew down the U.S. presence in the nation. Others say ISIS wouldn’t exist if former President George W. Bush had not launched the invasion in the first place in 2003.

Christians make up between five and 10 percent of the Syrian population, but just one-half of one percent of the refugees accepted from Syria in the 2016 fiscal year. Nicholson told The Stream that U.S. policy on the Middle East should aid both Christians who want to come to America and those who wish to stay in their homelands.

I support the prioritization of Christian and other minority refugees whose lives have been destroyed by the Islamic state. After being forced from their homes, they are often the victims of further discrimination in neighboring Arab countries who have been aiding in the refugee crisis. It is imperative, however, that by favoring certain minorities, U.S. policy does not inadvertently drain the region of Christianity. At-risk minority communities in Iraq and Syria must be preserved.

“I see a deep need to protect minority interests on the ground in Iraq and Syria,” Nicholson continued. “Christianity and Judaism is quickly disappearing from the Arab world – the cradle of both those religions. The Philos Project seeks to reinvigorate thoughtful discussion on sustainable solutions to preserve minority heritage in the region.”

The Philos Project hosted a panel at CPAC is entitled, “Why Disengagement Isn’t an Option in the Middle East.” Nicholson said his group is aiming “to inform and educate Christian leaders and future leaders to have a holistic understanding of the complex situations in the Middle East.”

“We recognize that many leaders who care about Israel and Christianity in the Middle East come to the CPAC conference,” concluded Nicholson, who said the CPAC panel “will explore strategies for sustainable U.S. policy in the region.” (For more from the author of “Christian Group: Israel Is Key to Christian Presence in Middle East” please click HERE)

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What the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About Donald Trump and Crime in Sweden

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President Donald Trump’s tortured relationship with the spoken word can lead to problems. Case in point, his remarks about Sweden at a rally in Melbourne, Florida on Saturday night. While Trump seemingly made a remark about a recent terrorist attack in Sweden, what he meant was the reported uptick in crime in migrant centers in the country. His remarks have ignited a firestorm online. I try to wade through it all to present to you what is exactly “going on in Sweden.”

If President Trump is right and there is a growing Islamic migrant caused crime wave in Sweden, the first step is to define when the surge in refugees from predominately Muslim countries started to spike in the country. Migrationsverket, the Swedish Migration Agency, has published country of origin data from 1980 to 2014 (pdf). This data does not include 2015, which saw the highest level of asylum seekers in the recent history of the nation.

Resident Permits Geneva Convention

Migrationsverket breaks out nine Muslim majority countries in their data set. Those countries are Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. It is clear that the Syrian civil war and ISIS has created a significant uptick in refugees from Syria, beginning in 2012. Prior to that year, immigration from that country was negligible. The second largest number of migrants come from the Horn of Africa with Eritrea and Somalia combining for close to 6,900 persons. The agency has not yet compiled country of origin for the roughly 160,000 asylum seekers that entered in 2015, but there are reports that have placed the Syrian number at over 50,000.

The recent surge in refugees caused Sweden, in the middle of 2016, to toughen its rules. The New York Times reported that Sweden took steps to curb the open door policy it had in place. The country was on pace to admit 200,000 refugees in 2016, or two percent of its population, the majority of whom were from Muslim majority countries.

Does this dramatic uptick in migrants starting in 2012 have anything to do with crime in Sweden? That’s where it gets complicated. As Politfact noted, Swedish authorities do not break out crime data by immigration or refugee status. So it is impossible to determine if any crime increase can be definitively linked to migrants.

What is apparent however, despite the media cherry-picking two years 2014 and 2015, is the significant increase in the number of reported sexual assault and homicides that have coincided with the increased numbers of migrants. According to the Brå, which reports Swedish crime statistics, reported sexual assaults have increased from 17,077 cases in 2011 to 18,057 in 2015. They peaked in 2014 at 20,326, which was 19 percent higher than in 2011. Preliminary data from 2016 show a reported 20 percent increase in sexual “molestation” from 2015, according to Brå numbers. Rapes increased by 13 percent from 2015 to 2016 according to the same preliminary report.

