Month: August 2014

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Our Daily Thread 8-20-14

Good Morning!

One of these things is not like the others…….

🙂

On this day in 1741 Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering discovered Alaska. 

In 1866 the National Labor Union in the U.S. advocated an eight-hour workday. 

In 1866 it was formally declared by U.S. President Andrew Johnson that the American Civil War was over. The fighting had stopped months earlier. 

In 1882 Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” debuted in Moscow. 

And in 1940 France fell to the Germans during World War II. 

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Quote of the Day

“The bud of victory is always in the truth.”

Benjamin Harrison

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Today is Brad Avery’s birthday. Third Day, from Air1

And I pretty much have to… 🙂

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Anyone have a QoD?

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Prayer Requests 8-20-14

Anyone have a praise or request they’d like to share?

And it’s Wednesday, so don’t forget to pray for the Gambia.

Psalm 51:1-15

¹Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

9 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

11 Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

15 O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

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News/Politics 8-20-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. A Grotesque Pantomime of Repression and Redemption

From CityJournal  “The American understanding of riots and racial violence was shaped a half-century ago, during the insurrections of the 1960s. To judge by the responses to the current rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, little has changed since then. After riots have wrought their physical and psychic damage, some invariably declare that the unrest was constructive. Patricia Bynes, a Democratic committeewoman for Ferguson, rationalized that the events in Ferguson would benefit the entire metropolitan area because, she said, “St. Louis never has had its true race moment, where they had to confront this.” She was topped by Missouri Highway Patrol captain Ron Johnson, who has been leading the police response in Ferguson. Speaking to a unity rally at a local church, Johnson suggested that, somehow, Brown’s death was “going to make it better for our sons to be better black men.” One rioter, who wouldn’t give his name, admitted that “If it wasn’t for the looting, we wouldn’t get the attention.” The virtue of disruption, academics and observers argue, is that it gives African-Americans a crisis with which to bargain. But after 50 years, what has this bargain achieved, except to cultivate a community that excels in resentment?

It’s not just African-Americans who are stuck in the sixties. Reporters are still seeking out the Kerner Commission’s white racists, who are ultimately to blame for all racial problems. Historians and sociologists are offering structural explanations for the violence; whites in general, and small businesses in particular, have little to say but simply flee to safer climes. In Ferguson, after a week of unrest that included looting and rioting, we know very little about the incident that resulted in Michael Brown’s death, despite the release of the first pathology report. The officer involved is in seclusion and has given no public statements. The Grand Jury, should one be convened, will likely have only a vague picture of what happened.”

“In Ferguson, the media’s preferred narrative—a “gentle giant” of a young black man gunned down for no reason by a racist cop—was short-circuited by a videotape, taken minutes before his death, depicting Michael Brown strong-arming a diminutive store clerk who’d caught him stealing a box of cigarillos. Deflated, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer described the video as a “smear.” Does he think the tape should have been suppressed? His CNN colleague Jake Tapper, just back from apologizing for Hamas in Gaza and justifiably angered by the misuse of military equipment to intimidate suburban civilians, subjected the state’s Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, to a vigorous grilling. Tapper suggested that Nixon had some atoning to do for his supposedly racist past before he could be relied on to take action in Ferguson. If only Tapper had been so hard-edged with Hamas.”

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2. Who are the agitators? And why isn’t this guy under arrest?

From WeaselZippers  “We’ve seen all manner of outside agitators at work seeking to use Ferguson for their own ends. Perhaps the worst of the lot are the Revolutionary Communist Party, who are actively ginning up the violence.

The white man in the middle inciting the crowd with the bull horn is Gregory Lee Johnson, a long term member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP has “Clubs” in various cities.”

“Antonio French, who tweeted the picture, is an alderman who has been tweeting coverage of the events in Ferguson. French claims Johnson was the instigator of the action. Other tweets id him as encouraging molotov cocktails, one even says Johnson had a grenade. Notice in the first video how he was within a few steps of police, including Captain Ron Johnson.

