State Department Report on Religious Freedom: Much Persecution, Few Positive Trends

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The U.S. State Department released its annual report Wednesday on religious freedom worldwide, which covered almost every nation in the world and many non-state groups, but excluded the United States, reported Yahoo! News. The report covers developments in 2015.

The International Religious Freedom Report for 2015 includes a long “global overview” of the report as well as individual reports on every other country. The country reports cover the country’s religious demography, its government’s respect for religious freedom, and what it calls “societal respect” for religious freedom, and the American government’s policy in respect to religious freedom in that country. The report also includes several appendices with the texts of international and American statements on religious freedom.

Top Persecutors

Among the top persecutors of religious people were, unsurprisingly, ISIS and Boko Haram, which “continued to rank amongst the most egregious abusers of religious freedom in the world.” Earlier this year, Secretary of State John Kerry stated that these groups and others were committing genocide of Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims. He added that the Islamic State’s “entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology.”

In releasing the report, Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said “Daesh [ISIS] kills Yezidis because they are Yezidi, Christians because they are Christian, Shia Muslim because they are Shia. … They’ve not only killed, they’ve sought to erase the memory of those they’ve killed, destroying centuries-old religious cultural sites.”

ISIS, according to the report, pursued a “brutal strategy” that included “barbarous acts, including killings, torture, enslavement and trafficking, rape and other sexual abuse against religious and ethnic minorities and Sunnis in areas under its control.” In areas it doesn’t control, the group sent suicide bombers and car bombs to kill “continued suicide bombings and vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attacks against Shia Muslims.”

The terrorist group also exploits its own version of the blasphemy laws common in Islamic countries. One speaker at the press conference told the story of seven-year-old Muaz Hassan. He was playing soccer with friends in ISIS-controlled Syria. “During the game, he said a bad word out of his frustration. He was detained by Daesh for blasphemy or cursing God. In a matter of days, he was marched out into a public square and murdered by a firing squad in front of a crowd of hundreds, including his parents.”

ISIS and Boko Haram were not the only countries singled out in the Overview. The report calls out Syria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, Eritrea, Brunei, Burma, Viet Nam, the Central African Republic, Hungary, Bahrain, Ukraine, and Russia. Most are either Islamic or Communist or ex-Communist countries. Only one, Hungary, is a Western nation and it is flagged for its government contributing to a statue of a WWII anti-Semite, which the government then rescinded.

Few Positive Developments, But Effective Blasphemy Laws

In a much shorter section of the Overview, the State Department lists some “positive developments,” though these were almost all one act of small groups, in comparison with the large, organized, often state-led assaults on religious freedom around the world.

Religious freedom is “gradually expanding” in Vietnam, while in Kenya and the Central African Republic groups of Christians and Muslims worked together. A second Catholic church was built in the United Arab Emirates and the government gave permission for the building of the first Hindu temple. A court in Canada prevented the government from requiring that “persons must remove religiously based clothing that covered their faces while reciting their citizenship oath,” an indirect way of saying that it can’t require Muslim women from wearing the niqab.

In his remarks at the release of the report, the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom said that his office had been given “significant” increases in funding. The department was able to increase its monitoring of individual countries and spend more time in those where “here our religious freedom advocacy can make a constructive difference,” said David N. Saperstein.

Only 24 percent of the world’s nations have “serious restrictions on religious freedom,” he said, but these countries contain 74 percent of the world’s people. This year, he told the press conference, he wanted to highlight “the chilling, sometimes deadly effect of blasphemy and apostasy laws” that governments use to persecute religious minorities. Such laws, he said, quoting a U.N. official, “do not contribute to a climate of religious openness, tolerance, non-discrimination and respect. To the contrary, they often fuel stereotyping, stigmatization, discrimination and incitement to violence.” (For more from the author of “State Department Report on Religious Freedom: Much Persecution, Few Positive Trends” please click HERE)

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Russia Caught Red Handed With Hundreds of Ground Mercenaries in Syria

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A recent Sky News investigation reveals Russia is hiring hundreds of private military contractors to fight on the ground in Syria, catching the government in a lie that it only assists Syria from the air.

Russia has repeatedly stressed its military operations are low cost, highly limited and focused on helping the Assad regime defeat jihadist groups. Sky New’s investigation reveals hundreds of Russian private military contractors are fighting side by side with the Syrian regime. Russia’s use of private military contractors is only the latest lie about its campaign inside Syria.

