Islamic extremists disguised as military separated Christians from crowed, slit their throats: bishop

From Christian Post.com (Oct. 7, 2022):

Suspected Islamic extremists disguised in military uniform gathered a crowd of people in Mozambique’s Nampula province, then separated the Christians from the group and tied their hands before slitting their throats, a Catholic bishop said.

Bishop Alberto Vera Aréjula of Nacala told the Catholic group Aid to the Church in Need this week about the killings that occurred last month as was told to him by one of the Christian survivors who managed to flee.

The survivor told the bishop that the terrorists were dressed in military uniform and they gathered people saying they were there to save them.

“When they were all gathered, they started asking who is Muslim and who is Christian. Those who identified as Christian, they started tying their hands behind their back and they cut their throats,” the bishop was quoted as saying.

The bishop said the killings took place on the night of Sept. 6 and the following day, and that “11 people were murdered in total and they left a trail of destruction and a lot of fear.”

On Sept. 6, an 83-year-old Italian nun, Sister Maria de Coppi, was killed in Chipene city when gunmen stormed a Catholic mission compound and set fire to buildings, including the church and hospital, according to reports.

The attack lasted five hours as the militants ransacked and burned the Diocese of Nacala’s mission church, school, health center, dwellings, library and vehicles, Aid to the Church in Need reported earlier.

Aréjula said he knew the nun, “and she was the image of a mother, she was really helping everyone with simple love and humility.”

“Sister Maria de Coppi was a nurse who would help malnourished children in a little room where there was milk and flour, and they destroyed that room as well.

According to reports, the gunmen were likely running away from security forces from Mozambique, Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community.

At least 24 countries have sent troops to support the fight against insurgents in Mozambique, whose army has been accused of being corrupt and having 7,000 “ghost soldiers,” according to the BBC.

Islamic State-affiliated insurgents in northern Mozambique, a Christian-majority country, have internally displaced more than three-quarters of a million people, according to the United Nations.

In the coastal province of Cabo Delgado, Islamic extremists have been exploiting the crisis after a civil war started in 2017. The area is rich with gas, rubies, graphite, gold and other natural resources. Protesters demonstrated at the time against what they say is profits going to an elite in the ruling Frelimo Party, with few jobs for local residents.

“In 2017, jihadist insurgents began in the Cabo-Delgado province, winning over some locals due to the fact that they gave back resources to villagers from the government and killed no one,” the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported earlier. “This did not last, however, as IS started setting fire to Christian villages, and killing those who lived there.”

Cabo Delgado is a mostly Muslim region where at least 300 Christians have been killed for their faith, according to ICC. There have also been over 100 attacks on churches in the area.

In March 2021, the United States labeled Islamic State-Mozambique as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” ISIS-Mozambique is also known as Ansar al-Sunna and known locally as al-Shabaab. The group reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State as early as April 2018 and has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians.

In November 2020, Islamic State-linked militants beheaded over 50 people, including women and children, and abducted others in weekend raids in the Miudumbe and Macomia districts of the Cabo Delgado province.

Last December, Human Rights Watch revealed that insurgents had enslaved more than 600 women and girls, many of which had been abused and sold as sex slaves for as low as $600. [source]

Pure intentional evil.

Malcolm McLean: The Unsung Capitalist Hero Who Changed the World One Container at a Time

From Mises.org (Aug. 25, 2022):

Ask the average person what they believe to be the most economically important innovation of the twentieth century, and they’ll probably point to the internet. The internet has certainly disproved Paul Krugman’s prediction that it would have no greater impact on the economy than the fax machine, but even this transformative technology may only warrant a silver medal when compared to something much more banal: the intermodal shipping container.

The shipping container was the brainchild of Malcolm McLean. A twentieth-century rags-to-riches story, McLean began his foray into the transportation business with only a high school education. Working as a gas station clerk, he’d saved up $120 to purchase a used truck by age twenty-one, and in 1944, he founded his first company, McLean Trucking. In the booming postwar economy, McLean was able to expand his business in an increasingly integrated global economy.