Gregory Johnson was infamously involved in the flag desecration case that ruled burning the American flag was protected speech. He was described by another activist as an “obnoxious young transplanted New Yorker” who would show up at “every local demonstration with a bloody, severed pig’s head (tendrils still trailing along) that he’d drag along on a leash and collar while shouting anti-imperialist slogans; the pig, of course, was the United States.” Truly a lovely human being.”

CONTEN WARNING!! for language in the video.

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3. Well, you know what they say about payback….

From HotAir  “Well, who could blame them? After Harry Reid used the Senate floor for weeks to demagogue the owners of Koch Industries for their legal and instructive engagement in the political process, he had to be expecting a little pushback. The Kochs don’t do anything small, however, and Politico’s Ken Vogel and Burgess Everett report that they are laying the foundation for a two-year effort to send the Senate Majority Leader into a much-deserved political oblivion:

Harry Reid’s reelection is more than two years off, but the Koch brothers’ political machine is already methodically laying the groundwork that will be used to try to take him out.

The efforts in recent months have been largely subterranean, but they are unmistakable. A handful of nonprofit groups in the vast political network helmed by allies of the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch have established or expanded permanent ground operations in Reid’s backyard. Focused on wooing key demographics like Latinos and veterans, they’ve also paid for ads assailing the Senate Democratic leader. …

As Reid last week ambled from an SUV to a side entrance of an MGM Grand here for a speech to the supportive United Steelworkers International Convention, he told POLITICO he wasn’t worried about the Koch forces’ buildup in his backyard. “I’ve always been targeted. … That’s not news,” he said, playfully dismissing a question about whether there was a personal element to the Koch effort. “I don’t see that they have any reason to come after me. Why would they?”

Ummmmm….. maybe because you abused your position of authority to bash them on the floor of the Senate on a daily basis. Ring a bell Harry?

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4. Making the best of it.

From MSNNews  “Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry is pressing forward after a criminal indictment with a smiling mug shot and an ice cream run.

The potential 2016 presidential candidate will now lean on his high-powered legal team to try to quickly extinguish two felony charges. Perry was booked and fingerprinted Tuesday at the same Travis County courthouse where a grand jury indicted him last week.

The longest-serving governor in Texas history has dismissed the case as a political ploy. He’s planning to maintain a busy travel schedule of courting GOP voters, and even splurged for a vanilla ice cream cone after being booked.”

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5. Oh boy…. They must be scraping the bottom of the new exhibit idea barrel. 🙄

From CNSNews   “Hundreds of photographs, papers and historical objects documenting the history of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are being added to the Smithsonian Institution’s collection Tuesday, including items from the popular TV show “Will and Grace.”

Show creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick along with NBC are donating objects to the National Museum of American History. The collection includes original scripts, casting ideas, political memorabilia surrounding the show and the series finale. The network agreed to donate props, including a pill bottle and flask, a sign from “Grace Adler Interior Design” and Will Truman’s framed college diploma.

Kohan told The Associated Press that the Smithsonian’s interest in the show featuring gay principal characters was a validation they never dreamed about when the sitcom began airing in 1998. “Will and Grace” ran through May 2006 depicting four friends both gay and straight, eventually ending with the main characters coupled off with children.”

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Our Daily Thread 8-19-14

Good Morning!

On this day in 1812 “Old Ironsides” (the USS Constitution) earned it’s nickname when it won a battle against the British frigate Guerriere east of Nova Scotia. 

In 1848 the discovery of gold in California was reported by the New York Herald. 

In 1917 team managers John McGraw and Christy Matthewson were arrested for breaking New York City’s blue laws. The crime was their teams were playing baseball on Sunday. 

In 1934 Adolf Hitler was approved for sole executive power in Germany as Fuehrer. 

And in 1942 about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France.

