Lee Ardis

Hostility Against Churches Is on the Rise in the United States

Family Research Council analyzed publicly available data from the past five years to determine whether there has been a statistically significant increase in acts of hostility against churches in the United States over time.

Between January 2018 and September 2022, at least 420 acts of hostility against U.S. churches occurred. The types of acts identified include vandalism, arson, gun-related incidents, bomb threats, and more. There also appeared to be an increase in frequency over the course of the reporting period.

This increase in religious hostility should not be taken lightly. Such acts are destructive and have the potential to intimidate a religious community. Therefore, they deserve to be condemned.

Major Energy Breakthrough: Milestone Achieved in US Fusion Experiment

The National Ignition Facility achieves ignition in a fusion reactor.

It was touted as a “major scientific breakthrough” and, it seems, the rumors were true: On Tuesday, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they have, for the first time, achieved net energy gain in a controlled fusion experiment.

“We have taken the first tentative steps toward a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world,” Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a press conference Tuesday.

The triumph comes courtesy of the National Ignition Facility at LLNL in San Francisco. This facility has long tried to master nuclear fusion — a process that powers the sun and other stars — in an effort to harness the massive amounts of energy released during the reaction because, as Hruby points out, all that energy is “clean” energy.

Despite decades of effort, however, there had been a major kink in these fusion experiments: the amount of energy used to achieve fusion has far outweighed the energy coming out. As part of the NIF mission, scientists had long hoped to achieve “ignition,” where the energy output is “greater than or equal to laser drive energy.”

Some experts have remained skeptical that such a feat was even possible with fusion reactors currently in operation. But slowly, NIF pushed forward. In August last year, LLNL revealed it had come close to this threshold by generating around 1.3 megajoules (a measure of energy) against a laser drive using 1.9 megajoules.

Dark Chocolate May Pose Health Hazard, Report Says. Many Bars Contain Levels Of Lead, Cadmium.

A new report indicates that dark chocolate, often touted as a healthy food to add to your diet, may in fact contain elements dangerous to your health.

Consumer Reports examined 28 different dark chocolate bars sold to consumers and found that every single one of them contained amounts of cadmium and lead. Children ingesting lead can suffer brain and nervous system damage as well as slower growth and development in addition to hearing and speech problems. Low levels of cadmium have been linked to kidney cancer and fragile bones.

“For 23 of the bars, eating just an ounce a day would put an adult over a level that public health authorities and CR’s experts say may be harmful for at least one of those heavy metals,” Consumer Reports stated. “Five of the bars were above those levels for both cadmium and lead.”

“To determine the risk posed by the chocolates in CR’s test, we used California’s maximum allowable dose level (MADL) for lead (0.5 micrograms) and cadmium (4.1mcg),” Consumer Reports acknowledged.

“There are risks for people of any age,” Tunde Akinleye, the food safety researcher who led the Consumer Reports project, stated.

UN General Assembly demands Israel surrender its nuclear weapons after 149-6 vote

Only a handful of countries supported Israel’s right to nuclear self-defense in a recent U.N. vote.

The U.N. General Assembly considered a resolution Wednesday calling for Israel not to develop, produce, test, or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons.

Additionally, the resolution called for the Jewish nation to “renounce possession of nuclear weapons” and to assent to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons treaty, thereby placing “all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive International Atomic Energy safeguards.”

149 nations voted in favor of the resolution. Only six voted against it.

What are the details?

The U.N. general assembly demanded that Israel agree to “accede to the [Middle Eastern nuclear non-proliferation] Treaty without further delay, and not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce their possession and to place all its unsafeguarded nuclear facilities under full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.”

Israel, India, Pakistan, and South Sudan have not signed the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons treaty.

Israel has never formally acknowledged possessing nukes. However, former President Jimmy Carter told MSNBC in 2014 that Israel has “300 or more” nuclear warheads, and leaked emails from former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell indicated the nation had at least 200 nukes in its arsenal.

The resolution calling for Israel’s disarmament was advanced by Palestine and various other countries including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the six nations that opposed the resolution were Canada, Israel, Micronesia, Palau, the U.S., and Liberia.

Ukraine, which voted with the Palestinians against Israel on another resolution in November, was among the 26 nations that abstained from the resolution.

American Girl is accused of ‘stripping away all innocence’ in book that teaches children as young as THREE how to change gender by asking doctors for puberty blockers

The popular American Girl doll brand is facing backlash for pushing children as young as three years old into changing their gender.

A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image, contains lines that give advice to prepubescents on how to change their gender – without their guardians’ blessing. Parents have since slammed the book’s contents as ‘deceptive and dangerous.

A passage in the book – marketed to girls aged between three and 12 advises: ‘If you haven’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity.’

It also provides a list of resources for organizations the children can turn to ‘if you don’t have an adult you trust’.

The book, penned by resident American Girl author Mel Hammond, is currently available on shelves in bookstores across the country and on the company’s website.

The release of the book comes amid a wave of increasingly woke content from the American Girl brand.

Earlier this year, its parent company Mattel, recently put a transgender Barbie doll on the market. Before that, American Girl, which sells more than 30million dolls a year, shilled an Asian doll when anti-Asian hate crimes were skyrocketing across the US.

The company has yet to comment on the contentious content.

In the book, it normalizes being transgender, and pushes children to use puberty blockers.

‘Worshipping The Creation Rather Than The Creator’: The ‘Climate Crisis’ Is Acting As A Catalyst For A New World Religion

(Queensland, Australia) — Is there a dark side to religious environmentalism?

Between 6 -18th November, the UN climate conference COP27 was held on the Sinai Peninsula in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. What may not be so well-known is that religious leaders from across the three monotheistic faiths signed the Jerusalem Climate Declaration just prior to the climate conference. Their stated aim was to encourage and empower religious communities around the world to curb climate change.

