Invasion and convergence

Apparently we’ll soon discover how completely converged the Methodists are:

Karen Oliveto clutched a friend’s hand, closed her eyes and wept when she learned last year she had been elected a bishop of the United Methodist Church. Oliveto, who is married to another woman, had become the denomination’s first openly gay bishop.

Within minutes, a formal complaint was filed challenging her election as contrary to the church ban on clergy who are “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” – a petition that the highest Methodist judicial authorities agreed to consider. On Tuesday, the court will take up the closely watched case, the latest flashpoint over LGBT rights in a denomination splintering over the Bible and homosexuality.

“It highlights very greatly that we are two different churches and that the real difference is whether or not we’re going to live by the covenant that we each have agreed to,” said the Rev. Rob Renfroe, who leads Good News, a caucus of evangelical Methodists that has lobbied to uphold current teaching. Said Oliveto, “I’m in deep prayer, reminding myself of what God has called me to do.”

Oliveto, who is based in the Denver area, will attend the hearing in Newark, New Jersey, accompanied by fellow bishops from the church’s Western Jurisdiction, her wife, mother and childhood pastor. LGBT clergy and their supporters plan to pray outside and wear T-shirts listing the first names only of gay clergy who would risk losing their ministerial credentials by coming out.

The goal is to underscore the human cost of church policy, said the Rev. Lea Matthews of the LGBT advocacy group Methodists in New Directions. Prayer vigils are planned in the Methodist Mountain Sky Area region, which Oliveto leads, while others will join a prayer vigil online.

The court, or Judicial Council, is expected to issue a ruling a few days later.

The 12.8 million-member church, the third-largest in the U.S., was already in turmoil over same-sex relationships when Oliveto was elected. Methodists approved language in 1972 calling same-gender relationships “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The top church policy-making body, or General Conference, has upheld that policy ever since, even as LGBT rights gained acceptance and other mainline Protestants, including the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), approved same-sex marriage. In recent years, the Methodists have seen their greatest growth overseas, especially in Africa, among more theologically conservative people, who have been standing with U.S. evangelical Methodists against recognizing same-gender relationships.

Deeply frustrated, Methodist LGBT advocates have stepped up pressure for new policies, holding same-sex weddings in defiance of church prohibitions and coming out as gay and lesbian from the pulpit. Conservatives responded by intensifying demands for church discipline over such actions. In one high-profile case, the Rev. Frank Schaefer was tried by a church court and defrocked for presiding at the wedding of his son to another man. Schaefer was later reinstated as a minister on an appeal of the ruling.

This really isn’t that hard. Any acceptance of same-sex relationships is sufficient to not only defrock a minister or a deacon, much less a bishop, but merits immediate expulsion from the church. Any so-called “Christian” church that embraces formalized sin, of any kind, is clearly nothing of the sort. This is not even remotely debatable.

Conservatives need to understand that the infiltrators are not seeking acceptance, and that they are not misguided, but they are there to destroy the organization from within. It’s not as if Christians weren’t warned of these “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, after all.

And furthermore, from a practical standpoint alone, it should be obvious that every single church that accepts female ministers, in direct contradiction to Scripture, has set itself on the wide and easy path that leads to worldly approval, declining attendance, societal irrelevance, and eventual destruction.

If those who wish to formally embrace everything from same-sex relationships to gluttony wish to set up their own organizations to pretend to worship the gods in whom they obviously don’t believe, there is nothing stopping them from doing so. So, ask yourself this: why is it so very important to them that they not only be permitted to join existing churches, but assume leadership of them and change their long-standing policies?

The disruption continues

A reader comments:

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is on BBC1 flagship news program. Talking about Wikipedia’s new and revolutionary innovation, a news page on Wikipedia.

Where have I heard that before?

It’s interesting to see that both Twitter and Wikipedia are already having to play catch-up with to Gab and Infogalactic with regards to features. And the disruption of the two social media giants has barely begun.

We’ll be having an open Brainstorm about Infogalactic tomorrow evening at 7 PM Eastern. Rifleman and I will be talking about the latest additions to the project, what is currently in development, and what we plan to do next. You may have noticed some new ads, particularly if you happen to visit one of the 10,237 (video game) or (computer game) pages. (Before you helpfully “alert” us to anything, please note that pages such as World of Warcraft, which lack any such appellation, are not included in those, because the Wikimedia engine is woefully outdated.)