Independent analyses of Russian airstrikes in Syria reveal they almost exclusively focus on groups that threaten territory valuable to the Syrian regime. Russia also broke several internationally brokered ceasefires in March 2016.

Russia is likely hiding the extent of its intervention in Syria to not inflame domestic tensions. Direct Russian military intervention in the Middle East harkens many Russians back to the Soviet Union’s military intervention in Afghanistan. Thousands of Russians were killed in Afghanistan, and many Russians blame the Afghan war for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia has a history of guising the scope its intervention with “unofficially” affiliated troops in active war zones. In Ukraine, Russia deployed thousands of non-uniformed Russian fighters to fight against the Ukrainian military. These fighters became infamously known as “little green men” and have been demonstrably linked back to the Kremlin. (Read more from “Russia Caught Red Handed With Hundreds of Ground Mercenaries in Syria” HERE)

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Christians Forced to Hide Bibles Amid Migrant Muslim Death Threats

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Bundestag member Erika Steinbach and Iranian-born pastor Mahin Mousapour called for much stronger sanctions for Muslims who abuse Christians in Germany at a press conference on Monday.

Highlighting the fact Christians suffer violence, harassment, and death threats in migrant lodgings, Ms. Mousapour criticised Germany for granting Islam “too much respect”. Declaring anti-Christian hate attacks an affront to German values, politician Erika Steinbach advocated the government deport migrants who insult or attack Christians.

At the press conference Ms. Mousapour, who converted to Christianity more than 25 years ago, reported that Christians face various forms of persecution in migrant housing.

Ms Mousapour warned that Christians living in migrant housing are told they are “impure as a dog” and deserved death for rejecting Islam.

“Toys of Christian children are being destroyed, Christian asylum seekers are told not only to wash their dishes after eating but also that they must clean the entire kitchen as it would otherwise be ‘unclean’. Many Muslim asylum seekers call all Christians unclean. Church services are held in secret, bibles and crucifixes have to be hidden,” she explained. (Read more from “Christians Forced to Hide Bibles Amid Migrant Muslim Death Threats” HERE)

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Iranian President Asks His Friend Mr. Obama to ‘Fix’ a $2 Billion Court Ruling

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…Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Obama demanding the release of $2 billion in Iranian funds that were seized from bank accounts in New York earlier this year.

The money was taken to compensate family members of victims of the 1983 bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran under a Supreme Court ruling in April. In all, 1,300 American victims have a legal claim to the money.

Ahmadinejad — known for his anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism — is said to be considering a political comeback and may be using Obama as a pawn to improve his standing.

“It is the clear expectation of the Iranian nation that the particular case of property seizure … be quickly fixed by your excellency and that not only the Iranian nation’s rights be restored and the seized property released and returned, but also the damage caused be fully compensated for,” says the letter from Ahmadinejad, which was made public Monday . . .

The letter comes as Obama is already taking heat for sending Iran $400 million in cash last January just as it released four American detainees. (Read more from “Iranian President Asks His Friend Mr. Obama to ‘Fix’ a $2 Billion Court Ruling” HERE)

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Why Is the Mainstream Media Completely Ignoring Christian Genocide by ISIS?

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The major news networks of ABC, CBS and NBC have remained silent on the Christian genocide perpetrated by ISIS, the Media Research Center (MRC) reports.

The number of Christians driven from their homes, raped, mutilated, crucified or otherwise executed by members of the Islamic State is “staggering,” writes Matt Philbin.

Christian holy sites are being destroyed for “cultural cleansing,” entire villages in Nigeria have been slaughtered, Christian students murdered in classrooms in Kenya, and churches bombed in Pakistan and Syria.

At least 1,131 Christians are known to have been murdered by the Islamic State for religiously motivated purposes, and that’s “just the tip of the iceberg”:

ISIS has publically beheaded or burned alive Christians for refusing to renounce their faith and convert. In Syria, the group crucified dozens. ISIS broke up Christian and Yazidi families and sold young girls into sex slavery. It destroyed Christian holy sites in an attempt to erase all pre-Islamic history, and announced it will continue to wage war against “the Jews, the Christians, the pagans, and the apostates.”

