90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Here’s Why Authors, Theologians Think Pope Francis Cooperates With the Chinese Government Despite Persecution of Religious Groups

Pope Francis caused widespread confusion among Catholics when he agreed to recognize bishops appointed by the authoritarian Chinese government in 2018. Over a year later, the pope keeps silent as China continues religious persecution, imprisons priests, and destroys Muslim graveyards.

Catholic authors and theologians provided the Daily Caller News Foundation with a variety of reasons on why Pope Francis keeps silent on Chinese persecution, and why the pope aligned the Catholic Church with the Chinese government in the first place.

“Francis continually denounces Western countries for any efforts at border control, but stays silent on China’s genocide against the Uighur Muslims; on its persecution of Christians; on its escalating crackdown on Hong Kong,” author John Zmirak, who writes about Catholic-related topics, told the DCNF. “Is this a replay of the Hollywood studios that vetoed anti-Hitler movies, for fear of losing business in Germany? Or is it darker? Is what we’re seeing more like the Soviet Union’s stifling of anti-fascist rhetoric after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939?”

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin pushed Francis’s September 2018 deal with the Chinese government, an agreement ending a decade-long power struggle between the Chinese government and the Catholic Church on whether the Chinese government has the power to appoint Catholic bishops. Under the conditions of the deal, Pope Francis recognized the legitimacy of seven bishops selected and appointed by the authoritarian Chinese government.

But this same Chinese government appointing bishops also persecuted Christians for decades, particularly after Communists took control of China in 1949. Led by Catholic bishops appointed by past popes, Chinese Catholics have practiced their faith through underground churches to avoid arrest.

The Chinese government continues to harass, detain, and arrest Chinese Catholics. As recently as Dec. 30, 2019, a Chinese court sentenced a priest to nine years in prison after the priest called the Chinese Communist Party...

Appeasement or war? Trump proves the Iran ‘experts’ wrong again

In 2015, as the debate over President Barack Obama’s proposed nuclear accord with the Iranian regime roiled the nation, mainstream reporters insisted there were only two choices: the deal or war.

It was understandable. Left-of-center media (that is, most outlets) so adored Obama that one of his aides called them his “echo chamber.” Following the White House line was the dutiful, echo-chamber thing to do — even if it meant ignoring rational alternatives to Obama’s appeasement of Tehran that didn’t entail waging war.

Today, liberals are regurgitating the same claims about the consequences of President Trump’s decision to take out Iranian arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani. Iran’s threats of retaliation and the statement that it is abandoning restrictions on its nuclear program are evidence, they say, that Team Trump is sleepwalking to war. The only option, in this line of thinking, is returning to the deal.

According to Obama administration alumni and other voices on the left, the deal was keeping Iran’s nuclear ambitions in check, and it was only Trump’s decision to pull out and reimpose economic sanctions that caused the current trouble.

But these are barefaced lies. Obama’s deal didn’t solve the nuclear problem. And Soleimani and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps began to make trouble for America long before Trump’s pullout from the deal.

Obama’s deal, for starters, made it certain that Iran would eventually gain a weapon. It included generous sunset clauses, permitted the regime to inspect its own military facilities and never required Tehran to come clean on its past weaponization activities. As bad, the deal ignored Iran’s use of state-sponsored terrorism, run by Soleimani’s outfit, even as it enriched the...

Liberals blame ‘climate change’ for Australia fires — as dozens investigated for arson

Hillary Clinton, her liberal friends in Hollywood, and the mainstream media want the world to believe that the changing climate is to blame for raging brushfires in Australia that have killed dozens of people and millions of animals.

Police are now working on the premise arson is to blame for much of the devastation caused this bushfire season. A strike force will investigate whether blazes were deliberately lit, and bring those responsible to justice. https://t.co/TWh1KQycs4 @ebatten7 #NSWFires #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/Dul8dMFrZv
— 7NEWS Sydney (@7NewsSydney) January 3, 2020

It’s fake news.

“Australia’s brushfire emergency, spurred by climate change, has killed 24 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and led to the loss of an estimated half a billion animals,” Clinton tweeted Monday, along with a link. “Here are ways you can help.”

Australian actress Cate Blanchett lectured the world at the Golden Globes Sunday night, as well:

Trump Campaign Exposes Six Separate Foreign Policy Lies by Democrat Joe Biden

From Iraq to Iran, Afghanistan to Ukraine, and everywhere in between, President Donald Trump’s campaign says former Vice President Joe Biden has been lying nonstop about foreign policy in recent days in an attempt to revise history in his political favor.

The Democrat presidential frontrunner in 2020, Biden, has made a number of claims in recent days that are demonstrably untrue, ranging from false claims that the Iran deal during the Obama administration “solved” the problem of Iran to untrue claims that he was supportive of former President Obama’s decision to launch the 2011 raid that finally killed Osama bin Laden.

Matt Wolking, the deputy communications director for rapid response for President Trump’s re-election campaign, joined Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend to expose several of Biden’s recent lies about foreign policy.

“What you’re seeing is Joe Biden is out there on the campaign trail trying to claim he is a foreign policy expert, and he claims that that is his area of expertise—which is really quite funny when you think about it,” Wolking said. “His own Defense Secretary under Obama, Bob Gates, said that he was wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades. So, now Biden is trying to rewrite history. He’s telling lie after lie to voters on a whole...

Trump Slams Democrats, Media For Describing Terrorist Soleimani As “Wonderful Human Being”

“He was designated as a terrorist by Obama, and then Obama did nothing about it.”

President Trump made an impromptu call to conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh’s show Monday, and slammed the Democrats’ and the establishment media’s attempts to frame Iran Gen. Qasem Soleimani as anything but a murderous terrorist.

“He was a terrorist, you know, they don’t want to call him a terrorist. Now the Democrats are trying to make him sound like he was this wonderful human being,” Trump said, agreeing with Limbaugh that the media has been describing Soleimani as being like a “poet.”

The President railed against the “totally fake newspapers” for penning pieces painting Soleimani in a sympathetic light, just as they did when they described the killed ISIS terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar.”

“They tried to build him up into a relatively wonderful guy,” Trump noted.

The President also slammed the Obama administration, saying that they were...

Addressing the British Parliament in 1982, President Ronald Reagan outlined a plan for placing the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism on the “ash heap of history.”

It is an objective President Donald Trump might pursue against the mullahs in Iran, who are subsidizing terrorism in the Middle East and threatening to export it elsewhere.

The latest military and verbal volleys between the United States and Iran started when a branch of the Hezbollah terrorist group (called “militants” by some reporters) attacked the American Embassy in Baghdad.

Unlike the 2012 terrorist assaults in Benghazi, Libya, during which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA operatives, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs, were killed, while President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did little, Trump sent in the Marines who repelled the terrorists.

The Baghdad incident followed U.S. airstrikes that killed 25 militia members, who the U.S. had claimed were responsible for the death of an American contractor. Following the repulsion of the embassy attackers, new U.S. airstrikes near Baghdad International Airport killed Qassim Suleimani, leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

This prompted a response from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who said Iran and other “free nations in the region” will take revenge on the United States. The only “free nation” in the region is Israel, which Iran has promised to destroy.

In terms of a focused verbal response, it is hard to beat what Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said: