Warning – Page 11 – The Faithful Watchman

‘One Christian Killed Every 2 Hrs’: Biden State Dept. Refuses To Place Nigeria On Persecution Watchlist, Despite Genocide Of Christians

The Biden State Department once again has refused to designate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), despite Christians being killed by militant Muslim groups almost daily with no effective intervention by the Nigerian government.

Over the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and pleas from religious freedom advocates, the Biden administration, for the second year, left Nigeria off of a list of 12 other nations designated as CPCs in an announcement on Dec. 2. The Trump State Department had designated Nigeria as a CPC, but the Biden administration dropped that label in 2021.

The CPC designations are announced annually by the State Department to spotlight the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.

Since 2011, the terrorist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have murdered more than 40,000 Christians in Nigeria, in addition to thousands more killed by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, Genocide Watch reports. In 2021 alone, according to the persecution watchdog group Open Doors, some 4,650 Nigerian Christians were murdered by these groups—equal to one Christian killed every two hours.

Open Doors estimates that Nigerians made up nearly 80% of the world’s Christian martyrs in 2021.

The State Department’s announcement revealed a sharp disagreement over Nigeria between the Biden administration and the members of the USCIRF, which is an appointed commission mandated by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.

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.

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.

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.

Federal Reserve set to introduce privacy-crushing digital currency that can be ‘controlled’ and ‘programmed’ by government bureaucrats

When Barack Obama was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress for his first two years in office, they passed a bill dubbed “Obamacare” that was the first step toward giving federal government bureaucrats complete control over Americans’ health care.

Since all Americans require medical care during their lives, the move was seen by critics as the ultimate authoritarian move; after all, if the government controls all healthcare decisions, tyrannical government bureaucrats could then begin to dictate behaviors and reward or punish people based on behavior.

Now, the government is attempting yet another major authoritarian move: The creation of a “digital currency” with the endgame objective being to control behaviors through “programmable” money that can influence and/or block certain spending habits.

“The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Center, or NYIC, announced that it would be launching a 12-week proof-of-concept pilot for a central bank digital currency, or CBDC,” Coin Telegraph reported this week.

The outlet continued: “In a Nov. 15 announcement, the New York Fed said the program would explore the feasibility of an ‘interoperable network of central bank wholesale digital money and commercial bank digital money operating on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger’ on a regulated liability network. Banking giants including BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo will be participating in the pilot by issuing tokens and settling transactions through simulated central bank reserves.”

Planned Parenthood Exec Said Children Are Born ‘Sexual,’ Wants Kid Porn Literacy Lessons

Newly unearthed comments have sparked backlash.

A Planned Parenthood executive has sparked backlash for saying that children are “sexual” from birth and calling for porn literacy lessons for older children.

Bill Taverner, executive director of the New Jersey-based Center for Sex Education, Planned Parenthood’s sex education arm, made the newly unearthed comments in a 2015 interview, Fox News first reported.

“I think that we unfortunately have in our society, an assumption of asexuality of people with intellectual disabilities,” Taverner told the interviewer, sexuality consultant Leslie Walker-Hirsch.

“It’s a myth that’s perpetuated, and really we are all sexual beings from birth until death,” Taverner said.

Planned Parenthood itself echoed this sentiment in a guide called the “Fundamentals of Teaching Sexuality,” stating that, “sexuality is a part of life through all the ages and stages. Babies, elders, and everyone in between can experience sexuality.”

In a 2012 interview, Taverner appeared to imply that some pornography exposure could be “useful” for older children.

“I think that there’s this yearning for information that young people have that … hasn’t changed,” Taverner said in the interview, which was hosted by a local New Jersey chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

“I think that the internet is a major influence on how people learn about sexuality,” Taverner said. “There’s access to erotica, pornography. That was very different for young people 30 years ago, certainly not as accessible, certainly not as instantaneous. So there’s a lot of information that is useful, there’s websites that are —”

“Some of it is wrong,” interrupted the interviewer, NOW’s Rebecca Lubetkin.

“Some of it is wrong, a lot of it is wrong, but there’s good stuff out there as well,” Taverner responded.

Outrage Ensues Over Balenciaga Using Young Children To Advertise Bondage Teddy Bear Purses

“A little girl as in 5-7 … is on a bed holding a Teddy bear dressed in bondage and fetish gear.”

Parents erupted in outrage over fashion brand Balenciaga using young children to advertise what one critic dubbed “bondage” teddy bear purses.

The high-end brand is known for its outrageous fashion and is often worn by celebrities like Kim Kardashian, model Bella Hadid, and actress Nicole Kidman.

“Has anyone else seen this? It’s on the main page of their website and is wildly inappropriate,” one person posted online to Mumsnet. “A little girl as in [aged] 5-7 … is on a bed holding a Teddy bear dressed in bondage and fetish gear. She also doesn’t look particularly happy. I don’t understand how a whole team of people presumably thought this was ok! It’s gross.”

