UPDATE:Incredible story about a homeless man, Ted Williams, in Ohio with an unlikely gift. In a true act of Christ, a man stops by to talk to the man and learns he is trying desperately to get his life back on track. Because of this man’s help, Ted has now been given multiple job offers from around the world and including Cleveland Cavaliers! Not only did the Cavs offer him a job, they are also offered him a house paid by Quicken Loans. God bless Mr. Williams. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of him for sometime to come! Matthew 25: 45 And he will answer, ‘I assure you, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’
If this is sewage back-up, take note then of the guy trying to move the ejected object from in front of his car when it goes off again.
Traffic Camera Catches Explosive Storm Sewer Flooding. Footage from MN DOT traffic camera video from 35th Street and Interstate 35W of the storm sewer during heavy rain. The heavy rain trapped air in the drain system causing it to push the water back up the storm sewer system and exploding straight up in the air like a geysers.
Libertarian Republican has this update on California and its role in limiting business, jobs, and freedom.
New Regs: Ban on Trans-Fats; Mandatory Food Hand-outs at Farmers Markets; strict “Green” Building Codes; Prison sentence for Parents who school kids at Home; Rapists, Murderers, Child Molesters set free if they have a “disability.”
[….]
■AB 97 bans the use of trans-fats in food facilities.
■AB 537 will make food stamps an acceptable form of payment at farmers markets through an EBT process.
■SB 1317 allows the state to slap parents with a $2,000 fine if their K-8 child misses more than 10 percent of the school year without a valid excuse. It also allows the state to punish parents with up to a year in prison for the misdemeanor.
■AB 715 makes a change to the California Green Building Standards code. The change will require new California buildings to be energy efficient.
■SB 1399 allows California to medically parole state prison inmates with physical incapacitating conditions and ultimately shifts some of the cost of care to the federal government.
Liberals seem to be at a loss in regards to what are freedoms worth mandating. They outlaw clove cigarettes but SB 1449 makes the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana an infraction with a penalty of a $100 fine.
While there is a lot of truth in the movie… there is quite a bit of personal opinion that is just that — opinion.
I watched — over the weekend — a movie called Agenda: Grinding America Down. While this would be one of the better documentaries I have seen (for instance, The Red Line: The Elites New World Order Agenda, is one of those documentaries that is horrible as well as anything from Alex Jones and Prison Planet). There may be some connecting merit in all these documentaries unveiling a supposed secret plan of one-worldism (OW) by quoting people who are against nation states, these documentaries also sully up any credibility by including people who think most major wars and milestones have been engineered by a secret cabal. Agenda is one of these films, sullied by extremists.
Again, there are many truths in this film, but some untruths as well.
Often times the response to this “Agenda” is rooted in a false idea of what government is and isn’t. One person that deals with the view that I wish to ferret out here is theologian Wayne Grudem. He makes an excellent point that I think we — as Christians — should inculcate into our lives rather than merely placate as a term uttered once in a while. Considering our dictate “the Bible interprets the Bible,” let us read Doc Grudem’s input on a verse where he explains it by the rest of the Bible. Obviously the persons this may be directed to do not hold the viewpoint Gregory Boyd does, but the point being made fits well:
Satan’s Authority
1. Support from Luke 4:6
This viewpoint has been strongly promoted by Minnesota pastor Greg Boyd in his influential book The Myth of a Christian Nation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005). Boyd’s views in this book have had a large impact in the United States, especially on younger evangelical voters.
Boyd says that all civil government is “demonic” (p. 21). Boyd’s primary evidence is Satan’s statement to Jesus in Luke 4:
And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours” (Luke 4:5-7).
Boyd emphasizes Satan’s claim that all the authority of all the kingdoms of the world “has been delivered to me” and then says that Jesus “doesn’t dispute the Devil’s claim to own them. Apparently, the authority of all the kingdoms of the world has been given to Satan.”
Boyd goes on to say, “Functionally, Satan is the acting CEO of all earthly governments.” This is indeed a thoroughgoing claim!
2. The mistake of depending on Luke 4:6
Greg Boyd is clearly wrong at this point. Jesus tells us how to evaluate Satan’s claims, for he says that Satan “has nothing to do with the truth” because
“there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
Jesus didn’t need to respond to every false word Satan said, for his purpose was to resist the temptation itself, and this he did with the decisive words, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve”‘ (Luke 4:8).
In evaluating Boyd’s claim that “the authority of all the kingdoms of the world has been given to Satan,” we have a choice: Do we believe Satan’s words that he has the authority of all earthly kingdoms, or do we believe Jesus’ words that Satan is a liar and the father of lies? The answer is easy: Satan wanted Jesus to believe a lie, and he wants us to believe that same lie, that he is the ruler of earthly governments.
