THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
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Islamist groups, like many others, are doing what they can to adjust to life during the coronavirus. Conferences and fundraising dinners are off the table, so many are turning to online gatherings.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a group that in many ways mirrors defunct Hamas-support network, is holding an "online gala" Saturday evening. Despite the rhetoric common at AMP events, the "Beyond Quarantine: Palestine Connects Us" event will feature two Democratic congresswomen.
Debbie Dingell of Michigan and California's Barbara Lee appear as speakers on AMP's promotions for the gala. Neither representative responded to requests for comment.
AMP has co-sponsored rallies featuring the chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." In that vision, Israel is erased from the map.
Its fall convention featured the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) equating "racism, Islamophobia and Zionism." Anti-Semitic political activist Linda Sarsour, who has blamed Jews for police shootings of unarmed black people, spread another lie when she told the same AMP convention that Israel "is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else."
A year earlier, CAIR San Francisco chapter director Zahra Billoo told the AMP convention she was, "not going to legitimize a country [Israel] that I don't believe has a right to exist."
This kind of rhetoric makes Dingell's appearance confusing. She withdrew her support last fall for HR2407, regarding the arrests of Palestinian children, saying the bill was "counterproductive to a peaceful, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Lee, on the other hand, has a clear anti-Israel voting record and is among the 23 co-sponsors of the resolution from which Dingell withdrew. Dingell and Lee have endorsed other anti-Israel groups, writing congratulatory letters, for example, for CAIR's 2018 fundraising banquet.
Both representatives joined U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in voting against a resolution last July condemning the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions ("BDS") movement targeting Israel. The resolution, which passed 398-17, criticized BDS for working against a two-state solution and trying "to exclude the State of Israel and the Israeli people from the economic, cultural, and academic life of the rest of the world."
It quoted BDS founder Omar Barghouti saying the movement rejects "a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine."
The AMP gala also will hear from the group's national policy director, Osama Abuirshaid.
Abuirshaid has defended Hamas rocket fire at Israeli civilians and urged people "to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel."
He blamed Israel for the Syrian civil war and for the Egyptian military's 2013 ouster of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government. "Israel," he told the 2016 Muslim American Society/Islamic Circle of North America convention, "is a direct challenge to the entire region. Israel is risking the entire region ... remember that Israel was not created just to take and to swallow Palestine. It was created to divide and to weaken that part of the world."
Before there was an AMP, Abuirshaid edited a magazine called Al-Zaitounah, which was published by the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP). He also served on the board of the American Muslim Society (AMS), which was another name for the IAP. He is listed as "Research Fellow at the United Association for Studies and Research" (UASR) in a 1999 article published in the Middle East Affairs Journal.
Internal records seized in the early 2000s by the FBI during a terror-financing investigation show that the IAP and UASR were part of a Hamas-support network called the Palestine Committee. A committee report described its mission as "defending the Islamic cause in Palestine and support for the emerging movement, the Hamas Movement."
UASR was created by Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas political leader. While it presented itself as an academic outlet, prosecutors say it was "involved in passing Hamas communiques to the United States-based Muslim Brotherhood community and relaying messages from that community back to Hamas."
The IAP served a propaganda role, publishing Hamas communiques.
"In fulfilling that function," federal prosecutors wrote in 2008, the IAP published the Hamas charter in English and distributed Hamas communiques. The IAP also published, each month, Arabic language magazines called Al Zaytouna and Ila Falestine which focused on Palestinian issues with an emphasis on support for Hamas."
Litigation pending in the U.S. District Court in Illinois alleges that AMP is a continuation of the IAP, which shut down after a 2004 judgment held it liable for $52 million in damages connected to an American student's death in a Hamas terrorist attack. The move aimed to duck out on the court's judgment, the lawsuit claims.
AMP's record and rhetoric consistently steer in one direction – it doesn't seek peace. It opposes Israel's existence. Yet Reps. Dingell and Lee appear comfortable lending their names and credibility to help the organization raise money.
Research Analyst Teri Blumenfeld contributed to this report.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (center) answers questions Saturday night during the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) online fundraiser.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., helped American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) raise more than $20,000 Saturday by speaking to the group's "online gala."
