Iran: Funding Terror Proxies And Targeting Israel, ISIS Holding 227 Christians Hostage, A National Tragedy And A Partisan Response

US details Iran funding of terror proxies targeting Israel in new report - Middle East - Jerusalem Post

Despite facing costly obstacles from the Syrian civil war, Iran continued its arming and funding of terror proxies targeting Israel throughout 2014 largely unabated, the US government found in a report released on Friday.

The State Department report— an annual accounting of organized terrorism worldwide— asserts that Iran has continued, if not expanded, its operations beyond its historical focus on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, to a limited number of operations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as to "various groups throughout the Middle East."

"Iran has historically provided weapons, training, and funding to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, including Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)," the report reads. "These Palestinian terrorist groups have been behind a number of deaths from attacks originating in Gaza and the West Bank."

"Although Hamas’s ties to Tehran have been strained due to the Syrian civil war, in a November 25 speech, Supreme Leader Khamenei highlighted Iran’s military support to 'Palestinian brothers' in Gaza and called for the West Bank to be similarly armed," the report continues. "In December, Hamas Deputy Leader Moussa Abu Marzouk announced bilateral relations with Iran and Hamas were 'back on track.'"

In the North, Iran continues providing Hezbollah— active in the fight in Syria as well as against the Jewish state from Lebanon— with "hundreds of millions of dollars. And the report claims Tehran is training "thousands of its fighters at camps in Iran."

The State Department asserts that, in admitting its arming of Hezbollah, Iran is in open violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 and 1747.

The report praises Israel's response to terror threats throughout the year, which saw war with Hamas in Gaza over fifty days that summer.

"Israel was hit by a record volume of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza and the Sinai in 2014, according to the Israeli government, with more than 4,660 projectiles launched, most during the July-August conflict, at Israeli territory compared to 74 launchings in 2013 and 2,557 in 2012," it says, referring to Israel as a "committed counterterrorism partner." 

"Militants from Gaza also infiltrated Israeli territory using tunnels in six separate attacks and, for the first time, by a sea-borne operation," it continued. The report also praises Egypt for taking aggressive counterterrorism measures against Hamas and its tunnel operations in the Sinai.

It notes, briefly, that Iranian proliferation of nuclear weapons remains a concern.

ISIS Holds 227 Assyrian Christians Hostage as World Watches Genocidal 'Ethno-Religious Cleansing in the Middle East,' Says Relief Worker

Over 200 Assyrian Christians remain captured by terror group ISIS despite the release of another hostage earlier this week, and despite the liberation of Assyrian villages that the Islamic militants had earlier taken over.

The Assyrian International News Agency revealed that 70-year-old Francois Sawa from the village of Tel Shamiram was released earlier this week, and is reported to be in good condition, joining dozens of others who have also sporadically been released. At least another 227 Assyrians are being held captive by ISIS after the terror group raided 35 villages on the Khabur river back in February.

The jihadists have asked for $100,000 for the release of each kidnapped Christian, or about $23,000,000 in total, which is more money than most in the region are able to pay.

AINA noted that all of the villages that ISIS had taken over have now been freed, but the terror group has left behind booby traps in homes and fields, and has destroyed many churches and houses.

Swedish newspaper InBlick added that the militants left behind messages sprayed on buildings that read "This is the Islamic State property."

"The implication being that, according to the Caliphate rules, when the Islamists have taken control of the area, they have the right to kill those who go in and claim the buildings. Those include, the actual owners who were sent to flee by the terrorists," explained Nuri Kino, worker with the A Demand for Action group.

"The whole area had been sprayed with these texts."

The relief worker said that over two-thirds of the indigenous Christian population in Iraq has been displaced since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, a situation he now sees being repeated in Syria.

"In February, in northeast Syria, in the so called Khabour area, 30 villages were drained from their Christian population by Islamist rampage. Over 220 of these people are still kidnapped by the Islamic State," he said.

"There is a gradual ethno-religious cleansing in the Middle East. It started in Iraq and has now come to Syria and we do not know when it will happen in other countries. There is an ongoing genocide in these countries."

Kano's comments echo concerns voiced by Jean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, Syria, who said that Christianity is slowly dying in the war-torn country.

"In my country, Syria, Christians are caught in the middle of a civil war and they are enduring the rage of an extremist jihad. And it is unjust for the West to ignore the persecutions these Christian communities are experiencing," Jeanbart said.

"What horrors must ISIS commit before the world will take greater action to stop the murderers?" he asked. "Syrian Christians are in grave danger; we may disappear soon."

Assyrian refugees who have made it to Beirut, Lebanon, have shared of some of the atrocities their children were forced to witness.

"Our children saw many beheadings," said Jack Zayya, referring to the actions of ISIS. "We were obligated to watch public executions. What kind of world is that for kids to grow up in? They were always scared."

While there are several relief groups helping Assyrian Christians and other refugees affected by ISIS, such as the Assyrian Church of the East Relief Organization, the fate of the 227 kidnapped Assyrians remains uncertain.