McLean’s business primarily involved shipping freight to and from ports for overseas exchange, and he was bothered by a transportation bottleneck that had impeded foreign exchange since the ancient world: every piece of freight had to be unloaded from the truck and reloaded onto ships, dramatically increasing the overall cost of long-distance trade.

McLean had the idea to simply ship the truck itself, but this traded the freight-transfer bottleneck for an inefficient use of space. McLean’s next idea was to load only the truck’s container.

Unfortunately, the Interstate Commerce Commission stood in his way. McLean owned a trucking business, and federal regulations would not allow somebody to own both a trucking and shipping company. McClean sold his trucking company in 1955, which by then had grown to 1,770 trucks, for $25 million dollars.

With the capital he received from the sale of his company, he secured a loan for $22 million and purchased a pair of World War II tanker ships to carry his patented containers, which he designed to stack on top of each other for overseas transportation. The containers could easily be transferred to eighteen-wheelers or railroad cars. By the 1960s, McLean’s new venture was turning a profit, and shipping costs were dropping rapidly. In 1969, he sold his company for $530 million, which he reinvested in further ventures to improve containerization. By the end of the 1970s, he owned a fleet of forty-four hundred container ships.

McLean also realized that his business did not depend on the monopoly protection of his design, so he released the patent for his container to the International Organization for Standardization, royalty-free. He understood that holding jealously to his patent would only slow trucking, railroad, and shipping companies’ adoption of his technology, and he had nothing to fear from competition.

The effects of McLean’s innovation are hard to capture in mere numbers, as it helped entire economies—such as Singapore and Hong Kong—leapt from preindustrial to modern seemingly overnight (coupled, of course, with the freest markets in the world, as even the most transformative technology cannot overcome the barriers imposed by a controlling state).

McLean received his flowers in the business community, taking his place in the Forbes Business Hall of Fame in 1982. But he remains largely an obscure figure, despite being perhaps the single most important force behind the explosive growth in global wealth of the second half of the twentieth century. Thanks to McLean’s seemingly simple idea, the cost of loading a ship fell from nearly $6 per ton in 1956 to only 16 cents by 2006 (adjusted for inflation, that would be a reduction from nearly $60 to roughly a quarter)!

McLean is the unsung hero of containerization, the revolutionary economic change that, as Marc Levinson put in the subtitle of his book The Box, “made the world smaller and the world economy bigger.” [source]

American innovation at its best.

'Tired' brain cells may distort your sense of time

From Live Science.com (Sept. 28, 2020):

Time in the brain doesn't follow the steady ticking of the world's most precise clocks. Instead, it seems to fly by at one moment and practically stand still at others. This distorted sense of time may be caused, in part, by brain cells getting tired, according to a new study.

When the brain has been exposed to the same exact time interval too many times, neurons or brain cells get overstimulated and fire less often, the study finds. However, our perception of time is complicated, and many other factors may also explain why time moves slowly sometimes and quickly at others.

We have only very recently begun to understand how our brains perceive time. It was only in 2015, that researchers found the first evidence of neurons whose activity fluctuates with our perception of time. But it wasn't clear if these neurons, found in a small brain region called the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), were keeping accurate time for the brain, or creating a subjective experience of time.

In the new study, the researchers used a "time illusion" on 18 healthy volunteers to figure it out. They hooked participants up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.

The volunteers then went through an "adaptation" period, in which they were shown a grey circle on a black background for either 250 milliseconds or 750 milliseconds, 30 times in a row.

After this, the participants were shown another circle for a set period of time as a "test stimulus." They were then told to listen to white noise for a certain amount of time and asked if the test stimulus was longer or shorter than the white noise. (They used white noise as a reference because an auditory stimulus isn't affected by the visual adaptation but the visual test stimulus is.) [read more]

So, if someone is late to an appointment or meeting can they use that as an excuse? You know, “Sorry, I’m late. My brain cells might have been tired.” Probably not. Also, I wonder if tired neurons possibly could effect other senses too. So, do they eventually go to sleep? May explain Sen. Mitch McConnell’s brain freezes. Good thing he is retiring.

IRS Chief: I Didn't Retaliate Against Hunter Biden Probe Whistleblowers—It Was the DOJ

From Bob Hoge on Red State.com (May 23, 2023):

In response to the whistleblowers who alleged that the IRS gave preferential treatment to first son Hunter Biden being abruptly taken off the case last week in what appeared to be an obvious retaliatory move, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Daniel Werfel said that it wasn’t his call.