By contrast, there are some very specific verses in the Bible that tell us how we should think of civil governments. These verses do not agree with Satan’s claim in Luke 4:6 or with Boyd’s claim about Satan’s authority over all earthly governments. Rather, these verses where God (not Satan) is speaking portray civil government as a gift from God, something that is subject to God’s rule (not Satan) and used by God for his purposes. Here are some of those passages:
“The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men” (Dan. 4:17).
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are the ministers of God, attending to this very thing (Rom. 13:1-6).
Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good (1 Peter 2:13-14).
At this point it is interesting that both Paul (in Romans) and Peter see civil government as doing the opposite of what Satan does: civil governments are established by God “to punish those who do evil,” but Satan encourages those who do evil! Civil governments are established by God “to praise those who do good,” but Satan discourages and attacks those who do good. In addition, it would not make sense for Peter to say, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every institution in which Satan is the CEO.” Peter would not want Christian citizens to be subject to Satan’s control and direction.
The point is that Satan wants us to believe that all civil government is under his control, but that is not taught anywhere in the Bible. (Of course, Satan can influence some individuals in government, but he is not in control.) The only verse in the whole Bible that says Satan has authority over all governments is spoken by the father of lies, and we should not believe it. Greg Boyd is simply wrong in his defense of the view that “all government is demonic.”
So, what is my point here? That all governments and plots to overthrow them, in the end, are under God’s control. This is something that is missed from documentaries like this. That is: God is Sovereign over everything.
Birchers
An interesting aspect that I have noticed when I was attending the local John Birch Society meetings and was an avid visitor of the American Opinion Book Store in North Hollywood, the joining idea of most of the Christians that I met in this movement were those of amillennialism. (Please read my “Learning Curves” section ~ pages 7-10 ~ of a chapter from my book for some more info on this subject.) They saw it (at least what I could surmise during the ending prayers) that they were bringing God’s Kingdom fully into the world by opposing Satan’s. What does this have to do, if anything, with the conservative documentary Agenda? One joining aspect in this unhealthy view is based around the book, The Naked Communist. The author (who also penned The Naked Capitalist) was written by W. Cleon Skousen, who’s career is often over-sold, in the end is a Mormon. This may not be important to many but his view of the universe, man, and “god’s”place in it are ultimately driven by a polytheistic worldview. This conspiratorial/polytheistic view has deeply infected Glenn Beck (see also) and Mitt Romney. There is an understanding by Skousen — unstated in the Agenda documentary, that god is in fact finite in many ways. So knowing Skousen’s worldview goes a long way in explaining the immediacy that others may not see regarding this problem. A problem, I might add, that has existed for some time.
The introduction of a novel term like “liberal fascism” obviously requires an explanation. Many critics will undoubtedly regard it as a crass oxymoron. Actually, however, I am not the first to use the term. That honor falls to H. G. Wells, one of the greatest influences on the progressive mind in the twentieth century (and, it turns out, the inspiration for Huxley’s Brave New World). Nor did Wells coin the phrase as an indictment, but as a badge of honor. Progressives must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis,” he told the Young Liberals at Oxford in a speech in July 1932. Wells was a leading voice in what I have called the fascist moment, when many Western elites were eager to replace Church and Crown with slide rules and industrial armies.
From the feminist movement in the 20’s to the support by American progressives of the Nazi regime and then the Communist dictatorships afterward. Nothing is new. Useful Idiots abound, from Eden to Kentucky. In fact, the church in the early 1900s dealt with this liberal intrusion extensively. One of the greatest books written on dealing with this liberalism that has infected the church since its founding is a book by Professor Machen. This was in fact the birth of modern conservative Christianity, which was born out of a systematic refutation of this liberal view of God, man, doctrine, and the like. One church historian makes the point that “heresy can claim greater antiquity than orthodoxy can” (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, p. 70). In other words, orthodoxy was a response to what was obviously heresy.
Skousen also twists facts to make a conspiracy seem plausible when in reality these goals are plain as day. As an example, one theme pushed in all my reading of Skousen and by authors like him is the danger of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and their goals for a one-world government. A myriad of quotes taken from many of these anti-nation states members, some well-known, are displayed across the pages of these books. What you never-everhear about is that the CFR has many lovers of nation states in its ranks. These members write and debate and influence the CFR as well. It is similar to when the major prime-time and morning news shows have 157 segments exclusively wanting stricter gun control laws and only 10 with a pro-2nd amendment segments. Something is lost in translation.
Another aspect of this documentary that is puzzling is in regards to liberals not liking the term “liberal” and wishing to be called “progressives” instead is just not true. In fact, they wanted to get away from the term progressive and self-applied “liberal” as part of the idea that they are classical liberals. Which of course is false, but they tried to hijack an understanding of being connected to the Founders in this way. So I prefer calling them “progressives” when I am making a deeper point, “liberal” if I am feeling nice. (Lawrence O’Donnell simply prefers socialist, and Rachel Maddow prefers to be thought of as “to the left of Moa.” [scary])
Connections
I can see why many may like this movie. Maybe this is the first time they are seeing some of this information and assume if one part is sound then all of this presentation is sound. A site that has made these connections for years is Discover the Networks, with whom David Horowitz is intimately involved.