Jeanbart argued that the international community needs to step up its efforts to provide "better protection and execute a more aggressive strategy."

"In the case of the fighting in northeastern Syria, the capture of several hundred Assyrian Christians could have been prevented had the U.S. started its bombing raids earlier. The recent coordinated effort, that included Kurdish troops on the ground, proved effective in turning back ISIS, but for many Assyrians this help came too late," the Archbishop reflected.

A National Tragedy and a Partisan Response

Why do black lives only seem to matter when white people take them? Why does the president of the United States think it’s proper to take a horrible racial tragedy in Charleston South Carolina as an excuse to bash America as the violence capital of the “advanced” world, and a prop for Democrats’  lust for gun control legislation in a state that already has it?

Last year 82 people were shot over the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago. 16 of them died. The victims and the shooters were black.

Now two 15-year-olds have already been shot in a single Chicago neighborhood in two days.

These are tragedies every bit as terrible as what took place in a church in Charleston, but the mass shootings of black people doesn’t attract much national attention when white people aren’t involved.

Chicago’s bloody weekends show us that the politicians and reporters haven’t turned their attention to Charleston because they care about dead black people.

They are there for the psychotic killer, Dylann Storm Roof, not for his victims. They are there for a Southern state with a Republican governor who can be safely blamed the way that their Mayor of Chicago can’t. They are there to use the voiceless dead as convenient props in their campaign for gun control – in a state that already has some of the toughest gun control laws in the South. They don’t care about black people. They care about their political agendas.

It is a shameless new frontier in the political exploitation of a human tragedy diminishing both the black victims and their black and white mourners alike. But for Obama, politics is the priority. The mourning is secondary. And forget about the healing.

Obama and Hillary insist that the country needs gun control, but what it really needs is a coming together of its ordinary citizens. It isn’t just Charleston that needs a new unity. It’s Democratic cities Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit – all centers of violence, all zones where strict gun laws rule that need it as well.

The world’s worst mass shootings have happened in other advanced societies – not America as Obama claims. They happen in countries like Norway, a social democracy, France, a country ruled by anti-gun socialists and South Korea. Making guns hard to get does not stop a determined killer. 

Dylaan Roof stopped to reload his gun 5 times in the Charleston AME Church. If only one of the bible study members had possessed a firearm, most of the victims would still be alive. The demonization of firearms takes place in societies that let go of personal responsibility. It leaves even law enforcement helpless down to the disarmed Paris police officer cringing before the heavily armed Charlie Hebdo Jihadists and the fumbling Norwegian police who let Breivik kill 69 people in one shooting before he was stopped.

Despite Obama’s slander of the country of which he is the putative president, the difference between America and the rest of the world is not that they have mass shootings and we don’t. Mass shootings have taken place in European countries with very tough gun laws. The difference is that when two terrorists with assault rifles dressed in body armor came for the Mohammed cartoonists in Texas, they were stopped by a middle-aged man with a handgun. Or when a jihadist beheaded a woman in Oklahoma and was slicing off the head of another, he was stopped by an individual who appeared with a rifle and took the law into his own hands.

The victims in the church followed the law in South Carolina and didn’t bring their guns into the church.

The gunman didn’t follow the law and killed them.

Hillary Clinton decided to use the tragedy in her stump speech, insisting, “In the days ahead, we will again ask what led to this terrible tragedy and where we as a nation need to go. In order to make sense of it, we have to be honest. We have to face hard truths about race, violence, guns and division.”

The hard truth that Hillary does not want to face is that our division does not come from disturbed lone gunmen, but from politicians like her who turn every tragedy into a campaign speech. Hillary, who ran a divisive racial campaign against Obama, now wants to lecture the country on race and division.

While people in Charleston, black and white, have generously come together, Obama and Hillary selfishly pursue a divisive attack on the Second Amendment and their usual divisive racial program.

Obama paints America as a terrible place of mass shootings that is, as usual in his skewed view of the country, substantively worse than the rest of the world. Unlike the mass shootings in Europe, our mass shootings are a burden of collective guilt that he uses to reinforce a negative image of America. And, unlike the mass shootings in Chicago or Detroit, they are also a burden of collective racial guilt.

And the solution can’t be and won’t be found in the rejection of personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility means accepting that Dylann Storm Roof was responsible for his actions, as the gang members in Chicago are responsible for their actions and as we are all responsible for our actions.

And it also means believing that black lives and all lives matter everywhere; not just when they’re convenient for scoring political points.

The life of a black woman killed in a church by a white gunman should not matter any less than the life of a black woman taken by a black gang member in Chicago over another bloody weekend.

If the politicians exploiting the Charleston shootings really care when black people are murdered, they will have the opportunity to show it this weekend in Chicago. And if they remain silent and unheeding, then they will have demonstrated that they don’t really care about the victims in Charleston. At least not that much.