Instead, it was the Department of Justice.

No surprise there, considering we’re living under probably the most politicized DOJ in our history, one that routinely applies two different standards depending on which side of the political aisle someone stands on.

In a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee dated May 17 and obtained by Fox News, the commissioner explains what went down:

“I want to state unequivocally that I have not intervened—and will not intervene—in any way that would impact the status of any whistleblower,” Werfel said.

“The IRS whistleblower you reference alleges that the change in their work assignment came at the direction of the Department of Justice. As a general matter and not in reference to any specific case, I believe it is important to emphasize that in any matter involving federal judicial proceedings, the IRS follows the direction of the Justice Department.” [Bolding mine.]

I love that phrase, “change in work assignment.” We know that means the whistleblower was punished and given some junk job like mopping the closets. Werfel proceeded to use the tactic that it seems all agency heads who appear before Congress use. Namely, cite the desperate need for secrecy:

“When I first learned of the allegations of retaliation referenced in your letter and in media reports on May 16, 2023, I contacted the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). In light of laws and policies designed to protect the integrity of pending proceedings, I am unable to provide details on this matter,” Werfel wrote.

As Red State‘s Bonchie reported last week, a whistleblower claimed that the entire IRS team working on the Hunter Biden probe was removed from the case. The whistleblower’s attorneys formally alleged that the move was “clearly retaliatory” in a letter to Congress soon after.

n an April 27 appearance before the committee, the commissioner said “I can say without any hesitation there will be no retaliation for anyone making an allegation or a call to a whistleblower hotline.”

That didn’t age well.

As I reported in April, an IRS watchdog turned whistleblower alleged that federal prosecutors engaged in “preferential treatment and politics” in their treatment of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter—and even tried to block criminal tax charges against him. On Monday, a second whistleblower was revealed who worked under the original informant and who backed his claims. He was immediately threatened with prosecution from IRS brass. Meanwhile, there are multiple whistleblowers over at the FBI alleging corruption within its ranks.

It’s apparent that Attorney General Merrick Garland and the DOJ aren’t even bothering to pretend anymore that their raison d’être is to pursue equal justice for all. They—the very people in charge of upholding the law—think they’re above it. [source]

Makes sense. The stooge Attorney General Merrick Garland is Crooked Joe's John Mitchell.

FBI Obtained Kash Patel and Susie Wiles Phone Records Under Biden: Reuters

From Newsmax.com (Feb. 25):

The FBI subpoenaed records of phone calls made by Kash Patel and Susie Wiles, now the FBI director and White House Chief of Staff, when they were both private citizens in 2022 and 2023 during the federal probe of Donald Trump, Patel told Reuters on Wednesday.

Reuters is the first to report on FBI actions that took place during the Biden administration, largely when Special Counsel Jack Smith was investigating whether Trump had interfered with the 2020 election and had hidden classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, according to Patel.

Smith was appointed to take over that probe in November 2022.

Patel portrayed the seizing of his phone records by the FBI and efforts to conceal them as an example of overreach by unelected government officials under Biden, a theme often repeated by President Trump.

“It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records – along with those of now White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles – using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,” Patel said in a statement to Reuters.

Reuters could not independently verify many of the details about Patel’s claims, including the full extent and timing of the seizure of phone records and the motive for doing so. Patel said the records were filed in a way that made it difficult for him and other FBI leaders to find them after taking over the bureau in February 2025.

Democrats in Congress have consistently defended Smith from GOP criticisms, saying he had acted appropriately in seeking phone records and other evidence they said was necessary to thoroughly investigate allegations of wrongdoing by Trump and his associates.

Investigators routinely subpoena and collect records of phone calls during investigations, even of prominent people, while seeking to determine the key facts in a case and who might be involved in a particular incident. Patel publicly said in 2022 that Trump had declassified the documents taken to Mar-a-Lago, a claim prosecutors disputed and Trump’s lawyers did not make in court.

Patel was summoned before a grand jury hearing evidence in the case that year after he was given limited immunity from criminal charges.