Let me say that I agree that this radical arm of the Democratic Party has substantial control now of the public’s trust. And one of the richest OW’ers is George Soros. Money talks, and Soros gives a lot of it to anti-nation state organizations. Marvin Olasky, senior editor at World Magazine, was key in showing Soros’ influence on a major liberal Christian organization, the Sojourners. However, taking this important information and connecting it to people that believe in massive secret conspiracies and societies in starting WWI, WWII, and the like; pushing authors who believe that all political parties are controlled by this One World cabal makes me stand vehemently against this “documentary.”
I must point out from a post a long-time back that these conspiracy theories that some of the authors and speakers highlighted in Agenda believe in ultimately explains nothing:
I was once the biggest New World Order (NWO) guy there was. Ralph Epperson was a god of conspiracy theories in my view of history. But when I started to draw these conclusions out to their logical ends and started tracking down references used by these writers, I found that this belief is just that, a belief.
Listen, I will give a parallel to one (of the many) reasons I reject Darwinism as a reason that includes the rejection of the conspiratorial view of history.
“The underlying problem is that a key Darwinian term is not defined. Darwinism supposedly explains how organisms become more ‘fit,’ or better adapted to their environment. But fitness is not and cannot be defined except in terms of existence. If an animal exists, it is ‘fit’ (otherwise it wouldn’t exist). It is not possible to specify all the useful parts of that animal in order to give an exhaustive causal account of fitness. [I will add here that there is no way to quantify those unknowable animal parts in regards to the many aspects that nature could or would impose on all those parts.] If an organism possesses features that appears on the surface to be an inconvenient – such as the peacock’s tail or the top-heavy antlers of a stag – the existence of stags and peacocks proves that these animals are in fact fit. So the Darwinian theory is not falsifiable by any observation. It ‘explains’ everything, and therefore nothing. It barely qualifies as a scientific theory for that reason…. The truth is that Darwinism is so shapeless that it can be enlisted is support of any cause whatsoever…. Darwinism has over the years been championed by eugenicists, social Darwinists, racialists, free-market economists, liberals galore, Wilsonian progressives, and National Socialists, to give only a partial list. Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer, Communists and libertarians, and almost anyone in between, have at times found Darwinism to their liking.”
From an article by Tom Bethell in The American Spectator (magazine), July/August 2007, pp. 44-46.
So to is the conspiratorial view of history (Bilderbergers, Council of Foreign Relations, Banking Institutions, Rosicrucians, The Knights Templars, on-and-on). It is used by Marxists to libertarians and anarchists, liberal and conservatives. If someone or something disproves an aspect of this theory that person is a “shill” or the fact has been planted. It explains everything and therefore nothing.
Dedications
Many a conspiracy folk have inane explanations of the symbols found on the dollar bill. I know because I did it. However, after reading David Barton’s book, The Question of Freemasonry and the Founding Fathers. I highly recommend this book. There are people who dedicate their writings to Lucifer, such as was truthfully pointed out in the first pages of Saul Alinsky’s book which heavily influenced our president and people around him. In the dedication portion of Saul’s book we find this:
Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer
Many in the media love Saul Alinsky. Chris Matthews for one (see video to the right), the founder of The Daily Kos (a well-known liberal website) wrote the following dedication in his book, Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era: “For…. Saul Alinsky.” Then Markos Zuniga continues in his dedication to this radical a quote from the same, “The tactics may change, but the soul of the radical endures.” The Agenda doesn’t respond to answering these tactics because it corrupts any response it tries with crazy conspiracy nuts (like Skousen) who have said George Bush invaded Iraq because of world bankers wanting him to do so. For instance this from one of Skousen’s classes as recalled by a Mormon student:
There is no denying that the Secret Combination spoken of in Ether Chapter 8 of the Book of Mormon exists today. Dr. Skousen spoke about the “War in Iraq,” informing us that it is unconstitutional and a war the Founding Fathers would have never gotten involved in. He said President Bush is taking orders from a higher power. One lady in the room asked, “who, Heavenly Father?” At that moment I began laughing in my mind, because I knew the truth was completely opposite. Dr. Skousen responded by saying it is the World Banks, the Rothchild’s, Rockefeller’s – the money powers, etc. They are the ones who are really in power. They are the ones who ordered the war.
Skousen believes that we have already lost:
“… the New World Order which is in control right now…. You don’t know it, but you’ve lost your country.”
