Warning – Page 24 – The Faithful Watchman

Desperate Afghan parents, unable to afford food, are selling their young girls

AFP and TOI staff – November 3, 2021

Nine-year-old Parwana dug her heels into the ground as she tried to resist being taken from her family home after she was sold into marriage with a 55-year-old man in northwest Afghanistan last week.

Village and displaced people’s camp leaders say the numbers of young girls getting betrothed started to rise during a 2018 famine and surged this year when the rains failed once more.

Parwana’s family has lived in poverty for years, but life has gotten harder for them since the Taliban takeover of the country earlier this year and as international aid has dried up.

Abdul Malik, Parwana’s father, told CNN ahead of the sale that he was “broken” with guilt and worry, but had no choice as the family is unable to afford food.

Several months ago he sold Parwana’s 12-year-old sister, and he already knows the money from the sale of Parwana won’t last long.

Ahead of the sale, Parwana said that she was sold because the family doesn’t have money for food.

“He has sold me to an old man,” said the girl, who had dreamed of becoming a teacher.

On October 24, a man named Qorban paid 200,000 Afghanis (approximately $2,200) and was given Parwana in a ceremony in the displacement camp on the outskirts of Qala-e-Naw, in Afghanistan’s Badghis province.

“[Parwana] was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money,” Qorban told CNN. “She will be working in my home. I won’t beat her. I will treat her like a family member. I will be kind.”

Child marriage has been practiced in Afghanistan for centuries, but war and climate change-related poverty have driven many families to resort to striking deals earlier and earlier in girls’ lives.

Boys’ parents can drive a harder bargain and secure younger girls, spacing out the repayments.

The World Food Program warned last week that more than half the population of Afghanistan, around 22.8 million people, will face acute food insecurity from this month.

https://www.timesofisrael.com

The CEO Of Blackstone Is Warning That “A Real Shortage Of Energy” Will Cause Social Unrest All Over The Planet

Michael Snyder – October 26, 2021

We are facing an unprecedented global energy crunch. Demand for energy is continually rising, and the production of energy is not keeping pace. One of the biggest reasons for this is that large financial institutions have become extremely hesitant to fund any new energy projects that will add more carbon emissions to the environment. Instead, they want to fund projects that will help us transition to the new “green economy”, but meanwhile we are getting to a point where we will soon see widespread shortages of traditional forms of energy. So now we all get to suffer. A lack of oil is pushing the price of gasoline to alarming heights, shortages of natural gas are already causing tremendous disruptions in Asia and Europe, we are being told that we are facing a propane “armageddon” this winter, and supplies of coal have dropped to dangerously low levels around the world.

In other words, we are potentially heading into the most painful global energy crisis in modern history.

When CNN asked Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman about this, he openly admitted that we are “going to end up with a real shortage of energy”…

Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman warned Tuesday that high energy prices will likely set off social unrest around the world.

“We’re going to end up with a real shortage of energy. And when you have a shortage, it’s going to cost more. And it’s probably going to cost a lot more,” the private-equity billionaire told CNN International’s Richard Quest at a conference in Saudi Arabia.

When the power goes out, people are not going to be happy.

And people are really not going to be happy if it goes out for an extended period of time.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Florida School Board Member Accompanies Elementary School Children on Field Trip to Gay Bar

Nick Gilbertson – October 28, 2021

A Florida school board member reportedly accompanied elementary school students on a field trip to a gay bar.

“I was SO honored to be invited to chaperone Wilton Manors Elementary’s field trip to the incredible Rosie’s!” Broward County School Board member Sarah Leonardi wrote in a Facebook post, reported by Fox News. “The students and I had a fun walk over and learned a lot about our community! A huge thank you to Rosie’s Bar and Grill for hosting this special field trip every year!”

Photographs included in the Facebook post show the elementary school students at Rosie’s Bar and Grill, a gay bar in Wilton Manors, Florida.

The post has ignited outrage on social media outlets.

“Leave out everything else – why in God’s name are they bringing elementary school kids to establishments that aren’t supposed to admit anyone under 21?” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted. “Also, homeschool your kids!”

https://www.breitbart.com

Pig-to-Human Transplants a Step Closer With New Test

Newsmax – October 19, 2021

Scientists temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants.

Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage, but among the hurdles: A sugar in pig cells, foreign to the human body, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited animal, engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid an immune system attack.

Surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased recipient so they could observe it for two days. The kidney did what it was supposed to do — filter waste and produce urine — and did not trigger rejection.

“It had absolutely normal function,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team last month at NYU Langone Health. “It didn’t have this immediate rejection that we have worried about.”

