Tag: religion

Epstein Obsessed With Vatican, Conspired With Steve Bannon

Newly released documents from the Justice Department have cast fresh light on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s long-running fixation with the Catholic Church and his private exchanges with Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, about efforts to “take down” Pope Francis.

The tranche of emails and text messages, dating primarily from 2014 to 2019, reveals a pattern of mockery, ideological hostility, and political strategizing centered on the Vatican.

Epstein was convicted in 2008 of child sex offenses and later died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. 

The records showed that in the years between those events he remained engaged with powerful political and media figures — including Bannon — and expressed particular contempt for the Roman Catholic Church and its papacy.

The most politically charged revelations involve text messages exchanged in 2018 and 2019 between Epstein and Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who had become an adviser to Epstein in the years after he was found guilty of sex charges.

In a June 2019 message, Bannon wrote to Epstein: “Will take down [Pope] Francis. The Clintons, [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping], Francis, EU — come on brother.”

The language suggests that Francis was viewed by Bannon as part of a broader set of geopolitical and ideological adversaries.

At the time, Francis was a vocal critic of nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant policies — positions that placed him at odds with segments of the populist right and traditional Catholics.

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For years the Taliban told women to cover up in public. Now they’re cracking down

In stop-start efforts since November, Taliban officials have cracked down on women and girls in the western city of Herat who have been ignoring the hardline group’s rules by showing their faces. Enforcement agents are preventing them from entering hospitals and seminaries and pulling them out of public transport.

Initially, women and girls were punished for not wearing a burka — the Afghan burka is typically blue, has a netted opening for the eyes and drapes down around the body, largely constraining the woman wearing it. Later, after what residents described as pushback, officials enforcing the rules relented and allowed women to wear the typical conservative dress in this part of Afghanistan, a voluminous cloak known as a chaddar, along with a face mask.

At the main hospital in the Western city of Herat, one health worker described female staff milling outside the entryway for hours, waiting for colleagues on the night shift to hand over their burkas so they could enter — like a token that allowed them “entry permission,” the worker said. In another incident, Human Rights Watch reported on a female surgeon, who was detained for several hours for not donning the burka.

Forcing women to don burkas, to cover their faces or even to wear a hijab, or head covering, “is part of the Taliban’s policy of controlling women’s bodies to make women invisible,” said Sahar Fetrat, a researcher in the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. She said in a statement: “Afghan women and United Nations human rights experts have called this “gender apartheid.”

In interviews conducted since November, more than a dozen Herat residents described different incidents to NPR. They all requested anonymity, or that we only use an initial of their first names, fearing reprisal from Taliban officials. The crackdown was run by officials of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which is tasked with the implementation of the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law.

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Diversity’s Fruits: Islam’s Brutal War on Dogs Comes to the U.S.

“The dog is man’s best friend” the saying goes. Why, we humans argue about most everything, notes website History and Headlines. “If there is one thing most people agree on, though, it is dogs,” it continues. “How can you not love them?”

Maybe one Nerdeen Kiswani can answer that question. After all, Kiswani, a Palestinian activist, recently agitated against the American norm of keeping dogs as indoor pets.

As she put it in a tweet last Thursday, “Finally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets. Like we’ve said all along, they are unclean.”

After pushback, Kiswani attacked her critics. “Lmao at the Zionists frothing at the mouth at this…,” she wrote. “It’s obviously a joke.”

Many noted that it’s obviously not. Regardless, no one is laughing — especially given Islam’s history of condemning, abusing, and even torturing dogs. (More on that momentarily.)

Notable pushback came from Congressman Randy Fine (R-Fla.) who, among other things, tweeted the following. (Kiswani’s original message is below Fine’s.)

Predictably, many condemned Fine as not so fine and demanded he resign. (To his credit, he didn’t back down but doubled down.) Many took issue with his implication that Kiswani’s sentiments are general Muslim ones. The truth, however, is this: As Islam comes to the West, so does its war on dogs.

The Prejudice Is Against Canines, Not Muslims

Commentator Andrea Widburg addressed this Wednesday, writing:

Muslims look to their faith to justify hating dogs. No wonder, then, that the dog war has finally come to America. And while Americans are willing to tolerate many insults from Islam, it remains to be seen whether they will tolerate Islam’s murderous intent toward man’s best friend.

The Muslim war on dogs is nothing new. While there is a trend in Islamic countries towards laws protecting animals, the fact remains that, across the Islamic world, the Muslim street doesn’t just want fewer dogs. It has a culture that encourages exceptional cruelty toward dogs. Torturing dogs is as much a part of childhood culture in large parts of the Muslim world as cuddling dogs is in the Western world.

