Pope FRANCIS funnels money to illegal Muslim migrants

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/02/pope-funnels-money;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

“If the pope were dedicated to the destruction of Catholic Europe, what would he be doing differently? Nothing.”

“Francis Funnels Funds to Muslim Migrants,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, February 17, 2022:  

VATICAN (ChurchMilitant.com) – Pope Francis is channeling funds to illegal Muslim immigrants, who have stormed the Lithuanian border in record numbers.

The illegal border crossers, who are coming in via Belarus, pose a threat to the national security of the mainly Catholic country. 

As Lithuania struggles to fight the influx, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development announced Saturday that Pope Francis had sent 50,000 euros through the apostolic nunciature in Vilnius to assist migrants in Lithuania on the Belarusian border. 

Francis’ support for the flood of illegals in the troubled region is the pontiff’s second aid package since sending 100,000 euros to migrants on the border between Poland and Belarus in early January.

In a press statement, the Vatican said that the Holy Father’s contribution to migrants on the Polish border was intended to “deal with the migratory emergency on the border between the two countries.”

Both aid packages will be channeled through local Catholic aid agencies Caritas Vilnius and Caritas Polska. The agencies are primarily assisting Muslim migrants from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Iran. A smaller number of refugees, some of them Catholic, come from Congo-Brazzaville, Togo, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast.

Weaponizing Immigration

“What is noteworthy about the pope’s donations to these migrants is that Poland is doing all it can to keep them [the migrants] out, charging that Belarus’ [President] Lukashenko has weaponized Muslim migrants to weaken Polish civilization,” historian of Islam Robert Spencer told Church Militant.

Spencer, who has written over 21 books on Islam and the Middle East and is the author of recent bestseller Mass Migration in Europe: A Model for the U.S.?, elaborated: 

The pope seems blithely unconcerned about the possibility of the weakening or destruction of what is left of Catholic European civilization at the hands of migrants who believe they are the “best of people” (Qur’an 3:110) and that non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings” (Qur’an 98:6). 

The pope shows no concern whatsoever for the national security concerns that are leading some Eastern European states to try to keep the migrants out. If the pope were dedicated to the destruction of Catholic Europe, what would he be doing differently? Nothing….

survey of Lithuanians revealed that citizens did not like that “most refugees are Muslims” and that “Muslim refugees will try to popularize their religion among us,” even though respondents mostly disagree with propositions that all terrorists are Muslims. The survey found that women felt more threatened by Muslim refugees….

How a Trial in Finland Could Have Worldwide Effects on Government Persecution of Religion

Finnish Lutherans under investigation for upholding biblical teachings on sexuality ...

Prosecution against Diocesan Dean Juhana Pohjola, ThD - Mission Diocese

BY THE FEDERALIST

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/how-a-trial-in-finland-could-have-worldwide-effects-on-government-persecution-of-religion/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

‘If the prosecution wins, the ability of pastors to preach the gospel is effectively over in Finland, without criminal sanction.’

The trial of two Finnish Christians for publicly stating mainstream religious teachings that reserve sex only for heterosexual marriage is heading towards a judgment scheduled for March 30. The case could end up hitting Finland’s Supreme Court and even the European Court of Human Rights, which means its outcome could affect the rights of religious believers and political dissidents across the world.

Members of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola have been prosecuted now for nearly three years after Rasanen tweeted a picture of Bible verses in June 2019. Complaints about this tweet led to her prosecution under Finland’s “hate crimes” laws.

The government investigation of Rasanen’s tweet uncovered a theological pamphlet she wrote and Pojhola published in 2004, for which they have both been charged. The booklet states classic Christian teachings about sex as reserved only for marriage, and defines marriage as comprising only one man and one woman for life.

“The teachings concerning marriage and sexuality in the Bible arise from love to one’s neighbor,” Rasanen said in a Feb. 17 statement. “This case is about whether it is allowed in Finland to cite the Bible and to agree with it in topics that go against the tide and challenge the current ethos and thinking.”

Oral arguments in the case wrapped up this week on Valentine’s Day. On Feb. 17, a Finnish court also heard a related request from the prosecutor to force a Finnish radio show to take offline a two-minute audio clip of Rasanen speaking about marriage in 2019.

“Being criminally charged for voicing my deeply held beliefs in a country that has such deep roots in freedom of speech and religion feels unreal,” Rasanen told The Federalist.

Prosecutor Seeks to Ban Christian Speech, Including From Pastors

On Feb. 14, Pojhola’s lawyer Jyrki Anttinen argued “if the prosecution wins, the ability of pastors to preach the gospel is effectively over in Finland — without criminal sanction,” said Lorcan Price, a lawyer assisting the case for Alliance Defending Freedom International who attended the Helsinki hearing. An Irishman, Price listened with the aid of a Finnish translator.

The Finnish prosecutor who brought the case is seeking a fine of one-third of Rasanen’s annual income, the public erasure of documents and audio she’s made on the subject, and a financial penalty against the small religious organization Pohjola runs, the Luther Foundation. If the two Christians are convicted, the steepest possible penalty could be two years in prison.

“I’ve been to his headquarters, the Mission Diocese of the Lutheran Evangelical Church,” Price noted. “It’s fairly utilitarian. It’s not luxurious — there’s no marble foyer with a fountain and receptionist. There’s a kitchen and a communal area and Bishop Juhana’s office.”

“They’re a breakaway from the main Lutheran church,” Price continued. In fact, Pohjola was expelled from the state church in 2014, also for affirming classic Christian theology about differences between the two sexes. He was elected bishop by his growing missionary congregations last year. “The main church abandoned the teachings but got to keep all of the buildings. That’s what we have here. He’s in fairly basic accommodation, let’s say. I think anything of their income is outrageous.”

Attempt to Expand Government Censorship

It’s not clear Finland’s hate crimes law even bans controversial speech, but Finland’s top prosecutor is arguing that it does. If the prosecutor wins the case, it would mark an unprecedented expansion of identity laws that exist in most European countries, many U.S. cities and states, and that U.S. Democrats are trying to make a nationwide law in The Equality Act.

“The prosecutor believes the law means you can’t preach the gospel in public, but some believe it means you can’t directly incite violence,” Price noted.

