90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Nigeria: Jihad against Christians

Pictured: Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, from a November 2018 Boko Haram propaganda video.

The current violence, which has been getting worse since early 2017, "is slightly different, in that it is a series of targeted attacks on Christian communities attempting to displace farmers and take land for herders." — Nathan Johnson, International Christian Concern, Regional Manager for Africa.
"Christians in Nigeria are treated as second-class citizens in the twelve northern states, where sharia law is implemented. They are victimized in many ways. Christian girls are kidnapped and forced into marriage to Muslim men. Pastors are abducted for ransom. Churches are vandalized or completely destroyed." — Nathan Johnson.
"The Nigerian government and the international community... have from the start done little to address the situation. This lack of participation is not surprising: they cannot even acknowledge its roots, namely, the intolerant ideology of jihad. As a result, the death toll of Christians has only risen -- and will likely continue to grow exponentially -- until such time that this reality is not only acknowledged but addressed." — Raymond Ibrahim, author and Middle East expert

Christians are being massacred in Nigeria by Fulani and Boko Haram jihadists -- and no one seems to care.

Christians are being massacred in Nigeria by Fulani and Boko Haram jihadists -- and no one seems to care.

The most severe persecution of these defenseless Christians -- who make up half of Nigeria's total population -- has been taking place mostly in the Muslim north of the country, which is governed by sharia law, and in the states known as the "Middle Belt," which are a transition zone between the northern and southern states.

According to the human rights organization International Christian Concern (ICC):

"Fulani militants continued to carry out violent attacks throughout Nigeria's Middle Belt region in March. The brutal attacks perpetrated by these hardline Islamic militants persistently spark fear among Christians living in the Middle Belt, as death tolls continue to rise... Last month [March 2019], at least 150 people were killed.
"... Nigerian bishop William Amove Avenya of Benue State said, 'Fulani tribesmen armed to the teeth, are murdering pregnant women and children, and destroying our smallholdings.

"'This is a time bomb that threatens to ignite the whole region. We cannot wait for a mass genocide to happen before intervening,' he added.
"... Below are the largest attacks that took place in March:

March 4, 2019: Fulani militants attack Benue State, killing 23

March 11, 2019: Fulani militias attack Kajuru, burning more than 100 homes, killing 52

March 18, 2019: Boko Haram sieged a Christian majority town in Adamawa State, inhabited by more than 370,000 people."

ICC Regional Manager for Africa, Nathan Johnson, who recently visited Nigeria, told Gatestone that this deadly violence began less than 20 years ago.

"It really only started in 2001, after riots between Muslims and Christians in the Plateau region left more than 1,000 people dead and many churches destroyed. There were also deadly riots in 2008 and 2010, and the tension between the two communities has been...

South Africa’s decline worst of nations not at war

A quarter of a century after South Africa's racial "liberation" the official unemployment rate is over 27 percent. Among people under 35 the rate is is an alarming 53 percent - one the highest in the world.

The black ANC government repeatedly vows, especially during election campaigns, to create jobs. But it has not been able to deliver. Only open borders, naked corruption and almost no accountability have thrived since 1994.

For the first time the ANC’s new manifesto for the May 8 elections included the party’s commitment to getting tough on the flood of undocumented immigrants.

The party says it will “take tough measures against undocumented immigrants involved in criminal activities in the country or in cross-border crimes, including those involved in illegal trading and selling adulterated food in townships and villages”.

At his speech at Moses Mabhida Stadium in January, President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke about the need for “effective border management”.

The International Monetary Fund in April lowered South Africa’s projected GDP growth rate for 2019 from 1,2 percent, citing policy uncertainty over land grabs, high levels of corruption and recurrent electricity blackouts, harming investor confidence.

The government’s target is to cut unemployment by half, to about 14 percent by 2020, but this is “unlikely to occur”, says the World Bank in a 2018 report.

The massive unemployment rate has fuelled apathy among voters, with the electoral commission noting a 47 percent drop in registered voters aged 18 and 19. Some two-thirds of the nine million eligible voters who did not bother to register are under 30 years old.

With lower standards of admission, access to higher education has increased, with the number of graduates from public universities more than doubling from 92 874 in 2000 to 203 076 in 2016.

Despite that, new research from think tank Eunomix Business & Economics showed that South Africa endured one of the worst declines over the past 12 years for a country not at war.

