GROWING MUSLIM THREAT ON EUROPEAN STREETS

“When the accused arrives at Hyttegata, he no longer has a bow and arrow. In Hyttegata, five people are killed with stabbing weapons,” Norwegian police said in a statement on Monday. Braathen is a Muslim convert who had previously been flagged for signs of radicalization. (https://rss24.news/norway-attack-victims-were-not-killed-with-a-bow-and-arrow-say-police/)

^“You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.”   (Deut. 28:19)

The suspect in a bow-and-arrow attack, which turned out to be knife attacks, that left five people dead in Norway was a recent convert to Islam who had been contacted by police over fears he was being radicalized.  A 37-year-old Danish man has been charged after admitting to carrying out the deadly attack, which also left two others seriously injured in the town of Kongsberg, according to prosecutor Ann Iren Svane Mathiassen. Norwegian security services said that it appears to have been an “act of terror.”

Police were alerted to the incident just after 6pm local time on Wednesday. The attacker then “managed to escape an initial confrontation” with police before being detained “35 minutes after the attack began,” during which time the victims “were most likely killed,” the BBC said.  (The Week, 10/14/2021)

LEIGH-ON-SEA, England, Oct 15 (Reuters) – British lawmaker David Amess was stabbed to death in an Essex church on Friday by an assailant who lunged at him as he met voters, in what police said was a terrorist attack.

Amess, 69, from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, was knifed repeatedly in the attack at about midday in the Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, east of London.

The Metropolitan Police, whose counter-terrorism unit are leading the investigation of the incident, said in a statement early on Saturday that they declared the fatal stabbing as a terrorist incident.

The early investigation has revealed a “potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism,” the police added.   (Reuters, 10/15/2021)

Amess’ Qatar links examined
Police investigating the murder of David Amess are examining his ties to the Gulf state of Qatar. The Conservative MP was chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the country. The man being questioned over the stabbing is the son of a former prime ministerial adviser in Somalia, where the current leadership is backed by Qatar. The MP’s family have called on the public to “set aside hatred and work towards togetherness.”  (10/18/2021)

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ISLAMIZATION OF GERMANY

The city of Cologne, once a stronghold of Christendom in Germany, has authorized mosques in the city to begin sounding Muslim calls to prayer over outdoor loudspeakers. The move, ostensibly aimed at promoting multicultural diversity and inclusion, represents a significant step toward the cultural normalization of Islam in Germany. It is taking German multiculturalism into uncharted territory.

Critics say that comparing Islamic prayer calls to church bells is a false equivalence because the muezzin proclaims religious slogans such as “there is no god but Allah” and “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the Greatest”).  (Gatestone, 10/14/2021)

How Germany’s far-right gained, even as it lost         

On the face of it, Germany’s main far-right party should be licking its wounds. The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, dropped about 2 percentage points in last month’s elections from its showing in 2017, when it entered the country’s parliament for the first time and won the status of being the largest opposition party in the German Bundestag. With just about 10 percent of the vote, it has lost seats and will almost certainly no longer occupy the role of main opposition party as other more mainstream parties wrangle over the shape of the next government.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Both of Germany’s two traditional political mainstays — the center-left Social Democrats and center-right Christian Democrats — won less than 30 percent of the vote. The AfD can gain a stronger foothold in a context of deepening fragmentation in German politics. In the states that once comprised Communist-ruled East Germany, the AfD is solidifying its position as a major regional force. It is particularly popular among younger cohorts of voters, and the party could be in a position to dominate in future state elections in Saxony and Thuringia.

“I’m confident that sooner or later there is no way without the AfD,” Tino Chrupalla, one of the AfD’s co-leaders, told reporters last month. “It will certainly start on the state level.”

“The AfD is here to stay,” Matthias Quent, professor of sociology at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, told the New York Times. “There was the widespread and naive hope that this was a short-lived protest phenomenon. The reality is that the far right has become entrenched in the German political landscape.”  (Ishaan Tharoor, Columnist, Washington Post, 19 Oct 2021)

In case of further escalation of the power struggle between the USA and China, German business circles go so far as to consider breaking up companies into different regional units or taking even more drastic steps, according to a comprehensive analysis elaborated by the Bertelsmann Foundation in cooperation with the Federation of German Industries (BDI). The analysis outlines five scenarios for the development of this US American-Chinese conflict, two of which – more cooperative ones – are deemed unlikely. A third scenario envisions the continuation of the status quo, while another two anticipate a further escalation of tensions. This would lead to clearly delineated blocs, a dramatic military buildup and an eventual erosion of the EU between the USA and China, its disintegration and possibly even its economic collapse. Some companies could feel compelled to completely decouple from the Chinese market and not ruling out withdrawal from the US, or even from the “European home market.” Initial signs of a new orientation can already be discerned in current corporate decisions.   (German Foreign Policy, 10/18/2021)

