MICHIGAN MILITIA PLOT TO KIDNAP GOVERNOR

The above signs are popping up all over Michigan. “Pure Michigan” is the state’s promotional slogan.

I am not a member of a Michigan militia. Nor do I know anybody who is.

But I think I understand their frustration.

So-called “white supremacists” are mostly people who want to preserve their identity and culture, something people don’t have to be concerned about in most other countries. The Governor seems to spend more time at Hindu Dewali and Muslim festivals than she does at Christian ones. They see their state in economic decline as jobs have moved overseas. Employed in the private sector, from which all wealth comes, they do not have the benefit of pay increases every year, like those in government jobs. They lose a few thousand a year to tax, while billionaires pay next to nothing; while their standard of living keeps falling. The Governor taking extraordinary and unconstitutional powers to impose restrictions on them for Covid-19 was the last straw. They simply broke and wanted to hit back. Not a wise choice, admittedly.

Perhaps a reading of I Samuel 8 is wise here. When Israel wanted a king, God warned the people that government would take more and more from them, until they would cry out in pain. That’s exactly what is happening today in America and other western nations.

“And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. ¹⁵ He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. ¹⁶ And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest [a]young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. ¹⁷ He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. ¹⁸ And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the LORD will not hear you in that day.” (I Samuel 8:14-18)

If the Democrats gain power next month, taxes are set to rise by an estimated 15%. Governor Gretchen Whitmer is fond of reminding people of her oath of office taken on the Bible. I suggest she reads I Samuel 8 (and beyond) and learns from the history of the kings of Israel the dire consequences of high taxation. These included the division of the kingdom. It’s not beyond the realm of probability that this “kingdom” could be divided between those fiscally responsible states and those that don’t pay their way.

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THE WEST’S DEMOGRAPHIC SUICIDE

First, “the demographic weight of the West in the world” has been declining. The percentage of the global population comprised by the U.S. and Canada has shrunk from 6.8% to 4.7% since 1950. Europe has declined from close to 22% of the global population to less than 10% today.

This will adversely affect the economic power of the West relative to the rest of the world. Although higher productivity has enabled the West to maintain its economic dominance in years past, the rest of the world is developing rapidly and narrowing the productivity gap. In a quarter of a century, China is expected to have approximately four times the GDP of the U.S. India will likely surpass China, due to its much higher fertility rate. The geopolitical ramifications of this shift will be far-reaching.

First, “the demographic weight of the West in the world” has been declining. The percentage of the global population comprised by the U.S. and Canada has shrunk from 6.8% to 4.7% since 1950. Europe has declined from close to 22% of the global population to less than 10% today.

Second, Western countries are experiencing a steadily aging population and workforce. GDP and tax revenue growth won’t keep pace with spending on pensions and healthcare. If there is too much transfer of wealth via taxes from the rest of society to pay for the needs of an aging population, the imbalance will drain the economy. Democracy will become “gerontocracy” because older voters dominate at the polls, advancing their interests.

Finally, low fertility rates will continue to create pressure for mass immigration into Western countries to meet the demands of labor markets, which can have deleterious cultural and political consequences. Immigration into the U.S., with its large number of Hispanics, is more assimilable to its prevailing culture than immigration into Europe, which has experienced in recent years a large influx of Muslims, who often choose not to integrate culturally. Europe’s native population, which has traditionally been more homogeneous than that of the U.S., has undergone a very sudden change with the immigrants. Macarrón estimates that 25% of babies born in France are from first-or second-generation Muslim immigrants; in Germany 15%, in Austria 14%, and in Spain, approximately 10%. If these increasingly “varied and complex” societies do not manage foreign immigration carefully, there could be severe “social clashes” in the future. (“The West’s demographic suicide,” Marilyn Stern, MEF, 9/29/2020).

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WHITE PRIVILEGE THEORY ‘HURTS WORKING-CLASS BOYS’

Pressure to apologise for “white privilege” is pushing white working-class boys even further “behind everyone else,” MPs have been warned.

Professor Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at the University of Kent, told the Commons Education Select Committee yesterday that “over the last ten years our national conversation has become more consumed about other groups in society.”

White working-class boys, who are among the worst educational performers, are landed with “a status deficit” and made “to feel as though they are not being given as much recognition and esteem as others,” Goodwin said.