It has been revealed that interfaith leaders also gathered at the conference to call for climate justice and a ceremony of repentance, during which a ‘New Ten Commandments’ was conceived. The organisations responsible for coordinating this were the Elijah Interfaith Institute and its Board of World Religious Leaders; the Interfaith Centre for Sustainable Development (ICSD); the Peace Department (a US non-profit organisation) and climate activist Yosef Abramowitz.

However, the ‘New 10 Commandments’ are not so new: the 10 commandments of climate change were devised some time ago by Pope Francis. An article from 2015 cites the Pope calling for a ‘cultural revolution’ to halt the ‘disturbing warming of our planet’ – the actual document being 184 pages in length. It is no surprise that Pope Francis is a leading voice in promoting the coming together of world religions to address what is widely perceived as an existential crisis: he has always encouraged inter-religious dialogue and collaboration. This was clearly demonstrated in the first-ever Pope Video message on his Monthly Prayer Intentions in 2016, in which he made the assertion that regardless of religion we are all children of God. The video featured representatives of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, all of whom proclaimed their respective beliefs in God, Jesus Christ, Allah and Buddha and who then declared their common belief in love.

Scripture, however, disagrees with the Pope – we are all made in the image of God, but we are not all children of God. In John 1:10-13 we read: “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

In our times the focus of this interfaith movement appears to be what is commonly termed the climate crisis. One of the plans was to hold a large ceremony of repentance on Jabal Musa, purportedly the biblical Mt. Sinai site. However, only a small group of faith leaders were allowed due to security concerns. As we know Mt. Sinai is a sacred place of revelation: it was the place where God’s Ten Commandments were revealed to Moses and written by the finger of God on two stone tablets.

Justices spar in latest clash of religion and gay rights

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ’s conservative majority sounded sympathetic Monday to a Christian graphic artist who objects to designing wedding websites for gay couples, the latest collision of religion and gay rights to land at the high court.

The designer and her supporters say that ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their beliefs. Her opponents, meanwhile, say that if she wins, a range of businesses will be able to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.

Over more than two hours of spirited arguments, the justices repeatedly tested out what ruling for the designer could mean, using detailed and sometimes colorful hypothetical scenarios. Those included a Black Santa asked to take a picture with a child dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, a photographer asked to take pictures for the marital infidelity website Ashley Madison, and an invented food business called “Grandma Helen’s Protestant Provisions.”

Block the Sun? Is Lex Luthor now the Secretary of Energy for Biden?

Biden administration wants to stop climate change by blocking out the sun

“The White House Admits It: We Might Need to Block the Sun to Stop Climate Change.”

Are you kidding me?

That is an actual headline via Yahoo News and The Daily Beast. The Biden White House is contemplating “Blocking the Sun.”

The Babylon Bee and Onion satirical sites must be kicking themselves that the brain trust advising our current president beat them to this laugh-out-loud bit of insanity.

The people that want to destroy the fossil fuel industry; foist useless “green energy” upon us; replace gasoline powered cars with hyper-expensive electricity-sucking – and destroying – electric vehicles with 1,000-pound highly toxic batteries; now want to literally “Block the Sun.”

Seriously, is Lex Luthor now the Secretary of Energy for the Biden administration? Is this his latest plot to somehow stop Superman?

While this truly does seem like the plot ripped out of an incredibly bad 1950s science fiction movie, it is actual Biden White House policy that is seemingly strongly embraced by the likes of Bill Gates and The New York Times. As just a hint of that “B-Movie” science fiction taking hold within the left, check out the below headline and sub-headline from The New York Times:

“Should We Block the Sun? Scientists Say the Time Has Come to Study It – The National Academies said the United States must study technologies that would artificially cool the planet by reflecting away some sunlight, citing the lack of progress fighting global warming.”

United Nations Adopts Resolution Calling Israel’s Founding a ‘Catastrophe’

The UN General Assembly this week passed a resolution to characterize the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 as a “catastrophe,” in what has been heralded as a major victory for pro-Palestinian activists.

The word “Nakba,” which means catastrophe or disaster in Arabic, was also a term coined by the Palestinians to commemorate the Jewish state’s founding.

The UN resolution acknowledges the Palestinian version of the events that led to Israel’s creation, and calls for the “commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba,” with a “high-level event” at the global body on May 15th, 2023. May 15 is the day Palestinians mark the Nakba, which is the day after Israel’s independence was declared in 1948.

Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties with Israel, but that didn’t stop them from co-sponsoring the resolution along with the Palestinians and Senegal, Yemen and Tunisia.

Israel’s new Arab allies from the Abraham Accords, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, all voted in favor of the anti-Israel resolution.

The U.S. and several European countries, including the UK, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands voted against the resolution.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called it a “shameful resolution.”

“Today the #UNGA passed a shameful resolution calling for an official event to commemorate the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ on the 75th Anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel,” he wrote on Twitter. “By passing such an extreme and baseless resolution, the UN is only helping to perpetuate the conflict.”

Prosecutor: Bible passage ‘no longer appropriate in modern society’

In a case against a street preacher charged for speech condemning homosexuality, a government prosecutor in England argued certain Bible passages “are simply no longer appropriate in modern society.”

John Dunn was charged with violating the Public Order Act by engaging in “threatening,” “abusive” and “insulting” speech when he told a lesbian couple that homosexuals will not “inherit the kingdom of heaven,” citing the Bible, the Daily Signal reported.

A prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service, the office of government prosecutors for England and Wales, wrote in a document sent to the defense before the trial that “there are references in the bible [sic] which are simply no longer appropriate in modern society and which would be offensive if stated in public.”

The case against Dunn, a 55-year-old British army special forces veteran, was dismissed because the lesbian couple declined to testify.