The charges against the two Christians include an attempt to criminalize statements they made years before the law being used to prosecute them passed. That’s the only charge against Pohjola, and one of three charges against Rasanen.

“The fact that Bishop Juhana is even in this trial is Kafkaesque, it’s insane,” Price said. “He’s being charged with something he did as the head of a charitable foundation, the Luther Foundation, that publishes theological documents, for a document he didn’t write that expresses mainstream, orthodox Christian teaching… Finding that Bishop Juhana as a publisher broke the law would damage the rights of publishers to publish things that are controversial and as a church leader [would] damage his ability to publish and evangelize and disseminate in public Christian teaching.”

The Federalist interviewed Pohjola in person in November, and Rasanen via Zoom last week. As their case concluded arguments this week, U.S. members of Congress reiterated their public concerns about its implications for human rights both worldwide and in the United States.

Case Likely To Set International Precedents

It’s likely their case won’t be over even after the court decision likely out at the end of March, said Price. That’s because both parties are likely to appeal if they lose.

If the court convicts Rasanen or Pohjola, or both, their lawyers will “definitely” appeal, Price said. The Finnish prosecutor also seems likely to appeal if the two Christians are not convicted, as she has appealed similar cases attempting to criminalize politically incorrect views, he said.

The Finnish legal system allows prosecutors to appeal if they don’t win a conviction in their first-round at court. In common law countries like England and the United States, usually, only those convicted of crimes can appeal, not their prosecutors, except under unusual circumstances, Price said.

“I think that’s very burdensome for those accused,” he noted. “So you can go through multiple levels of the court and be vindicated at each level and the prosecutor can keep dragging the accused through the courts.”

All this means Rasanen and Pohjola’s cases could very well end up in Finland’s Supreme Court, where if they lose they could appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, from where Price spoke to The Federalist by Zoom on Tuesday. That means their case could affect how all of Europe treats Christian doctrines and free speech more broadly.

Like the United States, Europe has been increasingly restricting political and religious speech, especially in international courts against countries seen as unfashionably conservative, such as Hungary and Poland, Price said. This case, therefore, comes at a crucial time as speech rights are receiving less government support than has been long-standing in the West.

Silencing Attempt Backfires

Before this case, Rasanen and Pohjola’s theological booklet was printed years ago in a few hundred copies and mostly used within tiny Lutheran churches. Their prosecution has caused it to be distributed around the world and translated into several other languages, Price said.

“This obscure little pamphlet has made its way around the world thanks to the efforts of the prosecutor to shut it down,” he noted.

Being targeted for their faith has given Rasanen and Pohjola a global platform for preaching the Christian message of forgiveness for all sins and the deep importance to Christians of the Bible as the very Word of God. Rasanen told The Federalist that because of her case, European media are quoting Bible verses and people are debating their meaning. She says she’s received emails from people saying her case has prompted them to start reading the Bible, which the pastor’s wife and grandmother of nine says she’s read repeatedly since age 16.

Rasanen spoke to the huge worldwide audience of Fox News this week about her case. Political and religious leaders around the world have also expressed support for Rasanen and Pohjola’s rights to free speech and religious exercise, which are legally recognized in European human rights agreements.

“Many people and journalists around the world regularly ask me: ‘What keeps you going, from where do you find the courage to speak up?’” Rasanen told The Federalist. “My motivation comes from the Bible and from my will to have an impact on society. A conviction based on the Christian faith is more than a [superficial] opinion. The early Christians did not renounce their faith in lions’ caves, why should I then renounce my faith in a courtroom? I believe it is my calling and honor to defend the foundational rights and freedoms at this point of my life.”

While some people have been scared into silence about their beliefs because of this prosecution, Rasanen said, it’s also prompted 1,000 Finns to stand in front of Parliament holding their Bibles up to “collectively show strong support for the freedom of God’s Word.” The Finnish Association for Freedom of Speech and Religion was also founded last June to support the legal defense for this case and possibly others.

“In one sense the prosecutor has frightened part of the population into being quiet and in another, it has drawn huge attention to the issue,” Price said. “We can’t underestimate the chilling effect of these prosecutions. She [the prosecutor] cannot but regard this as at least a partial success that sending a tweet about the Bible could result in the police coming to your door. Not everyone has the grit and determination of Paivi.

“That’s our concern with these hate speech laws. It denudes society of the opportunity to hear something that can be shocking and provocative but is also a different perspective and for Christians founded on a fundamental truth of scripture.”

VACCINE COLLECTIVISM: Fauci now talking like Chairman Mao, says individual rights must be surrendered for the “good of society”

Image: VACCINE COLLECTIVISM: Fauci now talking like Chairman Mao, says individual rights must be surrendered for the “good of society”

BY ETHAN HUFF

SEE: https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-10-06-fauci-chairman-mao-rights-surrendered-greater-good.html;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

(Natural News) Career criminal Tony Fauci is blabbing his annoying mouth again, this time in promotion of communism.

According to the government troll, who has been on the taxpayer dole for the past nearly 40 years, all Americans must “give up” their constitutional rights by getting “vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) and wearing a mask – because doing this, he says, is necessary for the “greater good.”

“But you are a member of society,” Fauci whined during a mainstream media appearance. “And as a member of society, reaping all the benefits of being a member of society, you have a responsibility to society.”

Fauci went on to say that he personally feels as though the Constitution should be scrapped because of “a pandemic that’s killing millions of people.” This, he says, is reason enough to suspend all individual rights and force everyone into slavery under his rule.

“You have got to look at it and say, there comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision for the great good of society,” Fauci added.

Fauci is a threat to freedom

Much like Chairman Mao, Fauci believes that he should be able to decide who gets to do what and when, based on their mask and vaccination status. Only those Americans who obey his commands should be allowed to live.

Even after openly admitting that Chinese Virus injections are causing more disease to spread, Fauci still feels like everyone should be forced to get them in order to stay “safe” against possible infection with Chinese Germs.

Back in August, Fauci appeared, as he often does, on some mainstream media program in which he threatened that “things are going to get worse” if Americans do not fully comply with his demands.