Dingell, AMP, Craft Hamas-Free Narrative About Gaza Challenges :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism
Harvard Prof Who Wants to BAN Homeschooling HUMILIATED as WHOLE WORLD is HOMESCHOOLING!!!
★★★ A NEW CONSERVATIVE AGE IS RISING ★★★
The Harvard Professor Who called for Homeschooling to be BANNED is suffering from some serious humiliation as WHOLE WORLD begins HOMESCHOOLING; that’s what we’ll be talking about on today’s video. We’re going to look at the latest example of liberals embracing ILLBERALISM with this call to ban homeschooling, and how it actually ends up showing how much leftist liberals at war with reality; you’re going to love it!
HARVARD PROFESSOR UNDER FIRE FOR BASHING HOMESCHOOLING AS PARENTAL "AUTHORITARIAN CONTROL", CALLING FOR "PRESUMPTIVE BAN"
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —A Harvard law professor is coming under fire after she characterized homeschooling as parents having “authoritarian control” over their children and called for a “presumptive ban” on the practice.
Elizabeth Bartholet, a Morris Wasserstein public interest professor of law and founder of the Child Advocacy Program, recently told Harvard Magazine that while parents have “very significant rights to raise their children with the beliefs and religious convictions that the parents hold,” sending their children to school does not limit those rights.
“The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous,” she stated. “I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
The magazine pointed to her views as recently published in the Arizona Law Review, where Bartholet called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling and stated that it is “a realm of near-absolute parental power” and a “regime [that] poses real dangers to children and to society.”
In her 80-page piece, she characterized some homeschool parents as “extreme religious ideologues” who question evolution, suppress women and espouse racist views. Bartholet cited, for example, the “Quiverfull” and “Stay-at-Home Daughter” movements as concepts that deprive girls of opportunities by “confining” them to their homes and fathers/husbands.
“A very large proportion of homeschooling parents are ideologically committed to isolating their children from the majority culture and indoctrinating them in views and values that are in serious conflict with that culture,” she wrote.
“Some believe that women should be subservient to men; others believe that race stamps some people as inferior to others,” Bartholet claimed. “Many don’t believe in the scientific method, looking to the Bible instead as their source for understanding the world.”
In her remarks to Harvard Magazine, Bartholet further opined that it is a threat to democracy for homeschooling not to be regulated so as to ensure that the level of education is equivalent to that of public schooling, citing among other matters, teaching on “nondiscrimination” and “tolerance.”
“From the beginning of compulsory education in this country, we have thought of the government as having some right to educate children so that they become active, productive participants in the larger society,” she told the outlet. “But it’s also important that children grow up exposed to community values, social values, democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints.”
Bartholet also expressed concern that “people can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves.” She said that the allowance of staying at home could hide child abuse cases whereas teachers would otherwise be on the lookout for signs of mistreatment.
While also conceding that some parents may be “capable of giving an education that’s of a higher quality and as broad in scope as what’s happening in the public school,” she still felt that the burden should fall on parents as to why they must homeschool.
However, homeschooling advocates are now pushing back against Bartholet’s views, including one Harvard graduate who was homeschooled herself.
“Homeschooling, and the lessons and characteristics I learned and honed during the first 18 years of my life, prepared me to succeed — no, excel — at one of the most difficult and prestigious universities in the world,” wrote Melba Pearson for the site Medium. “The idea that a government, already so inefficient and inadequate in so many areas, can care for and educate every child better than its parent is wrong.”
She noted that studies show that homeschoolers test as well or higher than their public-schooled counterparts and that public school students have higher rates of being bullies, drop-outs or suicidal.
“Statistics consistently demonstrate higher levels of abuse, bullying, suicide, and drop out rates in children and young adults who were educated in the public school system,” Pearson argued. “Homeschoolers are frequently more ‘community minded,’ ‘socially aware,’ ’empathetic,’ and ‘democratic’ than those publicly educated.”
“There are always outliers, but given the thousands of students in public schools who are bullied, abused, and end up committing suicide because of their educational atmosphere, I am shocked more isn’t being done to address those issues first,” she opined.