This research is “a significant step,” said Dr. Andrew Adams of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who was not part of the work. It will reassure patients, researchers and regulators “that we’re moving in the right direction.”

The dream of animal-to-human transplants — or xenotransplantation — goes back to the 17th century with stumbling attempts to use animal blood for transfusions. By the 20th century, surgeons were attempting transplants of organs from baboons into humans, notably Baby Fae, a dying infant, who lived 21 days with a baboon heart.

With no lasting success and much public uproar, scientists turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes to bridge the species gap.

https://www.newsmax.com

Al-Qaeda Threatens U.S. With Attacks ‘More Painful Than 9/11’

Robert Spencer – October 15, 2021

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse,” Osama bin Laden once famously quipped, “by nature they will like the strong horse.” America during the period in which Old Joe Biden continues to pretend to be president of the United States is decidedly a weak horse, and bin Laden’s old outfit has noticed. Last Wednesday, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a video crowing over the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and promising to inflict damage on the scale of 9/11 in America once again.

The video, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), featured yet another jihadi who was once held at Guantanamo, Ibrahim Al-Qousi, and was entitled “A Message to the American People: You Have Yet to Understand the Lesson.” Al-Qousi showed that he himself has carefully absorbed the lessons of the recent past. He said that “the greatest loss America suffered, besides its material and human losses, is its reputation and prestige as a superpower and the most powerful country in the world.” Thanks, Joe!

The Taliban, Al-Qousi declared, had won a “magnificent” victory, for they “have understood the essence of this religion and the nature of the conflict … they are men whose hands — by the grace of Allah alone — buried a third empire in the soil of Afghanistan and restored the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to rule by the shari’a of Allah, even if America and its allies hate it.”

If there is anything that the State and Defense Departments did not or would not understand, it was the role that religion played in the conflict. Foreign policy experts for years dismissed statements akin to Al-Qousi’s declaration that victory was won in Afghanistan “by the grace of Allah alone” as mere boilerplate, not realizing that for the Taliban, it was the essence of the entire war. That’s why they’re in power today in Kabul, thumping their chests over having defeated the United States.

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Methodist Pastor: Killing Babies in Abortions is “Moral” if It’s Done With “Thoughtful Prayer”

Micaiah Bilger – Oct 15, 2021

A United Methodist Church leader is promoting the notion that killing an unborn baby in an abortion is okay as long as the mother makes a “thoughtful and prayerful” decision first.

Pastor Robert Vaughn Jr., director of the General Board of Church and Society for the UMC, told Baptist News Global that the denomination takes a “reluctant pro-choice” stance on abortion. And his board is in charge of supporting that position.

“Terminating a pregnancy isn’t just a medical decision; it requires advanced pastoral care so that a person can look at the whole picture,” the Herndon, Virginia pastor said. “The United Methodist principle requires you to think through a decision, to seize the whole complexity of the question. It’s not as simple as some easy slogan.”

Vaughn said he once counseled a young, pro-life woman who became pregnant while she was taking medication that meant “she couldn’t carry the pregnancy to term,” according to the report. Rather than give her child a chance at life, she aborted her unborn child – a decision that Vaughn said was “moral.”

“I remember walking with her as she and her family went through that situation,” he said. “… It was good to be part of a denomination that respected her as an independent moral decision-maker, that gave her the right to choose.”

https://www.lifenews.com

Global Corporate Tax Deal Nears as Holdouts Drop Objections

Newsmax – October 8, 2021

A global deal to ensure big companies pay a minimum tax rate of at least 15% and make it harder for them to avoid taxation is set to be finalized on Friday after Ireland, Estonia and Hungary agreed to sign up, leaving a few holdouts isolated.

The agreement aims to end a four-decade-long “race to the bottom” by governments that have sought to attract investment and jobs by taxing multinational companies only lightly and allowing them to shop around for low tax rates.

Negotiations have been going on for four years, moving online during the pandemic, with support for a deal from U.S. President Joe Biden and the costs of COVID-19 giving additional impetus in recent months. Some 140 countries are now involved.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which has been leading the talks, is due to announce the outcome of Friday’s discussions around 1600 GMT.

The agreement will set a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% and let governments tax a greater share of foreign multinationals’ profits.

It aims to prevent big groups from booking profits in low-tax countries like Ireland regardless of where their clients are, an issue that has become ever more pressing with the rise of tech giants that easily do business across borders.

https://www.newsmax.com

Abortionist Celebrates Killing Babies, Tells Congress “Abortion is a Blessing, Abortion is an Act of Love”

Micaiah Bilger – September 30, 2021

Abortion is a “blessing” and an “act of love,” a Texas abortionist told lawmakers at a U.S. House hearing Thursday.