The “pain and suffering” will intensify, Fauci promised, if unvaccinated people continue to rely on their God-given natural immunity as opposed to the fake “immunity” being dispensed by him and his ilk.

“If you look at the acceleration of the number of cases, the seven-day average has gone up substantially,” Fauci stated, rattling off made-up numbers he came up with on the fly.

“You know, what we really need to do, John, and we say it over and over again, it’s the truth, we have a hundred million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not getting vaccinated.”

No, Fauci, what we really need to do is get rid of you and stop your reign of terror over the American people. You have no right to tell other people what to do with their own bodies, no matter how much you feel as though you do have that right.

What Fauci is effectively telling Americans is that their rights must decrease while his rights must increase. Fauci thinks he has the right to force you to wear a mask and get injected against your will, meaning he is unwilling to sacrifice his own self-perceived “right” to tell other people what to do.

The guy is a nutcase, but a dangerous one with clear psychopathic tendencies. Fauci is a threat to a free and open society, and nobody need pay him any mind – though many Branch Covidians have decided to make him their patron saint.

In the religion of Covidism, Fauci is a type of priest or pope that tells his followers what to do. The problem is that this religion has become mandatory, meaning if you refuse to convert, its members are threatening to punish you with violence and the total deprivation of your rights.

The latest news about psychopath Fauci and his murderous ilk can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

NationalFile.com

NaturalNews.com

Biracial GOP Candidate Rips CRT in Front of North Carolina School Board

WATCH: Dad Says There's No Racism Here —Except From the Government and Media

Rumble — A North Carolina dad dropped by his local school board meeting to speak about CRT, gender ideology, and more. Love seeing moms and dads showing up to speak up for the kids.

BY STEPHEN GREEN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2022/02/18/biracial-gop-candidate-rips-crt-in-front-of-north-carolina-school-board-n1560316;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

CRT got blown away by a massive truth bomb dropped by North Carolina dad — and local GOP candidate — Brian Echevarria at his school board meeting on Monday.

“As a parent, I speak to other parents,” he told Cabarrus County School Board members, “And there are a few things we don’t want.”

“I’m biracial, I’m multilingual, I’m multicultural. The fact is in America and North Carolina, I can do anything I want — and I teach that to my children. And the person who tells my little pecan-color kids that they’re somehow oppressed based on the color of their skin,” he justly insisted, “would be absolutely wrong and absolutely at war with me.”

Echevarria started off by thanking the board for passing a non-discrimination resolution but quickly segued into a now-viral attack against what he calls the “big fat lie” of critical race theory.

“What the masks showed us is the parents, the most powerful group in the country, [are] taking back the wheel.”

What a great dad.

He isn’t alone, either. As I reported for PJ Media VIP supporters, three “woke” school board members didn’t just lose a recall election in San Francisco on Tuesday, they lost by a jaw-dropping three-to-one margin.

Parents everywhere are waking up to the wokeness, and insisting that teachers teach the three Rs, rather than the poison of CRT.

CRT, Echevarria says, teaches children to “look at your black neighbor and say they’re oppressed and you look at your white neighbor and say they’re evil — regardless of the experience you’ve had with them.”

If Echevarria was looking to jumpstart his campaign, I can’t think of a better or more timely way to do it.

“Parents Have Rights,” in fact, is the first issue listed on his campaign website.

Echevarria is running as a Republican in North Carolina House 73rd district, and with his ability to garner positive attention with a strong and timely message, he might not stop there.

Watch the whole thing. It might be the best three minutes you’ll spend all day.

If candidates like Echevarria are becoming the new face of the GOP, it’s a welcome change from the pre-Trump stodginess and timidity we’d all grown far too accustomed to.

Biden’s handlers to give Iran $7,000,000,000 in pursuit of new nuke deal

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/02/bidens-handlers-to-give-iran-7000000000-in-pursuit-of-new-nuke-deal;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Biden’s handlers: financing the oppression of the Iranian people.

“Exclusive-Iran nuclear deal draft puts prisoners, enrichment, cash first, oil comes later -diplomats,” Reuters, February 17, 2022:

VIENNA : A U.S.-Iranian deal taking shape to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers lays out phases of mutual steps to bring both sides back into full compliance, and the first does not include waivers on oil sanctions, diplomats say.

Envoys from Iran, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany, the European Union and United States are still negotiating details of the draft accord amid Western warnings that time is running out before the original deal becomes obsolete. Delegates say much of the text is settled but some thorny issues remain.

The broad objective is to return to the original bargain of lifting sanctions against Iran, including ones that have slashed its crucial oil sales, in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear activities that extend the time it would need to produce enough enriched uranium for an atomic bomb if it chose to.

Iran has breached many of those restrictions and pushed well beyond them in response to the U.S. withdrawal from the deal in 2018 and its reimposition of sanctions under then-President Donald Trump. While the 2015 deal capped uranium enrichment at 3.67per cent fissile purity, Iran is now enriching to up to 60per cent, close to weapons grade.

Iran insists its aims are wholly peaceful and that it wants to master nuclear technology for civil uses. But Western powers say no other state has enriched to such a high level without developing nuclear weapons and Iran’s advances since the U.S. walkout mean the 2015 deal will soon be totally hollowed out….

The text also alludes to other measures that diplomats say include unfreezing about US$7 billion in Iranian funds stuck in South Korean banks under U.S. sanctions, as well as the release of Western prisoners held in Iran, which U.S. lead negotiator Robert Malley has suggested is a requirement for a deal….

Documents Reveal US Gov’t Spent $22M Promoting Anti-Russia Narrative in Ukraine and Abroad

BY AMERICAN FAITH

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/documents-reveal-us-govt-spent-22m-promoting-anti-russia-narrative-in-ukraine-and-abroad/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

The National Endowment for Democracy can claim it is in the business of democracy promotion. In reality, it does anything but that, unless “democracy” is entirely synonymous with elite U.S. interests.

(Mint Press News) Amid soaring tensions with Russia, the United States is spending a fortune on foreign interference campaigns in Ukraine. Washington’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has spent $22.4 million on operations inside the country since 2014, when democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown and replaced by a successor government handpicked by the U.S. Those operations included propping up and training pro-Western political parties, funding pliant media organizations, and subsidizing massive privatization drives that benefit foreign multinational corporations, all in an effort to secure U.S. control over the country that NED President Carl Gershman called “the biggest prize” in Europe.