Mike Donnelly of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) likewise told Fox News that “Bartholet’s call for a presumptive ban on homeschooling because she considers American homeschooling parents too ignorant or too religious goes against the weight of decades of scholarly research on homeschooling which demonstrates positive academic, civic and social outcomes.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 reads, “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates.”
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HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR SAYS HOMESCHOOLING IS DANGEROUS, PARENTS SHOULD NOT HAVE 24/7 AUTHORITY OVER THEIR CHILDREN
(Friday Church News Notes, May 1, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from Erin O’Donnell, “The Risks of Homeschooling,” Harvard Magazine, May-June 2020: “A rapidly increasing number of American families are opting out of sending their children to school, choosing instead to educate them at home. Homeschooled kids now account for roughly 3 percent to 4 percent of school-age children in the United States, a number equivalent to those attending charter schools, and larger than the number currently in parochial schools. Yet Elizabeth Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, sees risks for children—and society—in homeschooling, and recommends a presumptive ban on the practice. Homeschooling, she says, not only violates children’s right to a ‘meaningful education’ and their right to be protected from potential child abuse, but may keep them from contributing positively to a democratic society. ... ‘From the beginning of compulsory education in this country, we have thought of the government as having some right to educate children so that they become active, productive participants in the larger society,’ she says. ... In a paper published recently in the Arizona Law Review, she notes that parents choose homeschooling for an array of reasons. ... surveys of homeschoolers show that A MAJORITY OF SUCH FAMILIES (BY SOME ESTIMATES, UP TO 90 PERCENT) ARE DRIVEN BY CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN BELIEFS, AND SEEK TO REMOVE THEIR CHILDREN FROM MAINSTREAM CULTURE. Bartholet notes that some of these parents are “extreme religious ideologues” who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy. ... ‘But it’s also important that children grow up exposed to community values, social values, democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints,’ she says, noting that EUROPEAN COUNTRIES SUCH AS GERMANY BAN HOMESCHOOLING ENTIRELY and that countries such as France require home visits and annual tests. ... ‘The issue is, DO WE THINK THAT PARENTS SHOULD HAVE 24/7, ESSENTIALLY AUTHORITARIAN CONTROL OVER THEIR CHILDREN from ages zero to 18? I THINK THAT’S DANGEROUS,’ Bartholet says. ‘I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.’”
TERRIFYING LIBERAL TYRANTS WANT TO BAN HOMESCHOOLING BECAUSE THEY HATE CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN BELIEFS
(Friday Church News Notes, May 1, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from Timothy Carney’s response to the Harvard Magazine rant against homeschooling, from the Washington Examiner, Apr. 22, 2020: “It is important to remember that there exist terrifying liberal authoritarians who think homeschooling is horrible and should be banned because it gives parents, particularly conservative Christians, too much control over their children’s education. Harvard Law School hosts a program called the ‘Child Advocacy Program,’ or CAP, which works on weakening ‘parent rights’ and diminishing the idea of ‘family preservation,’ done in the name of fighting abuse. Fighting abuse is good and important. Children often need protection from abusive parents. But the latest crusade by CAP’s director, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, is basically to abolish homeschooling. ... based on this second-hand anecdotal evidence of some horrific cases, Bartholet tries to create a presumption that homeschoolers are abusers. ... Much of her argument is standard, paranoid ‘what’s to stop x from y’ reasoning. She argues that under current state laws and enforcement, there are all sorts of bad things some parents could be doing. ... But her real worry isn’t children getting no education. It’s children getting the ‘wrong’ education. ... she grants there are legitimate reasons to pull your children from school. Butshe is really worried about religious parents who don’t like public schools teaching their children transgender ideology, moral relativism, or radical feminism. To drive that home, Harvard Magazine had an insane picture illustrating the story. Public school children are all running around freely, while the homeschooled child is locked in a literal prison made of books--including the Bible. (Oh, and Harvard Magazine misspelled ‘arithmetic’ in the illustration.) ... This is Alice-in-Wonderland, truth-on-its-head stuff. ... The notion that public schools provide more meaningful education than the average homeschooler is also insane. The idea that homeschoolers are, de facto, not exposed to ‘community values, social values, democratic values’ is also totally unfounded. Unless, again, by ‘social values,’ she means the values of the secular Left. ... If you live in a state with a Democratic legislature, you need to worry about these people. They will craft an agenda to make it illegal to homeschool your children unless you can prove good reason. They will do this precisely because they don’t want conservative Jewish, Muslim, and Christian parents passing down their values. And while these activists will lead by focusing on the rare and horrific abuses, they clearly believe that religion and conservative values count as ‘maltreatment.’ These people have a dangerous agenda. We shouldn’t ignore their work.”