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Unmasking The Muslim Brotherhood Ties Inside Ohio’s General Assembly

In a highly anticipated move, the Trump administration designated factions of the global Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations last month, an executive action with profound implications extending beyond the Middle East to America’s heartland. Astonishingly, a Somali-American legislator from Ohio, State Rep. Munira Abdullahi, D-Columbus, continues to serve as a national leader for the Muslim American Society (MAS), a registered nonprofit that federal prosecutors have identified as the “overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

Abdullahi’s involvement with MAS dates back to at least 2012, when she served as a youth director in Columbus and later as a national program director. The organization’s youth programs have been marred by scandals nationwide, including an incident in Philadelphia where children were taught songs about beheading Israeli Jews, and a fundraiser selling merchandise glorifying Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. Upon her election to public office in 2022, Abdullahi appeared to distance herself from MAS, updating her LinkedIn profile to indicate she no longer worked for the group.

However, her ties persisted and deepened. Now heading MAS-Columbus and part of the organization’s national leadership, she leverages her elected status to host events featuring ultra-conservative preachers and pro-Hamas activists. Though MAS officially claims independence from the broader Sunni Islamist movement, a 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation exposed how its early leaders decided to conceal their Muslim Brotherhood affiliations while aiming to “convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office.”

Campaign finance records underscore this connection: in 2022, Abdullahi received a $1,000 contribution from an MAS colleague and later donated $2,400 from her campaign to MAS-Columbus.

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Son of trans hockey shooter revealed to be arsonist who attempted to burn down black church as cops seize terrifying weapons stash

The son of the transgender shooter who opened fire at a high school hockey game is serving time in federal prison for setting fire to a black church.

Robert Dorgan, 56, who also went by ‘Roberta Esposito,’ took his own life after he fired shots inside the Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on Monday afternoon, killing his son Aidan Dorgan, 23, and his ex-wife Rhonda, 52.

Dorgan’s in-laws, Linda and Gerald Dorgan, both 75, and her friend Thomas Geruoso, 54, an assistant principal at Shea High School in Pawtucket also remain in critical condition at a local hospital following the rampage.

While investigating the shooting, authorities discovered that Dorgan was the biological father of Kevin Colantonio, 37, who tried to burn down the Shiloh Gospel Temple Ministries in North Providence two years ago.

North Providence Police Chief Alfredo Ruggiero Jr. told the Boston Globe that investigators made the connection on Wednesday and reviewed an interview they conducted with Colantonio’s mother, Marlyse Dunbar, following his arrest.

She told officers at the time that Dorgan – who has a Nazi-inspired tattoo on his bicep and voiced his support for ‘white power’ – was Colantonio’s father. 

The development came as police released images of firearms they recovered after conducting a search of Dorgan’s apartment, work locker, and storage unit.

The images depicted a sawed-off shotgun and AR-15 style rifle seized from the storage unit. Two handguns were recovered at the scene of the massacre.

People close with the family have since told WPRI that Dorgan influenced his son’s dangerous fixation on race. 

The son even scrawled white nationalist messages in notebooks seized by federal investigators following the fire on February 11, 2024. 

One disturbing message read: ‘Hunt them down gun everyone down that isn’t white, if one is white spread the gospel. Always gibe our bloodline a chance.’

‘Eliminate Rich Snob global Elite Pastors, burn churches down to the ground, when congregants move to [the] next church, do the same,’ read another of Colantonio’s messages.

Authorities said Colantonio bought a Bic lighter and $10 worth of gas from a local gas station before walking over to the Shiloh Gospel Temple Ministries, a Pentecostal church with about 100, mostly black, members.

Once at the church, Colantonio poured gasoline around its base and ignited five different fires, all of which were quickly extinguished – but not before causing significant damage to the church.

‘Due to the damage, church congregants were prevented from enjoying their free exercise of religious beliefs as church services were canceled until the church could be reopened,’ federal prosecutors said. 

Just one day after the blaze, court documents showed Colantonio privately messaged an unidentified family member and said no one in the community cared about the arson.

In those messages, he called the church ‘Atheist God mockers,’ adding: ‘They’re busy dancing around collecting money.’

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Texas launches legal action against CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood, Antifa

Ken Paxton, the attorney general in Texas, has launched a series of high-profile legal actions targeting alleged terrorist-linked organizations as part of his efforts to combat domestic and foreign extremism in the state.

On Feb. 5, he announced a lawsuit against the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) “to stop the terrorist groups from operating in Texas.”

According to the 32-page filing submitted to a Collin County district court, the State of Texas alleges that the Muslim Brotherhood “is a radical terrorist organization that exists to usurp governmental power and establish dominion through Sharia law” and that it has “covertly operated in the United States under the name ‘CAIR’ for decades.”

The document states that “the group is not peaceful. It is not tolerant. It does not respect the freedom to practice other religions or sects, including Christianity and Judaism.”

Paxton is seeking temporary and permanent injunctions to halt all operations, fundraising, property ownership and recruitment by the organizations in Texas.

The attorney general also turned his attention to domestic terror groups. On Feb. 6, Paxton initiated legal action against the Houston-based Screwston Anti-Fascist Committee, described by his office as an “Antifa-affiliated unincorporated nonprofit association,” alleging violations of Texas law tied to doxing and violence.

“Radical leftists have engaged in coordinated efforts to militantly attack our nation and undermine the rule of law,” he said. “These deranged traitors will face the full force of law. No stone will be left unturned, and no tool will be left unused.”