While I disagree with this last statement (see audio to the right), so what? I don’t say this in a way that means I will not fight for one of the greatest nations to grace this earth. I say this only because America is not the Church. There was a promise made and it included the Body of Christ, not a particular nation:
And Jesus responded, “Simon son of Jonah, you are blessed because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the forces of Hades will not overpower it. (Matthew 16:17-18)
As Reformational Protestants, we know that the Rock is Jesus. We also know that the Church is not America. Some say that there are 150-million Christians in China. I wonder if they pray for their government to be more like America, or if they pray like the prayee in the ending verses of the Bible, “He who testifies about these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” I live in America and I often find myself praying for this!
Optimism
So what can we do to subvert this inevitable slide? God, family, community. You see it isn’t only communists that want the family to disintegrate and thus rely on government more. It is anarchists, liberals, progressives, Republicans, even anti-communists. It is the negation of one of the first edicts of God to man to leave your mother and father and become one with your wife. You see, there are Christians — people who have become new creatures through the miraculous work of Christ. Then there are pagans. Both are working towards God’s goal. He is sovereign and His will will be done. Whether America is weakened in order for this to be done, or for America to be made more Godly. I will fight for truth and justice as much as I can, and as helpful as some of the information was in Agenda and the excellence of some of those interviewed for the documentary (M. Stanton Evans for instance).
Many of these documentaries make us feel like we are in an irreversible state, morally & spiritually. While I do not necessarily agree with everything in the chapter, I recommend Michael Medved’s last chapter of his book, The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation. This chapter is entitled “America is in the Middle of an Irreversible Moral Decline.” In an interview about this book, Medved mentioned this after the initial question:
There are a lot of conservatives out there, probably most of them even, who believe that “America is in the midst of an irreversible moral decline.” Would you disagree with that?
I do. In my book, The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation, that’s the 10th big lie and in many ways, it’s the most pernicious — because if our moral decline is irreversible, then America’s weakening and decline is irreversible. That goes against our national ethos. Part of what it means to be an American is that nothing is irreversible for this country. No challenge is too great.
Now, I would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind — particularly dumb — to suggest that everything about American culture is healthy, vital, vibrant, and wholesome. It isn’t. There are a lot of cultural problems in this country and I have written about them very extensively in the past in books like Hollywood vs. America.
The problem with the premise that our moral decline is irreversible is that people have been saying this since the 1640s (laughs)…it simply cannot be true that every single generation of Americans is the worst generation in American history.
In history, remember, there was a time when almost every Democrat wanted to secede, and those who didn’t were segregationists. Yet we overcame slavery against such odds. The 2010 elections were a great leap forwards in regards to correcting what many see having gone wrong in this greatest nation on God’s green earth. Not only this big gain, but since November second we have had 17 Democratic state legislators change their party affiliation to that of Republican. In order to keep this momentum, we need to stay away from complicated themes and zero in on the basics. Do you want big government or small. Its as simple as that. The larger the government, the smaller the individual. Not only is a smaller government a preferable economic position we are in need of desperately, but smaller government is a moral position.
Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali (also known as Abdul Malik Ali and Abd Al-Malik) is a black Imam associated with the Masjid Al Islam mosque in Oakland. A graduate of San Francisco State University and a former Nation of Islam member, he is a frequent guest lecturer at Muslim Student Union and Muslim Students Association events. A passionate supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, he helped organize a July 1999 rally in San Francisco at which Imam Abdul-Alim Musa proudly displayed a cashier’s check made out to “Hamas, Palestine.” Malik-Ali endorses suicide bombings as a legitimate “resistance” tactic: “Palestinian mothers are supporting their children who are suicide bombers, saying, ‘Go honey, go!’ That ain’t suicide; that’s martyrdom.”
A fervent admirer of the famed Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, Malik-Ali is a leader of the As-Sabiqun movement which is inspired by Malcolm’s work and life. He is also part of the Al-Masjid movement which is dedicated to creating an Islamic revolution in the United States. His ultimate goal is to see Islamic law instituted in America, and he refers to those who oppose this objective as “poop-butts.” “From an Islamic movement we graduate to an Islamic revolution,” he says, “then to an Islamic state. . . . We must implement Islam as a totality [in which] Allah controls every place — the home, the classroom, the science lab, the halls of Congress.”
Malik-Ali is a favorite guest speaker of UC Irvine’s Muslim Student Union (MSU). In 2002, he told an MSU audience: “Israel wants Palestinians to have their own state. It’s beyond that now. No. That’s off the table. One state. Majority rules. Us. The Muslims.”
On February 26, 2004, MSU again brought Malik-Ali to the UC Irvine campus to deliver a speech titled “America under Siege: The Zionist Hidden Agenda.” According to UCI’s student newspaper, he “implied that Zionism is a mixture of ‘chosen people-ness and white supremacy’; that the Iraqi war is in the process of ‘Israelization’; that the Zionists had the ‘Congress, the media and the FBI in their back pocket’; that the downfall of former Democratic [presidential] front-runner Howard Dean was due to the Zionists; and that the Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency] would have assassinated Al Gore if he was elected [in 2000] just to bring Joe Lieberman (his Jewish vice-president) to power.”