HARVARD TO HOST PRO-HOMESCHOOL FORUM
(Friday Church News Notes, May 1, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from “Harvard to Host Pro-Homeschools,” Townhall, Apr. 24, 2020: “Amid outcry from homeschooling advocates and allies [against the ‘Homeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform’] Harvard announced on Friday that they would be hosting a virtual discussion that would effectively counter the suggestions being put forward by the original summit. Titled, ‘The Disinformation Campaign Against Homeschooling,’ the May 1 event will precede the summit hosted by Harvard Law and being presented by the Kennedy School of Government. The event is also organized by the student-run group, Ideological Diversity. ‘Speakers will discuss the dishonest attacks on homeschooling that have been pervasive in the media and academia and also address the failures of public education,’ the event website states. The discussion will take place via virtual call host Zoom and is open to all, no RSVP required. Speakers include the Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation Corey DeAngelis, author of Unschooled, Kerry McDonald, education scholar Peter Gray, homeschooling advocate Patrick Ferenga, and documentary filmmaker Cevin Soling.”
HOMESCHOOL ADVOCATE ANSWERS ANTI-HOME SCHOOLING HARVARD PROFESSOR
(Friday Church News Notes, May 1, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from Michael Farris, “Harvard Law Professor Attacks Homeschoolers, as She Envisions Them,” Townhall, Apr. 22, 2020. Farris is president of Alliance Defending Freedom and founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association. “Should homeschooling be banned? Harvard Magazine and one of Harvard’s law professors, Elizabeth Bartholet, think so. This is despite the fact that Harvard University admits an appreciable number of homeschooled students to both its undergraduate and graduate programs every year. ... Bartholet argues that homeschooling denies children a meaningful education. In so doing, Bartholet fails to demonstrate any familiarity with valid social science research. The literature demonstrates that homeschooling works very well academically—including in some ways that many would find surprising. In public schools, family income is a strong predictor of a child’s academic success. In homeschooling, children from lower-income levels not only outscore their public school socio-economic counterparts, but they also score comparably to homeschool students from higher income levels. ... I personally know two homeschool students who are Harvard Law grads and clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court. Another Harvard alum is the current solicitor general of West Virginia. I taught constitutional law to all three at Patrick Henry College. And two more of my PHC students, who were also homeschooled, clerked for the Supreme Court after graduating from the University of Virginia Law School. Moreover, dozens of homeschooled students in my personal sphere of friends have been elected to state and local offices. ... Thousands of homeschooled students actively participate in the electoral process every cycle through a program called Generation Joshua. ... Perhaps the most troubling thing found in this article is a clear display of bigotry by Professor Bartholet. She argues that a chief evil at hand arises from the fact that as many as 90 percent of homeschooled children live with conservative Christian parents ‘who seek to remove their children from mainstream culture.’ ... Any form of bigotry coming from one of its professors should cause Harvard trustees to be concerned.”
“We’ve been competing against other states, against other nations, against our own federal government for PPE — coveralls, masks, shields, N95 masks — and we’re not waiting around any longer. And we’re no longer interested in the progress that we were seeing in the past.”
That was California governor Gavin Newsom in an April 7 MSNBC appearance with Rachel Maddow. As Newsom added, “In the last 48 hours we have secured –through a consortia of nonprofits and a manufacturer here in the state of California – upwards of 200 million masks on a monthly basis that we’re confident we can supply the needs of the state of California, potentially the needs of other western states.”
As it happened, the manufacturer wasn’t exactly “here in the state of California.” The manufacturer was BYD, “Build Your Dreams,” a Chinese company not known for making personal protective equipment. Newsom wasn’t revealing details of the $1 billion deal, which as John Myers of the Los Angeles Times noted, “will cost taxpayers 30 percent more than the governor’s January budget allotted for infectious diseases for the whole fiscal year.”