Reuters could not independently establish what records the FBI obtained or who approved the subpoenas. The news agency also couldn’t ascertain if Patel or Wiles themselves were under investigation and, if so, why. Both were close to Trump during this period, as he built toward and ultimately launched his campaign to reclaim the presidency in 2024.

Both Patel and Wiles were known to have been interviewed by investigators as part of Smith’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents following his first term.

A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment on Patel’s allegations on Wednesday. Biden, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, and former FBI director Chris Wray, who oversaw the bureau during Smith’s investigations, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Garland appointed Smith as special counsel.

A federal judge on Monday permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing Smith’s report on the documents investigation. Smith has told Congress that he is barred by court orders from discussing any aspects of the probe that have not been previously disclosed in court filings.

Smith previously told Congress that his investigators had serious concerns about obstruction of justice in their investigations. He told lawmakers last month that his office “followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements and took actions based on the facts and the law.”

The White House and Wiles did not immediately comment.

Patel said investigators used subpoenas to obtain what are known as “toll records,” which detailed the timing and recipients of calls he and Wiles made, but not what was said on the calls. The government may lawfully obtain phone records via subpoena without a judge’s approval.

Patel said investigators obtained the records around the time Smith led the probe into allegations that Trump illegally took classified documents to his South Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, after he left the presidency in 2021 and allegedly obstructed federal efforts to return those documents.

Smith charged Trump with felonies related to this investigation in 2023 but that case was ultimately dismissed by a federal judge, and Smith dropped an appeal of that ruling after Trump won election to a second term. Trump has denied wrongdoing related to Smith’s investigations.

Patel said he did not know the FBI’s purpose in seizing the phone records of him and Wiles, who became a top Trump adviser after he left office in 2021 and eventually co-campaign manager for his 2024 run against Biden. Patel also was a Trump political ally during this time.

Patel said the collection of phone records extended into Wiles’ time as Trump’s co-campaign manager, though he did not say when exactly the record collection began or ended.

The FBI discovered the phone records in files categorized as “Prohibited,” which makes them difficult to discover on the bureau’s computer systems. Patel said he recently ended the FBI’s ability to categorize files as “Prohibited.”

Smith's investigative techniques have previously drawn denunciation from GOP leaders, including the seizure of phone records of U.S. senators and other Republican officials during Smith’s probe into alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Smith testified last year that records of members’ calls helped investigators verify the timeline of events around the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and that prosecutors “followed all legal requirements in getting those records.” He told a House panel that the records obtained from lawmakers did not include content of conversations. [source]

Another example of abuse of power by Briben's FBI.

Patel: FBI Leaving Hoover Building, Transferring Agents

From Newsmax.com (May 16, 2025):

FBI Director Kash Patel has confirmed that the bureau will leave its headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington D.C. and transfer 1,500 employees to other locations around the United States.

Patel said the Hoover Building is being vacated as it is "unsafe," adding that the agency does not deserve to work in the aging structure, reports The New York Post Friday.

"We want the American men and women to know if you're going to come work at the premier law enforcement agency in the world, we're going to give you a building that's commensurate with that, and that's not this place," he told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in an interview for her Fox News program "Sunday Morning Futures."

The FBI chief didn't outline what safety hazards are going on at the giant building, located on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, but the building has been draped with nets to keep passersby from being hit with concrete that has been falling from it.

Patel also did not specify a time frame for the move or where the bureau's new headquarters will be located.

The Hoover Building, which has come under complaints from President Donald Trump during both terms, was finished in 1975 after being under construction for 10 years.

Before he entered politics, Trump in 2013 said he was considering buying the structure from the U.S. government to use as a private project.

And by 2018, when Trump was in his first term as president, he insisted that he wanted the building to go, as he thought it was "one of the ugliest buildings in the city."

"It's one of the brutalist-type buildings, you know, brutalist architecture," he commented.

Earlier this year, Trump said his administration would build another FBI building in the same location as the Hoover Building, "because the FBI and DOJ have to be near each other."

Former President Joe Biden's administration, however, had plans for moving the headquarters to Greenbelt, Maryland, but Trump blocked that plan after an inspector general's report determined that the selection process had passed over a site in Springfield, Virginia.

