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Reports of escalating persecution and a crackdown on religious believers in China have been filtering to the outside world for months. In recent years nearly 6,000 underground churches have been shut down by Communist authorities, some leveled to the ground, and pastors and church members arrested for crimes such as "inciting subversion of state power" and "illegal business operations."

For two years, Stephen (not his real name) attended one of those 6,000 now-shuttered underground churches. On the day authorities raided his church in 2018, he was flying back from an overseas trip so he was not there when his pastor and other church members were arrested. He told his story of harassment from authorities and efforts to flee to the Christian Post last week.

Before Stephen could get home, authorities came to his apartment and knocked on the door. Frightened, his wife locked the door and turned off the lights. Oddly, the police did not knock down the door. But when he next spoke with his wife by phone, he learned the electricity had been turned off and that there was no heat in the place in the middle of a freezing winter. He called the property manager who was able to turn the power back on for a short while. But it was soon shut off again and he was told he had to meet with authorities to get it turned back on. He went to the local police station expecting to be arrested and thrown in prison. He described the experience to the Post:

"I wore a very heavy jacket and heavy pants," he said. "I go there and told the police officer, 'Why you turn off the power? You can just call me. You have my phone number.' And he said, 'If we do not do that, you won't show up.'"

Stephen said he was ordered by a police officer to write his name and government identification number on a piece of paper in addition to the names and ID numbers of his wife and kids.

At that point, the police official introduced Stephen to three "community officials" who wanted to discuss issues related to the closure of the church and a school affiliated with the church that his children attended.

The officials offered his children free seats in a public school. Although some Chinese families desire the opportunity to send their children to a good public school, Stephen refused the offer.

"I said 'Oh, thank you so much. I know this is a very good opportunity but please give to other people,'" he recalled. "My wife and I are Christians. We want to educate our children with God's Word."

The officials didn't seem happy with his refusal and left the room.

He was then asked to sign a document saying he would no longer have any contact with church members. The document also contained a gag order, which would prohibit him from talking about church affairs or street preaching.

Stephen refused to sign, telling officials that "friends and family need our support."

"They were scared about why we visit each other. That's human beings doing natural things," Stephen told CP. "I want the freedom to visit my brothers and sisters. I want to contact them. So I could not sign."

Stephen then said something that is often heard in report after report of Christians facing persecution. "I understood they are doing their duties. They are under pressure," he added of the government officials. "As Christians, we pray for them. They have to do whatever they do to earn money. So they kind of surprisingly let me go home."

Stephen says to this day he doesn't know why officials didn't break down the door to his apartment that first day, or why he was let go after interrogation. He wanted to stay in China, but Christian leaders urged him to flee for fear authorities would again arrest him and force information from him about the church's ministry in order to build a stronger case against the church's pastor. He finally fled his home city, going from city to city for weeks, knowing police were monitoring his moves. A month later he and his family flew to America where they live with a relative.

As CBN News has reported, attacks against Christians and other religious groups have been increasing in China in recent years, including bulldozing churches and mosques, barring Tibetan children from Buddhist religious studies, and incarcerating more than a million members of Islamic ethnic minorities in what are termed "re-education centers."

One of the most obvious attacks on Christians happened last October when Chinese government authorities tore down a mega church's building in the Funan, Anhui region, starting the demolition while the congregation was still in the church worshipping. The church's pastors were arrested and detained, according to the international non-profit Christian human rights organization China Aid.

Government officials did not show any documents ordering the 3,000-seat church building's demolition. But they did produce arrest warrants for leaders Geng Yimin and Sun Yongyao. Both pastors were detained on the charge of suspicion of "gathering a crowd to disturb social order."

Despite all his smiles to the US and the West, President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is behind the increasing persecution in China, and has ordered that all religions must "Sinicize" to ensure they are loyal to the officially atheistic party. According to Open Doors 2020 Persecution Watch List, this means they must make beliefs, including Christianity, "fall in line with [the government's] interpretation of Communism...[and endure]a steady drip of pressure, where the government increases surveillance, control, and restrictions of believers."

China ranks as the 23rd worst persecutor of Christians in the world, moving up from 27th last year, according to that 2020 Persecution Watch List.

As he released their newest report last week, Open Doors CEO David Curry warned that China, with its "social scoring" system where people get points for "good" behavior, and lose points for not strictly adhering to the government line, and with its increased facial recognition capability, it is creating a "system of persecution for the future" and is the "greatest threat" to human rights in the world today, according to CP.

"I saw with my own eyes the surveillance on the street but also in the churches, watching their congregation," Curry said. "Facial scans when you come in and then tracking you and generating reports with assumptions built into their artificial intelligence system that is tracking Christian behavior."