At aFebruary 2005 MSU-organized event held in the center quad at UC Irvine, Malik-Ali stood at a podium that bore the inscription “Desperation of the Zionist Lobby,” and told his audience of some 150 mostly Muslim listeners: “Zionism is a mixture, a fusion of the concept of white supremacy and the chosen people.” He complained about Zionist control of the American media, Zionist complicity in the war in Iraq, and Zionists’ ability to deflect justified criticism. “You will have to hear more about the Holocaust when you accuse them of their Nazi behavior,” Malik-Ali declared. “One state. Majority rule,” he added, to rousing applause. “Check that out. Us. The Muslims.”
In February 2006, Malik-Ali told an audience at Long Beach State University that “the Zionist Jews were behind” the Danish cartoon controversy that had recently sparked Muslim riots around the world.
In a May 2006 appearance at UC Irvine, Malik-Ali accused the “apartheid State of Israel” of carrying out a “holocaust” and a “genocide” against the Palestinian people. He spoke from a podium whose facade was adorned with a banner that read, “Israel, the 4th Reich.” Referring to Jews as “new Nazis” and “a bunch of straight-up punks,” he told Jews directly: “The truth of the matter is your days are numbered. We will fight you. We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious.” He also gloated over the fact that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had been felled by a massive stroke four months earlier, was “a vegetable now.”
Malik-Ali was again the featured speaker at an October 5, 2006 MSU event where he told a crowd of roughly 200 cheering students: “They [Jews] think they are superman, but we, the Muslims, are kryptonite. They [Jews] know that their days are numbered.”
In May 2007, MSU held an “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” week that featured twice-daily speeches and rallies condemning the State of Israel. On May 17, Malik-Ali delivered a lecture titled “UC Intifada: How you can help Palestine,” wherein he informed Muslim students that a martyr’s death is the most honorable form of death. “Victory or martyrdom,” he asserted, are the only two viable options available to the Palestinians in their battle against Israel. Refusing to recognize Israel’s existence, Malik-Ali referred to that country not by its name, but only as the “Zionist Apartheid State.”
Also among Malik-Ali’s notable quotes and positions are the following:
“The enemies of Islam know that when we come back to power we’re gonna check ’em.”
“Stay conscious and ask Allah to raise the Muslims and give us victory over the disbeliever.”
“When it’s all over, the only one standing is gonna be us [Muslims].”
“Sooner or later, today’s Muslim students will be the parents of Muslim children. And they should be militants.”
“Neo-cons are all Zionist Jews.”
“The wars against Iraq [Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom] were manufactured by the Jews in America to avert attention from the two [Palestinian] Intifadas.”
“You [Jews] made all the mistakes we wanted you to make. You went after [former Georgia congresswoman] Cynthia McKinney. So now black folks don’t like you…. You’re walking into all the traps we want you to walk into. You hijacked American foreign policy.”
“[T]he Israelis were in control of 9-11,” which “was staged to give an excuse to wage war against Muslims around the world.”
Israelis ought to return “to Germany, to Poland, to Russia. The Germans should hook y’all up. You [Israelis] should go back to Germany.”
“In America, you’re mostly fighting with your tongue, but you should also learn how to fight with the sword.”
At the Sixth Annual Muslim Student Association Conference held at UC Berkeley in February 2004, Malik-Ali denounced “the white man, who is the enemy.”
At the Universal Heritage Foundation’s December 2003 Islamic Conference in Florida, he warned moderate American Muslims that their desire to be “liked” was turning them into “‘house slaves’ in the mansion of a racist, imperialistic and destructive America.”
He has described Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a “pretty good guy.”
CAIRO—A bomb detonated outside a church in the northern port city of Alexandria early Saturday, killing more than 20 and injuring dozens.
The attack struck Christian worshippers as they were leaving midnight mass at the Church of Two Saints in Alexandria. The death toll shot up Saturday morning, from an early estimate by officials of just seven.
By midday, Egypt’s state media reported 21 dead and nearly 80 injured. Egypt’s interior ministry said the bombing was a suicide attack…..
(Foreign Policy Magazine) From the bloody civil wars in Africa to the rag-tag insurgiences in Southeast Asia, 33 conflicts are raging around the world today, and it’s often innocent civilians who suffer the most.
Eastern Congo: Eastern Congo has been particularly unstable since Rwandan Hutu militias (Interahamwe) and the Rwandan Tutsi military took their battle into the neighboring Congolese jungle following the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Since then, this massive, lawless region has been home to a number of rampaging militias, leading to the displacement of more than a million Congolese and the death of several million. In 2003, a Congolese Tutsi leader, Laurent Nkunda, took up the fight against the Hutu Interahamwe and established the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) militia. Nkunda was finally captured in January 2009 by Rwandan forces, though remnants of the CNDP and other rebel groups have continued to wreak havoc in the area.