Patel told Bartiromo that the FBI is not fully manned, but when it is, 38,000 people are employed.

"In the national capital region, in the 50-mile radius around Washington, D.C., there were 11,000 FBI employees," he said. "That's like a third of the workforce. A third of the crime doesn't happen here, so we are taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out."

This means every state will get a supplemental supply of agents.

"When we do things like that, we inspire folks in America to become intel analysts and agents and say 'We want to work at the FBI because we want to fight violent crime and we want to be sent out into the country to do it,'" said Patel. "In the next three, six, nine months, we're going to be doing that hard." [source]

I like the idea of decentralizing the FBI agents to the States.  That will make them more effective in fighting federal crimes.

5 Indicators of a Wicked and Evil Heart

From Leslie Vernick on I Believe.com (May 16, 2025):

As Christian counselors, pastors and people helpers we often have a hard time discerning between an evil heart and an ordinary sinner who messes up, who isn’t perfect, and full of weakness and sin.

I think one of the reasons we don’t “see” evil is because we find it so difficult to believe that evil individuals actually exist. We can’t imagine someone deceiving us with no conscience, hurting others with no remorse, spinning outrageous fabrications to ruin someone’s reputation, or pretending he or she is spiritually committed yet has no fear of God before his or her eyes.

The Bible clearly tells us that among God’s people there are wolves that wear sheep’s clothing (Jeremiah 23:14; Titus 1:10; Revelations 2:2). It’s true that every human heart is inclined toward sin (Romans 3:23), and that includes evil (Genesis 8:21; James 1:4). We all miss God's mark of moral perfection. However, most ordinary sinners do not happily indulge evil urges, nor do we feel good about having them. We feel ashamed and guilty, rightly so (Romans 7:19–21). These things are not true of the evil heart.

Here are five indicators that you may be dealing with an evil heart rather than an ordinary sinful heart. If so, it requires a radically different treatment approach.

1. Evil hearts are experts at creating confusion and contention.

They twist the facts, mislead, lie, avoid taking responsibility, deny reality, make up stories, and withhold information. (Psalms 5:8; 10:7; 58:3; 109:2–5; 140:2; Proverbs 6:13,14; 6:18,19; 12:13; 16:20; 16:27, 28; 30:14; Job 15:35; Jeremiah 18:18; Nehemiah 6:8; Micah 2:1; Matthew 12:34,35; Acts 6:11–13; 2 Peter 3:16)

2. Evil hearts are experts at fooling others with their smooth speech and flattering words.

But if you look at the fruit of their lives or the follow through of their words, you will find no real evidence of godly growth or change. It’s all smoke and mirrors. (Psalms 50:19; 52:2,3; 57:4; 59:7; 101:7; Proverbs 12:5; 26:23–26; 26:28; Job 20:12; Jeremiah 12:6; Matthew 26:59; Acts 6:11–13; Romans 16:17,18; 2 Corinthians 11:13,14; 2 Timothy 3:2–5; 3:13; Titus 1:10,16).

3. Evil hearts crave demand and control, and their highest authority is their own self-reverence.

They reject feedback, real accountability, and make up their own rules to live by. They use Scripture to their own advantage but ignore and reject passages that might require self-correction and repentance. (Romans 2:8; Psalms 10; 36:1–4; 50:16–22; 54:5,6; 73:6–9; Proverbs 21:24; Jude 1:8–16).

4. Evil hearts play on the sympathies of good-willed people, often trumping the grace card.

They demand mercy but give none themselves. They demand warmth, forgiveness, and intimacy from those they have harmed with no empathy for the pain they have caused and no real intention of making amends or working hard to rebuild broken trust. (Proverbs 21:10; 1 Peter 2:16; Jude 1:4).

5. Evil hearts have no conscience, no remorse.

They do not struggle against sin or evil—they delight in it—all the while masquerading as someone of noble character. (Proverbs 2:14–15; 10:23; 12:10; 21:27,29; Isaiah 32:6; Romans 1:30; 2 Corinthians 11:13–15) [read more]

Sounds like the Left especially #3. The 5th indication is very definition of a psychopath.