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.
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:
Dr. Judy Mikovits BLOWS Whistle FBI Investigation TARGETED Dr. Anthony Fauci(REPORT)
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?
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The Pope has decided to do Iran’s bidding, after Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad “wrote to Pope Francis in mid-March appealing to him help end U.S. sanctions on Iran.” In response, “Pope Francis called for relaxed international sanctions during his Easter message.” Yet more money flowing into Iran means more murder, more threats to the region, and more jihad terror internationally.
Like others of similar mind who have called for the U.S. to ease sanctions, the Pope believes that Iran will prioritize funds for domestic purposes during the coronavirus pandemic. Not so. It should be well known by now that the Iranian regime cannot be trusted to act for the benefit of its own people. The country used $1,700,000,000 Obama gave it to finance jihad terrorists, and was lying all along about its nuclear weapons cache in order to secure and maintain the Iran deal. It was also recently found to be diverting funds away from helping its citizens to fund its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
There is no shortage on trickery from Iran and no shortage of complicity from infidels in aiding this jihadist regime.
“Pope Francis Calls for Relaxed Sanctions at Iran’s Behest,” by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, April 12, 2020:
ROME — Pope Francis called for relaxed international sanctions during his Easter message Sunday after receiving a request from officials in Iran asking him to intervene.
According to Mehr News Agency (MNA), a news service based in Tehran, a senior member of the Academy of Sciences of Iran, Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, wrote to Pope Francis in mid-March appealing to him help end U.S. sanctions on Iran.
During his solemn Urbi et Orbi blessing Sunday, Pope Francis appeared to comply with the ayatollah’s request, calling on nations to lift sanctions in this difficult period of coronavirus lockdown.
“In light of the present circumstances, may international sanctions be relaxed, since these make it difficult for countries on which they have been imposed to provide adequate support to their citizens,” the pope said, before also suggesting a reduction of international debt.
On March 20, International Christian Concern (ICC) also reported that Ayatollah Damad had written a letter to the Vatican appealing for diplomatic assistance to reduce the effects of U.S. sanctions. ICC also criticized Iranian officials of mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic due to their “strict interpretation of Islam.”
In his letter to the pontiff, the ayatollah underscored the suffering of the Iranian people from the coronavirus outbreak, insisting that U.S. sanctions against the country “have increased their suffering and closed doors to solving many problems,” MNA reported.
The International Quran News Agency (IQNA), another Iran-based service, said that Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin had responded to the academy’s letter, saying that the Pope has expressed sympathy with the people of Iran for the outbreak and wishes a speedy recovery for all affected….
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U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- There is a viral plague in our midst. It is a thing both tenacious and relentless; implacable and ruthless; furtive and evasive; grievously painful and deadly. It is a scourge, spreading rapidly across our Nation, suffocating the very life out of Americans, and crippling our Nation. What is this debilitating virus?
No, we are not talking about the Chinese Coronavirus.
Sure, Premier Xi Jinping’s Coronavirus is horrific. And, it has become a useful, effective bioweapon of war for Xi, whether the unleashing of the viral plague on the U.S. and the world was the Regime’s intention or not.
There is much speculation about the movement of the Chinese Coronavirus plague in our Nation and much disagreement as to the best ways to deal with it and to protect our people and also to get our economy up and running. But one thing is clear and indisputable: The Chinese Coronavirus has ravaged our land and our people. And it is devastating our economy. It is everything loathsome, vile, disgusting, and deadly. Because of this “Gift” from China, our lives are changing, perhaps forever.
But as dreadful as the Chinese virus is, there is another virus in our midst that is more horrific; more rapacious and voracious; more ferocious and tenacious; and more noxious, and it has been with us much longer than the Coronavirus. It is a parasitic virus, a silent plague; carefully cultivated and nourished, right here at home. It doesn’t attack and destroy the body. It latches onto and destroys the mind; the spirit; the soul. Many Americans have a natural immunity to it. Most, unfortunately, do not. It is endemic to our Nation but rarely mentioned. There is no known cure for those who contract the disease. And, for those who succumb to it, the virus turns a person into a numb, unthinking automaton, an obedient drone.
And this parasitic virus has a vile, odious feature the China Coronavirus doesn’t have. It is seductive.