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TOWARDS SOCIALISM IN THE US

One party is effectively saying it will pack the courts, including the Supreme Court, with politically friendly judges, so that the judiciary will be an extension of one political party rather than part of a system of checks and balances, the separation of powers or a co-equal branch of government. One party is openly saying it will remove the electoral college, so that sparsely populated, rural states would be totally outvoted by cities. One party is openly saying that it would add more states, such as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, to provide it with more Senators to create a permanent one-party rule. And one party is openly saying it would reverse core parts of our Bill of Rights so we could be jailed for free speech, or for owning a gun to defend ourselves, as the minutemen did, against “enemies foreign and domestic.” (“Slouching towards the Socialist States of America,” Chris Farrell, Gatestone, 10/13/2020)

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CHRISTIANS AGAINST TRUMP

A group of prominent Christians from both sides of the aisle, including a past faith adviser to former President Barack Obama, is forming a political action committee designed to chip away at Christian support for President Donald Trump in the final weeks of the 2020 campaign.

Dubbed Not Our Faith, the new super PAC plans to roll out six-figure TV and digital ads focused on Christian voters — particularly the evangelical and Catholic voters who helped power Trump to victory in 2016. Its first digital ad, set to run in Michigan and Pennsylvania, takes sharp aim at Trump’s claim to a foothold with Christians.

The ad, shared with The Associated Press in advance of its release, says Trump “has used Christianity for his own purposes,” invoking imagery of the Republican president’s photo op outside a historic Washington church amid this summer’s racial justice demonstrations. Urging Christians to break from Trump, the ad states that they “don’t need Trump to save them. The truth is that Trump needs Christians to save his flailing campaign.”

That sharp critique of Trump’s standing with Christian voters comes as the president looks to evangelicals in particular to help him muscle to reelection over Democratic nominee Joe Biden. While Biden’s campaign is mounting a well-organized faith outreach effort, that work largely focuses on an affirmative case for the former vice president rather than the overtly anti-Trump case that the new PAC is making. (“Bipartisan Christian group forms super PAC to oppose Trump,” Elana Schor, AP, 10/13/2020)

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DOUBLE STANDARDS

President Obama received a Nobel peace prize months after he was sworn in, before he had done anything to deserve it. President Trump has broken through decades of antagonism between Israel and some Arab countries, with a peace deal that alters the balance of power in the Mideast. The Nobel committee gave the prize to an organization fighting hunger. Double standard, anyone?

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HUNTER BIDEN SCANDAL

Another double standard is the following. Why isn’t this in the American papers?

Hunter Biden pursued deals with a major Chinese energy company including one that would be ‘interesting for me and my family’, new secret emails said to be from the presidential candidate’s son claim.

He also struck a deal for $30 million plus bonuses ‘based on introductions alone’ over three years after his father left office, then was offered a ‘much more lasting and lucrative arrangement.’

The son of the Democratic presidential nominee communicated with China’s largest private energy company, CEFC, according to the latest trove of messages unearthed by the New York Post from what is said to be Hunter’s personal laptop. (Daily Mail 10/15/2020)

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BLACK APPRAISALS OF BLACK LIVES MATTER

“I have no objection to the statement ‘black lives matter.’ But the movement that uses that name has a sinister hostility to serious, fact-driven discussion of the problem it purports to care about. Even more sinister is the haste with which academic, media and business leaders abase themselves before it. There will be no resolution of America’s many social problems if free thought and free speech are no longer upheld in our public sphere.” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

“All of these corporations… that give a dollar or millions of dollars to the BLM agenda, they are destroying black lives.” — Niger Innis.

“Little Yummy was an eleven-year-old murderer. He got murdered at eleven by a 14-year-old who is doing life in prison now . . . Where was his father? . . . It starts in the home. My three closest friends did 15-25 years in prison… I was the only one who had a father in my life. I had a father who was a gentle man and a good example — they didn’t.” — Denzel Washington.

“Police don’t wake up and think, ‘I’m going to kill a n*gger today or kill a white man.’ They’re just trying to make it back home to their family in one piece.” — Muhammad Ali Jr.

(“Black Appraisals of Black Lives Matter,” Soeren Kern, Gatestone, 10/7/2020)

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HEALTH INEQUITIES

Our youngest daughter is a nurse. In one of her college textbooks, the following appears, a classic example of revisionist history. I hadn’t realized that healthcare was such a major issue in 1619!

“Systematic differences in health that occur between and within countries and are avoidable and unfair. United States has a long history – starting with colonist’s treatment of American Indians and enslavement of people from Africa. “

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German Imperialism & European Ambitions Beyond NATO
by Franziska Kleiner, 12 Oct 2020, News Click.