Kashmir: Kashmir has been the site of conflict since the 1947 partition of British India. The resulting countries, India and Pakistan, have fought three wars over the disputed territory, and border skirmishes remain frequent. Unrest in Indian-held Kashmir is also common; tensions flared recently over the deaths of two unarmed teenage Muslims.
China: A Uighur woman peers through a security fence as Chinese soldiers look on in Urumqi, Xinjiang, on July 9, 2009. The northwestern Chinese autonomous region is home to 13 major ethnic groups, the largest of which — at about 45 percent of the population — is the Uighurs. Although the region is classified as autonomous, some Uighurs have called for outright independence since the mid-1990s. While China has made attempts to further integrate Xinjiang, ethnic tensions, combined with religious repression and economic disparities between Han Chinese and Uighurs, have only made matters worse.
Iran: Objecting to incumbent President Ahmadinejad’s victory in the 2009 presidential election, millions of Iranians took to the streets in support of opposition candidate Mir Hossein-Mousavi, who they thought had legitimately won the election, and in protest of what they thought to have been Ahmadinejad’s electoral fraud. The electoral protests, which were soon collectively referred to as the “Green Revolution”, marked the most significant event in Iranian politics since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But unlike the regimes that were unseated as a result the color revolutions” that swept across Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine during the first half of the decade, the Iranian regime showed no reservations about using force to quash the protesters.
Chad: Chad is entering its fifth year of nearly continuous civil war, its anti-government rebels often aided by neighboring Sudan. Compounding matters further, war-torn Chad is a relative safe haven not only for thousands of Darfuri refugees but also for those fleeing the Central African Republic next door — as many as 20 per day.
Eastern Chad: Over the last half-decade, fighting in eastern Chad and neighboring Darfur, Sudan, have sent at least 400,000 refugees spilling into refugee camps in the dusty Chadian desert. Rebel groups in the two countries cite a litany of grievances ranging from state neglect to ethnic persecution, and they are often backed by one government or the other. Civilians have been caught in the crossfire, terrorized by wanton rape, scorched-earth tactics, and ethnic cleansing.
Korea: More than a half-century after the Korean War’s end, relations between communist North Korea and democratic South Korea remain tense. The two countries have never signed a formal peace agreement, and the United States continues to station well over 20,000 troops in the South. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who succeeded his father Kim Il Sung in 1994, has pushed forward with Pyongyang’s nuclear program despite repeated U.S. attempts to curtail it through negotiations. The North tested its first nuclear device in 2006, followed by a second in May 2009.
Pakistan: Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are two of the world’s most volatile war zones. Located along Pakistan’s porous, 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan, the two regions have, since 2001, seen fierce battles between Islamist militants and the Pakistani Army. Al Qaeda’s top leaders are thought to reside here, and U.S. drones patrol the skies in search of terrorist and Taliban leaders.
Pakistan: While Iraq and Afghanistan have captured much of the public’s attention of late, Pakistan may well be the country whose security, stability, and partnership is most important to American success in the war on terrorism. Under increased pressure from the United States, Islamabad has recently begun to intensify its efforts at fighting the Taliban within its borders. While Pakistani forces have enjoyed some success in their counter-insurgency operations against the Taliban, such success has come at the cost of alienating civilian populations and destabilizing Pakistani society.
Somalia: This East African country has been without a central government since the 1990s and without peace for even longer. Shortly after ousting strongman leader Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991, rebel groups began splintering into various camps headed by individual warlords. The United States intervened in 1992 with Operation Restore Hope, but pulled out in 1994, several months after the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident. The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) government brought a measure of stability in 2006, but its reign was short-lived. Wary of spreading Islamist activity, an Ethiopian-led offensive installed a U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in early 2007. Today, much of the country falls increasingly under the control of militant groups while the TFG and its president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a former ICU leader, control only a few blocks. Since 1991, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed, and the number of internally displaced persons is upwards of 1.5 million.
Somalia: Somalia is a failed state and as such is controlled by several competing players. A weak government is seated in Mogadishu (backed by a joint U.N.-African Union force), while powerful warlords control territory across the country. Sharia courts provide some semblance of order while Islamist militias, the strongest of which is al-Shabab, are still gaining ground. In 2009, however, the major conflict narrowed into one between the central government and al-Shabab. Al-Shabab recently announced publicly that it would be joining the international jihad movement led by al Qaeda.
Philippines: The Philippines is home to one of Asia’s longest-running wars, a 40-year conflict that has taken 40,000 lives. The fighting began in 1969 with the formation of a communist rebel group called the New People’s Army (NPA), founded to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship. Despite Marcos’s 1989 death, efforts by international mediators have continually failed, including the two-decades-long attempt by Norway that collapsed in 2004 and has not resumed. The NPA is known for its guerrilla tactics and recruitment of child soldiers, who by some estimates make up 40 percent of new recruits.