And, of course, you can always keep up on current world events with Infogalactic News. We got off track over the Easter holidays, but that will not happen again, as we will be adding more volunteer news editors soon.

Oh, those knuckleheads

It’s just a pity that a few knuckleheads have to play the fool and ruin it for everybody:

A recent string of robberies on BART trains took a frightening turn when dozens of juveniles swarmed an Oakland station over the weekend and commandeered a train car, forcing passengers to hand over bags and cell phones and leaving at least two with head injuries, witnesses told the transit agency.

The incident — the first of its kind in recent memory — occurred around 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Coliseum Station.

According to a police officials, witnesses said 40 to 60 juveniles flooded the station, jumped the fare gates and rushed to the second-story train platform. Some of the robbers apparently held open the doors of a Dublin-bound train car while others streamed inside, confronting and robbing and in some cases beating riders.

The juveniles “committed multiple strong-arm robberies of bags and cell phones,” said a police summary prepared after the incident. “At least two victims suffered head/facial injuries requiring medical attention.”

Remember, diversity is our strength. It’s very, very important not to stop telling yourself that. Also, slavery.

WWII production trivia

MR sent this fascinating explanation of one reason the Allied bombing campaign was a bust with regards to inhibiting German aircraft manufacturing:

When I was in grad school I heard of the origins of CO2/Sodium Silicate core making in Germany during WWII. The fellow said we were bombing factories and foundries.  My dad and later myself were metallurgists, both doing time in the foundry industry before branching out.

Coremaking….. cores make the hollow spaces inside castings, is heat intensive as it was done with oil bonded sands that had to be baked like cookies.  Gas, coal, coke…..and big core ovens. A cupola to melt iron can be made from oil drums and bricks and the molding sands can be mixed with a shovel and rake, but you need ovens for cores.  We couldn’t figure out how the Germans were making castings so soon after we bombed their foundries into the stone age.

After the war we found out that they had invented a core making process that did not need ovens or oil.  Simple sodium silicate and clean sand.  What the foundry men would do was take the coreboxes, the molds for the core..out in the cities and countryside.  They taught the people to mix the silicate and sand and ram up the cores, then set them out in the air.  In a few hours to a day the core would be hard as a rock…literally.  The two halves, or more pieces, would be glued together and be ready to go. They had regular drop off and pick up routes and kept the German foundry industry humming.

Necessity, as is so often the case, proved the mother of invention. Given the dearth of invention in Silicon Valley of late, perhaps we should encourage the North Koreans to bomb the Bay Area.

Netanyahu denies the Holocaust

Apparently it is now only FOUR million, according to the Prime Minister of Israel:

“If the powers in 1942 had acted against the death camps — and all that was needed was repeated bombing of the camps — had they acted then, they could have saved four million Jews and millions of other people,” he said at the official state Yom HaShoah ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. “When terrible crimes were being committed against the Jews, when our brothers and sisters were being sent to the furnaces,” he said, “the powers knew and did not act.”

Since, as we all know, casting any doubt on the sacred SIX MILLION number that has been popping up in the New York Times alone since 1869, is considered DENYING THE HOLOCAUST and merits criminal charges, I can only conclude it is necessary to denounce Mr. Netanyahu as a Holocaust-denier and demand his resignation as Prime Minister of Israel.

Also, as someone who has paid a considerable amount of attention to the effects of the bombing campaign on German industrial production – the number of German aircraft produced rose 70 percent from 1943 to 1944 despite all the bombing – I can testify that Netanyahu has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. First, the Allies could not easily reach Eastern Europe from their bases in England. Second, since all the bombing of the German industry didn’t even slow down their industrial production, which grew until it finally collapsed due to the loss of materials and manpower in 1945, it’s absurd to think that even a single individual in any of the concentration camps could have been saved by Allied bombing.

And third, if the labor in the labor camps had been somehow disrupted by a bombing campaign, the Germans might have simply executed all of those being held there and the death toll might have been even greater than four million. I mean, of course, SIX MILLION.

From across the sea six million men and women call to us for help, and eight hundred thousand little children cry for bread.


These children, these men and women are our fellow-members of the human family, with the same claim on life as we, the same susceptibility to the winter’s cold, the same propensity to death before the fangs of hunger. Within them reside the illimitable possibilities for the advancement of the human race as naturally would reside in six million human beings. We may not be their keepers but we ought to be their helpers.


