Daily Archives: January 1, 2014

Christians targeted in Iraq on Christmas Day

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iraq_christmas_bombThe persecution of Christians in Muslim countries is one of the most under-reported stories out there. It’s widespread and constant, carried out by terrorist undergrounds when it’s not condoned or indulged by the local government. When Islam gains power, it often develops serious “co-existence” problems. The global media really hates to discuss it for ideological reasons, but sometimes it’s impossible to ignore. From the Associated Press:

Militants in Iraq targeted Christians in three separate Christmas Day bombings in Baghdad, killing at least 37 people, officials said Wednesday.

In one attack, a car bomb went off near a church in the capital’s southern Dora neighborhood, killing at least 26 people and wounding 38, a police officer said.

Earlier, two bombs ripped through a nearby outdoor market simultaneously in the Christian section of Athorien, killing 11 people and wounding 21, the officer said.

The Iraq-based leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Louis Sako, said the parked car bomb exploded after Christmas Mass and that none of the worshippers were hurt. Sako said he didn’t believe the church was the target.

There were well over a million Christians in Iraq 20 years ago; it’s down to less than half that number today, and maybe closer to a third, depending on which estimates of the current population are most reliable. The usual factional violence and government-toppling insurgent agenda was also in play:

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad condemned the attacks in a statement.

“The Christian community in Iraq has suffered deliberate and senseless targeting by terrorists for many years, as have many other innocent Iraqis,” the statement read. “The United States abhors all such attacks and is committed to its partnership with the government of Iraq to combat the scourge of terrorism.”

Along with Christians, other targets include civilians in restaurants, cafes or crowded public areas, as well as Shiites and members of the Iraqi security forces, attacked in an attempt to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government and stir up Iraq’s already simmering sectarian tensions.

Read more at Human Events

Fast and Furious gun turns up after Mexican resort shootout

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Washington (CNN) — A dramatic shootout between authorities and suspected cartel gunmen at a Mexican seaside resort this month has ties to a botched U.S. gun operation.

A U.S. official said Tuesday that investigators have traced at least one firearm recovered at a December 18 gunfight in Puerto Peñasco, across from the Arizona border, to Operation Fast and Furious.

That’s the disastrous operation run by agents in the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Agents allowed suspected gun smugglers to buy about 2,000 firearms with the goal of trying to find and prosecute high-level traffickers. They couldn’t track the firearms and most are believed to have ended up with cartels and gangsters in Mexico.

Many have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including at a shooting that killed a U.S. border agent in 2010.

The shootout in Puerto Peñasco, also called Rocky Point by Arizona tourists, two weeks ago left at least five suspected cartel gunmen dead, including possibly a high level Sinaloa cartel chief, according to Mexican authorities.

Read more at CNN

Global Warming Alarmists Stuck In Antarctic Sea Ice

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The alarmists set sail for Antarctica with a plan to show the world how badly alleged man-made “global warming” was wreaking havoc across the region. Instead, their Russian-flagged ship was frozen in place after sea-ice coverage hit record-high levels this year. The dozens of global warmists onboard are still stuck as multiple ice-breaking rescue vessels were unable to reach the frozen ship. Climate realists and the alternative press, meanwhile, were quick to ridicule and poke fun at the stranded and beleaguered alarmists. However, the increasingly discredited establishment media has largely failed to notice or report the irony.

The doomed Antarctic “climate research” expedition that ended up being trapped in ice was led by Chris Turney, a professor of “climate change” at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He claims emissions of essential-to-life carbon dioxide — exhaled by all humans — must be drastically curtailed by government to stop “global warming,” which has been non-existent in recent years. The controversial alarmist, who boasts of setting up a “green” business known as “Carbonscape” to profit from increasingly discredited theories underpinning climate hysteria, was on a self-proclaimed mission to “discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south.”

Presumably, being frozen in summer ice was not what Turney and his fellow alarmists had in mind. However, it should not have been entirely surprising. Despite hysterical fear-mongering by the United Nations and self-styled “climate experts,” sea-ice cover in the Southern Hemisphere hit a new record in September of 2013 for the second year in a row, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The latest data show Antarctic sea ice is more than two standard deviations above normal, climate researchers reported.

Read more at The New American