Swedish sexual assault statistics

Similarly, according to Brå, lethal violence has shown an increase. Lethal violence is described as murder, manslaughter, or assault that results in death. In 2011 there were 81 instances of lethal violence reported; in 2015 there were 112 cases. This is an increase of 38 percent. From 2014 the increase was almost 29 percent. Lethal crimes data for 2016 will not be available until the end of March according to Brå.

swedish lethal violence

The data does show an uptick in violent crime, particularly sexual assault and lethal crimes that coincides with the increased migrant wave. That fact is undeniable and buttressed by the data from Swedish authorities. The media, who have cherry-picked the drop in reported sexual assaults from 2014 to 2015, are misleading with their reporting. But there are also two critical pieces of data missing: 2016 assault numbers, and a breakdown of crime by immigration status. Without those data points, both sides of the argument have cases to be made.

There is certainly a significant amount of anecdotal evidence to buttress the claims of increased violence by migrants in Sweden. Most significantly is the documentary by Ami Horowitz which kicked off the current news cycle. Horowitz was interviewed by Tucker Carlson the day before President Trump made his statement.

Horowitz, with on-the-ground reporting, shows a very different picture than what the MSM or Swedish authorities want you to believe.

In Norway, a bordering Scandinavian country, the authorities recently produced a guide on how migrants should treat women. This was a direct result of a rise in rapes that accompanied a similar increase in migrants.

A spring 2016 Pew poll showed that a whopping 88 percent of Swedes disapprove of the way the European Union, of which Sweden is a member, is handling the refugee crisis. That is the second highest number after Greece, which has been a first port of entry for many migrants as they make their way through Europe. The next highest is 77 percent in Italy.

No matter where the debate here in America stands on the issue, it is clear the Swedish people are concerned about migration to their country. That is why, as previously mentioned, the government took extraordinary means to limit refugee settlement after a long history of virtually open borders. This action happened shortly after the Pew poll was conducted.

The data clearly show an uptick in sexual assaults, and lethal crimes since the massive increase in refugees to Sweden from majority Muslim countries. It is careful to remember that correlation does not always equal causation. Until Sweden publishes data which includes the immigration status and country of origin in their crime statistics, on-the-ground experience will continue to drive the narrative. Politifact and other “MSM fact checkers” owe it to their readers to paint a complete picture. (For more from the author of “What the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About Donald Trump and Crime in Sweden” please click HERE)

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What’s Happening in Sweden

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As if on cue, riots broke out in a heavily immigrant suburb of Stockholm as soon as the media mocked President Donald Trump for a vague warning about immigration-related problems in Sweden.

At a campaign rally over the weekend, Trump issued forth with a mystifyingly ominous statement. “You look,” he declared, “at what’s happening last night in Sweden.” What? Had the president invented a nonexistent terror attack? As it turned out, the reference was to a segment on Sweden he had watched on the Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight the previous night rather than to any specific event in the Nordic country . . .

By welcoming a historic number of asylum-seekers proportionate to its population, Sweden has indeed embarked on a vast social experiment that wasn’t well thought out and isn’t going very well. The unrest in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby after police made an arrest the other night underscored the problems inherent in Sweden’s immigration surge . . .

Sweden welcomed more than 160,000 asylum-seekers in 2015, and nearly 40,000 in October of that year alone. For a country of fewer than 10 million, this was almost equal to 2 percent of the population — in one year. The flow doubled the number of asylum-seekers at the height of the Balkans crisis in 1992 . . .

There is a stark gap in the labor-force-participation rate between the native born (82 percent) and the foreign born, (57 percent). As the Migration Policy Institute points out, Sweden is an advanced economy with relatively few low-skills jobs to begin with. On top of this, high minimum wages and stringent labor protections make it harder for marginal workers to find employment, while social assistance discourages the unemployed from getting work. (Read more from “What’s Happening in Sweden” HERE)

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Latest Examples of Cultural and Governmental Bullying: Church, Wake Up

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Have you ever watched a movie where the good guy got framed for what the bad guy did and you felt morally indignant, desperate to see justice done and the horrible wrongs made right? That’s how I feel when I see social madness in our country, wondering to myself, “How can this go on in front of our eyes? What kind of craziness is this?”

