Excellent Video on Climate Change

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U.S. Recalls Ambassador to Zambia After Dispute Over Gay Rights

By Don Jacobson

Zambian President Edgar Lungu told U.S. officials he would no longer work with the American diplomat.

File Photo bu Harish Tyagi/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- The United States has recalled its ambassador to Zambia after he waded into a dispute over gay and lesbian rights with the president of the southern African nation.

The U.S. State Department confirmed Monday it has recalled diplomat Daniel Foote after it was told Zambian President Edgar Lungu would no longer work with him.

Saying they were "dismayed" by Lungu's stance, U.S. officials conceded Foote's position in Zambia was "no longer tenable" after the American envoy last month criticized 15-year prison sentences handed down to two gay men convicted of having sex. Sexual relations among gay Zambians, even consensual, is outlawed.

The department said there are no immediate plans to send another diplomat to Zambia, Bloomberg reported.

"Despite this action, the United States remains committed to our partnership with the Zambian people," a State Department spokesperson said, emphasizing that the United States "firmly opposes abuses against" lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons.

Zambian Foreign Minister Joseph Malanji first registered displeasure with Foote last month after the U.S. ambassador said he was "horrified" at the long prison terms imposed on the gay men.

Malanji said the government strongly disagreed with Foote's view, and concluded that his questioning Zambian courts "is tantamount to questioning the Zambian Constitution."

‘Role play’? Swedish Schoolkids Made to Kneel in Gender-Segregated MUSLIM Prayer & Told to Listen to Koran in Arabic

When integration borders on indoctrination

FILE PHOTO © Global Look Press / ZUMAPRESS.com / Faisal Khan

A Swedish school decided to familiarize its fifth-graders with Islamic worshipping by having a teacher recite Koranic verse to them and having them pray facing Mecca, in a bizarre set-up the educators called “role play.”

An offbeat “religion lesson” was taught at the Bjurbäck school situated in the south of Sweden, according to Samhallsnytt news outlet. An outraged parent said pupils were told to face the Kaaba and kneel on prayer mats, while the whole class was divided by gender, with girls forced to the back of the room.

His daughters “did not even want to be there because they could not understand a word of what the teacher read from the Koran in Arabic,” the man, called Markus, revealed. After the “prayer,” the pupils “would dance to Arabic music and eat Arabic cake” in something used to replicate Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festivities marking the end of compulsory fasting.

Local authorities confirmed the report, with an education official in Emmaboda – a serene southern county where the school is located – telling the news outlet that the class did take place.

When confronted by angry parents, the school management defended the activity, referring to it as “role play.” But the awkward explanation didn’t sit well with Markus who wants the school to apologize and its principal to be suspended.

Except, the teacher wasn't role-playing; he was almost certainly a real Islamic teacher and only God knows what he said, what prayers he recited over those children. They certainly have no idea.

“Calling this a role play is not OK as it hits me as a parent,” he told the paper. “It’s me, not the school, that raises my children ... they go there to learn things that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.”

The story sparked uproar on social media.

“Of course, the continuation of it will be Muslim students learning the Lord’s Prayer and attending a Catholic mass,” one person suggested.

Or, John 3:16. That would cause a real uproar!

“Forcing minors into submission is disastrous. One should choose a religion on their own,” another one wrote.

However, the Emmaboda municipality tried to cool down tempers, saying that, while “his lesson was about Islam and Muslim rituals and traditions,” there are other classes teaching about other world religions.

The class in question involved “so-called role-play pedagogy where the students have different roles in order to gain a better understanding” of the subject, it explained. During the lesson, no student expressed concern or felt insecure, the authorities said, adding that taking part in the role play wasn’t compulsory.

Allahu Akbar!

A similar scandal broke out in neighboring Denmark this summer, when a boy of African descent was filmed teaching his third-grade classmates a daily prayer ritual, with the exercise ending with the class kneeling and chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (Allah is great). The school, however, defended the teaching methods used to integrate children of different cultures.

Countries that were once Christian ought to be concerned about how Jesus Christ feels about teaching children false religions, especially those that are violently anti-Christian and anti-Semitic. But then, those once-Christian countries don't really believe Jesus Christ is real, or, for that matter, any religion. God have mercy on them.

Defrauding Sweden No Impediment to Ministerial Jobs in Iraq

Corruption is Everywhere - Iraqi government officials milk

Sweden's generous social benefits in blatantly fraudulent ways

Fishing for Swedish cash: Afghan politician collecting benefits

for his dead mother – report

Swedish Krona banknotes and coins ©  REUTERS/Fredrik Sandberg

An Afghan politician is under investigation in Sweden for collecting benefits intended for his dead mother, according to a new report. Welfare fraud has become a growing problem in the Scandinavian country.