At a conference, “Contradictions within imperialist countries and the danger of war,” journalist Jörg Kronauer gave a presentation on German imperialism and its military ambitions. This is an excerpt of the presentation.

In this excerpt, we bring you his views on how German imperialism operates within the NATO alliance and within Europe.

He also talks about PESCO or the Permanent Structured Cooperation.

The ongoing conflict is the fight over who exerts influence in eastern Europe: the Germans or the Russians. This power struggle led to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict and it has not been decided unequivocally for the German/European or Western side, which increases the desire to expand the military pressure on Russia. It manifests itself in the leading role the German army is playing in building the NATO spearhead and stationing NATO troops in Eastern Europe. In this conflict with Russia, NATO is the ideal ally for the German establishment, because it gains access to the military weight of the United States.

(https://www.newsclick.in/german-imperialism-european-ambitions-beyond-NATO)

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GERMANS TRAIN TO DROP US NUCLEAR BOMBS

According to reports, the Bundeswehr has started this year’s “Steadfast Noon” nuclear combat exercise. Within the framework of the so-called Nuclear Sharing, the German Air Force is practicing the various stages German pilots need to go through to drop US nuclear bombs. “Steadfast Noon” takes place every fall. This year’s exercise also includes the near Cologne, which is intended to serve as an alternative site for the 20 nuclear bombs stored at the Büchel Air Base (Eifel). At the same time a second maneuver is taking place in Büchel, aimed at “protecting important infrastructure against airborne threats.” The nuclear bombs in Büchel, as well as the fighter jets capable of dropping them, are to be modernized costing billions of euros. The new B61-12 nuclear bombs can also be deployed with low-yield warheads, lowering the threshold to nuclear war. According to reports, NATO documents mention “nuclear first strikes.” (German Foreign Policy, 10/14/2020)

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EU URGES CEASEFIRE IN ARMENIA-AZERBAIJAN DISPUTE

With clumsy pleas, the EU is urging Armenia and Azerbaijan to agree to a ceasefire. The hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh must be ended immediately, was the call sent out by the EU foreign ministers at their meeting yesterday, albeit without any mention of concrete measures. According to German experts in foreign policy, Germany’s lack of influence on the parties to the conflict must be compensated for through coordinated EU activities and agreements with Russia. In a similar situation earlier this year, Berlin had been able to make progress in its efforts to reach a ceasefire in Libya with Moscow’s help. This option is nowhere in sight in the current case. On Franco-German insistence, EU foreign ministers agreed to impose sanctions on Russia yesterday. Experts estimate that now, Moscow will no longer “expect anything from Europe,” and feels “no longer obliged to take its opinion or interests into account.” The EU is unable to exert influence on Turkey, which supports Azerbaijan: Ankara is playing off Berlin and Paris against one another. (German Foreign Policy, 10/13/2020)

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TO THE POINT

• Marx actively rebelled against the divine. He wrote, “I long to take vengeance on the One Who rules from above. The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed.” (Epoch Times, 10/14/2020)

• Hard-pressed Brits forced to pay £9 BILLION to fund migrant invasion of Britain (10/9/2020)

• NOT JUST TRUMP: Cover on The Economist, 9/26/2020. “Why are so many governments getting it wrong?” (The subject was Covid.)

• In today’s Daily Telegraph online: Big Tech is hiding the truth about lockdowns – Doctors and the WHO are turning against lockdowns, but you wouldn’t know it from Google and the other tech giants who are trying to keep this news quiet, writes James Morrow. (10/12/2020)

• SAUDI ARABIA AND RUSSIA IN UN HUMAN RIGHTS BODY: A string of countries accused of perpetrating human rights abuses are on course to win election to the United Nations Human Rights Council, despite protests from activists and political dissidents. China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Cuba and Pakistan are expected to secure places on the governing board of the organisation in a vote today – a move described by Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch as “like making a gang of arsonists into the fire brigade.” Each country must win 97 votes in the UN General Assembly to be appointed as one of the council’s 14 member states, “meaning a concerted campaign among democracies could still stand a chance of blocking their election,” The Times reports. (The Week, 10/13/2020)

• Xi Jinping tells China’s troops to prepare for war – Chinese President Xi Jinping has told troops to “put all their minds and energy on preparing for war.” During a visit to a military base in the southern province of Guangdong, Xi told the soldiers to “maintain a state of high alert” and be “absolutely loyal, absolutely pure and absolutely reliable”. Tensions between China and the US remain high, while it has also seen skirmishes on its Himalayan border with India. (The Week, 10/15/2020)