In the face of death, in the throes of starvation there is no place for mental distinctions of creed, no place for physical differentiations of race. In this catastrophe, when six million human beings are being whirled toward the grave by a cruel and relentless fate, only the most idealistic promptings of human nature should sway the heart and move the hand.


Six million men and women are dying from lack of the necessaries of life; eight hundred thousand children cry for bread. And this fate is upon them through no fault of their own, through no transgression of the laws of God or man; but through the awful tyranny of war and a bigoted lust for Jewish blood.


In this threatened holocaust of human life, forgotten are the niceties of philosophical distinction, forgotten are the differences of historical interpretation; and the determination to help the helpless, to shelter the homeless, to clothe the naked and to feed the hungry becomes a religion at whose altar men of every race can worship and women of every creed can kneel. 
– “The Crucifixion of the Jews Must Stop”, Martin Glynn, 31 October 1919

Saving lives, making money

And invading Europe. It’s all in a day’s work for the dyscivilizational NGOs:

An Italian prosecutor says he has evidence some of the charities saving migrants in the Mediterranean Sea are colluding with people-smugglers. Carmelo Zuccaro told La Stampa phone calls were being made from Libya to rescue vessels. Organisations involved in rescue operations have rejected accusations of collusion, saying their only concern is to save lives. Italy is the main route for migrants trying to reach Europe.

Almost 1,000 people are thought to have drowned in waters between Libya and Italy this year, according to the UN refugee agency. Nearly 37,000 people have been rescued over the same period, a surge of more than 40% from last year, the figures say.

“We have evidence that there are direct contacts between certain NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and people traffickers in Libya,” Mr Zuccaro is quoted as saying in La Stampa.

Imagine how many of those 1,000 drowning victims would have lived if only the first 10 or 20 ships had been sunk in 2015. Anyhow, it’s time for the West to follow the lead of Russia and Hungary in banning NGOs and their pernicious, Soros-funded attempts to tikkun the olam by destroying it.

The so-called Open Society is a Satanic slave society. They call themselves “do-gooders”, but are we not advised to beware of those who call evil good?

I notice the media is now calling them “migrants” rather than “refugees”. I wonder how long it will take before they become “invaders”.

The end of “religious freedom”

It appears that Russia is leading the way towards a much-needed rejection of “religious freedom” in the West:

Russia’s crackdown on religious activity took a major step forward this week as the Justice Ministry banned Jehovah’s Witnesses. Russia has steadily curtailed rights to evangelize in recent years, but this move signals their commitment to aggressively policing private religious activity. The Russian supreme court ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses amount to an “extremist group,” and therefore the government is shutting down their headquarters and local chapters, seizing their property, and banning them from meeting.

Vladimir Putin’s campaign to strengthen ties between the government and the Russian Orthodox denomination has included the passing of absurdly broad laws that prohibit “religious discord” and can easily be deployed against any religion or sect. This ruling will directly harm the 175,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in the country, but it also poses a clear threat to other minority religious groups, such as Protestant Christians. Without genuine protections for the free exercise of religion, the government has remarkably free rein to determine the social benefits of a given religion — and that means trampling the consciences of those who fall victim to government caprice.

I don’t suppose there are any other religious groups that pose a similar threat to the Russian people, their security, and public order, are there?

Religious freedom is a bogus and ill-considered pseudoright. In practice, it has been turned into a weapon that is almost solely used against Christianity across the West, and therefore it has to be abandoned. It has always been a charade anyhow; any religious belief or practice that challenges the state is always going to be banned no matter how sincerely held it may be. No one is about to let Aztecs start mass sacrificing to the sun or permit Druids to burn people in wicker baskets, no matter how historically legitimate their religious traditions are.

In like manner, any religion that harms the commonwealth merits similar outlaw status. Let people live among others of like religion if they wish to practice their religious traditions. How serious and sincere can their beliefs be anyway, and how much do those beliefs merit respect, if non-Christians would rather live in Christendom among Christians than where Islam, Hinduism, Shinto, or Judaism are the state religion?

Don’t be fooled by the appeal to imaginary fears for Protestants. The concept of religious freedom in the USA died the moment prayer was banned in the public schools, and the coffin was nailed shut when Muslim immigration was encouraged. There is no legitimate moral, legal, or philosophical reason that every nation in Christendom should not proceed to ban all non-Christian religions as readily as atheist regimes banned Christianity in the 20th century.