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Quote of the Day

“But far more numerous was the herd of such, who think too little, and who talk too much.”

John Dryden

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 Today is Gary Chapman’s birthday.

And it’s David Douglas’ too.

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Anyone have a QoD?

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Prayer Requests 8-19-14

Anyone care to share a request or praise?

Psalm 50

¹The mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.

2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.

3 Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him.

4 He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people.

5 Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.

6 And the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for God is judge himself. Selah.

7 Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God.

8 I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me.

9 I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds.

10 For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

11 I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

12 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.

13 Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

14 Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:

15 And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?

17 Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind thee.

18 When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.

19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.

20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son.

21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

22 Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.

23 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.

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News/Politics 8-19-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The more we know……

From TheBlaze  “For the very first time, an alleged “friend” of the officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Ferguson man Michael Brown is revealing new details about the controversial incident that has sparked unrest in cities across the country, CNN reported on Monday.

Calling into The Dana Loesch Radio Show on Friday, “Josie” claimed that Brown “bum-rushed” officer Darren Wilson moments after pushing him into his squad car, punching him in the face and trying to grab the cop’s gun.”

“The alleged friend of Wilson continued: “So he goes in reverse back to them, tries to get out of his car. They slam his door shut violently. I think he said Michael did. And, then he opened the car again, you know, he tried to get out. He stands up. And then Michael just bum-rushes him and shoves him back into his car, punches him in the face and then, of course, Darren grabs for his gun. Michael grabbed for the gun. At one point, he got the gun entirely turned against his hip. And he shoves it away, and the gun goes off.”

The caller went on to claim that Brown then ran from the officer, making it about 35 feet away before Wilson got up and ordered the suspect to “freeze.”

“Michael and his friend turn around. And Michael taunts him… And then all the sudden he just started bumrushing him. He just started coming at him full speed. And, so he just started shooting. And, he just kept coming. And, so he really thinks he was on something,” she concluded. “The final shot was in the forehead, and then he fell about two or three feet in front of the officer.”

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2. The autopsy report conflicts with witness testimony, but still says excessive force was used. I have a feeling Holder’s autopsy will say otherwise. Call it a hunch.

From FoxNews  “Dr. Michael Baden, who conducted the autopsy at the request of Brown’s family, talked to Bill Hemmer by phone this morning. His findings do not line up with witnesses who have claimed that Wilson shot Brown from behind.

“This autopsy shows that there wasn’t any gunshot wounds in his back. Some people thought they saw that. An autopsy helps organize which witness testimony is more reliable,” he said.

But he said the presence of six gunshot wounds points to “excessive” force by Wilson. Baden noted that Wilson may have fired even more shots that missed Brown, explaining that the police would know the total number of shots fired.

“There is legitimate concern as to whether the shooting was overreacting. That has to be answered and we don’t have all the answers,” said Baden.”

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3. I would add Holder, Sharpton, and Jackson to the list.

From Breitbart  “Former CNN anchor and Fox News Channel’s “MediaBuzz” host Howie Kurtz criticized some outlets for creating “almost a lynch mob mentality” in Ferguson, MO in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown. 

“Some liberal outlets [are] creating almost a lynch mob mentality around this, the Huffington Post today, screaming banner headline ‘Arrest Him.’ Now, the Huffington Post, nor you or I, knows exactly what happened” he said. And “when you cross that line into becoming an advocate and to demanding that somebody be prosecuted before the facts are in, while the investigation is going on, you’re grandstanding, you’re trying to keep the story alive and I really think it’s troubling.”

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4. Who are the protestors?

From TheWashingtonPost  “The militants are one faction of many that have filled Ferguson’s streets each evening since Brown, walking unarmed between a convenience store and his grandmother’s apartment at midday on a Saturday, was shot at least six times and died.

There is a group of “peaceful protesters” that congregates around the QuikTrip, which was looted and burned during the first night of protest. Another gathers near the Ferguson police station. A third, more scattered faction uses the social-media community Black Twitter to organize demonstrators.