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IRAN NOW FULL MEMBER OF SCO

• In another blow to the US, after many years of Iran trying to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), SCO members finally agreed in September to elevate Iran’s status from “observer” to “full member,” even though the global financial watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force, had placed the Islamic Republic on its terrorism financing blacklist.
• The SCO is a political, military, economic and security alliance that currently includes China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. This alliance will likely… assist the mullahs of Iran to defy the West.
• In the face of these critical developments, the Biden administration has remained silent. (Gatestone, 10/16/2021)

Danish Islamic Scholar Criticizes The Taliban:  Your Goal Should Be To Liberate Humanity From The Filth Of Liberalism, The Injustice Of Capitalism.  (MEMRI, 10/19/2021)

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US

To be clear, the spending bill is actually the creation of a national debt so massive that it has the means to destabilize a democracy dependent on a functioning economy.

For the Chinese Communist Party, seeking to master the 21st Century as the one global superpower, it represents a strategic victory without so much as firing a single bullet. They know that an economically weakened America cannot possibly sustain its military leadership when it is burdened with paying down a massive debt. Our allies and unaligned nations recognize this threat, as well, and will reinvent their relationship with China if they believe America’s best days are in the past.

This recipe for an economic apocalypse comes at a time when new job creation has stagnated and the specter of a serious inflation has begun to emerge….  As historians will tell you if we have the wisdom to listen, no one escapes the devastation of a debtor nation. No one.   (Gatestone, Lawrence Kadish, 10/21/2021)

JOURNAL‘S COMMENT ON BIDEN

What a change of political fortune. In July President Biden was still on a honeymoon with voters, but now his job approval rating is underwater. His disastrous handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal undermined his campaign pledge of governing competence, and now inflation and shortages of workers and goods are weighing on public confidence in his economic policies. The Labor Department reported that prices kept rising in September, and Americans are noticing that they’re paying more for gasoline, food, houses, cars and more. (Wall Street Journal, 10/18/2021)

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TO THE POINT

• China linked to English schools — The Times has revealed that top private schools in England are making tens of millions of pounds from close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The board of Harrow International School Hong Kong includes four senior Communist Party members, while the website of one of Dulwich College’s nine associated Chinese campuses lists policies and procedures for turning children into party members. Tom Tugendhat, Tory chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said: “Education is one of Britain’s great exports but these reports are concerning.”  (The Week, 10/18/2021)

• “The journey towards addiction is often multi-layered and complex. But, by recognising what lies beneath addiction, we can help remove the taboo and shame that sadly surrounds it.”  The Duchess of Cambridge warns that addiction can happen to anyone in a landmark speech as part of the Forward Trust’s Taking Action on Addiction campaign. (The Week, 10/19/2021)

• Prince William has suggested that tech billionaires should focus on saving Earth from the impact of climate change rather than directing their resources into space tourism.  Speaking to the BBC’s Newscast podcast, the Duke of Cambridge told presenter Adam Fleming that “we need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.” (The Week, 10/14/2021)

• The meteoric rise of a controversial television pundit has put him in prime position to replace Marine Le Pen as the biggest threat to Emmanuel Macron in next year’s French presidential election.  Dubbed the “French Trump” by Politico, Eric Zemmour is racking up “far more prime-time TV slots and front-page stories than many of his rivals.”  And while critics claim his “inflammatory rhetoric on immigration and Islam” is “degrading the public debate ahead of April’s election,” Zemmour is “on the rise in the polls,” said the news site.  (The week, 10/14/2021)

• “The numbers are staggering,” said Gino Hoel on Slate.fr. A landmark report published last week estimates that about 330,000 children were abused by clergymen and officials of the Catholic Church in France between 1950 and 2020. At least 3,000 priests and officials performed criminal acts, according to the 2,500-page review by Jean-Marc Sauvé, a former senior civil servant; about 90% of their victims were boys.   (The Week, 10/15/2021)

WATCH THEREFORE AND PRAY

Donald Trump says he can beat Oprah in the next election. (REX/Shutterstock)

So now, we have Oprah Winfrey being talked about as the next President of the United States.   If she does decide to run in 2020, she could definitely win against Mr. Trump, although it is by no means certain.   It would mean America going from being led by a reality TV star to a talk show host.   If nothing else, this shows the influence of television today.