This parasitic virus in our midst is the mainstream Press. It is a plague upon us; one that has been with us for decades.
Where did this plague come from? Disturbingly, it arose from and took root in the U.S. Constitution itself through a corruption of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The freedom of speech is, of course, a fundamental, unalienable, immutable right: a right that exists intrinsically in man, bestowed by a loving Creator in man. Is freedom of the Press distinct from the freedom of speech? Legal thinkers in the past didn’t think so. In fact——
“Through most of our history the distinction has not seemed important because the terms freedom of speech and freedom of press have been used more or less interchangeably. In the last decade, however, the press has begun to assert rights arising specifically from the press clause—the right to maintain the confidentiality of sources, the right of access to prisons and courtrooms, the right to keep police from searching newsrooms, and the right to prevent libel plaintiffs from inquiring into journalists’ thought processes. Thus far the Supreme Court has declined to give independent significance to the phrase ‘freedom of the press.’ It has refused to give the press any more protection than an individual enjoys under the speech clause.” The Origins Of The Press Clause., 30 UCLA L. Rev. 455, February 1983, by David A. Anderson, Professor of Law, The University of Texas at Austin.
If the freedom of the Press exists implicitly in the freedom of speech, why did the founders reference it in the Constitution? We guess they did so to emphasize the import of “free Press Speech,” apart from general public “free Speech,” evidently assuming that the energies of a free Press would be directed to safeguarding the Nation. Many of the founders therefore trusted in an unencumbered, unrestrained, unconstrained free Press. Many did; but not all.
But the founders did, as one, foresee the innate tendency of the federal Government to accumulate power unto itself. And that concern informed the founders’ blueprint for the Nation. They concluded an unshackled free Press, in tandem with the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, were two effective guardians against a tyrannical Government. But did the founders misapprehend the Press? Did they fail to see that an unrestrained Press, far from safeguarding a free Constitutional Republic, would endanger it?
The founders correctly deduced the tendency of the federal Government to unlawfully amass power, even as the Constitution's first three Articles, carefully delineated the powers and authority that each Branch may lawfully wield. The founders also correctly deduced that an armed citizenry would effectively counter encroaching tyranny. But the founders evidently did not believe a Press, far from serving as a mechanism to ward off tyranny, might one day become the agent of it, even as some, notably Thomas Jefferson, harbored serious misgivings about Press Freedom as reflected in his writings. In those writings Jefferson expressed uncertainty, even equivocation, despite the fact that many commentators, today, deny this, arguing Jefferson unequivocally supported Press Freedom. He did not.
John Norvell, U.S. Senator from Michigan, January 26, 1837 – March 4, 1841, wrote to Jefferson, explaining how he would one day wish to enter the field of newspaper publishing:
“It would be a great favor, too, to have your opinion of the manner in which a newspaper, to be most extensively beneficial, should be conducted, as I expect to become the publisher of one for a few years.
Accept venerable patriot, my warmest wishes for your happiness.”
Jefferson composed a stern letter to Norvell, warning him of the dangers of the Press.
“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected . . . but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.”
—Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 14 June 1807
And, 200 years after composing his cautionary letter to John Norvell, the fear that Jefferson expressed has come to pass as many academicians hold to the theory that Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Press are two conceptually distinct freedoms; one accorded to the body politic generally, and the other accorded to mainstream “professional journalists.”
The schism has resulted in the false idea that Press Free Speech is of a higher order of Right than the general Free Speech Right accorded the ordinary masses'; that “professional journalists” should be designated a privileged group; that Press freedom should be accorded more deference than speech freedom. This is a dangerous idea, not only detrimental to First Amendment Free Speech but to the very sanctity of a free Constitutional Republic. And the danger isn’t theoretical; it is actual. The Press is not content simply to report the news and to critique the Government. No! The Press has itself become an instrument of repression as it strives to constrain our fundamental rights and liberties, to overthrow a duly elected President, and to undermine a free Constitutional Republic.