 “People have been tweeting, ‘We are ready to die tonight,’ ” said Mary Pat Hector, a national youth organizer with the Rev. Al Sharpton’s national action network. “It is a trending topic.”

Hector traveled from Atlanta, hoping her presence as a non­violent protester would help counter what she described as “so much negative energy.””

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5. This is troubling, but not surprising. As the above story shows, nowadays the mob rules.

From TheGuardian  “An Israeli ship subject of a pro-Palestinian protest has docked, but demonstrations at the port of Oakland in California continue after between 2,000 and 3,000 pro-Palestinian activists streamed towards the port entrance on Saturday, chanting and waving flags. It remains unclear whether the ship’s cargo has been unloaded.

The protesters intended to form a picket line to prevent work crews from unloading the ship.

Activists had originally planned to meet at 5am for a blockade of the Zim Integrated Shipping Services vessel, but word that its arrival had been delayed prompted organisers to push the protest back until later in the afternoon.

The event began with a brief rally at a nearby transit station, followed by a march to the port. Sameh Ayesh, a 21-year-old Palestinian activist with the San Francisco-based Arab Youth Organisation, led the crowd in a chant.”

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6. Not shocking either….

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The administration that vowed to be the most transparent in history now must defend itself against a federal lawsuit accusing it of thwarting the release of public information. It’s a case that could reveal just how much politics influences the processing of Freedom of Information Act requests, especially when such releases could embarrass the president.

The civic watchdog group Cause of Action on Monday sued the Obama administration, claiming that presidential attorneys have interfered improperly in the release of public documents under the landmark FOIA law in an effort to curb the release of derogatory information about the White House.”

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7. First it was the Army clearing out the ranks of Majors, now it’s the Navy’s turn.

From USAToday  “Almost 8,000 senior enlisted personnel must go before a continuation board later this year to determine whether they can continue to serve or must retire.

The board — the first since early 2013 — will convene Oct. 27, according to a Navy document released Aug. 14.

At risk are between 7,500 and 8,000 retirement-eligible active and reserve E-7s, E-8s and E-9s with at least at least three years’ time in rate.”

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Our Daily Thread 8-18-14

Good Morning!

On this day in 1227 the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan died. 

In 1587 Virginia Dare became the first child to be born on American soil of English parents. The colony that is now Roanoke Island, NC, mysteriously vanished. 

In 1846 Gen. Stephen W. Kearney and his U.S. forces captured Santa Fe, NM. 

In 1894 the Bureau of Immigration was established by the U.S. Congress. 

And in 1966 the first pictures of earth taken from moon orbit were sent back to the U.S. 

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Quote of the Day

“Right or wrong, the customer is always right.”

Marshall Field

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 Today is Benjamin Louis Paul Godard’s birthday.

And it’s Antonio Salieri’s birthday.

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Anyone have a QoD?

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Prayer Requests 8-18-14

Anyone have a request or a praise to share?

Psalm 48

¹Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

3 God is known in her palaces for a refuge.

4 For, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together.

5 They saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and hasted away.

6 Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail.

7 Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.

8 As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it for ever. Selah.

9 We have thought of thy lovingkindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple.

10 According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth: thy right hand is full of righteousness.

11 Let mount Zion rejoice, let the daughters of Judah be glad, because of thy judgments.

12 Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof.

13 Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following.

14 For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death.

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News/Politics 8-18-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The IRS is now contradicting sworn testimony, and the judge wants answers.

From TheDailyCaller  “U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan Thursday ordered the Internal Revenue Service to come up with new answers after IRS employees contradicted sworn testimony about damage to Lois Lerner’s hard drive.

Sullivan ruled that “the IRS is hereby ORDERED to file a sworn Declaration, by an official with the authority to speak under oath for the Agency, by no later than August 22, 2014″ on four issues: the IRS’ attempted recovery of Lerner’s lost emails after her computer allegedly crashed, bar codes that could have been on the hard drive, IRS policies on hard drive destruction, and information about an outside vendor who worked on IRS hard drives.