Ghazaleh Moayedi, a Texas abortionist invited by Democrats to testify at a hearing about abortion, slammed the new state heartbeat law, which prohibits abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, about six weeks of pregnancy.

The law, which went into effect Sept. 1, has saved as many as 2,800 unborn babies’ lives so far and spared countless mothers from the physical and emotional pain of abortion.

Moayedi, however, who makes her living aborting unborn babies, claimed that the pro-life law is “extremely dangerous” and abortion is a “blessing.”

“We need laws that elevate science and evidence and recognize the dignity and autonomy of people accessing care,” she said, adding that it is a “global fact” that “when people do not have access to abortion care, that maternal morbidity and mortality rates rise.”

Several studies refute this claim and at least one found the opposite to be true: Countries with pro-life laws have lower maternal mortality rates than countries with pro-abortion laws.

Moayedi went on to claim that killing unborn babies in abortions saves lives.

“Texas deserves better. I know firsthand that abortion saves lives,” she continued. “For the thousands of people I’ve cared for, abortion is a blessing, abortion is an act of love, abortion is freedom.”

Many women who have had abortions disagree. Countless women regret their abortions, and thousands have shared their stories of regret and healing through the Silent No More Awareness Campaign and other pro-life efforts.

And there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, more women who cannot speak out against such lies because they died along with their unborn babies in supposedly “safe, legal” abortions.

https://www.lifenews.com

Texas Teachers Instructed To Help Students Hide Gender Identity From Parents

Mairead Elordi – September 30, 2021

A teacher training for a Texas public school district directed teachers to hide information about students’ gender identity from their parents in order to make school a “safe” place.

Teachers at Leander Independent School District north of Austin received a training presentation in October last year that instructed them to discuss gender identity with students and ask them whether it was okay to share students’ preferred pronouns with their parents.

The training, titled “Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth in Schools,” was led by two school social workers working for the district, Felix Barnhart and Monica Kelly, who describes herself as a “fat-positive, sex-positive therapist.”

“Add your pronouns wherever your name is published and then also whenever you are introducing yourself, just to normalize the sharing of pronouns,” Kelly suggested to participants in the training.

Another idea, she said, is to “let students identify themselves on the first day of class with their individual name and pronouns,” and make sure to inform substitute teachers and anyone else visiting the classroom of their correct pronouns, “so that way it protects that student from being misgendered or called a name that they don’t identify with.”

“We kind of do this already for students who have nicknames,” Kelly remarked. “We’re just asking to extend that courtesy to students whose gender identity may be different from their sex assigned at birth.”

However, in her next breath, Kelly appeared to admit that pronouns are much more sensitive than nicknames, encouraging teachers to ask students whether it is okay to refer to them by their preferred pronouns when speaking with their parents.

“May I use these pronouns when I contact home?” reads a question on a form Kelly suggested teachers have students fill out.

Another question reads, “Would you like to follow up with me in a private conversation about your pronouns?”

“A student may be out at school, but they may not be out to their parents,” Kelly explained.

https://www.dailywire.com

Woman with Down Syndrome Loses Challenge to UK Eugenic Abortion Law

Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. – September 24, 2021

A British court decided Thursday against a young woman with Down syndrome who challenged a law permitting the abortion of children with her condition up to birth.

While abortions in England, Wales, and Scotland are forbidden after 24 weeks of pregnancy, an exception is made when there is “a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped,” in which case abortion may be performed at any time before birth.

Heidi Crowter, a 26-year-old woman with Down syndrome who lives on her own and recently got married, called the legislation “offensive” and together with two others took the Department of Health and Social Care to the UK High Court, contending that a provision of the 1967 Abortion Act is discriminatory and violates the European Convention on Human Rights.

During the two-day hearing of the case in July, Jason Coppel QC, representing the petitioners, told the court that Down syndrome is the single most common justification for “late-term abortions” under the Abortion Act.

In their decision, two senior judges, Lord Justice Rabinder Singh and Mrs. Justice Nathalie Lieven, dismissed the case, arguing that not all mothers will want to carry a pregnancy to term if they believe the child will be born with disabilities.

“The evidence before the court powerfully shows that there will be some families who positively wish to have a child, even knowing that it will be born with severe disabilities,” they said. “But the evidence is also clear that not every family will react in that way.”

“The evidence is also clear that, although scientific developments have improved and earlier identification may be feasible, there are still conditions which will only be identified late in a pregnancy, after 24 weeks,” the judges said.

During the hearing of the case, Crowter told reporters that the law was “out of date.”

https://www.breitbart.com