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CHINA REMOVES CROSSES FROM CHURCHES FOR BEING “HIGHER THAN THE NATIONAL FLAG”
(Friday Church News Notes, April 24, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
Bitter Winter, a human rights magazine, reports the following: “Even the deadly coronavirus outbreak did not reduce the speed of the cross-demolition campaign sweeping through China. In mid-March, crosses were removed from multiple churches in the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui. In the neighboring Shandong, the prefecture-level city of Linyi is no exception: On top of at least 70 crosses removed from churches since last spring, more have been taken down during the epidemic. ... Last December, numerous crosses were removed from Three-Self churches in Hegang, a prefecture-level city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. A member of a church in the city’s Dongshan district told Bitter Winter that a local official threatened to close down the church if the cross was not removed because ‘it was higher than the national flag’” (“Crosses Removed from Numerous State-run Protestant Churches,” Bitter Winter, Apr. 11, 2020). This reminds us of two Bible prophecies. The first is in the Psalms: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” (Psalm 2:1-6). The second prophecy is in Isaiah: “Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low” (Isaiah 2:10-12).
CHINA MONITORING CHURCHES’ SOCIAL MEDIA
(Friday Church News Notes, April 24, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from ChristianHeadlines.com, Apr. 7, 2020: “Day-to-day online activities by Christians also are monitored. Members of a Three-Self church in the province of Henan received a notice from their pastor in January demanding they dissolve their groups on We Chat, a social media app. In February, a village official forced a Christian resident to ‘change his We Chat account profile picture’ because it contained an image of a cross, Bitter Winter reported. Churches and their members are prohibited from saying anything negative about the government or spreading information about the pandemic that isn't government-approved. ‘The Public Security Bureau has information on all members of every We Chat group, and network inspections are carried out, especially strict during the pandemic,’ a Three-Self pastor from Shandong told Bitter Winter. Persecution has worsened during the pandemic. ‘Encouraged by the government, many factories and public venues have been re-opened, but religious venues are still barred,’ a Three-Self believer from Henan province said. ‘Religious meetings are forbidden, and all channels of religious communication are blocked.’”
IN CHINA, ALL CALLS FOR FREEDOM
LEAD TO PUNISHMENT
(Friday Church News Notes, April 24, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from “In China,” Bitter Winter, Apr. 11, 2020: “The death of Li Wenliang, the doctor who raised concerns about the dangers of the coronavirus and was silenced by the government, ignited a wave of anger among China’s population. On the night of his death, February 6, a protest started online, a rarity in the country governed by an authoritarian regime. Wearing face masks with ‘can’t’ and ‘don’t understand’—in reference to ‘Can you manage? Do you understand?’ from Dr. Li’s forced confession, asking if he could behave and understand what he did wrong—people took to the internet to express the pent-up distrust and despair at the government for concealing information about the virus and its dangers. They also accused the authorities of suppressing free speech. Among them was a man from eastern China. He agreed to talk to Bitter Winter on the condition of anonymity, so we’ll call him Mr. Cheng. ‘When Li Wenliang died, I wanted to do something to commemorate him,’ Mr. Cheng told Bitter Winter. ‘So, I sent a message on my WeChat group, suggesting that the group members change their profile picture to the photo of Li Wenliang and demand to thoroughly investigate why the coronavirus whistleblowers were persecuted, find out who is to blame, and ask for a public apology.’ ... That same day, the local police stormed into his house, took away his cellphone, and arrested him on suspicion of ‘disturbing public order.’ ‘The police claimed that my message was intended to subvert the state power. I could be imprisoned for ten years,’ Mr. Cheng continued. ... Before he was released, Mr. Cheng was asked to sign a statement promising not to post any more ‘improper remarks.’ ... Many other netizens joined the online protest, demanding freedom of speech. They were reprimanded and silenced by the police, and nothing has changed—business as usual in China.”
MARXISTS LOVE TURMOIL
(Friday Church News Notes, April 24, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
“Marx took Hegel’s idea of change through confrontation and accommodation and placed it in the material world. This gives us the basic communist idea of change through destruction and reorganization. Communism thrives on turmoil because, to their way of thinking, anything which upsets order is an aid in movement toward their ultimate synthesis. In communism, the ruling class is the thesis, the working class the antithesis, and the ultimate synthesis will be a state controlled by the people living in complete equality. ... Many Christians have been amazed at the sympathy and comradeship liberal theologians feel for the godless communist movement. But it is not really surprising since they are both, in different areas of life, searching by the same methods for the same end” (Daniel J. Ebert, Will Our Sons Defend the Faith, 3rd edition, 1994, p. 36).