Gaza: After disputed parliamentary elections and a bloody fight against the rival Palestinian Authority, Hamas gained full control of this impoverished strip of sand and soil in 2007. When Israel tightened its sanctions, Hamas and other groups retaliated by firing homemade Qassam rockets into nearby Israeli cities. In December 2008, Israel launched a massive operation aimed at crushing Hamas’s military capability. Neither side came out of the war untarnished; Hamas has since been accused of using human shields while Israel has battled allegations that it improperly utilized white phosphorus and indiscriminately killed civilians.
India: According to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the raging Communist Party of India (Maoist), known as Naxalites after Naxalbari, the site of their first rebellion, are “the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country.” Although the Naxalite movement began as little more than a local peasant rebellion in 1967, over time it has evolved into a regional insurgency whose aim is to overthrow the Indian regime and install a Maoist government. In the last decade, the movement has quadrupled in land area, today active in up to 223 districts of the country.
Afghanistan: Mere months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. forces drove the ruling Taliban and its al Qaeda allies out of power and installed a regime headed by President Hamid Karzai. Eight years later, elections have failed to bring stability, and the Taliban-led insurgency continues to rage. In December 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 more troops to join the flagging NATO efforts in Afghanistan, bringing the coalition contingent close to 150,000.
Nigeria: The militant movement in Nigeria’s Niger Delta sprung up after environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and several of his colleagues were executed by the country’s military regime in 1995. Saro-Wiwa had been protesting the poverty and pollution of his home region after oil companies began exploring there a decade earlier. Today’s Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), founded around 2003, demands a higher percentage of the country’s oil wealth and a cleanup of villages polluted by oil.
South Ossetia: South Ossetia is a breakaway province of Georgia along that country’s Russian border. In 1988, the South Ossetian Popular Front (Ademon Nykhaz) was created to fight for secession from Georgia and reintegration with Russia. Military confrontations since then have been frequent, with major episodes in 1991, 1992, 2004, and most recently in 2008, when Russia joined the conflict in support of South Ossetian separatist forces. Today, South Ossetia is firmly in Russian control, but tensions remain high.
Nepal: Although the 2006 comprehensive peace agreement marked the end of a 10-year civil war that pitted Maoists against the central government, Nepal has yet to find any semblance of political stability as its two major parties have squabbled incessantly. The most recent flare-up in Katmandu occurred in May 2009, when Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda resigned after President Ram Baran Yadav of the Nepali Congress party overturned the prime minister’s decision to fire a key general, Rookmangud Katawal.
Central African Republic: In 2004, the Central African Republic (CAR) exploded into full-blown civil war after more than a decade of instability. Rebels calling themselves the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity initiated attacks against the government of President François Bozizé, who had seized power in a 2003 coup. Although the conflict officially ended with a peace agreement on April 13, 2007, sporadic violence continues to plague the CAR. Since 2007, the European Union has maintained a mission there whose purpose has been to assist the government and protect civilians.
Burma: The Karen, an ethnic minority, have been fighting the Burmese government to establish an autonomous state called Kawthoolei along the Thailand border since 1949, making Burma’s one of the longest-lasting internal conflicts in the world. In June 2009, the Burmese military undertook an offensive against Karen strongholds on the Thailand-Burma border, crushing seven rebel camps and driving the remaining 4,000 Karen fighters even deeper into the jungle.
Colombia: Since 1964, Colombia has been the site of an low-intensity armed feud that has involved the Colombian government, paramilitary organizations, drug cartels, and guerrilla* forces such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). Throughout the conflict, hostage-taking, drug-smuggling, and terrorist attacks against civilians have all become a familiar part of everyday life in much of Colombia.
Peru: Since 1980, the Peruvian government has been working to stamp out the Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla organization that seeks to displace what they see as a “bourgeois” government in Lima and install a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Although the Shining Path was fairly active in the 1980s, the government’s 1992 arrest of Abimael Guzmán, the group’s leader, dealt a significant blow to its activities. But after a decade of dormancy, the Shining Path announced its comeback by exploding a bomb near the U.S. Embassy in Lima in March 2002, just days before a visit by then U.S. President George W. Bush.
Northern Ireland: In 1969, a secret armed wing of Sinn Fein (Ireland’s oldest political party, founded in 1905) called the Provisional Irish Republican Armydeclared direct rule over Ulster. More than 3,500 people were killed between 1969 and 1998 — a period known as “the Troubles,” which ended with the 1998 Good Friday agreement. began a violent campaign to expel British troops stationed in Northern Ireland, which the radicals hoped to reunite with the rest of Ireland. The conflict escalated in 1972 when Westminster
Darfur, Sudan: In recent years the conflict in Darfur has become one of the world’s most well-known, thanks to a U.S.-based advocacy movement calling for an end to what many say is genocide. The conflict’s origins are geographic: Sudan’s power and resources are concentrated in its northern capital, Khartoum, and other regions of the country tend to be marginalized. In the early 2000s, rebels in the western region of Darfur took up arms in protest. Khartoum responded forcefully, arming nomadic Arab militias called janjaweed that pillaged and raped their way through Darfur, killing an estimated 300,000 Darfuris beginning in 2003. Today, fighting has calmed and a U.N. peacekeeping mission has soldiers on the ground. But more than 400,000 Sudanese refugees are living in camps abroad, and another 1.2 million are displaced within Sudan.