A March 18, 2016 article in the Christian Science Monitor cited the evangelical Christian group Open Doors, which found that more than 7,000 “Christians were killed because of their faith last year,” and that doesn’t necessarily include the numbers from Iraq, Syria, or even North Korea, where accurate data are difficult to obtain.”

Meanwhile, the mainstream American media has ignored these acts of genocide. In a study by MRC, the media watchdog found:

Between January 2014 and June 2016, the network evening news shows referred to persecution against Christians in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia just 60 times. Despite telling of murders, forced religious conversions and mass displacement, the networks refused to add up the thousands of atrocities to what they clearly amount to: genocide. Just six of the 60 reports used the word genocide. Put another way, over two years, they mentioned the Christian genocide on just four separate days. Even when Secretary of State John Kerry officially declared in March 2016 that ISIS was engaging in genocide, CBS didn’t report it.

Comparatively, the media referred to the “genocide” in Darfur even before the George W. Bush administration officially acknowledged the Sudanese horror as such. Subsequently, the mainstream networks referred to the Darfur “genocide” 38 times in a two-year period.

When the mainstream networks have referred to the slaughter of Christians by ISIS as “genocide,” they’ve done so in a manner minimizing the global tragedies:

The six instances where the networks have used “genocide” or equivalent terms, they’ve tended to lump Christians in with Yazidis and Shia Muslims as victims, echoing the Obama administration’s reluctance to focus on the anti-Christian violence. During the two years MRC Culture analyzed, one source has recorded 226 Muslim- on-Christian attacks. At least 125 churches have been attacked. According to one Christian group, 7,000 Christians worldwide were killed because of their faith in 2015 alone. Yet even when the Obama administration has (officially and unofficially) called the Christian persecution in Iraq and Syria genocide, the networks almost never used the word.

The journalists working for mainstream news can’t plead ignorance to the situation. As the MRC states, “By their own reporting, hundreds of thousands of Christians are ‘on the run’ from their homes, mass graves have been found, and Christians have been made to ‘convert or die.’”

Connecting said dots, it can lead to only one conclusion: genocide.

The silence is deafening. (For more from the author of “Why Is the Mainstream Media Completely Ignoring Christian Genocide by ISIS?” please click HERE)

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Rio Olympics Ceremony Pushes Global Climate Change, Ignites Controversy

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The opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Friday featured a video focusing on the controversial issue of climate change.

Discussion over whether or not the Olympics were an appropriate forum for political topics like climate change or race relations has been ongoing for months, with former Olympic medalist Caitlin Jenner — who was a man known as Bruce Jenner when he won a gold medal in 1976 — telling HBO’s Bill Simmons “absolutely not” when asked that question on Wednesday.

The opening of the summer Olympics disregarded Jenner’s objections, including fireworks, musical acts, costumed performers and a climate change themed video narrated by Oscar winner Judi Dench, with maps and graphics showing climate data and demonstrating potentially harmful scenarios that climate change activists say could happen if action isn’t taken to prevent further damage to the planet.

With roughly 30 percent of the world’s rainforest and more than half the Amazon rainforests within the country, Brazil seems to be a logical place for a discussion on climate change to occur since if there are any negative effects, Brazil would be uniquely harmed by them.

The climate change portion of the opening ceremony spurred plenty of reaction on social media, with many showering praise upon the Olympics for tackling what they perceive to be such an important subject.

However, the controversial nature of the issue meant that a lot of people were not complimentary. Skeptics have said that the climate change issue has been exaggerated by alarmists and dispute the idea that it is a catastrophic problem.

Many of these people likewise took to social media to show their displeasure with the opening ceremony.

(For more from the author of “Rio Olympics Ceremony Ignites Controversy” please click HERE)

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Iran HANGS Spy Who Gave the US Valuable Nuclear Information

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Iran has executed a nuclear scientist who allegedly accepted millions in bribes spying for the U.S., the country’s state-controlled media announced Sunday.

The strange saga of Shahram Amiri began in 2009, during Democratic presidential nominee Hillary’s Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. Amiri was making a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia when he abruptly vanished without a trace. A few months later, Iran accused the U.S. of kidnapping Amiri with Saudi cooperation, but the U.S steadfastly denied this.

In early 2010, though, news reports started coming out claiming Amiri was a long-time U.S. spy inside Iran, and that his disappearance was a carefully planned CIA operation to allow him to defect to the U.S.