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The grim news on the American job market kept coming this morning with the U.S. Labor Department’s announcement that another 4.42 million Americans applied for unemployment last week.
The figure is a slight dip from the 5.2 million two weeks ago, but the number is still another major blow to the economy.
The latest numbers mean more than 26 million Americans have applied for unemployment since March 1, just after the Chinese Virus landed in the country and began spreading.
At this writing, infections in the United States are nearing 850,000, with fatalities closing in on 50,000.
Slight Decline
Bad as the news is from the week ending April 18, it’s not as bad as it was the week before.
Though 4,427,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits, the Labor Department reported, the figure is 810,00 less, or 15.5 percent less, than the week ending April 11. That number was 5,237,000.
The unemployment rate for the week ending April 11 was 11 percent, a 34-percent increase from the week ending April 4, when it was 8.2 percent.
The insured unemployed for the week ending April 11 numbered nearly 16 million, the department reported.
That week’s increases in claims were just as staggering. Colorado suffered the most, with 58,246; while New York added 50,250; Missouri, 10,668; and Florida, 10,534.
The largest decreases, the department reported, were in California, which enjoyed 263,342 fewer claims, Michigan with minus 166,347, New Jersey with minus 73,416, Georgia with minus 70,551, and Ohio with minus 66,874.
The department also reported unemployment rates for a number of states for the week ending April 4:
• Michigan: 17.4
• Rhode Island: 15
• Nevada: 13.7
• Georgia: 13.6
• Washington: 13.2
• New Hampshire: 12.2
• Minnesota: 11.9
• New York: 11.9
• Montana: 11.7
• Ohio: 11.6
Adding last week’s 4.4 million claims to what came before, the number of unemployment claims filed since March 1 is nearing 27 million, an average of roughly 3.85 million claims per week for seven consecutive weeks.
More than 10 million filed for unemployment in the two weeks ending March 28.
Real Unemployment Rate
Though the unemployment rate for March was just 4.4 percent, two professors are tracking the downturn in the jobs market and estimate that the real figure is 20 percent, as The New American reported last week.
On April 15, Alexander Bick of Arizona State University and Adam Blandin of Virginia Commonwealth University reported that the nation’s employment rate had dropped from 72.7 percent to 60.7 percent, which translated into a staggering 24 million jobs lost.
But even worse, elected officials and labor-market experts are dealing with numbers that are increasing at an almost incomprehensible pace.
“The April 2020 Employment Situation report will reflect labor market outcomes from the third week of April, but is not scheduled for release until May 8,” the professors wrote. “The gap between the data needs of policymakers and the time lag of traditional data sources has left policymakers ‘flying blind’ to a significant degree.”
The Bick-Blandin estimate of 20 percent unemployment, which came from respondents who answered an online survey, is likely higher given last week’s 4.4 million new unemployment claims.
A bright spot in the number, the professors wrote, was that “more than half of the unemployed in our sample are temporarily laid off. Somewhat less than 3/4 of the laid off have been either given a concrete date of return or the indication to be called back within 6 months. This suggests that large share of the unemployed might be quickly recalled to their previous jobs once the economy is opened up.”
Help From the White House
Policymakers, as the professors wrote, might be flying blind, but the country’s top policymaker has at least partly seen the light on one issue: cheap foreign labor.
Yesterday, President Trump closed the border to legal immigrants to stop them from taking jobs that otherwise would go to Americans, although some foreigners will be permitted to enter the country.
Among them are the foreign spouses and children of citizens, tycoons who enter on investor visas, and medical personnel who can help fight the pandemic.
As for illegal immigration, last month, as TNA reported yesterday, border agents apprehended almost 34,000 illegal aliens who tried to jump the U.S. border with Mexico or were stopped at ports of entry.
That brought the total this fiscal year to more than 234,000.
Border authorities began immediately deporting illegals pursuant to Trump’s order of March 17 and have sent more than 10,000 back across the border to Mexico since then.
Those deporations will stop unscrupulous American employers from hiring cheap, illegal-alien labor.
