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While the Christian faith is denigrated in the West, and Christians are persecuted in the rest of the world (see the earlier post), still, the Faith is on the march. Good people worldwide see the evil that is Islam, Communism, Secularism, etc., and search for the Truth. And, they are finding it.
From Malaysia:
Hundreds of thousands of Malay Muslims have filed for apostasyTue | Feb 14, 06 | 06:15:44 PM
Oleh Ekmal Yusof IPOH, 14 Feb (Hrkh)
Head of the Malaysian State of Perak Mufti (religious head) Dato' Seri Haji Harussani Haji Zakaria announced that there are close to 250,000 Muslim apostates in Malaysia .
This figure includes about 100,000 Malay Muslims who have declared themselves Christians.
This announcement was made on a TV Forum entitled "Pekerti Islam" in the Malaysian State of Kedah recently which was aired by RTM (Malaysian TV & Radio Department) at 2 pm this evening.
Another 100,000 Muslims are in the process of filing for apostasy while the rest are filing to have their Muslim name changed to "other religion name"
"This figure does not include individuals who don't do salat, doesn't fast and breaks all the tenets of Islam" he said.
According to the Perak Mufti he has personally received a letter from the American Christian Missionary Association which accuses the Malaysian (?) / Perak (?) religious authorities of being cruel (or mean) for not allowing about 30,000 Malay Muslims to convert out to Christianity.
Even in a religion where the penalty for apostasy is death, and in a predominately Muslim country where one must publicly file with the government to apostasize, Christianity is growing.
Islam is evil. It cannot prevail.
North Korea, The Worst Violator Of Religious Rights In The World
This speaks for itself, requiring no further comment from me.A call to prayer for North Korea
'Subversive, threat to the position of the Great Leader' - these words do not refer to dangerous villains, but to Christians in North Korea who are not considered as normal people.
"In North Korea, Christians are regarded as political criminals and in the prison camps, they are treated as political prisoners," according to the refugee Soon Ok Lee and author of the book Eyes of the Tailless Animals.
Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean defector, was imprisoned in North Korea at the age of 10 because his grandfather was branded a political dissident, Often the North Korean government will try to purge three generations of a religious or political dissident's family. He describes the conditions he experienced:
"At the camp I witnessed public executions, forced labour and other inhumane atrocities. New prisoners in the North Korean political prison camps are taught not to consider themselves as human beings. The prisoners cannot complain of beatings or even murders.
"Even the children are subject to forced labour, and about a third of them die of malnutrition and from heavy labour. I also suffered from malnutrition three months after being imprisoned, lacking even the strength to walk.
"Because we were not given any source of protein, we would catch and eat snakes, frogs or even worms in order to survive. At first, I did not want to taste these things. One day my friends caught some rats while working in the fields and roasted them on an open fire.
"That was the first time I tasted rat meat, and that one piece of rat meat sustained me. From then on I ate anything to survive: rats, frogs, snakes and worms. Prisoners who do not do this could die in less than a year. People like me who are able to eat anything can survive longer."
It is estimated that 200,000 are suffering in North Korean prison camps where they face cruel abuses. According to a contact, Brother Peter*, an estimated 50,000-70,000 are Christians. Some think the hermit regime has detained more political and religious prisoners than any other country in the world.
For the fourth year in a row, Open Doors' World Watch List ranked North Korea as the worst violator of religious rights in the world. Christianity is treated as one of the greatest threats to the regime's power.
Go read the whole thing.
The migration from Mexico to the United States is now constitutes the largest diaspora in the history of humankind. The numbers are staggering, and Mexico needs it. A nearly failed country, mired in corruption and political incompetence, Mexico's economy is now based on the few dollar each of her citizens sends from the United States. This is one reason why the Mexican government has such open contempt for our border.
Give and take across the border - 1 in 7 Mexican workers migratesWashington -- The current migration of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States is one of the largest diasporas in modern history, experts say.