South Sudan: Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has the dubious distinction of being the world’s only acting head of state to be indicted for war crimes, with an International Criminal Court warrant issued on March 4, 2009, for his alleged crimes in Darfur. But Darfur isn’t Bashir’s only headache. South Sudan, a now-autonomous oil-rich region that fought Khartoum for two decades until the 2005 signing of the U.S.-facilitated Comprehensive Peace Agreement, has set a referendum for next year to decide on full secession. Elections scheduled for this year have caused both sides to start re-arming, and simmering violence in the South has killed scores in recent months.
Mexico: Although Mexico, a developed state with a robust middle class, has long battled narcotics smuggling and the violence that comes with it, the recent spike in drug-related deaths has many observers worried about the country’s trajectory. The number of people who have died in Mexico from drug-related violence since January 2007 — some 10,000 — exceeds the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite President Felipe Calderón’s redoubled efforts to crack down on drug gangs, border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, which serve as major transshipment hubs for cocaine and marijuana, have become cauldrons of violence.
Indonesia: Indonesia’s two easternmost provinces of Papua and West Papua have staged an insurgent campaign to secede from the archipelago country since the early 1960s. Under the U.S.-backed New York Agreement, the Netherlands ceded the provinces to Indonesia in 1961 — but without Papuan consent.Today, the low-intensity conflict churns on between Papuan insurgents armed with bows and arrows pitted against the Indonesian Army. The leader of the Free Papua Movement, Kelly Kwalia, was killed in a shootout with Indonesian forces last December.
Iraq: On Dec. 13, 2003, nine months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. soldiers captured deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on a farm near Tikrit in Operation Red Dawn. This success was followed by three years of civil war and chaos, during which U.S. forces were brutalized by Iraqi insurgents. Although the United States began to turn the tide of the war with Gen. David Petraeus’s 2007 troop surge, Iraq continues to suffer from political instability and frequent violence.
Yemen: Since June 2004, the Yemeni government has been at war with the Houthis, a militant Shiite group named after its now deceased leader, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi. Some analysts see the conflict as a semicovert proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Saudi Arabia, the major Sunni power in the region, backing the Yemeni government and even intervening with airstrikes and incursions along the countries’ border, while Iran, the major Shiite power in the region, supports the rebels. Although the Yemeni government and the Houthis signed a cease-fire agreement in early February 2010, it is too early to tell whether the accord will hold.
Uzbekistan: Like Russia and other post-Soviet countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Uzbekistan has had a difficult time balancing the fight against Islamist extremism with the need to integrate its more moderate Muslim population. In particular, the Uzbek government’s habit of harassing and torturing suspected terrorists has frayed relations with local Muslim groups. Most recently, in 2005, members of the Uzbek Interior Ministry and security service opened fire on a crowd of Muslim protesters in Andijan. Estimates of the number killed range from 187 (the official government count) to more than 1,500 (the figure provided by an ex-Uzbek intelligence officer).
Uganda: For the past 22 years, fanatical guerrilla Joseph Kony has led the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in a rampage across the country’s north and into the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan. At first, the movement aimed to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a Christian theocracy. Today, it has deteriorated into pillaging and banditry. The movement is notorious for taking children as servants and fighters; an estimated 3,000 fill its ranks today. A cease-fire between the Ugandan government and the LRA during 2006-to-2008 talks in Juba, Sudan, inspired great hopes for peace, but the negotiations came to a disappointing end when, in April 2008, Kony backed out of the deal.
Thailand: The Thai government has long had a strained relationship with its Muslim population, many of whom live in the southern region of Pattani. But the tension came to a head in 2004, when Islamist rebels in Pattani began a full-fledged separatist insurgency. Bangkok claims that the restive southern region will soon be stabilized. Meanwhile, the death toll continues to mount: As of March 2008, more than 3,000 militants had been killed.
Ogaden, Ethiopia: The Ogaden Liberation Front, a group of ethnic Somalis from a region of Ethiopia that juts into their native country, has been fighting for Ogaden independence since 1984 — an independence that would inevitably lead to incorporation into Somalia. Not eager for such an outcome, Ethiopia has cracked down in Ogaden, often preventing aid groups from operating there. Some think that the country’s 2006 invasion of Somalia was a pre-emptive move to warn Somalia’s Islamist government not to start fighting for “greater Somalia” with more zeal.
Machen