Recent documents from nonprofit group Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the IRS, which Sullivan is presiding over, showed that IRS technology officials contradicted sworn testimony about damage to Lerner’s hard drive.

Aaron Signor, an IRS technician that looked at Lerner’s hard drive in June 2011, said in IRS court filings that he saw no damage to the drive before sending it off to another IRS technician, leading some in the media to suggest that the lost emails scandal is basically over. But Signor’s statement, issued in response to the Judicial Watch lawsuit, does not jibe with sworn congressional testimony.”

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2. About that indictment of Gov. Perry…….

From NYMag  “They say a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and this always seemed like hyperbole, until Friday night a Texas grand jury announced an indictment of governor Rick Perry. The “crime” for which Perry faces a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison is vetoing funding for a state agency. The conventions of reporting —  which treat the fact of an indictment as the primary news, and its merit as a secondary analytic question —  make it difficult for people reading the news to grasp just how farfetched this indictment is.”

“I do not have a fancy law degree from Harvard or Yale or, for that matter, anywhere. I am but a humble country blogger. And yet, having read the indictment, legal training of any kind seems unnecessary to grasp its flimsiness.

Perry stands accused of violating two laws. One is a statute defining as an offense “misus[ing] government property, services, personnel, or any other thing of value belonging to the government that has come into the public servant’s custody or possession by virtue of the public servant’s office or employment.” The veto threat, according to the prosecutor, amounted to a “misuse.” Why? That is hard to say.

The other statute prohibits anybody in government from “influenc[ing] or attempt[ing] to influence a public servant in a specific exercise of his official power or a specific performance of his official duty or influenc[ing] or attempt[ing] to influence a public servant to violate the public servant’s known legal duty.””

He’s not a lawyer, but this guy is. And he thinks even less of it.

From NewsMax   “Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz calls himself a “liberal Democrat who would never vote for Rick Perry,” but he’s still “outraged” over the Texas governor’s indictment Friday on charges of abuse of power and coercion.

The charges are politically motivated and an example of a “dangerous” trend of courts being used to affect the ballot box and politics, he told Newsmax on Saturday.

“Everybody, liberal or conservative, should stand against this indictment,” Dershowitz said. “If you don’t like how Rick Perry uses his office, don’t vote for him.””

Democrats can’t beat him at the ballot box, so they turn to the courts to do their dirty work for them, yet again.

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3. Boko Haram is at it again(still). And now they’re taking cues from ISIS.

From TownHall  “The death toll from Boko Haram’s takeover of the predominantly Christian town of Gwoza is nearly 1,000, not the 100 included in many reports, Nigerian relations expert Adeniyi Ojutiku told Baptist Press.

The Nigerian military abandoned their weapons and fled Gwoza as Boko Haram attacked Wednesday (Aug. 6), burning government buildings, killing residents and taking hostages. Some residents managed to flee to the mountains bordering Cameroon and are without food or water; others made it 85 miles north to Maiduguri, Associated French Press (AFP) and others reported.

News surfaced just today (Aug. 15) of a separate Aug. 10 attack on the remote village of Doron Baga in northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram kidnapped dozens of boys and men, leaving women, girls and young children abandoned there.

Boko Haram has escalated its attacks to a new level, capturing towns and hoisting Boko Haram flags instead of killing residents and fleeing, Ojutiku said. He compared them to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). As such, a concerted global effort is needed to conquer the rebels, he said.”

“”This is a new dimension in this crisis,” Ojutiku said. “A completely new dimension. Now they are following the strategy of ISIS. They attack, they occupy, they hold the town. Now that they have started adopting ISIS methodology, they should be receiving the type of treatment that ISIS is receiving.””

 

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4. Meanwhile ISIS continues it’s rampage.