Roughly 10 percent of Mexico's population of about 107 million is now living in the United States, estimates show. About 15 percent of Mexico's labor force is working in the United States. One in every 7 Mexican workers migrates to the United States.
This, and Mexico looks as if it may become unstable.What happens in Mexico, by turn, has a big effect on immigration flows to the United States. Those events include a hotly contested election six weeks away that pits a leftist populist against a market-oriented heir to President Vicente Fox.
"We want Mexico to look like Canada," said Stephen Haber, director of Stanford University's Social Science History Institute and a Latin America specialist at the Hoover Institution. "That's the optimal for the United States. We never talk about instability in Canada. We're never concerned about a Canadian security problem. Because Canada is wealthy and stable. It's so wealthy and stable we barely know it's there most of the time. That's the optimal for Mexico: a wealthy and stable country."
What isn't wanted, Haber said, "is an unstable country on your border, especially an unstable country that hates you."
Imagine Hugo Chavez on our southern border.
This migration is so large that areas of Mexico are being depopulated. Mexico's most important economic activity is the illegal migration of people that have no future in Mexico. This is a country that is so corrupt and managed with such complete incompetence that virtually the entire population of working people wants to leave, indeed must leave. What kind of country is this?Migration is profoundly altering Mexico and Central America. Entire rural communities are nearly bereft of working-age men. The town of Tendeparacua, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, had 6,000 residents in 1985, and now has 600, according to news reports. In five Mexican states, the money migrants send home exceeds locally generated income, one study found.
Read the entire article, it is a real eye-opener.
UPDATE:
It would be nice if our own government would get serious about this for a change;
Lawmakers call for border 'tipping' inquiry
As both of my faithful readers know, the Korean War has not yet ended. Hostilities came to an end in 1953 with the signing of an armistice between the United States (who sign on behalf of the now worse than worthless United Nations), North Korea, and China. The state of war between the United Nations (fought for them by the United States) and South Korea, and North Korea still exists.
It seems like someone the the US government thinks that it is a good idea to just go ahead and hand the victory to the DPRK.
U.S. Said to Weigh a New Approach on North KoreaWASHINGTON, May 17 - President Bush's top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country's nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.
Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.
North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.
It is tempting to try anything that will end the current deadlock with North Korea and there is a recognition that dealing with them is too dangerous and difficult.Now, said one official who has participated in the recent internal debate, "I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult."
The official added, "So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war" that has existed, at least on paper, for 53 years. "It may be another way to get there."
We have already seen in negotiations with other tyrannies (Iran or the Palestinian Authority for instance) that giving them what they want only validates their tactics. A peace treaty with North Korea will give them something that they dearly want, and that can only reinforce them in their behavior. They act the way that they do because it gets them what they want.
Still, As described by administration officials, none of whom would speak on the record about deliberations inside the White House, Mr. Bush's aides envision starting negotiations over a formal peace treaty that would include the original signatories of the armistice - China, North Korea and the United States, which signed on behalf of the United Nations. They would also add South Korea, now the world's 11th-largest economy, which declined to sign the original armistice.
Japan, Korea's colonial ruler in the first half of the 20th century, would be excluded, as would Russia.
And this at a time when North Korea may well be preparing to test a long range missle capable of striking all of the US.
North Korea missile site under observationSEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Activity detected this month at a North Korean missile site was being closely watched yesterday, but officials in northeast Asia expressed doubts that a test launch was imminent.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said the North has transported a missile to the facility, without specifying what kind.
Media in Japan reported it was a ballistic type that some analysts believe could reach the United States.
"In fact, we understand that it (the missile) has been brought to the site," Aso said in Parliament. "But we are not sure about any subsequent moves."
While North Korea's intentions remained unclear, any test-firing would escalate tension in the region and could deal a blow to international efforts to get the communist state to disarm, analysts said [which is no doubt what they want. - ed.].