Curry believes in the future China's system could be exported to other persecuting rulers around the world.

As for Stephen, after more than a year in America, he wants to go back home to China. But Christian leaders there say it's not advisable at this time. He continues to live in America where he and his family of six share a room in a sibling's home.

Read more from the original source:
Chinese Christian Tells of Increasing Persecution By Communist Government - CBN News

A walk-out at the Sinn Fin ardfheis became front-page news in 1970 with the emergence of republicans owing allegiance to a new IRA Provisional Council. The heated dispute at the partys conference involved the principle of parliamentary abstentionism: refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the partitionist parliaments in Leinster House and Stormont. Sinn Fin representatives, if elected as abstentionists, were not allowed to participate in them.

However, the underlying ideological tension at the January ardfheis hinged on the Cold War: Western freedom versus Soviet-style dictatorship. The Provisionals accused the leadership or junta of trying to turn Sinn Fin into another political party seeking votes at all costs under the direction of Moscow-led communists.

Even though the party had no TDs, or MPs, Sinn Fins publicly-aired divisions were significant because the IRA had split. The IRAs leadership stood accused of running its military capacity down to a point where it could not defend Belfast Catholics in August 1969. Sen Mac Stofin defined the Provisional IRAs mission: to remove the British presence in the North and establish the Irish Republic by force of arms.

The delegates who walked out of the ardfheis were angry with the party leadership for attempting to overturn its position on abstentionism. Adherents of the physical-force tradition were disturbed at the leaderships efforts to prioritise political struggle, thereby downplaying the IRAs role. They feared participation in a National Liberation Front would result in a communist takeover of the republican movement.

With Cathal Goulding and Sen Garland in the driving seat, the IRA leadership in the 1960s attempted to steer republicans away from the militarist focus on partition the Border in other words. As part of this reassessment Goulding enlisted intellectuals such as Roy Johnston, who had been a member of the communist party in Britain. Significantly, republican old faithfuls believed that his cohort were communists first and foremost.

Republicans took up issues such as housing and civil liberties. And the civil rights campaign initially proved to be spectacularly successful in drawing international attention to Northern Irelands inbuilt sectarianism. Many left-wing Sinn Fin activists, more than happy to work with young communists in the Connolly Youth Movement, for example, were glad to see the back of traditionalists at the ardfheis. But most Belfast republicans, according to Gerry Adams, had turned against the IRAs leaders following the August violence: they were out of touch with northern realities. Refused entry to the ardfheis in Dublin, Adams joined an anti-apartheid march instead.

The Provisionals soon made clear their hostility to Soviet-inspired communism. In February they launched their own publication, An Phoblacht, and listed the differences with the now-Official republican movement. These included recognising the Stormont, Dublin and Westminster parliaments; adopting socialism so extreme that it would result in dictatorship; and failing to provide the maximum possible defence for our people in the North.

An Phoblacht contended that before the split republican policymakers and masterminds included some who had joined from the communist party. Co-operating with communists in a National Liberation Front could only end in disaster: We know that in other countries that have come under the control of organisations similar to these radical groups totalitarian dictatorship has been the outcome. We have no reason to believe that the result would be any different in Ireland.

Traditionalist republicans perceived Marxist socialists promoting an alien ideology as having little in common with past revolutionary heroes. They did not see themselves as conservative on economic questions, but were suspicious of what they believed were political adventures and the then-fashionable language of world revolution. The first public opposition to the pre-split leadership had been expressed in July 1969 by a veteran Belfast republican, who claimed that one is now expected to be more conversant with the thoughts of Chairman Mao than those of our dead Patriots.

Traditionalist republicans found a platform in The Voice of the North, a paper bankrolled by a faction in the Fianna Fil government. Belfast Provisionals who served neither Queen nor Commisar spelled out the dangers of the alien ideology for Irish republicanism. The pre-split leadership, they stated, had attempted to replace the programme of Wolfe Tone and James Connolly with the foreign socialism of Marx and Mao. If this had gone unchecked, their argument went, the traditional IRA would have been replaced by the so-called National Liberation Movement, including Communist Party members.

At its first ardfheis, Provisional Sinn Fins president, Ruairi Brdaigh, said the party did not see a Marxist Socialist Republic as the solution to Irelands problems; it had rejected a takeover bid by extreme Marxist elements last January. Mac Stofin later spelled out the central difference between the two IRAs: The Officials say unless you have mass involvement of the people you havent got a revolution. We say, the armed struggle comes first and then you politicise. For Goulding, however, the republican movement had split over the communist issue.

Garland later addressed the allegation that left-wing republicanism constituted an alien ideology. Tone had been inspired by the French Revolution, he argued, and Irish revolutionaries should cherish internationalism. The cause of Ireland, as it were, was the cause of Vietnam, Palestine and South Africa: If it is alien to recognise the common humanity of working people struggling for freedom everywhere in the world, then call us alien and be damned.