Razaq Ahmadzai, co-leader of Afghanistan’s Green Trend party, is expected to receive a top post in Kabul once the new coalition government is formed. But the Afghan politician is already being handily rewarded by the Swedish government, according to an investigation conducted by Fria Tider. The Swedish outlet has alleged that Ahmadzai, a resident of Sweden, has been collecting a pension intended for his long-deceased mother.

The paper found that Ahmadzai’s mother was registered to receive benefits from the Swedish government in February 2017 – one month after her death was reported by relatives on Facebook. Sweden’s Census Register still lists the dead woman as alive and residing in Afghanistan. Fria Tider reported that Ahmadzai has access to his deceased mother’s bank account, and still enjoys Stockholm’s generosity.

Swedish police were tipped off about the alleged welfare fraud, which is now under investigation. However, cash is still being dutifully deposited into the dead mother’s bank account.

The scheme is the latest high-profile case of alleged fraud in Sweden’s welfare system. In November, Iraq’s serving defense minister, Najah al-Shammari, was accused of receiving child and housing support from Sweden for years – even after returning to his native Iraq.

Corruption is Everywhere, But in the LDS Church?

Mormon Church accused of stockpiling billions,

avoiding paying taxes

Cheri Mossburg and Stephanie Becker
CNN

A whistleblower accuses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints of keeping money for charitable causes.

(George Frey/Getty Images)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormon Church, responded Tuesday to a recently filed whistleblower complaint that accuses the church of stockpiling US$100 billion in accounts intended for charitable works, misleading members and avoiding taxes.

A whistleblower alleges that billions of dollars collected in tithes -- mandatory donations by members -- was invested in an investment arm of the church, Ensign Peak Advisors, but in 22 years, has not been distributed to charitable causes in accordance with IRS rules, according to the complaint filed with the IRS.

"Claims being currently circulated are based on a narrow perspective and limited information," the LDS Church told CNN in a statement. "The Church complies with all applicable law governing our donations, investments, taxes, and reserves. We continue to welcome the opportunity to work with officials to address questions they may have."

The complaint was first reported by the Washington Post. The whistleblower, David Nielsen, is a Mormon who worked for the church until September, his brother, Lars Nielsen, told CNN. David Nielsen is a former senior portfolio manager at Ensign Peak Advisors, his brother said.

The complaint was prepared by the brothers and filed with the IRS in mid-November, according to Lars Nielsen.

Under IRS rules, whistleblowers can be awarded up to 30 percent of any taxes and penalties collected.

"We began this effort before we knew the IRS whistleblower program existed and he asked me to work with him," Lars Nielsen said Wednesday.

David Nielsen wants the IRS to strip the Mormon church of its tax exempt status, according to the complaint.

An IRS spokesman declined to comment citing federal law prohibiting the agency from discussing any specific case. Ensign Peak Advisors declined to comment.

Sam Brunson, a professor of nonprofit tax law at Chicago's Loyola University who is a member of the LDS church, said under Ensign's Articles of Incorporation, "it is both a supporting organization," which means it has to make charitable donations "commensurate in scope" to its funds, and an "integrated auxiliary," which means it might not have to. An integrated auxiliary organization can legally sidestep paying taxes by being a non-profit.

"My guess is that the IRS will probably do nothing" and even if it does, "chances are very small we will find out," he said.

Brunson told CNN that "there is some hurt and questioning" among his friends and church members who worry about those who can't really afford the 10% tithing to a church that allegedly has such a large nest egg.

And he hopes that the whistleblower's complaint will spark some changes. "Members of the church aren't shareholders, but stakeholders, and there's something good about transparency," he said.

The church added in its statement that most of the donated money was used for education, humanitarian work, meeting houses, missionary efforts and temples. Other money was saved.

"Over many years, a portion is methodically safeguarded through wise financial management and the building of a prudent reserve for the future," the church said in the statement.

In the statement the church made no mention of allegedly accumulating $100 billion, but did say, "All Church funds exist for no other reason than to support the Church's divinely appointed mission."

Lars Nielsen told CNN that his brother reveres the people he worked with and said they might have made mistakes. He said the church hierarchy may not have understood what was demanded under the law.

"David and I are very mindful that the money that could be recovered is money that came from the tithe, from people we care about. This is special money," he said.