On a range of social, economic, and governance measures, South Africa deteriorated more than any other nation not involved in an international or civil conflict, it pointed out. Only conflict-torn countries such as Mali, Ukraine, and Venezuela have performed worse in the past decade than South Africa, said Eunomix.

An index of security, governance, prosperity, and welfare indicators showed South Africa slumped to 88th out of 178 nations last year from 31st in 2006. The think tank blamed the past nine years of worsening corruption and...

How to Counter 7 Lies in Turkey's Denial of the Armenian Genocide

Next week, on the 24th, is the commemoration of the Armenian genocide, 114 years after the Ottoman Empire started systematically murdering 1.5 million Armenians, as well as Greek and Assyrian minority Christians.

One man and the state he leads will not be participating in this important recognition of historical truth. Turkey's anti-Semitic, Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, fancies himself the reviver of a neo-Ottoman Empire and has undertaken to spread his ideological influence globally. That includes Armenian genocide denial.

While Turkey has long fought the recognition of the Armenian genocide internationally, the situation under Erdoğan's Islamist ideology has led him into an alliance with the international Muslim Brotherhood and its American affiliates. This has given Turkish propaganda a reach into the United States that didn't exist at these levels before. Samantha Rose Mandeles wrote at The American Spectator in February on how Turkish diplomats have spoken at and influenced prominent Muslim groups since 2014. One such organization officially embracing Turkey's genocide denial is the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), an umbrella group of over 30 Islamist charities and mosques, which published a "Statement on 1915 Turkish-Armenian Events" that forwards Turkey's denialism.

American Muslim organizations that founded the USCMO include American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), ICNA, Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), MAS, Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), and The Mosque Cares (Ministry of Imam W. Deen Mohammed). Today, 32 Muslim organizations and mosques affiliate with the group.

Now Turkey has gone a step farther: actively distributing Armenian genocide denialist propaganda to American Muslims. Last year, MAS's 21st annual West Coast convention took place from November 22 to 24 at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario, California. The conference featured booths from Muslim charities and businesses. But Turkey was the only Muslim government present, represented by two booths. There, amid complimentary Turkish flags, hats, and t-shirts, they distributed free books and pamphlets challenging the regime's enemies, including the Armenian people.

A good example of the Turkish propaganda on offer is Our Neighbours of a Thousand Years: The Armenians, a slick, 52-page book filled with pictures and even a miniature CD in the back with folk songs. While the title seems friendly and inviting, the book contains questionable historical claims and shaky arguments about Armenian-Turkish relations.

These falsehoods include the following:

The book quotes Erdoğan at the beginning demanding that all death and suffering of the period be treated the same, ignoring the historical question of who was responsible: "a fair humanitarian and conscientious stance requires an understanding of all the pain experienced in this period regardless of religion or ethnic origin." This is akin to insisting that equal historical weight be given to the Jews murdered in the Holocaust and to the Nazis responsible for their deaths.
The book claims that the Ottoman Empire did not seek to exterminate the Armenians — that it sought only to relocate them. The decision to forcibly relocate Armenians was supposedly the result of...

President Trump Responds Perfectly to Pathetic Junior Senator Mitt Romney

Junior Senator Mitt Romney has become Utah’s Jeff Flake, constantly attacking the President and serving up fresh meat for the Democrats. He has no sense of loyalty and likes to place himself on a high moral plane looking down, judging others, especially the President.

In reality, Romney hasn’t accomplished much beyond bloviating. What has he done as a politician that has made a real difference?

Romney posted vile comments on Facebook about President Trump after the Mueller report was released, claiming he was “sickened” by the “dishonesty.” Romney makes a good Democrat lapdog.

Mitt is also a carpetbagger and a waste of time. He had to travel the country to find an electorate that would vote him back into office.

President Trump responded exactly as we did at the Sentinel, but it sounds so much better coming from him.

He said, “If Mitt Romney spent the same energy fighting Barack Obama as he does fighting Donald Trump, he could have won the race (maybe)!”

That’s a big “maybe” given his tendency to back off when Democrats attack.

Happy Easter!

Easter has a different date every year because it’s based on the moon phases. In 325 CE, Constantine I led a council of Christian bishops who decided that Easter must always be a Sunday to honor the resurrection of Jesus. They also said it would immediately follow, but not land on, the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, which is why the date can fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25.