The day after Newsom’s MSNBC appearance, San Francisco Democrat Phil Ting, chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, told reporters, “We don’t have any information as to how many masks we’re buying, who we’re buying them from, at what price. What are we obligated? For how long are we obligated?” Los Angeles Democrat Holly Mitchell, chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee, fired off an official letter demanding details. Newsom wasn’t talking, which prompted an escalation.
“Perhaps it’s time for legislative leaders to dust off their rarely-used subpoena power,” the Sacramento Bee editorialized on April 22. The administration feared that “Trump might steal California’s equipment,” but that did not justify Newsom’s decision “to hide a taxpayer-funded contract from legislative leaders.” Neither did the obfuscation account for “other reasons why the administration may wish to shield the contract from oversight.” Journalists and legislators alike should have seen this coming.
In March, as CalMatters noted, legislators “made $500 million available immediately and allowed Newsom to spend up to $1 billion total,” and unanimously passed two bills “waiving a requirement that legislation must be in print for three days before lawmakers can act.” Legislators also suspended public hearings for at least a month and floor votes for at least a month. As Republican assemblyman Jay Obernolte explained, “We are placing an extraordinary degree of trust in Gov. Gavin Newsom.” The governor took full advantage, opting for BYD despite serious issues with the Chinese company.
BYD has “glaring red flags on its record, including a history of supplying allegedly faulty products to the U.S., ties to the Chinese military and Communist Party, and possible links to forced labor,” reported Daniel Newhauser and Keegan Hamilton of Vice News. The federal Food and Drug Administration gave the company emergency approval, even though BYD had been prohibited by law from bidding for some federal contracts and is involved in lawsuits with several states.
Newsom was not forthcoming about the deal’s details but it did emerge that California already sent the first installment of $495 million to BYD. When reporters approached BYD, the Chinese company referred all questions to Newsom’s office. The governor’s deal with BYD was not the first time California politicians rejected American products and American labor in favor of China.
“California Turns To China For New Bay Bridge,” noted Richard Gonzalez of NPR back in 2011. On this key infrastructure project, “California avoided legal requirements to use domestic steel by not using federal funds for the job.” Since politicians seldom if ever turn down federal funds, they must have been determined to outsource the job to “a state-owned Chinese company, Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries.” This was supposedly to save money, but it didn’t.
The bridge came in $5 billion over budget, a full 10 years late, and riddled with broken rods and faulty welds, all performed in China. Every one of the bridge’s 750 panels had to be repaired. The Grade BD Chinese steel was prone to embrittlement, and in 2013 dozens of the long metal rods on the project snapped. When apprised of the lingering safety issues, Gov. Jerry Brown famously said “I mean, look, shit happens,” with no second thoughts about California’s use of Chinese steel, faulty work by Chinese workers, fathomless waste and corruption, and the ensuing coverup by politicians.
Meanwhile, Jerry Brown’s successor Gavin Newsom rejects American products and labor to strike a $1 billion deal with BYD, a Chinese company with a record of faulty products, and as Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio testified last year, “a company that is very heavily subsidized by the government of communist China.” If anybody believed Newsom should register as a lobbyist for BYD or an agent of China it would be hard to blame them.
Gov. Newsom told reporters his deal with BYD was “not political. This is not in any way, shape or form usurping or undermining.” If anybody believes that, Newsom has a bridge to sell them, not that anybody is buying these days.
BREAKING! THIS EMERGENCY ROOM DOCTOR JUST NUKED FAUCI'S "PLANDEMIC" FRAUD STRAIGHT TO HELL
Dr. Erickson COVID-19 Briefing, Part 1
Dr. Erickson COVID-19 Briefing, Part 2
THE TRUTH!
FAUCI WITH HOMOSEXUAL ELTON JOHN
& NANCY PELOSI:
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Dr. Judy Mikovits - vaccines are driving these epidemics
Scientist Judy Mikovits Jailed After Discovering A Deadly Virus Delivered Through VACCINES.