Demwashing the CIA

The National Endowment for Democracy was set up in 1983 by the Reagan administration after a series of public scandals had seriously undermined both the credibility and the public image of the CIA. That the organization was established and continues to function as a cutout group doing much of the agency’s dirtiest work is not in question. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Gershman himself said, explaining its creation. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein told The Washington Post in 1991.

Since its inception, NED has been a driving force behind many of the most prominent uprisings and coups around the world. The organization currently has 40 active projects in Belarus, all with the goal of removing President Alexander Lukashenko from office. Last year, the country was engulfed by nationwide protests that made worldwide headlines. NED senior Europe Program officer, Nina Ognianova, boasted that her agency was involved in the uprising. “We don’t think that this movement that is so impressive and so inspiring came out of nowhere — that it just happened overnight,” she said, noting that NED had made a “modest but significant contribution” to the protests.

The 2021 protest movement in Cuba was also led by NED-financed operatives, with the organization’s own documents showing how it had for years been infiltrating the Cuban art and music scene in an attempt to turn popular culture against the communist government. Ultimately, the movement failed. However, NED continues to prop up anti-government Cuban artists, media outlets, politicians, and public figures.

NED was also funneling money to the leaders of the 2019 Hong Kong protests in an attempt to prolong the movement. “The organization and its partner will leverage their extensive existing networks to support exiled activists and to sustain and grow activist communities remaining in Hong Kong,” one NED grant explains, adding that a secondary goal was to “strengthen regional and international support for the pro-democracy movement,” by carrying out a worldwide PR campaign promoting it, something that might help explain why the events dominated the news cycle for months.

Meanwhile, NED has also channeled millions to right-wing opposition groups in Nicaragua and even organized rock concerts in Venezuela in an effort to undermine support for its socialist government.

While NED is careful to couch all of its activities in the language of “democracy promotion,” the fact that it has never carried out a single project in the U.S.-backed Gulf dictatorships of Saudi ArabiaQatarBahrainOman, or the United Arab Emirates — some of the least democratic nations in the world — underlines that the organization exists to antagonize enemy governments.

NED is almost entirely funded by Congress and is staffed largely by ex-national security state leaders. Its current president is Damon Wilson, former special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council. Other top officials pepper NED’s board of directors, including current CIA Director William J. Burns, current Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and 2014 Ukrainian Maidan revolution mastermind Victoria Nuland, as well as veteran national security official Elliott Abrams, infamous for his role in supplying weapons to far-right death squads in Central America and his attempts to overthrow the government of Venezuela.

Despite this, NED still insists that it is a private, non-profit, non-governmental organization. One key reason for this designation is that its private nature means that its affairs do not fall under the same legal scrutiny as those of government organizations like the CIA. It is harder to acquire documents under the Freedom of Information Act, for example, meaning that the group’s actions remain shrouded in secrecy.

Economic and political capture, NED-style

Studying the NED grants database reveals that the organization has approved 334 separate grants to Ukraine, a country the group’s 2019 annual report identified as its “top priority,” owing to “its size and importance for the Europe region.” The report notes that NED is focused on “counter[ing] foreign [i.e., Russian] malign influence, particularly disinformation and corrosive capital.” Of the European nations, only Russia itself has been the target of more NED money ($37.7 million to Ukraine’s $22.4 million).

NED is rather hazy about where its money is going, with the only clues being brief, one-paragraph descriptions (rarely longer than 75 words) full of boilerplate rhetoric. Yet scrutinizing even the vague project outlines, it becomes clear that NED has two major objectives in Ukraine:

  1. Pushing through mass privatization of the country’s state-owned businesses.
  2. Building up political parties that will represent elite U.S. interests.

Of the $22.4 million, over $2.9 million has been awarded to the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), an offshoot of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for the purpose of “sparking economic transformation” in Ukraine. What sort of transformation the CIPE wants to see is made clear on its website, which states categorically that “Free market capitalism and global trade have resulted in the greatest economic gains in human history,” and that the center’s role is to further free-market penetration around the world.

For instance, one NED grant to the CIPE — worth $500,000 and entitled “Developing [a] Market Economy” — described the project’s goal as “enhanc[ing] the role of leading business associations and the private sector in public policy decision-making, and improv[ing] the capacity of the private sector and officials to cooperate to develop and implement economic reforms.” In other words, to hand over government decision-making to big business, something many might argue is the antithesis of democracy.

The post-2014 government, installed after the Maidan Revolution, has already implemented a course of economic shock therapy, selling off many of the country’s state-owned assets, in the process turning Ukraine into, by quite some margin, the poorest nation in Europe (although it has also helped create many new billionaires). Nevertheless, the U.S. wants to see further privatizations, along the lines of what it helped implement in Russia in the 1990s.

NED has also been key in building up pro-U.S. political forces in Ukraine, notably awarding the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) nearly $2.2 million towards this endeavor. Congress established NDI in tandem with NED; and NDI, like its sister organization, claims to be a non-governmental organization, despite being affiliated with the Democratic Party. Its chairperson is Madeline Albright, secretary of state under the Clinton administration.

One $595,000 grant describes how NDI will “help political parties develop into inclusive, national movements,” and will “assist parties in the development of inclusive, internal communication and decision making procedures” and “conduct public opinion research and training to help parties better understand and respond to citizens, including those outside of their traditional geographical bases of support.” A less charitable interpretation of the grant would be that the U.S. government is taking over the political direction and organization of Ukrainian political parties, molding them as they see fit.

In tandem with the support of political blocs also comes the grooming of young political and social activists who NED hopes will become the leaders of tomorrow. To this end, it has given at least $385,000 to the European Institute for Democracy in Warsaw, in order to, in its words, “support a new generation of political leaders in Ukraine,” by conducting training courses for their handpicked proteges, flying them out of the country to provide lessons in “election campaigning, women empowerment, effective governing, and crisis management,” among other skills.