Rex Murphy: A Political Travesty is Unfolding in America

This sleazy attempt to get Trump out of office illustrates what happens when one side refuses to accept the voice of the people in an election

Rex Murphy, National Post
Rex Murphy is Canada's best political commentator. His drifting to the right in
recent years resulted in the termination of a very long employment at the CBC.

Back in the days when it was obvious to all the oracles of the higher punditry that Donald Trump was on a quixotic quest towards the presidency, and when it was inscribed in the granite of fate that Hillary Clinton was going to thrash the rampageous outsider, some raised a caution: what if Trump, in violation of all standards of American democracy, refused, after losing, as he was surely going to do, to accept the election’s result?

Predictably, the answer was that it would be a horror, typical of Trump’s manic manner, and in Ms. Clinton’s own tweeted words a fundamental “threat to our democracy.” The standard has always been: the people vote, the votes are counted, and save in the most exceptional and absolutely vivid demonstrations of overt and blatant examples of fraud, the loser sighs and the winner goes on to Pennsylvania Avenue. Even after the nail-biter and hanging chads debacle in the 2000 election, did not Albert Gore himself accede to George Bush II, and Americans proceeded, in the most beautiful phrase in politics, “to put it all behind them?”

Not so when, so to speak, Alaric stormed the empire and reduced Rome to ruins, which is the only historic template for how progressives viewed and still view Trump’s successful march to the White House. The psychological shock was massive and unprecedented, the “pussy hats” were out marching in days, and opinion columnists sobbed over the trauma of voters who found themselves incontinent with rage and sorrow that Trump, the disruptor, had won.

It was not, among the virulently anti-Trump forces, supposed to have been this way. Within the coven of Clinton supporters a Trump victory was against nature; it could not be, the goddess of glass ceilings must have been, had to have been, cheated. Hillary herself over the months that followed unspiralled a vast catalogue of why she shouldn’t have lost and then fixed upon the No. 1 favourite. Trump and his lawless henchpersons had “stolen” or “manipulated” the process. And most particularly, most explosively, spun the story of how the dread Darth Putin and Trump had secretly, nefariously, maliciously colluded and “stolen” the election from Hillary.

From the elegant hostelries of Martha’s Vineyard to the sleek mansion-palaces of the Silicon Valley hyper-tycoons, the keening went on. And thus, as soon as Trump was installed, the charge was made, that Trump was in the White House only because he had “colluded” with the Russians, and therefore he was not “really” president. It went even more raw than that. Some of the cable networks, and most of the big press, became utterly absorbed in the effort to prove collusion. The most hysterical of the Russian conspiracy theorists, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, went on every night for two and a half years articulating every wild wisp of an allegation that Trump was an agent of Russia, Putin’s stooge — a president beholden to an enemy tyrant.

With that as context the move to impeach originated. It would not do to have a “Russian asset” control the government of the United States. And for close to two and a half years the Russian connection was investigated as the strongest possible, irrefutable reason to take him out of office: to impeach him, and rid the country of his Russian-contaminated presence in the White House.

Hillary Clinton speaks at the Jewish Labor Committee’s Annual Human Rights Awards Dinner on Dec. 9, 2019, in New York City. Jeenah Moon/Getty Images

So there were investigations without number, hearings without end, with Robert Mueller, the distinguished, highly respected Washington prestige-figure all the while doing the most detailed and rigorous dive into the whole mess. Mueller was going to do the job, bring home the bacon. No report was more anticipated. And when it did come: Nada, nothing, no American, no one in the Trump administration, not Trump himself or his auxiliaries had “colluded with the Russians to steal the election.” The Russian collusion fantasy collapsed. Democrats again went into mourning. Rachel Maddow checked in for aromatherapy and radical grief counselling.

But. The impeachment game itself was not the least affected. After Russia, Russia, Russia every day, almost within minutes the impeach brigade jumped on a phone call to Ukraine. I’m not going to detail this adventure save to note that the speed with which his opponents went from “having evidence of collusion with Russia” as the ground base for their impeachment efforts — the very speed of the switch to Ukraine, was or should be mind-blowing.

And now to this very week: when articles of impeachment have been drawn up to vote on, on Wednesday or Thursday, there are only two charges — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Where’s Russia, where’s Lord Putin, where’s treason and being a “stooge” of a foreign power? How can they leap, with such shameless ease, from the massive campaign of nearly three years insisting they had proof Trump was a tool of Putin, to this petty sideline of an allegation that Trump abused his power on a phone call to Ukraine?