Let me give you several cases in point.

Transgender Activism in a Texas High School

In Texas, a 17-year-old girl who identifies as a boy is taking testosterone supplements as she begins to “transition” to being male. (She currently identifies as a boy named “Mack” Beggs and is referred to as “he” in a relevant article about her.) She is in the news because she wrestles on the girls’ team and just won a tournament when her opponent in the finals forfeited because the other girl’s parents protested the match.

And they had every reason to protest.

Beggs is taking performance enhancing drugs, and in a physically-taxing sport like wrestling, the differences are all the more tangible. That’s why the lawsuit brought by the parents of another female wrestler urged the governing body to suspend Beggs “because of the use of the steroid. The suit claims that allowing the wrestler to compete while using testosterone exposes other athletes to ‘imminent threat of bodily harm.’”

This is not rocket science, and Beggs would not be allowed to compete in a college-level or Olympic or professional match while on steroids. (Is this why Beggs is undefeated this season?)

Steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are banned for logical, obvious reasons, yet logic seems to stop at the door when it comes to transgender activism.

Accordingly, Beggs’ grandmother (and guardian), rather than recognizing how unfair this all was to the other girls who worked so hard to be there, could only say, “Today was not about their students winning. Today was about bias, hatred and ignorance.”

This is absolute nonsense, and while my heart goes out to young “Mack” and I truly want to see her find wholeness without sex-change surgery and a lifetime of hormones, I reject the notion that her struggles should now be imposed on the other female athletes.

Shame on the school system for letting this happen.

Allegations of Gay Bullying in the WNBA

To give another example from the sports world, we are constantly reminded of the struggles experienced by gay athletes, to the point that Michael Sam, the first openly gay player drafted by the NFL, blamed the NFL’s alleged homophobia on his failure to make it at the highest level of the sport.

Of course, it makes perfect sense that other players would be uncomfortable around him once he announced he was homosexual. After all, they are strong young men in the prime of life who work out together and play together and shower and undress next to each other and who horse around in manly ways. Why should they be expected to feel perfectly at home with an openly gay player, even if they did their best to ignore this and behave as professionals?

Today, however, we’re hearing about something very different.

An article about former WNBA player Candice Wiggins states, “There is a ‘very, very harmful’ culture running throughout the WNBA, she says, which saw her get bullied during her eight-year career because she is heterosexual.”

She claims that, “Me being heterosexual and straight, and being vocal in my identity as a straight woman was huge. I would say 98 percent of the women in the WNBA are gay women. It was a conformist type of place. There was a whole different set of rules they [the other players] could apply.”

And, she alleges, “People were deliberately trying to hurt me all of the time. I had never been called the B-word so many times in my life than I was in my rookie season. I’d never been thrown to the ground so much. The message was: ‘We want you to know we don’t like you.’”

Could this be true?

If it is, even if her estimate about the percentage of lesbian players is too high, don’t expect her story to get much traction in the news. After all, straights are never the victims, only gays are the victims, and because Wiggins is straight and therefore part of the dominant culture, she can’t be the victim. Straights are the bullies, so suck it up, lady, and stop complaining.

As this story gets more responses, we’ll see if my theory holds true.

NFL, NBA Threaten Texas

How about one more from the sports world before I get to the most egregious example of all?

Back in Texas, the NFL and NBA have warned the state that if they pass a bill similar to North Carolina, which, among other things, forbids boys who believe they are girls from playing on girls’ sports teams or using the girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers, the state will be severely punished by the leagues.

Responding to the NFL, which was the first to threaten Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said, “The last thing the NFL needs to do is to get into the business of telling states how to operate their own political operations.” Indeed.

And what will the NFL and NBA (and NCAA and others) do if state after state does the right thing and protects the privacy and rights of its citizens? Hopefully, we’ll find out in the years ahead as the pushback against radical LGBT activism continues.