The point, of course, is to develop a cadre of pro-Western neoliberal thought leaders who will ally themselves to the United States and its vision for Ukraine. Left unstated in all this is that the U.S. is deciding who exactly this new generation of leaders comprises. And for all the nods towards diversity and liberalism, the U.S.’ record in Eastern Europe shows they are happy to support fascists and other highly anti-democratic forces. Those who do not share Washington’s goals for Ukraine need not apply. Thus, by using its financial muscle to support only one side in this debate, NED hopes to engineer a future in which pro-Russia, anti-privatization political figures and movements are sidelined and marginalized.

Media capture, NED-style

Another key focus for NED is to establish and support pro-Western media outlets and NGOs that backed both the 2014 overthrow of Yanukovych and the new government’s privatization agenda. This is all couched as “promoting independent media.” But in reality, it is creating a network largely dependent on and answerable to Washington.

One example of this is the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, which consistently publishes studies about “Russia’s efforts to distort facts” and scare stories about an impending Russian invasion while inviting the British ambassador to give talks at its headquarters. Ukraine Crisis describes its vision of Ukraine as an “outpost of freedom and democratic development in Eastern Europe,” and an “integral part of the West.” Ukraine Crisis is directly funded by a number of different U.S. governmental organizations, as well as by NATO and the governments of Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Finland, and the Netherlands.

Most of the media organizations NED funds also maintain English-language versions of their websites. This is because many of these groups are used to influence Western audiences as well as individuals inside the target country, Ukraine. The Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), for example, has been supported financially since 2016 and has received at least $204,000 from NED. It plays an important role in injecting U.S. government narratives into American media reporting, having been presented simply as a “human rights group” in a wide range of outlets, including The Washington PostUSA Today, and The New York Post. None of these articles inform readers that CCL is directly in the pay of a CIA front group, precisely because it would undermine their credibility.

Media networks directly owned and operated by the U.S. state, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America, also frequently use CCL as an expert source. This gives the impression that there is a sizable groundswell of individuals all focusing on the same issue when, in reality, it is simply operatives from the same source (the U.S. government) all interacting with each other.

Target: Donbas

Before his overthrow, President Yanukovych maintained cordial relations with Russia. However, that changed drastically after the Maidan Revolution, with the new government not only attempting to tie itself to the West but also aggressively suppressing any pro-Russian sentiment. Since 2014, the government has shut down Russian-language media and jailed pro-Russian voices. It has also banned the Russian language from schools and in public places such as in stores and restaurants. Any business caught violating the law is subject to a fine.

This has caused significant consternation inside the country, not least because almost one-third of Ukrainian citizens speak Russian as their first language, and significant minorities do not speak Ukrainian at all. This is particularly true in the Donbas, the large industrial area of Eastern Ukraine, and in the Crimean peninsula, which Russia controversially annexed in 2014. In both regions, Russian is far-and-away the majority language, spoken by nearly three-quarters of the population. Support for Yanukovych and language preference are closely correlated. Since 2014, the Ukrainian government has also been engaged in a low-level civil war in the Donbas against Russian-speaking militias.

The Donbas is a target for not only the Ukrainian government but for NED as well. The word “Donbas” is referenced 52 times in the 334 one-paragraph grants noted above, while eastern Ukraine is mentioned 108 times and Crimea 22 times. The projects are full of coded references to “expanding outreach” of media outlets into the Donbas, or, even more alarmingly, to “assisting” civil groups “working in the front line territories of the Donbas” — a statement so vague that it could mean anything from health workshops to funneling weapons.

Selective anti-corruption agenda

Another focus of NED projects is anti-corruption drives. The words “corrupt” or “corruption” appear 83 times in the NED grants to Ukraine, and the endowment has funded a wide range of NGOs dealing with the subject. For instance, it has awarded $106,000 to the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center (KhAC) and $225,000 to the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kiev.

NED describes KhAC’s work as “non-partisan” and concerned with “promot[ing] government transparency and accountability in eastern Ukraine,” by “monitor[ing] the financial performance of Kharkiv-based municipal enterprises, expos[ing] corrupt practices, and launch[ing] legal proceedings to prevent them.”

Certainly, corruption is endemic in Ukraine. Yet there is good reason to question the intentions of these groups and suspect that they are selectively pursuing opponents of American policy. KhAC was actually established by leaders of the Maidan Revolution. Furthermore, the board of the Anti-Corruption Action Center is littered with Western government officials, including the director-general of the European Anti-Fraud Office (a department of the European Commission), a former FBI special agent, as well as controversial neoconservative intellectual Francis Fukuyama.

In an article in the elite American journal Foreign Policy, executives at the Anti-Corruption Action Center frame “corruption” and “Russian” as virtually synonymous. “[Ukraine’s] democratization and ongoing efforts to fight entrenched graft and cronyism are a threat to [President Vladimir] Putin’s model of governance,” they explain, adding that Russia uses “strategic corruption” to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty. The country is a “battlefield” between Ukrainian democracy and Russian autocracy, they write, calling for the U.S. to flood Ukraine with arms and to sanction Moscow.

In this sense, then, NED’s incessant focus on “corruption” appears to look far more like a witch hunt to bring down political forces that it opposes. This is reminiscent of the tactics of advanced “lawfare” — using legal means to destroy political enemies — that Washington used to overthrow Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and imprison her predecessor, Lula da Silva, paving the way for far-right pro-U.S. Jair Bolsonaro to become president.

Unbeknownst at the time, the U.S. government was secretly aiding an “anti-corruption” operation known in Brazilian as “Lava Jato.” A combination of corrupt judges and extremely flimsy evidence led to the persecution of the leaders of the Workers’ Party. Both the FBI and CIA were crucial to the operation. As one prosecutor involved in the persecution quipped, Lula’s arrest was “a gift from the CIA.”

Send in the Neo-Nazis

At the same time as NED has been training political leaders, other arms of the U.S. government have been training military units, almost certainly including the notorious Neo-Nazi group, the Azov Battalion. A Yahoo! News report noted that, since 2015, the CIA has been training “insurgent leaders” while Congress rubber-stamped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid to Ukraine. The congressional aid bill originally included text explicitly barring assistance to Azov but, under pressure from the Pentagon, the language was removed. “Given all this,” wrote Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic, “it would be more of a surprise that the neo-Nazis of Azov haven’t been trained in the CIA’s clandestine make-an-insurgency program.”