But things only got weirder from there. In June, 2010, Amiri resurfaced in two homemade videos where he claimed he had been kidnapped by the U.S. He said U.S. officials had tortured him and offered mammoth bribes to get nuclear secrets from him, but he claimed to have resisted all these efforts. Amiri also expressed a wish to return to Iran, which he did one month’s later to a hero’s welcome.

At the time of his return, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amiri had returned home after Iranian officials threatened to kill his son. Meanwhile, Iran’s official Fars news service claimed Amiri was actually a double agent, who had obtained secret information from U.S. intelligence during his stay in the U.S. (Read more from “Iran HANGS Spy Who Gave the US Valuable Nuclear Information” HERE)

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Russian Olympics Cheating Is Emblematic of the Nature of Putin’s Regime

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The Games of the XXXI Olympiad [Friday] in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As you watch the parade of nations, you may notice Russia’s contingent of Olympians is noticeably smaller. That’s because well over 100 Russian athletes have been banned from competing in the Olympics for their use of performance-enhancing drugs.

In December 2014, the World Anti-Doping Agency began looking into allegations that Russia was running a state sanctioned doping operation for its Olympic athletes. The anti-doping agency’s investigations found that Russia had indeed operated a state-sponsored doping operation for athletes competing at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and the 2014 Winter Olympics that Russia hosted in Sochi.

One of the investigative reports, released on July 18, stated that Russia’s “Ministry of Sport directed, controlled, and oversaw the manipulation of athlete’s analytical results or sample swapping … ” The report also cites the active engagement of the Centre of Sports Preparation in Russia and the Russian Federal Security Service.

The head of the International Olympic Committee described Russia’s actions as a “shocking and unprecedented attack” on the integrity of the sport and on the Olympic games.

Nothing about Russia’s doping program should be shocking; rather, it is yet another example of the brutal nature of the Russian regime. As The Heritage Foundation has described, the regime is “an autocracy that justifies and sustains its hold on political power by force, fraud, and a thorough and strongly ideological assault on the West in general, and the U.S. in particular.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime defines itself against the United States. Putin sees Russia as a great power and undoubtedly sees Olympic medal counts as another means to solidify his country’s great power status.

At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Russia came in 11th in the overall medal count, winning only three gold, five silver, and seven bronze medals. In Sochi, however, at the apex of the state-sponsored doping operation, Russia won 13 gold medals, 11 silver, and nine bronze, coming in first in the overall medal count.

Russia also seeks to make a mockery of international norms, values, and standards of conduct. The doping scandal shows a complete lack of respect for the integrity of sport as well as for the international organizations that organize the Olympic Games and the countries and athletes that participate from across the globe.

In July, the International Olympic Committee decided against issuing a blanket ban for Russian athletes at the Olympics, instead largely leaving the decision to the international federations of each sport to decide whether Russian athletes would be individually banned from participating.

The World Anti-Doping Agency criticized the International Olympic Committee’s decision not to issue a blanket ban, saying that the investigations “exposed, beyond a reasonable doubt, a state-run doping program in Russia that seriously undermines the principles of clean sport embodied within the World Anti-Doping Code.”

While some Russian athletes will be able to compete at the Olympics in Rio, the doping scandal has once again highlighted the criminal nature of the Russian regime, a nature that is at the very heart of the country’s actions at home and abroad.

The next president must come into office approaching Russia as it actually is, not as the U.S. wishes it might be. Russia is not a fit international partner, the size and scope of the doping operation, as well as the government’s involvement in directing it, once again drive this point home. (For more from the author of “Russian Olympics Cheating Is Emblematic of the Nature of Putin’s Regime” please click HERE)

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US Olympians to Pay Insane Penalties for Winning

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Tomorrow, the 2016 Summer Olympics will begin in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Americans have participated in the summer Olympic games since 1896, and have won more summer gold medals than any other country.

How do you like them apples, world?

Americans should be proud that we athletically kick butt. This year, our nation will root for 554 Americans competing in 27 different sports. As we cheer in support of our athletes donning the red, white, and blue, the government has a different message: win – and you’ll pay.

That’s right, our government levies a tax on every Olympic medal won. Currently, the U.S. Olympic Committee (no, not part of the government) awards cash prizes to accompany medals won. A gold medal comes with $25,000, a silver $15,000, and $10,000 for bronze.