Dr. Judy Mikovits - Part 1 | Vaccine Court Corruption, Damage, and the CDC
Dr. Judy Mikovits - Part 2 | Public Health Cover-Ups And Fraud Surround Vaccines
Dr. Judy Mikovits - Part 3 | How Vaccines are a “Sacrament” of Big Pharma
Dr. Anthony Fauci: ‘We Will Have Coronavirus In The Fall’
In the wake of CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield’s comments that a second wave of the coronavirus in the fall and winter could be even more challenging than the first, President Trump downplayed the possibility. But Dr. Anthony Fauci said “We will have coronavirus in the fall: I am convinced of that.”
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Preparation failures combined with the fast spread of the COVID-19 virus have exposed America's vulnerabilities to terrorists, several bioterrorism specialists told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
These failures have included an inadequate inventory of ventilators, personal protective equipment such as face shields, gloves and gowns, and an inability to handle the patient onslaught in cities like New York that have been in the terrorists' crosshairs for decades.
"I think that people are certainly observing what is happening with COVID-19 and how it is spread, and thinking about how to use that [information] tactically," said Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. "ISIS and al-Qaida, and presumably other terrorist organizations, they are pursuing biological agents, and they are pursuing chemical weapons for terrorist purposes."
Pandemic and bioterrorism preparedness are inseparable, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and infectious diseases, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2013.
The U.S. Intelligence Community's January 2019 threat assessment warned of the "potential for adversaries to develop novel biological warfare agents."
George attributes the current lack of preparedness to "apathy" on the policymakers responsible for funding and implementing bioterrorism and pandemic countermeasures. who never thought a pandemic like COVID-19 would happen.
"From the standpoint of risk analysis, recency bias—that is, an overwhelming focus on events that have happened most recently—is one of the most nefarious psychological blinders," an October Security magazine article warned. "It nudges us toward considering what is important now but can prevent both a thorough review of the past and an imaginative look into the future. Our immediate past has elevated issues such as cybersecurity and drones to the top of risk forecasts. These are critical, but biological threats (or 'biothreats') deserve our attention more than ever."
The failure of prior 21st century pandemics, including SARS, the bird flu, H1N1 and Ebola, to live up to fears lulled security professionals into a state of complacency, the article said.
"As a culture, we're good at saying, 'Well, we're really good responders, and so we'll just respond.' What we're finding out now is that it just doesn't work," George said.
Terrorists sought chemical and biological weapons long before COVID-19.
In 2014, journalists recovered an ISIS operative's laptop containing information on bioweapons and documents justifying their use. Some of the files detailed how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals.
"If Muslims cannot defeat the kafir [unbelievers] in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction," one of the documents said.
A 2018 ISIS propaganda video called on Muslims living in Western countries and Russia to carry out biological attacks, noting that biological weapons are silent killers in contrast with bombs or the airliners used in the 9/11 attacks. It discussed using inhaled viruses and bacteria.
"Islam prohibits the use of this type of mass terrorism and allows it in the exception of repelling aggression and reciprocity," the video said. "With simple equipment extract harmful viruses and bacteria then release them."
Several ISIS-linked plots involving biological weapons have been foiled.
Kenyan authorities broke up a 2016 anthrax attack plot by an ISIS-linked group.
A Wisconsin woman, Wabeha Dais, pleaded guilty last year to providing ISIS supporters with a recipe to produce the toxic chemical ricin, which the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lists as a bioweapon.
Al-Qaida attempted to create biological weapons in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion in 2001.
"You can spread [some biological agents] the same way that this particular organism is spreading whether it is natural or otherwise just by human-to-human transmission, where it infects a lot of people," said former CIA operative Sam Faddis, who headed the agency's counterterrorism unit that tracked weapons of mass destruction. "Why would a group like ISIS care? If you use tactics routinely where you strap explosives to your body and blow yourself up and are willing to blow up synagogues, churches and mosques, why would you not be willing to infect your own people?"
Diseases such as the pneumonic plague that are spread by coughing could have a similar impact because it's spread by droplets transmitted by coughing, Faddis said.
Using an infected person on a suicide mission of infecting others is not out of the question, George said, if the person is infected with a disease with a long incubation period.