Paxton noted that Antifa has been designated by U.S. President Donald Trump as a terrorist organization and that “reported members of Screwston affiliates recently participated in an armed assault on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alvarado, Texas.”

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After Attacking Dog Ownership, Nerdeen Kiswani Does Damage Control

It’s clear that most Americans get testy when you even suggest outlawing dog ownership. New York Leftist Muslim Nerdeen Kiswani said the other day that “NYC is coming to Islam” on dogs being filthy and unfit to live in homes. Florida Rep. Randy Fine said what most of us were thinking: we chose our dogs. He’s been hammering Democrats about it, too, many of whom are eager to call critics of Kiswani and Islam “racist,” but none of whom can bring themselves to say they won’t ban dogs to appease Muslims.

Now Kiswani is doing two things, and the first one involves her playing the victim, accusing Fine of making a “genocidal statement.”

Genocide is the “deliberate, systematic, and intentional destruction—in whole or in part—of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” Nothing Fine said is remotely genocidal. Muslims who don’t like dogs are free to leave America, where dogs are part of our culture, and go to one of the many Muslim nations that openly slaughter dogs in the street.

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How MI6 backed ‘right-wing religious fanatics’ in Afghanistan

In 1980, journalist John Fullerton sat down for lunch in London with members of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6. The spooks asked the restless reporter to name five cities where he would like to work. He scrawled the answers unhesitatingly on a paper napkin.

“The top one was Peshawar in Pakistan,” he told Declassified, explaining his desire to move near the turbulent Afghan border. “The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan but I couldn’t find ways to be a freelancer out there. There were no journalists covering it. Everyone had left Kabul. So I wanted to cover the war and that’s how SIS employed me.”

He had been on good terms with SIS for many years already, after a chance encounter with Nicholas Elliott, one of the agency’s high fliers. Elliott, who famously confronted the KGB double agent Kim Philby, had just retired as an SIS director when he spotted an article by Fullerton exposing a power struggle between the police and military in apartheid South Africa.

Fullerton grew up in Cape Town, rising to night news editor on the Cape Times before migrating back to the UK, the country of his birth. After checking he was not a mole for the apartheid regime’s Bureau of State Security, British intelligence eventually took him on as a “contract labourer”, a cheaper option than a permanent SIS officer position.

“They employed quite a lot of these contract labourers, many from military backgrounds,” Fullerton commented. “SIS had gone through a period of retrenchment in the 1970s and early 80s and it had shrunk. From having three fully staffed stations in Latin America it went to having none.”

This all changed under Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who received informal advice on espionage from Elliott. “She took a great interest in foreign affairs and intelligence and she tried to beef it all up,” Fullerton remarked, adding that her Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington was eager to get “scenes of Afghans fighting communists onto television screens.”

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Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, former ZAKA head, dies year after attempted suicide

Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, creator of ZAKA and alleged rapist, has died at the age of 62, a year after he attempted suicide and less than a month prior to his 63rd birthday.

One of the most well-known and colorful characters of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist communities, Meshi-Zahav founded the famed medical search and rescue group, but his life was tainted by revelations of numerous allegations against him of rape, sexual assault and pedophilia.

Meshi-Zahav was an 11th generation Jerusalemite who, in his youth, headed the anti-Zionist demonstrations in the capital, and demonstrations against Sabbath violators, including throwing rocks at passing cars.

A grandson of Rabbi Yosef Scheinberger, the secretary of the Eida Hareidit Rabbinical Court, and with blood ties to the Rivlin family on his mother’s side, Meshi-Zahav was considered nobility in ultra-Orthodox circles.

He developed a special relationship with the police, despite being arrested several times after organizing anti-Zionist rallies.

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Mobs in India Destroy Christian Homes After Believers Refuse to Renounce Jesus

Christians in the Indian village of Midapalli had their homes destroyed by an angry mob after refusing to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ.

About 25 believers — four families and two other individuals — were confronted by a mob on Jan. 11 and told to renounce their faith, according to a report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

They refused to comply — even after being threatened with death.

The mob of about 20 fellow villagers then proceeded to destroy four of their homes.

When the Christians asked the police in Kavande village for assistance, the police not only declined, but sided with the mob.

“The officer in charge threatened the Christian families, questioning their decision to embrace Christianity as members of a tribal community and warning that their unique identity cards and ration supplies would be cancelled,” Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported.

On Jan. 14, the authorities questioned their pastor, banning him from visiting households in Midapalli.

The mob was emboldened even more, and new death threats were directed at the believers.

The Christian families have no choice but to remain in their destroyed homes, which now offer poor shelter.

“It is deeply concerning to witness the grave and unacceptable assault and humiliation these families have been subjected to on account of their religion,” Christian Solidarity Worldwide President Mervyn Thomas said.

“Even more alarming is the failure of the police to protect these vulnerable citizens, which has emboldened the perpetrators,” the statement added.

“We call upon the district administration and state authorities to intervene as matter of urgency, ensuring the safety of the affected families, restoring their rights, compensating them for the loss of their homes, and holding those responsible to account under the law.”

Such mob violence against Christians is sorrowfully more and more common in India.

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