As to the missile in question,NHK said if the missile is an advanced version of the Taepodong 2, it would have a firing range of 15,000 kilometres (9,300 miles) that could reach as far as the US mainland, [in fact it would cover all of the US. - ed.] citing unidentified US government officials. Japan's Kyodo News agency had a similar report.
An official at South Korea's Foreign Ministry said on condition of anonymity, citing ministry policy, that the government was "closely monitoring and making many-sided efforts to confirm, but (such signs) haven't reached a credible level."
I think that giving North Korea what they want, a peace treaty, is a huge mistake.
I received a very nice email from JamesoftheNorthwest. He is publishing an excellent blog, PARADOSIS, and an excellent web site, Paradosis. These are now listed in my sidebar.
See also the Chronicles of Mary by Dawn.
Go, read, and learn.
It is about time that the MSM has noticed this. A textbook case of failure, Politically driven adoption system yields shallow, misleading materials.
Although the author, Alex Johnson, disingenuously suggests that the forces politicizing school textbooks are as much the fault of the Right as the Left, he still points up a very serious problem and even offers a solution.At its core, the economic surge in India and China comes down to brains. The industries driving the region's challenge to American leadership - communications, information technology, biotech and the like - can't thrive without a steady supply of highly educated, intellectually flexible workers.
This is where the United States is falling behind. "“Most U.S. high school students don't take advanced science; they opt out, with only one-quarter enrolling in physics, one-half in chemistry,"” the National Science Foundation found. The National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century concluded that U.S. students were "devastatingly far"” from leading the world in science and math.
...If America'’s textbooks were systematically graded, Wang and other scholars say, they would fail abysmally.
American textbooks are both grotesquely bloated (so much so that some state legislatures are considering mandating lighter books to save students from back injuries) and light as a feather intellectually, flitting briefly over too many topics without examining any of them in detail. Worse, too many of them are pedagogically dishonest, so thoroughly massaged to mollify competing political and identity-group interests as to paint a startlingly misleading picture of America and its history.
Textbooks have become so bland and watered-down that they are "“a scandal and an outrage," the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit education think tank in Washington, charged in a scathing report issued a year and a half ago.
Read it all. This is very important.
From Electric Boat Public Affairs:The third ship of the Virginia class, Hawaii (SSN-776), will be christened at Electric Boat’s Groton shipyard Saturday, June 17, at 11 AM.
The ship sponsor is the Hon. Linda Lingle, governor of Hawaii.
It cannot be said more clearly that this:
Roots of the 'Roe Effect'
Commentary: Beauty and ControversySOMERVILLE, May 8 (UPI) -— During my junior year of college, a friend invited me over to her apartment to meet her visiting family. For reasons I never understood, she mentioned in casual conversation that I ran the university's pro-life group. A history of abortion existed in her family. She told me so, many times. I knew her stepmother aborted her sibling at her father's insistence. When my friend mentioned my pro-life views, her father reacted fiercely.
"A woman should have an abortion if she gets pregnant when she's not supposed to," he said. I sat dumbstruck.
"A woman should get an abortion if she gets pregnant when she shouldn't," he repeated. His wife silently slipped into the bathroom.
"I think abortion hurts women," I replied and awkwardly changed the topic. My friend's stepmother wiped away her tears before she returned, but the moisture and redness around her eyes were still visible.
...What Fran Dahl and so many other baby boomers fail to grasp is that post-Roe children are far more aware of the realities of abortion, legal or otherwise, than the generations before us. Recall the '70s episode of the television sitcom "Maude," in which the main character chooses an abortion. Her daughter actually compares the procedure to "going to the dentist." Nobody in their right mind would write such dialogue today. After 30 years of Roe, the legalization as liberation lie is lost in the image of women crying in the bathroom.
Read the whole thing and have compassion for the women who have been the victims of this insanity.
While the Christian faith is denigrated in the West, and Christians are persecuted in the rest of the world (see the earlier post), still, the Faith is on the march. Good people worldwide see the evil that is Islam, Communism, Secularism, etc., and search for the Truth. And, they are finding it.