It started with CNN, now almost forty years old.   Before the 24/7 news channel was born, television news was serious and sober, even boring.   In the early days, all the news took up 15 minutes of our time.   News was separate from entertainment.   CNN blurred the two.   And it’s just gotten worse.   Even the news programs themselves became entertainment, with participants yelling and screaming at each other.

Given this background, it’s easier to understand a visit I made to a doctor on Tuesday.   The receptionist, Sandra,  is from Germany, though she has lived in Michigan for a good twenty years.   She recently went to visit her parents in Germany.   I asked her how the visit went. She told me it went well and made the comment that “people over there are so much better informed, even my parents who are just ordinary people; they know so much more about the world than we do over here.”

She added:   “TV news here only covers America, with maybe one minute for the rest of the world.”

It’s not just the president who puts “America First!”

I made a point of watching “DW News” at 5.30 that day, on our PBS channel.   DW stands for Deutsche Welle and is the main German news service.   It does a very good job of covering world news, including American news.   It is, as Sandra said, like watching events on a different planet.

They are exceptionally good when it comes to European and Mideast news.

Christians are told to “watch therefore and pray” (Luke 21:36).  Jesus Christ said this in the context of world events that culminate in His Second Coming.  These events could not possibly take place until after 1948, when the nation of Israel came into existence, so they are for our time now.   So many prophecies relate to Israel (biblical Judah) and Jerusalem, in particular.   The latter has become a major point of contention in recent weeks, following President Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy there, thereby recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

If Christians are to effectively “watch” world events in the context of Bible prophecy, watching Fox News for three hours each evening is not going to help.   CNN won’t help, either; or any of the other US based television channels.   DW News is not perfect and definitely has a slant, but at least you will have a good idea of what’s going on in the Middle East and Europe.   These are the two geographical areas that the Bible focuses on when it comes to prophecy.   Neither is the central area of focus of US-news based channels.

One thing is for sure – neither DW nor the BBC are as entertaining as CNN, Fox, ABC, etc.   But does “Watch therefore” include entertainment?

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MYTHS OF ISLAMIC TERRORISM

The “Clarion Project challenges radical Islam and promotes human rights.   We focus on the United States but also Islamist extremism in the Middle East and Europe”.   The following info chart was in my mailbox this morning.   It demolishes some of the myths that surround Islamic terrorists.

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Taking [white owned] land should increase food production       – says Ramaphosa

Nongoma – South Africa could turn into the ultimate paradise if the implementation of the policy of expropriation of land without compensation leads to higher food production, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa said in Nongoma, Kwazulu-Natal on Sunday.  “In fact, it is possible for us to begin a process of working the land and improving agriculture – making it a very successful factor in our country,”   Ramaphosa said, addressing King Goodwill Zwelithini at Osuthu Palace – explaining the ANC’s decision to implement a policy of land expropriation.   Ramaphosa emphasised that the implementation of the ANC’s policy must not harm the economy, the agriculture sector or food security.   “We can make this country the garden of Eden,” the new ruling party head said at a meeting to introduce the ANC’s new top six leaders to the Zulu king. Ramaphosa said redistributed land must be used productively.   He estimated that increased food production could grow the economy by two million jobs.   In his address at the meeting, Zwelithini then urged Ramaphosa to pursue this policy.    He said that “only a very small proportion” of the people had had their land returned to them.  “We look to you to act … with speed.”

Mr Ramaphosa clearly fails to remember that neighboring Zimbabwe confiscated white-owned land twenty years ago;  the result was a dramatic fall in food production.   Two decades later, people are still going hungry.

One further thought:   a day after Ramaphosa called for the confiscation of white land,  Donald Trump said something derogatory about Africa (and Haiti).  One was condemned as “racist”;  nothing critical was said of the other.   It’s the usual double standard!

LONDON’S TOLERANCE IS CLEARLY LIMITED

London’s Muslim Mayor, Sadiq Khan, is also guilty of a double standard.  London, he boasts, is a tolerant, multicultural city.   But he threatens Donald Trump with massive demonstrations if he should visit the UK.   Clearly, there’s a limit to tolerance!   This may or may not have been a factor in today’s announcement from the White House — that the US president will not be visiting London to open the new American Embassy.  It’s also the case that British immigration policies have led to a domestic situation that threatens the Special Relationship with the United States.