Blood in Gun-Free Zones Falls on the Hands of Anti-Gun Politicians - Freedom Outpost

"Bank Holiday" Preparations Begin In Greece, Lines Form At Athens ATMs | Zero Hedge

The writing has been on the wall for quite sometime. 

Deposit flight from Greece's ailing banking sector has been running north of €500 million per day this week as the threat of capital controls casts a pall over the Greek government's efforts to reassure the public and head off a terminal bank run. 

Sparking a panic has been the most powerful tool at the troika's disposal to bring PM Alexis Tsipras to the negotiating table and force Syriza to either concede to pension cuts and a VAT hike or risk social and political upheaval in the face of dark ATMs and public protests - we said this first in February and finally even the Greek government realized just what game Europe is playing. 

Until now, Greeks had taken the barrage of headlines in stride with a stoic fortitude that would impress Marcus Aurelius but now, it appears as though the 'institutions' might have finally broken their spirits.

Earlier today, the ECB agreed to lift the ELA cap by just €1.8 billion, far less than Greek banking officials had requested and probably just barely enough to cover Friday's withdrawals. And so, as Europe's "Lehman Weekend" may finally be kicking off, the ATM lines are officially forming as Greeks prepare to be 'Cyprus'd' and as the country stares into "template" oblivion.

And in yet another sign that the next week may be the beginning of the end, Cyrpus is preparing for a bank "holiday" in Greece:

Bank of Cyprus, Cyprus’s largest lender, is preparing for an extended bank holiday in Greece as continuing deposits outflows may force authorities to take this type of step and impose capital controls.

“We are preparing to facilitate our customers with operations in Greece with additional liquidity,” a Bank of Cyprus source with knowledge of the situation said on condition of anonymity. “This is something we don’t want to see happening”.

The source said that in recent days the bank saw an increase in deposits inflows, both from Cypriot and Greek depositors, amounting “hundreds of million euros”.

Reuters reported on Thursday that European Central Bank Executive Board member Benoit Coeure told euro area’s finance ministers that he was not sure whether Greek bank will be able to open on Monday.

The Bank of Cyprus source also said that the bank cannot be ruled out that a bank holiday in Greece could also affect the Cypriot banking system via the units of Greek banks operating on the island in the form of deposits outflows.

The source was not in position to name the amount in additional liquidity the bank will need in the case of a bank holiday in Greece nor the number of its customers that would be affected.

“In that case, a bank holiday in Greece could also prompt Cypriot authorities to also impose a bank holiday in Cyprus,” the Bank of Cyprus source said.

The only remaining question is whether today's deposit bleed will be dramatic enough to force Brussels - or Athens for that matter under pressure by the local banks - into implementing capital controls over the weekend. 

Waiting for the "Supreme Court" to Break the Ice beneath Our Feet - Freedom Outpost

Here we are in mid-June of 2015 and the clock is ticking. The countdown is on. The formal, official American repudiation of God's binding Word on the nature of family, marriage, and sexuality is heading our way fast. We know it's coming. We can feel it. We can't see clearly enough to know exactly when it'll get to us, but we can hear the Jaws music ramping up. We know it won't be long. (See: Gender Chaos: The Insanity (and Impossibility) of "Sex Change")

While we're doing our best to dog-paddle while bleeding out here in the middle of our All-American "ocean of freedom" from the Law of God, we have a great opportunity. Several, actually.

Make no mistake: Repentance and broken submission is our only hope.

Begging for forgiveness from the King whose Nature "we the people" have openly mocked with every act of open rebellion against Him is our only hope. (See: Note to 'Merica: There is no "God-given right" to worship false gods. Repent accordingly.)

So as we watch and listen to Fox News, MSNBC, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and every other Pagan Right/Left mouthpiece that will never call "we the people" to open repentance and complete submission to Christ as King in practice, we cannot afford to forget who they are, where they're coming from, and where they've led us thus far (because we have allowed them to).

We must remember who is King.

We must remember who has all authority right here and now in America and everywhere else in His creation.

We must remember that we are to do everything that we are able, by His grace, to see that His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

We must remember the apparently long lost and forgotten Gospel-fueled Great Commission of Jesus Christ and we must cling to it now, as the doom of this American culture fast approaches, lest we fear man and continue in the cowardly, apathetic manner that brought us to this condition in the first place.

Let's be clear: There is but one Supreme Court, and it is not in Washington DC.

While the American court deliberates and prepares its verdict – its pathetic attempt to redefine God's unbreakable reality – His people are already being blessed with great opportunities to stand, suffer and advance His Kingdom here and now, even as the ice begins to break wide open beneath the feet of the proud and unrepentant. (See: How to truly love (and really save) America.)

Pray that we will seize those opportunities, by His grace and for His glory, so that whatever comes after this will be much more clearly, lovingly and obediently His. (See: Roaring into Post-America Christianity.)

Also see:

Rand Paul: "Americans See The Rot In The System...And Want It To End!" | Zero Hedge

Illegal Immigration Nightmare: Obama Has Been Releasing 1000s Of Convicted Criminals Back Into Our Communities