That may sound like a lot of dough. But, in the world of international competitiveness and sport, that’s reasonably low compared to some countries. In 2012, Russian and Italy paid substantial sums to their Olympic winners. Russia, for example, pays $135,000 per gold medal, $81,600 for silver and a bronze will fetch $54,400.

Yet, the cash awards won by Americans – and the value of the medals themselves (valued at $600 per gold, $315 per silver, and $3 per bronze) – are considered “earned income from abroad” from the IRS’s perspective. The amount of tax each athlete would have to pay depends on the amount of other income that athlete earns, in addition to the medal and cash prize.

Take America’s most decorated Olympian of all time, swimmer Michael Phelps. In 2014, he received lucrative endorsements from companies including Under Armour, Visa, Subway, and HP, just to name a few. It was expected that such endorsements brought him a yearly income in the millions.

Therefore, assuming that Phelps makes at least $400,000 each year, he likely pays the top marginal income tax rate, or 39.6 percent. So, one could reasonably assume that if Phelps wins more gold for the U.S., he’ll have to pay the government roughly $10,000 in taxes – per gold medal.

Some congratulations, right?

Sure, Phelps can afford $10,000 per gold medal. But Phelps is a bit of a phenomenon. Most Olympians aren’t necessarily rich, and many live off meager stipends or wages while they train. Others must take on part-time jobs. U.S. Olympian wrestler, Jared Frayer, worked, for example, as a teacher; Gwen Jorgensen, a U.S. tri-athlete, works as an accountant. The list goes on.

If anything, it’s the principle that should matter. I mean, really, upon the glorious return of those who represent America, should we really be so eager to slap them with a tax bill? It’s as Hillary Clinton said in 2009 in Pakistan, “We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move …” Apparently, moving too fast in some aspects (swimming, track, biking, etc) gets you taxed even more!

I agree that the U.S. taxpayer should not subsidize our Olympic athletes – and the government doesn’t. In fact, the U.S. is only one of three countries that avoids offering financial help to Olympians; and as successful as we have been in those games, perhaps we’re all the better for it.

To be fair, the IRS doesn’t merely just pick on U.S. Olympians. They tax anyone who is awarded a monetary prize. As their website claims, prepare to pay a tax penalty if you’ve been awarded, “in a drawing, quiz show program, beauty contest, or other event.”

Surprisingly, these screwy tax laws have even convinced certain individuals to forfeit great achievements over the years. One Forbes article states:

Most people just pay the tax, but you could avoid taxes by declining an award. One famous example was George C. Scott, who declined a Best Actor Academy Award for Patton. You can even decline a Nobel Prize, and six Nobel laureates have done it.

Even Obama, the lover of taxes, avoided paying a chunk of taxes on his $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize (eye roll) by donating it to charity.

In the end, I don’t believe in just giving Olympians better tax treatment. Instead, this is the perfect anecdote in how truly unpatriotic our tax code is for all Americans. Our tax code is littered with 2.4 million words that most of us don’t understand. It’s a tax code that demands 8.9 billion hours of our time to comply; and costs the economy $409 billion annually. So, when our Olympians win this year for America, just remember, we all lose to our government. (For more from the author of “US Olympians to Pay Insane Penalties for Winning” please click HERE)

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RESET: Russia to Build Eight (8) New Nuke Plants in Iran

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Because Mr. Obama’s partners in peace deserve nuclear capabilities, what with their super-happy-fun humiliation of the U.S. Navy, their spread of terror throughout the world, plus collecting $400 million for American hostages.

“Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant has been built based on Russian technology and we have agreed on construction of eight more nuclear reactors for the country,” President Putin said on Friday… Russia built Iran’s only operating nuclear power reactor, at Bushehr.

…The Islamic Republic signed the Bushehr contract with Russia in 1995 and the nuclear power plant reached its full capacity by August 2012. It is located about 18 kilometers South of the provincial capital.

But at least the “Death to America” crowd is cooperating with the IAEA:

…“We are not obliged to introduce to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the nuclear facilities that we are to build in the future and only 180 days before entry of nuclear substances there, we will inform the IAEA of them,” Salehi said.

Hey, I guess this counts as another of Hillary’s many accomplishments! (For more from the author of “RESET: Russia to Build Eight (8) New Nuke Plants in Iran” please click HERE)

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