A copy of the House of Representatives articles of impeachment resolution that Democrats hope to use to impeach U.S. President Donald Trump is seen after being released in Washington on Dec. 10, 2019. Jim Bourg/Reuters

All this sits alongside what has been revealed during this farce, that the FBI and its masters had set spies in Trump’s campaign, that they had used the Steele dossier — compiled by the Clinton camp and utterly discredited — to obtain the famous FISA warrants, that they had played pat-a-ball with Hillary on her server, and the Clinton Foundation’s octopus relation with foreign “investors.” That, in fact, the whole predicate of their investigations came from a paid-for, confected, Clinton research dump, with some of the most salacious, unverified and to-be-proven-false allegations ever to rise against a president. The immortal charge came from the head of the FBI himself, and was repeated in his book tour: “I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” he said. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.” Of course James Comey didn’t know — that’s the off-ramp of every sly insinuation.

So now this week, the move to impeachment proceeds but is reduced from the melodrama of Russian collusion, the word Russia not even in the two articles of the impeachment itself. And what are these two? Nothing more than a formless and flowing river of hot fudge and mostly composed of the same materials, so vague they could be hauled out on a thousand occasions.

Members of the House Rules Committee hold a hearing on the impeachment of U.S. President

Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 17, 2019. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

But no Russia. That’s the big take: It is what is not in the charges, which assures anyone looking at this that the desire to impede, demean and entangle Trump, not “high crimes and misdemeanours,” was and is the whole and only motive behind a transparent travesty. The impeachment process as we have observed turns, with vicious irony, on something Hillary Clinton herself warned about, when she was “certain” and half the country was, too, that she was going to win. That not accepting the result of an election was a grave threat to American democracy.

She was right. The past three years, clouded daily by this sleazy attempt to get Trump out by means other than by democratic vote, is the full illustration of what happens when one side — the Democrats — refuse to accept the voice of the people in an election. And there is an additional irony attached: the impeachment mania may well increase support for Trump and give him a second term. As was said of old: He who diggeth a pit shall fall into it.

If Trump's phone call with Zelensky is grounds for impeachment, I guarantee there is not one President who ever sat in the Oval Office who didn't deserve a similar fate. And many have committed far more outrageous travesties, but no-one is looking into those.

It should be noted here that the Republicans did exactly the same thing during the first term of Obama. They attempted to distort and prevent everything he tried to do, not on the basis of individual merit, but because they so intensely disliked him, whether for his colour, his progressiveness, or his preference for Muslims over Jews. They certainly did not respect the people's choice. Whoever wins next year, should expect more of the same, only, perhaps, worse.

Religion of Peace - Justice by Mob Rule and Mass Hysteria

Pakistani Court Sentences Professor to Death for Blasphemy

A police officer stands guard at the entrance of the Central Jail in Multan, during Hafeez' sentencing

© Reuters / Arshad Raza Zaidi

An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan has sentenced a university professor to death for insulting the Prophet Muhammed. The trial has already seen his defense lawyer shot dead, under the Muslim world’s harshest blasphemy regime.

Thirty-three-year-old Junaid Hafeez was arrested in 2013 and charged with making derogatory remarks about the Islamic Prophet Muhammed on social media. Under the country’s harsh blasphemy law, he was sentenced on Saturday to death by hanging.

"We have a spineless system.

No one can stand up to a blasphemy charge.”

His lawyers claim he was framed by Islamic extremists for his liberal views, and said they plan to appeal the verdict. “There can't be a fair trial in blasphemy cases in Pakistan,” defense lawyer Asad Jamal told Reuters. "We have a spineless system. No one can stand up to a blasphemy charge.”

Pakistan has the strictest blasphemy laws in any Muslim-majority country. Though nobody has been actually executed under these laws, more than 75 of those accused have been killed extra-judicially, according to the Centre for Social Justice.

Critics say blasphemy charges are used to settle personal scores, and allow the country’s Muslim majority to persecute religious minorities. While a 2014 poll showed that a majority of Pakistanis want blasphemy legislation repealed, religious hardliners often turn up in droves to punish offenders and their supporters extra-judicially.

Hafeez’s previous defense lawyer was gunned down in his office in 2014. Rashid Rehman was the first lawyer in a year to take up the case, for fear of mob violence, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan told AFP at the time.

More recently, the acquittal last year of a Christian woman facing execution for blasphemy triggered nationwide protests, with one hardline Islamist party calling for the death of the judges who freed her. Earlier this year, a blasphemy charge against a Hindu veterinarian in Pakistan’s Sindh province caused an anti-Hindu riot, with multiple Hindu businesses set on fire before police intervened (see photos above).