In their drive to stoke hostilities between the West and Russia, corporate media have overwhelmingly ignored the fact that the U.S. and NATO forces have been supporting openly Neo-Nazi paramilitaries for many years. A MintPress study of the op-ed pages of The New York TimesThe Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal found that only one of 91 articles published in January mentioned this connection at all, with far more asserting that Vladimir Putin himself is Hitler incarnate. Around 90% of opinion columns pushed a “get tough on Russia” message, with anti-war voices few and far between.

“People who take at face value the Western media coverage would have a very distorted perception of the Ukraine conflict and its origin,” Ivan Katchanovski, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, told MintPress, adding:

They omit or deny that there is a civil war in Donbas even though the majority of scholars who [have] published or presented concerning this conflict in Western academic venues classify it as a civil war with Russian military intervention. The Western media also omitted that recent ‘unity marches’ in Kharkiv and Kyiv and a staged training of civilians, including a grandmother, were organized and led by the far right, in particular, the Neo-Nazi Azov [Battalion].”

The Azov publicity stunt involving a grandmother, to which Katchanovski is referring, was a particularly noteworthy incident. Conducting a civilian training operation in the middle of the Donbas city of Mariupol while a crowd of Western journalists looked on, Azov units showed locals how to use rifles. The extraordinary image of a silver-haired, 79-year-old “babushka” staring down the sights of an AK-47 went viral around the world, allowing the media to construct an “everyone in brave Ukraine is doing their part to oppose an imminent Russian invasion” narrative. The story was covered by a host of outlets, including ABC NewsMSNBCNewsweek, the BBCThe Guardian, and The Financial Times, as well as by media in IrelandAustraliaIsraelDenmarkThailand, and Indonesia. Images from the training day featured on the front cover of six national British newspapers on February 14.

This was all despite the fact that the Wolfsangel insignia of the many Azov soldiers instructing the grandmother is clearly visible in a number of the images. The Wolfsangel was the crest of the infamous SS brigades, Hitler’s elite paramilitary units that carried out the extermination of millions of people (including countless Ukrainians) in Nazi death camps across Europe. The image is widely used by Neo-Nazi groups in the U.S. and is considered a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League. Azov’s original commander, politician Andriy Biletsky, has stated that he sees Ukraine’s mission as to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led subhumans.” None of the outlets above mentioned the fact that they were profiling Neo-Nazis.

Judging by other pro-Nazi coverage, this was far from an honest oversight. Earlier this month, a number of prominent Western media outlets, including The Daily Mailran puff pieces on Olena Bilozerska, a Ukrainian sniper with “at least ten confirmed kills.” Bilozerska was presented as a quintessential “girl boss” who was defending her land from foreign aggression. The Sun — Britain’s best-selling newspaper — called her a “hero” in its headline. Both outlets even included a video of her killing Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens for readers’ pleasure. This enjoyment might have been tempered somewhat if the Mail, Sun, or other outlets revealed to their readers that Bilozerska is a fascist from the Right Sector group, a Neo-Nazi paramilitary.

This information is far from difficult to find, as Bilozerska is a well-known public figure inside Ukraine, keeping a popular blog and YouTube channel where she shares her thoughts. These reportedly include that the Holocaust did not happen, that homosexuals should not be allowed to eat at the same table as heterosexuals, and that monuments to Hitler’s greatness should be erected in Berlin. In 2013, German state-owned media outlet Deutsche Welle was forced to rescind an award for which it had nominated her after activists highlighted her pro-Hitler writings. In 2019, she was invited to NATO headquarters in Brussels to give a speech.

A broken promise and an existential threat

In 1990, the U.S. government promised Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would stray “not one inch eastward” from its current position in exchange for Soviet support for German reunification. However, it later reneged on this promise, and between 1999 and 2004 NATO galloped eastward, even admitting three former Soviet republics, all of which share a land border with Russia. In 2008, NATO also invited Ukraine and Georgia to join.

For Moscow, this was an existential threat. Russia as a country draws its origins from the Kievan Rus Federation, a medieval state whose capital was Kiev and from where the word “Russia” derives. In the 13th century, the Rus people fled north towards Moscow to avoid the Mongol invasion, helping to establish the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, which later became the Russian empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation today. Putin himself has said that he considers Russians and Ukrainians to be “one people”; “Ukraine” literally means “borderland” in Russian. Yet White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki recently described Ukraine as “our eastern flank” — an assertion that is significantly less credible than Russia’s claim.

The U.S.-Russian relationship fundamentally deteriorated during the 2014 Maidan Revolution. President Yanukovych had been playing the European Union and Russia off against each other, negotiating economic deals with both. Unsurprisingly, given Ukraine’s importance to Moscow, Russia offered a more lucrative deal, which he accepted. This turned out to be Yanukovych’s political death warrant, as the United States immediately began supporting a nationwide protest movement. Senior U.S. officials like Senator John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland flew to Kiev, famously handing out cookies to protestors in Independence Square.

In February 2014, leaked audio of Nuland speaking with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt showed that the United States was pulling the strings and crowning the kings. “I don’t think Klitch should go into the government. I don’t think it is necessary. I don’t think it is a good idea,” Nuland can be heard saying, referring to the boxer-turned-politician Vitali Klitschko. “I think Yats [Arseniy Yatsenyuk] is the guy who has got the economic experience, the governing experience,” she added. Less than one month after the audio leaked, Yatsenyuk became the next prime minister.

Less than two weeks after the phone call, snipers massacred almost 100 people protesting. Although the U.S. immediately blamed the Yanukovych administration, another leaked audio call, this time between the E.U.’s foreign affairs chief and the Estonian foreign minister, revealed that they believed pro-U.S. forces had staged a false-flag attack as a pretext to remove Yanukovych and stage a coup. In the end, far-right militias like Azov and Right Sector provided the muscle to force Yanukovych out of office.