USDA Officials Order Christian Business Owner to Hide His Beliefs on Marriage

Finally, in Michigan, a Christian business owner experienced an absolutely outrageous example of government overreach. As explained by Tony Perkins, “Donald Vander Boon has been operating a meatpacking center in Michigan for almost 15 years — but thanks to the federal government, it’s his freedom that’s getting butchered.”

What happened is truly shocking (and should send shock waves across the country).

When USDA officials were touring the plant for an inspection:

They noticed a handful of brochures on the break room table about natural marriage. As Don tells it, the article was mixed in with the stacks of newspapers celebrating the recent Supreme Court decision redefining marriage. Even so, the on-site officers took offense to the literature, walked into Don’s office, closed both doors, and told him they’d call off the inspection if the material wasn’t removed.

So, the Christian owner of a meatpacking center employing 45 workers was given an ultimatum by USDA officials — who were there to inspect the meat operation, not the beliefs, of Vander Boon — telling him that if he didn’t remove the material on marriage, there would be no inspection, as a result of which the center would be shut down.

Yes,

According to inspectors, Don’s article was “offensive” and had violated a new rule from the Obama administration that gave government officials (including these inspectors) the right to take “immediate and appropriate corrective action” when dealing with anything they considered “harassment.” Vander Boon’s position on marriage, he was told, qualified.

In his own words, “It’s made me realize how quickly we can lose our religious liberty. I never dreamed that I would have this experience, and that I would have USDA personnel telling me that I had to choose between putting an article on the break room table or my business.”

Today, more than 18 months after this event took place, despite ongoing legal efforts by the ADF, the Department of Agriculture has not changed its policy or responded to Vander Boon’s rightful concerns. Perhaps this is coming to your business next?

There’s a reason I and others have been sounding the alarm for years now, seeking to wake up a slumbering church and a complacent society.

If these latest examples don’t jolt readers into reality, I wonder what will.

Honestly, I hate to imagine.

So, let’s pray and act today lest tomorrow’s news makes today’s news look relatively mundane.

God have mercy on America. (For more from the author of “Latest Examples of Cultural and Governmental Bullying: Church, Wake Up” please click HERE)

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Iraqi Suicide Bomber Was Ex-Gitmo Detainee

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A suicide bomber who attacked a military base in Iraq this week was a former Guantanamo Bay detainee freed in 2004 after Britain lobbied for his release, raising questions about the ability of security services to track the whereabouts of potential terrorists.

The Islamic State group identified the bomber as Abu Zakariya al-Britani, and two British security officials also confirmed the man was a 50-year-old Briton formerly known as Ronald Fiddler and as Jamal al-Harith.

He was one of 16 men paid a total of 10 million pounds (now worth $12.4 million) in compensation in 2010, when the British government settled a lawsuit alleging its intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to the officials. (Read more from “Iraqi Suicide Bomber Was Ex-Gitmo Detainee” HERE)

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ISIS Has ‘People in Place’ to Conduct ‘Steady’ Attacks

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The Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) terror group is under heavy global pressure from militaries and law enforcement organizations, but military and counterterrorism officials forecast no letup in the current wave of international terrorism.

“We think that transnational terrorist attacks, in the near term, will probably remain steady. The group has been able to build a robust and redundant apparatus for conducting transnational terrorist attacks,” said a U.S. defense official.

ISIS will likely continue to employ a less-centralized approach to attacks, the official said — one driven by slick, incendiary online messages.

“They have a lot of people in place already that are sympathizers around the world. … We think they will be able to continue to be able to produce at least a constant level of propaganda, which underpins a lot of the ideology in Europe and elsewhere,” the official said.

Currently in Europe, the terror threat, which is high, is driven by ISIS, Al Qaida and other mostly Salafist groups. (Read more from “ISIS Has ‘People in Place’ to Conduct ‘Steady’ Attacks” HERE)

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Fact Check: Trump Is Right. Violence Is Rising in Sweden

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The media pounced on President Trump after he declared Saturday that large-scale immigration in Sweden is not working out. Appearing at a campaign rally in Florida, the President defended his ban on immigrants from dangerous countries.