The Official IRA had previously stated that it did not want to wage a military campaign against the British army at the expense of political struggle it declared a ceasefire in May 1972. Its republican detractors had been proved right.

However, from the late 1970s, the Provisional movement became increasingly influenced by Adams, who emphasised that armed struggle had to be complemented by political activity. When hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to the British parliament in 1981, the Provisionals decided to contest elections in the North. Sinn Fin, now the only party claiming this title, won 10 per cent of the vote in the 1982 Assembly election. Ironically for Brdaigh he had been displaced by Adams as president the party reversed its position on abstentionism in 1986.

More irony followed when the Provisional IRAs military operations came to an end in 1997. Sinn Fin had a non-abstentionist TD elected the same year. And many more followed him. Its challenge is now to win enough Dil seats in order to be invited into a coalition government, while, simultaneously, participating in a Stormont executive. But one question remains. Does Sinn Fins focus on partition handicap it south of the border?John Mulqueen is the author of An Alien Ideology: Cold War Perceptions of the Irish Republican Left, published by Liverpool University Press

See more here:
We serve neither Queen nor Commisar: The birth of the Provisional IRA - Irish Times

The new Conservative MP for Totnes told colleagues in Parliament he is following in the footsteps of a mystic and a communist spy.

Anthony Mangnall won the Devon seat at the December General Election, defeating Sarah Wollaston who switched from the Tories to the Liberal Democrats, via the short-lived Change UK.

Mr Mangnall referred to his distant predecessors in his maiden speech in the House of Commons.

He revealed one constituent had decided to vote for him on the basis of whether he liked Marmite, and added: Given that one of my predecessors was a communist spy and another a mystic, I feel it is only acceptable for me to outline what sort of politician I might be.

The communist spy Mr Mangnall referred to in his speech was Ray Mawby, Conservative MP for Totnes from 1955 to 1983.

The BBC revealed in 2012 that Czech security service files showed Mr Mawby was in its pay for a decade.

The documents were handed to the BBC after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe

Local members of the Conservative Party expressed their surprise at the allegations against their former MP, who died in 1990.

The Czech papers revealed Mr Mawby was a gambler and began accepting loans while playing roulette and other games.

He later went on to accept payments, usually for 100 a time, for information and was given the codename Laval, it was reported.

Mr Mawby became assistant postmaster general and a junior minister in 1963.

His handler feared the promotion could end their arrangement as it meant a salary increase of 2,000 a year, yet Mr Mawby reportedly continued his meetings.

It was alleged he supplied spies with a floor plan of the Prime Ministers Commons office, lists of parliamentary committees, information about colleagues and a supposedly confidential parliamentary investigation into a Conservative peer.

The BBC said the file showed the relationship ending in November, 1971.

The mystic was Henry Vivian, who won the Totnes seat at the 1923 General Election, only to lose it to the next year the previous Tory MP Samuel Harvey.

Devon-born Vivian, a trade unionist and Liberal Party politician, was described as a practical mystic.

In another colourful political episode, a long-serving MP for the area stepped down after becoming involved in the MPs expenses scanda

Sir Anthony Steen represented the South Hams constituency, later renamed Totnes, from 1983 to 2010.

He decided to step down as MP for Totnes after the Daily Telegraph reported in 2009 he had claimed more than 87,000 in expenses at his constituency mansion, which was designated as his second home.

He told the BBC at the time that the claims were for maintenance to his home and garden.

He said the issue was of jealousy and he had done nothing wrong, but had discovered constituents were angry about it.

Sir Anthony told a BBC interviewer: "I think I behaved, if I may say so, impeccably. I've done nothing criminal, that's the most awful thing, and do you know what it's about? Jealousy.

I've got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral. It's the photographs, it looks like Balmoral, but it's a merchant's house of the 19th century. It's not particularly attractive, it just does me nicely it's got room to actually plant a few trees."

Sir Anthony blamed the Conservative Government for the Freedom of Information Act which led to the information being released, and said it had mucked up the parliamentary expenses system.

While an MP, he led work to raise awareness of human trafficking and modern slavery in the UK and across Europe. He carried on with the work after leaving Parliament and was knighted for his efforts in 2015.

Mr Mangnall told MPs in his speech he had been working with politicians for the last 12 years, including a campaign in 2012 which saw the creation of an initiative to prevent sexual violence in conflicts.

By 2014 more than 150 countries had signed up to a commitment to tackle the issue.

Last year he said he played a small role in helping to shut down the UKs domestic trade in ivory.

Mr Mangnall said hehad a background in the shipping industry which he said gave him experience of international trade.