“Bloody typical of Balenciaga,” another person reacted to the photos. “They shock to get attention for their overpriced rubbish. It’s like a social experiment on how ridiculous their products are but yet people buy the rubbish.”

“This though is disgusting and verging on depraved. What possessed the parents of this child to think this is any sort of normal I cannot fathom.”

There Is No War On Christmas — But There Is One On Thanksgiving

As America heads into the third Thanksgiving since the pandemic, a lot of things look like they’re back to normal: Families are gathering around the table together and travel is forecast to be at its highest level in decades. Even the anticipated turkey shortage didn’t materialize, according to the USDA. After three long years of socially distanced holidays, we’re back to merely worrying about whether Cousin Bob and Aunt Kim are going to ruin the feast by shouting at each other about politics. Perhaps we can entice them to debate side dishes instead.

Look closely, though, and there’s one thing that’s strikingly different from how Thanksgiving worked in the long-lost world of November 2019 — and it’s something to be grateful for: A lot of stores will actually close.

Back in the before times, one of the long-festering trends of the fourth weekend of November was the steady encroachment of that bigger holiday scheduled for December. Not long ago, Black Friday didn’t even have a name; by 2019, the signature kickoff event of the Christmas shopping season had bled into Thanksgiving itself.

Thus Walmart, Sears, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Michael’s all announced plans to open with special deals at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving night of 2019. By that point, Target, Best Buy, Macy’s and Kohl’s would already have been open for an hour. Upping the ante, Old Navy and GameStop opened at 3 p.m., and J.C. Penney unlocked the door at 2. A few big chains dispensed with the holiday altogether: Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s were open at 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. KMart opened at 6:00 in the morning, before the sun had even risen on the United States’ great home-grown holiday.

This year, by contrast, most, but not all, of the big chains will remain closed for business — forgoing the opportunity to have customers make the late local news by storming the aisles, but in the process allowing their employees to actually spend the holiday observing a holiday.

Laos Pastor Likely Tortured, Killed for Spreading Christianity

Local police and Christian authorities in Laos jointly believe that a Christian pastor was tortured and killed for spreading Christianity and converting villagers to the Christian faith.

According to a report by Christian Headlines, investigators discovered the body of Pastor Seetoud in October with visible signs of torture. The pastor was known to minister in Laos’ Khammouane Province, where his church was.

Details of the Incident
The same report disclosed that Pastor Seetoud was supposed to minister to Christians in the village of Thakhek on Oct. 20. The village is at least 100 kilometers away from his house in Done Keo village in Khammouane Province’s Nakai District.

When the pastor did not arrive at the meeting place three hours after his supposed arrival, 20 people began looking for him.

The search team reportedly went to a mountain pass close to Don Keo village but failed to locate the pastor. They also visited a local hospital to look for Pastor Seetoud, but he was not there.

Following the failed attempts to locate him, the search party secured CCTV footage from a local store in Nakai the following day. The footage showed the pastor leaving a gas canister, which he intended to retrieve afterward.

Christians are attacked in Bethlehem. A rabbi calls on Israel to intervene

“You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt. EXODUS 23:9 (THE ISRAEL BIBLE)

A series of attacks targeting Christians and Christian sites in the Bethlehem area has many faith leaders deeply concerned. The persecution is threatening the existence of the oldest Christian community in the world.

There has been a marked uptick in religiously motivated attacks by Palestinian Muslims on Christians in Bethlehem. Just over two weeks ago, a Muslim man was accused of harassing young Christian women at a Forefathers Orthodox Church in Beit Sahour near the city of Bethlehem. Soon after, the church was attacked by a large mob of Palestinian men who hurled rocks at the building while congregants cowered inside. Several of the congregants were injured in the attack.

The Palestinian Authority, responsible for security in the area, did nothing.

In October, unidentified gunmen shot at the Christian-owned Bethlehem Hotel after a video on social media associated the hotel with a display that included cardboard cutouts of a Star of David and a Menorah. The video showed the display in the conference room of the hotel which also included cardboard cutouts of sheep and a wine chalice that had been set up by Filipino guests. The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism ordered the closure of the hall, claiming the hotel was preparing for a Jewish festival.

No arrests were made in connection with the shooting.

Perhaps the greatest shock to the community came in April when the Palestinian evangelical pastor, Johnny Shahwan, was arrested by the Palestinian Authority security forces on charges of “promoting normalization” with Israel. The arrest came after Shahwan appeared in a photo alongside Rabbi Yehuda Glick, a former member of the Knesset. After the photo of the pastor and rabbi appeared on social media, unidentified gunmen fired shots at the center. The pastor was held for 40 days and his ministry was shut down, purportedly for his own protection.