We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden! They took in large numbers, they’re having problems like they never thought possible.

Swedish authorities immediately responded with denials, and much of the media media fixated on his reference to “last night.” Trump clarified later that he was referencing an episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, which had aired the night before.

Left-leaning news outlets like The Atlantic actually referred to Sweden as “low crime.” Trump addressed them as well in a tweet:

Rising Number of Rapes and Violence in Sweden, Largely by Muslim Immigrants

This was all an exercise in diversion from this glaring fact: Sweden’s increase in violence comes largely from the large influx of Muslim immigrants entering the country.

Rapes have increased by an alarming 250 percent since 2003, rising from 24.9 cases of reported rapes per 100,000 inhabitants to 66.5 last year. Reports of sexual molestation incidents increased by a “striking” 20 percent between 2015 and 2016, reaching 10,500 in 2016.

Örebro Police investigator Peter Springare says the crimes are mostly committed by Muslim immigrants. On February 3, he wrote on Facebook, “Mohammed, Mahmod, Ali, again and again.” Springare is now reportedly under criminal investigation for “incitement to racial hatred.“

In January, Malmö Police Chief Stefan Sinteus issued a desperate plea for help combating “the upward spiral of violence.” The city is composed of 32 percent immigrants. British UKIP leader Nigel Farage refers to Malmö as “the rape capital of Europe.”

Over the past 15 years, Sweden has taken in 650,000 immigrants seeking asylum. About 35,000 claimed to be “unaccompanied minors,” but could very well be young men disguising their age in order to improve their chances of not being deported.

Many are unemployed and jobless, straining the country’s welfare system. According to the Swedish Migration Agency, another 25,000 to 45,000 immigrants are expected this year.

Videos of the rioting and burning uploaded to YouTube reveal the extent of the violence, and contradict the media’s claims there has been no increase in violence. Rioters often outnumber the police, as they throw stones at the officers and beat them up.

What’s Really Happening

In the video below, a Swede in Rinkeby contradicts Swedish politicians and media reports. She says there isn’t a large police presence; they show up after the riots calm down. Law enforcement has set off 55 no-go zones, she reports. Law enforcement will not go into them unless in large patrols. The left-leaning media denies the existence of the no-go zones.

Videos show the radical Islamists plotting against law enforcement. They will plant a bomb in a trash can, then put it on fire. When the fire department comes to put out a fire, the bomb explodes on them. Similarly, they set traps for the police. They will report a rob and throw rocks at them.

The woman goes on to say that Trump’s remarks were accurate. In fact, the reason the violence doesn’t make the news is because it’s so prevalent. “There aren’t any headlines about this kind of stuff,” she explains, “since it’s so common.” Additionally, the Swedish politicians who deny it’s happening are “too proud … to admit they got it wrong. … They want to believe that they are so morally superior to everyone else that their multiculturalism can’t fail and that their feminism can’t fail.”

Rape as Jihad

Such violence by Muslim immigrants is not unique to Sweden. The problem is cropping in other European countries that have welcomed immigrants from Muslim countries. Writing in Algemeiner, Abigail R. Esman described the infamous New Year’s Eve attacks on women in Cologne, Germany, as “a different kind of terrorist attack.” Muslims in Europe have long exhibited misogyny, abuse and sexual exploitation of women, writes Esman, author of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West.

All of these trends have paved the way for sexual violence as a natural weapon for jihad in the age of ISIS. Indeed, we’ve seen it used not just in the mass gang rapes in Europe in recent years, but in the sexual enslavement of Yazidi girls in Syria and Iraq. We’ve seen it further in ISIS propaganda that even encourages its male members to rape women to bring them “closer to Allah.”

Thirty years ago, political and media elites might have been able to hide this. But they can’t prevent ordinary citizens from recording violent riots and arson with their smart phones and uploading the footage to YouTube and Facebook. The truth will get out. (For more from the author of “Fact Check: Trump Is Right. Violence Is Rising in Sweden” please click HERE)

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