The Enlightenment, such as it was, ended a long time ago. It failed. It is long past time to reject its failed liberal precepts.

All your youth are belong to us

The Left is freaking out over the inevitable rise of the Alt-Right:

Can’t believe that the Alt-Right is even a FUCKING THING.

Seriously what the fuck happened? This, the internet, was supposed to be OUR platform. We were the ones who were going to change the world and, now? Now you have a bunch of younger people interested in right-wing politics? Just what the FUCK happened?

Another question, what year is it? Oh that’s right, IT’S 2017, and there are STILL people whose worldviews shift right.

RIGHT-WINGERS MOVE THE FUCK ASIDE.

He can’t run.
He can’t hide.
He gets helicopter ride.

Eventually, people notice. Eventually, people see through the mass of lies they have been told. And it’s often the young men who see through them first. The Left’s worldview is false. The Conservative worldview is false. The Libertarian worlview is false.

And that is why the Alt-Right will win out in the end, so long as it continues to maintain a political philosophy in line with history, science, reason, and truth.

We are the philosophy of Truth and Beauty. That is a winning combination.

First steps towards Frexit?

France goes to the polls for the first round of the Presidential vote. Results are expected around 2 PM Eastern.

PARIS (AP) — Amid heightened security, French voters began casting ballots for their next president Sunday in a first-round poll that’s being seen as a litmus test for the future of Europe and the spread of populism around the world.

More than 50,000 police and gendarmes were deployed to protect 66,000 polling stations for Sunday’s election, which comes just three days after a deadly attack on Paris’s famed Champs-Elysees Avenue in which a police officer and a gunman were slain. Another 7,000 soldiers are on patrol.

The presidential poll is the first ever to be held while France is under a state of emergency, put in place since the November 2015 attacks in Paris left 130 people dead.

Voters are choosing between 11 presidential candidates in the most unpredictable contest in generations. The current president, Socialist Francois Hollande, is not among them, having decided that his historic unpopularity would hurt his party’s cause.

“We really need a change in this country, with all the difficulties we are facing and terrorism,” Paris resident Alain Richaud said as he waited to cast his vote.

“There have been surprises (this year), there have always been scandals,” said Le Touquet resident Pierre-Antoine Guilluy.

Opinion polls point to a tight race among the four leading contenders vying to advance to the May 7 presidential runoff, when the top two candidates will go head to head.

Polls suggest far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist and former economy minister, were in the lead. But conservative Francois Fillon, a former prime minister embroiled in a scandal over alleged fake jobs given to his wife and children, appeared to be closing the gap, as was far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon.

The best chance for Le Pen is if Melenchon finishes second behind her. The problem with the two-round runoff system is that it essentially gives the mainstream two chances to keep out the populist riff-raff. But if it’s between the Front National and the far left, Le Pen should win relatively easily.

That doesn’t mean Le Pen can’t beat Macron or Fillon; Fillon was supposedly a sure thing only three months ago. But it would be more difficult and would probably require another incident of Muslim misbehavior or two to put her over the top.

UPDATE: It will be Macron vs Le Pen in the second round.

Sean Hannity is next

Debbie Schussel is accusing Sean Hannity of sexual misconduct:

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was recently fired from Fox News after mounting accusations of sexual harassment and backlash from network sponsors. This follows the resignation of former CEO of Fox News Roger Ailes in July 2016 after allegations from Gretchen Carlson, Andrea Tantros, and Megyn Kelly of sexual harassment. Tantros also filed suit against Bill O’Reilly and politician Scott Brown. The latest conservative commentator to be accused of sexual misconduct is host Sean Hannity who was accused on the Pat Cambell Show by lawyer, political commentator, and frequent Fox News guest Debbie Schlussel. Debbie claimed on the show that Sean Hannity asked Schlussel to come back to his hotel twice after a book-signing event. Does this constitute sexual misconduct?

Why do these guys even talk to women in a professional capacity? This is further proof that the talking heads simply aren’t all that smart. If a woman shows even the slightest sign of being a fame whore, you’d have to be mad to think that she has any interest in you for yourself.

Anyhow, now that the new standard is “allegations have been made”, Hannity will obviously be expected to resign, since Mrs. Junior Murdoch doesn’t approve of those goings-on at her father-in-law’s company.

It’s rather amusing to see conservatives being ejected by the very “conservative” women they championed. At this rate, the Alt-Right is going to win by default.