Some biological agents are available on the Dark Web. Utah authorities arrested a Salt Lake City woman, Janie Lynn Ridd, in December on charges she attempted to obtain a bioweapon. She used $300 in bitcoin to buy an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that causes staph infections.
"That sort of stuff has been going on forever on a scale that most people aren't aware of and is going on now at an even greater rate," Faddis said. "If you are looking at biological warfare and you are looking at the kind of crude mechanisms that terrorists use ... it's not that hard to work with biological organisms and all you really need is a good lab tech."
RAND Corporation bioterrorism scholar David Gerstein, who served as acting undersecretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, shares concern that terrorists could use the Dark Web to facilitate a bioterrorism plot.
"I think anytime you've got the Dark Web and you've got information that's out there and becomes available to people who might misuse it, that's a concern," Gerstein said. "I think we know that many of these capabilities are becoming more available and more democratized, hence their chance of misuse".
However, research has shown that creating designer viruses is harder than many people think.
"In bioterrorism there are some nuances that make it complex for a terrorist to do," Gerstein said. "Could you create a biological mess? Yes. But you may kill yourself in the process, so there are some disincentives along the way."
Lab security has come under scrutiny in recent years. The U.S. intelligence community is investigating the possibility that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan research lab.
A security breach may have been linked to the 2001 anthrax attack against Senate offices, the Supreme Court and NBC News. FBI investigators concluded that Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist at United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMARIID), was responsible. He committed suicide in 2008 before he could be charged.
In 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) cited China for allowing SARS to escape a government lab in Beijing on two separate occasions.
Failings exposed by the COVID-19 crisis have long been known to bioterrorism researchers.
The Bush, Obama and Trump administrations all developed detailed bioterror action plans, but this current pandemic shows they were not implemented.
"The government comes up with these strategies, and some of them are pretty good," Gerstein said. "But what happens is that they sort of put out these strategies but forget that a strategy is not just the objectives; it's also the resources to accomplish the objectives.
"So, most of these strategies simply do not come to fruition."
A shortage of surgical masks occurred during the 2009 H1N1 Swine flu pandemic just as it has in the current COVID-19 outbreak. In 2010, a Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism report card gave U.S. bioterrorism preparedness an F. There was "no national plan to coordinate federal, state, and local efforts following a bioterror attack, and the United States lacks the technical and operational capabilities required for an adequate response," it said.
Obama-era budget battles resulted in a failure to replenish the surgical masks that contributed to the current lack of preparedness.
"We weren't prepared the day Donald Trump came into office. We weren't prepared at any time during the Obama administration," Faddis said. "This is not a political thing. This is not a somebody else got it right and somebody else screwed it up kind of a thing. We have focused on this the way we have focused on so many things in Washington. We build a bureaucracy. We draw a line diagram. We throw a lot of money. And that's just kind of assumed therefore that equals accomplishment."
COVID-19 presents a call for planners and policymakers to shift to being proactive to save lives during the next bioterrorist attack or pandemic, George said.
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Despite the fact that the Scriptures are clear that women are not to teach, progressive churches continue to rebel against God by handing the pulpit over to women — like Beth Moore — and give God the proverbial middle finger by insisting that God doesn’t really mean what he says.
While most Southern Baptist Churches still hold to the biblical teaching on complementarianism and biblical gender roles, several notable Southern Baptist Churches are now defying and questioning this. And while there has been much debate on the issue including allowing women to teach other women, there is no argument from Scripture — or the Baptist Faith and Message, the standard confession Southern Baptist Churches must adhere to — that women should be teaching men or hold the function or title of pastor.
Nonetheless, Newspring Church in Anderson, SC — formerly pastored by Perry Noble who was fired due to alcoholism — has now named a woman as “teaching pastor” in defiance of the denomination’s minimum requirements for fellowship.
Meredith Knox, along with others, has been named “teaching pastor” in the Church.
Knox does not just teach women, she preaches to the entire congregation as can found in the sermon search on the church’s website. The question is now, will the Southern Baptist Convention finally disfellowship this rogue church? Or will they continue — like they do with Elevation Church — to accept dirty money from a church that teaches falsely and defies biblical standards?