From TheHuffPost  “The Islamic State militant group has executed 700 members of a tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria during the past two weeks, the majority of them civilians, a human rights monitoring group said on Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked violence on all sides of the three-year-old conflict, said that reliable sources reported beheadings were used to execute many of the al-Sheitaat tribe, which is from Deir al-Zor province.

The conflict between Islamic State and the al-Sheitaat tribe, who number about 70,000, flared after Islamic State took over two oil fields in July.

“Those who were executed are all al-Sheitaat,” Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman said by telephone from Britain. “Some were arrested, judged and killed.”

They continue to take women as spoils of war.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Hundreds of Yazidi women who were captured by Islamic extremists during their sweep through the town of Sinjar are being incarcerated at scattered locations across northern Iraq in what increasingly looks like a deliberate attempt to co-opt them into service as the wives of fighters.

As the militants with the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State surged into the area from surrounding Arab villages two weeks ago, snaring those who had not managed to flee, they showed a marked interest in detaining women, notably the youngest and prettiest, according to witnesses, relatives and in some instances the women themselves.”

“Those who convert to Islam can be promised a good life, with a house of their own and — implicitly — a Muslim husband, because the extreme interpretation of Islam promoted by the Islamic State does not permit women to live alone.

Otherwise, they have been told, they can expect a life of indefinite imprisonment — or, they fear, death.”

It’s gotten so bad that some would rather die than accept the fate that awaits them.

From TheDailyMail  “The call came in the early hours, the voice muffled, furtive and shaking with fear. ‘If they see me talking to someone they will kill me for sure, maybe kill all of us.’

This was Nisreen, a 17-year-old seized by the vicious Islamic State forces who have swept through Iraq and Syria spreading fear and panic.

She told how she was one of 96 Yazidi girls kidnapped when their towns and villages fell to the fanatics. Now these teenagers wait in terror to be sold into slavery or forced into marriage with militant Islamists.”

“The husband of another teenage woman, heavily pregnant, held  captive by the IS told me how she would rather the US bombed her prison – with her inside – than be handed out like a piece of property to an extremist fighter.

She said: ‘Let those jets come to bomb us and save us from this situation by killing all of us.’ She added death would be a better fate than to ‘be forced off with a strange man.’”

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5. And things are heating up again in Ukraine.

From Bloomberg  “Tensions flared in Ukraine yesterday as the government said its army destroyed part of a column of military vehicles that crossed the border from Russia, even as Vladimir Putin denies any military presence.

President Petro Poroshenko said Ukrainian forces destroyed part of a column that had arrived from Russia. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow rejected the statement and warned about a potential attack on another convoy that carries aid. Ukraine’s top diplomat, Pavlo Klimkin, said he will meet with his Russian, German and French counterparts tomorrow in Berlin.

The incident adds to the building unease over Russia’s plan to send about 275 trucks with what it says is humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine. Even with Ukraine saying it doesn’t see the armed vehicles as the sign of potential invasion, their arrival raised the stakes, said Volodymyr Fesenko, of the Penta research institute in Kiev.”

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Our Daily Thread 8-16-14

Good Morning!

Sunday UPDATE!!!

happy birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHAS!!!!!!

I hope you enjoy your day Sir.

On this day in 1777 the Battle of Bennington took place. New England’s minutemen routed the British regulars. 

In 1829 the “Siamese twins,” Chang and Eng Bunker, arrived in Boston, MA. They had come to the Western world to be exhibited. They were 18 years old and joined at the waist. 

In 1937 Harvard University became the first school to have graduate courses in traffic engineering and administration. 

And in 1960 the free-fall world record was set by Joseph Kittinger. He fell more than 16 miles (about 84,000 feet) before opening his parachute over New Mexico. 

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Quote of the Day

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

C. S. Lewis

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 Today is Eydie Gorme’s birthday. From fabtv

And it’s Bill Evans’ as well.

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Anyone have a QoD?