However, as Katchanovski noted, very little of this context is given in the press, leaving audiences fundamentally ignorant of the basic facts. In Katchanovski’s opinion:

The Western media coverage of the escalating Ukraine conflict is highly inaccurate and selective. The Maidan massacre, which led to the current conflict, is either omitted or misrepresented even though overwhelming evidence shows that this crucial mass-killing of the protesters and the police was perpetrated by the elements of the Maidan opposition; in particular, the far-right. Such evidence includes videos of snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings shooting the protesters and the police, testimonies of the absolute majority of wounded protesters at the Maidan massacre trial and investigation, several hundred witnesses, and 14 self-admitted members of Maidan snipers groups.”

All over the world, the National Endowment for Democracy is training groups of people who can function as the leaders of another color revolution. In the process, it helps squash genuine grassroots movements by co-opting them and using its financial clout to push activism down pro-U.S. avenues. Spending more than $22 million on the country, NED has made Ukraine one of its top priorities. Yet an analysis of the groups receiving money reveals that the whole operation is an attempt to shore up support for the U.S.-backed Zelensky administration, and to carry out a foreign interference operation, the extent of which blows anything Russia is accused of out of the water. The National Endowment for Democracy can claim it is in the business of democracy promotion. In reality, it does anything but that, unless “democracy” is entirely synonymous with elite U.S. interests.

Feature photo | Ukrainians attend a rally in central Kiev, Ukraine, Feb. 12, 2022, during a protest against the potential escalation of the tension between Russia and Ukraine. Efrem Lukatsky | AP

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

Biden’s Handlers Release at Least 50 Afghans with ‘Potentially Significant Security Concerns’ Into the U.S.

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/02/bidens-handlers-release-at-least-50-afghans-with-potentially-significant-security-concerns-into-the-u-s;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

New in PJ Media:

Back in September 2021, Joe Biden reassured Americans that the Afghan refugees whom he was bringing into the United States would be as benign and harmless as Aunt Harriet. Old Joe’s crack team (no, not Hunter) of experts would make sure of that by “conducting thorough scrutiny — security screenings for everyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident.” Well, here’s a shocker: Biden, one of the world’s least trustworthy human beings, lied again: Not only were most of the refugees not vetted at all, but on Thursday it came to light that at least fifty Afghan refugees with “potentially significant security concerns” were admitted to the United States with no problem, and are here now. Thanks, Joe!

Wait, it gets worse. The Defense Department’s inspector general reported Thursday, according to the Washington Times, that not only did Biden’s handlers bring these security risks into the country, but now they have no idea where they are: “It looked at a sampling of 31 security risk evacuees identified as of Sept. 17 and found only three could be located.” Nor is that likely to be the extent of the problem: “Tens of thousands more names remain to be checked.”

The Defense Department’s audit explained laconically: “Not being able to locate Afghan evacuees with derogatory information quickly and accurately could pose a security risk to the United States.” Well, yeah. And so once again one has to wonder: Are the people who are running Joe Biden’s presidency really this careless and stupid, that they thought vetting these Afghan refugees was something they could dispense with when in a hurry, and that there would be no downside? Or is the situation even worse? If a gang of traitors who actively wanted to weaken the United States were ensconced in the White House, how could this have been mishandled any more than it has been?

The Times report suggests that the whole thing is just a result of poor planning and organization, not the massive betrayal of American citizens that it appears to be at first glance: “Investigators said a key set of Defense Department databases was off-limits to the vetting team in the early months of the evacuation effort, because of agreements the Pentagon had with other countries. Eventually, officials developed a workaround.” But that doesn’t make the situation any better. If unvetted Afghan refugees were brought into the United States because the vetting team didn’t have access to the necessary databases, the resettlement process should have been halted until those databases became available. Instead, an unknowable number of Afghans who could be jihadis or potential jihadis have been deposited into American communities, where they’re being welcomed with open arms by people who don’t have a clue about what they’re dealing with.

There is more. Read the rest here.

Mounted Police Trample Peaceful Protestors

BY KEVIN DOWNEY, JR.

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2022/02/19/bombshell-mounted-police-trample-peaceful-protestors-one-dead-trucker-beaten-with-a-rifle-n1560409;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Canada’s Princess Justin Trudeau skipped the firehoses and went straight to trampling peaceful protestors with horses, including an elderly woman with a walker. Other protestors moved in to help the two people trampled but were pushed back by police officers with batons and wearing riot gear.

Another police officer reportedly beat a trucker with the butt of a rifle.

GRAPHIC VIOLENCE & LANGUAGE WARNING

Police, some armed with semi-automatic rifles, have begun arresting some of the entirely peaceful protesters. Roughly 100 people were arrested on Friday, many of whom had linked their arms and were singing “O Canada,” their national anthem. Some were thrown to the ground and had their hands zip-tied behind them.

Here is the woman who was trampled by Trudeau’s stormtroopers,

Trudeau, who took a knee for Black Lives Matter, invoked the Emergencies Act a few days ago to deal with the convivial Canadians protesting against COVID-19 mandates, stating it would give the police “more tools” to deal with the demonstrators. Apparently, by “tools,” he meant horses with which to trample his own people. Trudeau spoke of the threat of violence from the large group of demonstrators, but there was none until his Stasi showed up.

Trudeau has also threatened to seize the bank accounts of people protesting in Ottawa, the nation’s capital. Cops set up roughly 100 checkpoints to keep people from joining the protestors already there.

Related: FLASHBACK: Authoritarianism Is a Trudeau Family Tradition

FACT-O-RAMA! Canada’s COVID survival rate is 98.9% of KNOWN cases. When you factor unknown cases (people who contract the Bat Soup Flu but don’t report it in any way), the survivability rate only improves.

The Ottawa Freedom Convoy protestors have been more than peaceful, they’ve been playful, setting up bounce houses for the kids and even a hot tub for adults, as well as playing hockey and BBQing.

The police-led violence comes as no surprise. Police around the world have used violence to quell protests from people tired of COVID-related oppression. Australian police were even videotaped choking one young girl and pepper-spraying another.

Police in #Melbourne #Australia literally #choking a girl by her throat, shoving her up against the wall and then wrestling her to the ground to be handcuffed and taken away. What was her crime? Not wearing a #mask. If you want to know what #fascism looks like this is it! 😢 😡 pic.twitter.com/VGKWadWBMr

— ⚔️🛡Sir Rickster🛡⚔️ (@Rickster_75) September 28, 2021

Editor’s note: the reference to a protester dying has been removed.

Huge LGBT libel case against Montana pastor stalled after his bankruptcy filing this week

SEE: https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen4/22a/MT-Pastor-forced-into-bankruptcy/index.html;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Jordan Hall, Baptist pastor and publisher of a popular conservative news site, is being sued for libel by transgender lobbyist and well-funded LGBT “lawfare” mob

Far-left Judge had scheduled hearing Feb. 16 to determine whether the pastor is a “dangerous person,” subject to fines even before his trial

Pastor forced to file for bankruptcy in federal court

February 18, 2022
ALT TEXT
Pastor Jordan Hall is principled and fearless. That's why the LGBT movement is out to destroy him.

Pastor Jordan Hall, a conservative pastor who is the publisher of Montana’s largest and most influential conservative news site, has been forced to file for personal bankruptcy as he faces a massive LGBT lawsuit. Even before his trial, the judge was expected to impose fines in a hearing that had been scheduled for Feb. 16. That proceeding was suddenly postponed once Hall filed for bankruptcy.

As we reported earlier this week, Pastor Hall is a publisher of the Montana Daily Gazette. He is being sued for libel and $250,000 damages by Adrian Jawort, a “transgender” American Indian activist who is also a registered lobbyist at the Montana State Capitol. Jawort – a man who wears a dress and heavy makeup, and stands 6’3” in women’s heels – claims that Hall libeled him in an article describing a confrontation allegedly involving Jawort and some legislators at the Capitol. As we described, this case has no merit and would be thrown out in any normal court setting.

Not your regular State Capitol lobbyist. From Jawort’s public Facebook page: Christian verses certainly seem to anger this fellow. The Satanic horns, inverted cross on his forehead, and blood dripping from his mouth indicate where he’s coming from.

However, Jawort is represented by a group of well-funded leftist attorneys who have already spent an estimated $150,000 against Hall – and the trial has not even started.

In addition, Jawort’s lawyers were able to get the case moved away from Hall’s home county to a judge, Elizabeth Best, who is arguably the most ruthlessly left-wing in the state. She has already shown her strong bias against Hall. In a recent court filing, she characterized his Gazette article as employing “an offensive and ignorant epithet used by transphobic people, obviously aimed at demeaning Jawort.”

Judge Best had scheduled a special preliminary hearing for this past Wednesday, Feb. 16, to determine if Hall is a “threat” to public order. Jawort’s lawyers claim that Hall’s use of Bible quotes and Christian imagery when speaking about the lawsuit constituted “threats” to the plaintiff, his attorneys, and the judge. According to information we had, Judge Best was very likely to fine Hall up to hundreds of thousands of dollars – before the trial even started.

Pastor Hall forced to file for personal bankruptcy

On Monday, Feb. 14, Pastor Hall filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in federal bankruptcy court. Pastor Hall has not discussed any details about this. But according to a news report, his filing “listed assets of less than $50,000 and that attorneys’ fees were the primary drivers of his bankruptcy, and those bills ranged between $100,000 and $500,000.”

Judge Best put a “stay” on the Feb. 16 hearing. The Daily Montanan newspaper explained:

Hall’s bankruptcy filing also puts an immediate stay, or halt, to any legal proceedings, meaning that it instantly stops the sanctions hearing that was scheduled for Wednesday. The stay is in effect for as long as 30 days, and Judge Benjamin P. Hursh [the federal bankruptcy judge] may ultimately decide how the case will proceed.

A seemingly impossible situation for Pastor Hall

Going into personal bankruptcy is certainly a horrible situation. Although Pastor Hall has not discussed this, it’s easy to see the seemingly untenable situation he was put in.

He and his attorney are facing a team of leftist lawyers who have unlimited funding to destroy him. He is up against a far-left judge who has already shown extreme bias against him, including allowing the opposing lawyers to impose an aggressive and invasive “discovery” process that clearly goes beyond any objective necessity for the case. There was a strong feeling that the judge was preparing to declare him a “threat” and impose a huge fine on him.

ALT TEXT 
Judge Elizabeth Best [Great Falls Tribune photo]

Just how bad is Judge Best? Here’s what Bart Crabtree, President of the Montana Citizens Council on Judicial Accountability, recently wrote about this case:

Eighth judicial district court judge Elizabeth Best is arguably one of the worst judges ever to sit on the bench. There is case after case in Cascade County of her usurping our state statutes, violating the judicial canon of ethics, and a character of intemperance. Her appointment to this particular case is by design and of no surprise. She believes she is the master rather than a servant of the people, and is not liked in Cascade County where there is a fervent desire to have her removed. She has already demonstrated undue bias towards Mr. Hall in statements she has apparently made, according to the [Sidney, MT] Herald, which automatically disqualifies her as judge in the case, per MCA 3-1-805.

After the trial is over, the only appeal is to the Montana Supreme Court, which is very left-leaning. It already has ruled against Hall on one issue regarding this case that would have seemed obvious – whether Jawort is a “limited public figure.” So there is no confidence that Hall would get a fair hearing there. (Maybe this must go to the U.S. Supreme Court?)

Final thoughts

Jordan Hall’s real “crime” is being unafraid to publish the truth about the LGBT agenda. The “libel” charge is a red herring concocted to bludgeon him. His Daily Montana Gazette may be the most widely read news site in the state. That’s why the Left wants to destroy it – and him.

It is unfortunate that in a “red state” like Montana – where Republicans have super-majorities in both houses of the Legislature and hold all statewide elected offices, that the judiciary is largely left-wing. According to people we talk to there, this is because the state’s only law school is at the left-leaning University of Montana.

Pastor Jordan Hall is, sadly, paying the price for being principled and fearless. But this fight isn’t over! You can help support him here.

Addendum 2/19/22: A person knowledgeable of this case has told us that it’s extremely unlikely that it will be back before Judge Best. The federal bankruptcy judge, Judge Hursh, will be deciding what will happen going forward. Although Jawort’s lawyers have already begun contesting the bankruptcy, Judge Hursh has a reputation for being fair and following the law properly. We'll see what happens.

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