He told MPs: Those of us who have the privilege to sit in this historic Chamber know that knocking on doors across constituencies enables us to see the very best of our communities and country, from the constituent who decided to vote for me depending on my like or dislike of Marmite, to the enthusiastic member of the public who greeted me and the Prime Minister as her little teddy bears - we have all been there.

This House now has the duty and expectation to restore our peoples faith in this Parliament, honour our promises, and tackle the burning issues of the day for the good of the country and to demonstrate our global ability.

The Totnes parliamentary constituency includes the towns of Totnes, Dartmouth and Kingsbridge, and stretches from Dartmoor to the south Devon coast betweenBanthamandBrixham.

See the rest here:
The 'mystic' and 'communist spy' who were Devon MPs - Devon Live

When the Impossible Happens

A few weeks ago, I received from a friend rare video footage of a powerful interview with Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov that has beenbanned by YouTubeas part of the Google-owned tech giants latest censorship efforts against hate speech.

A former KGB agent, Bezmenov had some not-so-nice things to say about the horrors of communism. He also warned that communism would eventually creep its way into the United States if Americans failed to spot it and deal with it,one source wrote.

Even though Bezmenovs lecture took place in Los Angeles in 1983, just as he warned, were now seeing communism go mainstream. And ironically enough, one prominent example of its tactics of subversion is the escalating assault on free speech by YouTube and other Big Tech companies.

A Review of Bezmenovs lecture

The meaning of subversion was first of all defined as an action, activity, or plan intended to undermine or overthrow a government or other institution. it was then pointed out that subversion has nothing to do withespionage, such as stealing blue prints of defense secrets and then selling them to European entities.

Notable at the time was the KGB. As to espionage, only 10% to 15% of the KGBs money and manpower was spent on espionage. 85% was spent on subversion to destroy the enemy. Subverters were then described not as those who blow up buildings, but as students, diplomats, actors, artists, and journalists.

Pointed out was the impossibility to subvert an enemy that doesnt wish to be subverted, as subversion is only possible when the agent is a responsive target. The U.S. was noted as a target susceptible for subversion,

Categories under which subversion happens

As set forth by Bezmenou: Religion; Education; Social Life; Power Structure; Labor Relations; and Law and Order. As for Education, it takes only 15 20 years to educate one generation of students to shape their outlook.

The Concept of Equality

As Bezmenou indicated, It is impossible to create equality by force. Yet a propaganda system has told us to believe that equality is desirable. Should a criminal be treated the same as a law-abiding person? Should one that comes to this country and immediately takes hand-outs be treated the same as a hard-working American.

Democracy is not equality. Democracy is where different people and equal people have a chance to survive and help each other in constant competition and in constant perfection. There is equality in the Soviet Union, but some people are more equal than others.

Inability to define words

No longer are people sure what is right or wrong; good or bad; or evil or good, often believing there is no division among the terms. Everything is relative and subject to what a person deems the terms to mean. Bezmenou also spoke about church leaders who see violence as good if the justification is social justice.

Much of Bezmenovs lecture discussion was how subversion could have been nipped in the bud before it took hold in the Soviet Union. Basic is that unlimited power and subversion of power be curbed The enemy must be taken out before it becomes too powerful. Reference was made to a Marxist professor landing a job at a University in CA.

How to keep a society strong?

As to Socialism creeping into this nation,Bezmenou had this to say: History has shown us that countries in the past with centralized governments have collapsed and disappeared the moment they lost religion. Ideas are moving society and keeping mankind a society of human beings. Neither exact knowledge, nor the sophisticated knowledge of computers will keep our society from degrading and eventually dying out. For its not material things that move society and will help it to survive. The answer to ideological subversion is simple: We dont have to shoot people or aim missiles. We simply must have faith not to be a victim of subversion.

Recommended books

Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorismstarts off with details of how President Bill Clinton seized upon the black church hate crime hoax of the 1990s to foment hatred toward whites and Christianity, perfectly following the blueprint of Soviet-style demoralization, destabilization and subversion.

Another similar book with more modern details is calledDemonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering Americaby Ann Coulter.Demonicreveals astonishing historical details of how leftists not only overthrow governments, but then they usuallykill their own subversivesafter the takeover, having decided their own people were useful idiots to achieve the coup.

To keep up with the latest censorship stories, be sure to check outCensorship.news.

[Originally Published at Illinois Review]

Nearly 40 Years Ago, Soviet KGB Defector Warned About Communism Going Mainstream was last modified: January 14th, 2020 by Nancy Thorner

See more here:
Nearly 40 Years Ago, Soviet KGB Defector Warned About Communism Going Mainstream - Somewhat Reasonable - Heartland Institute

10/01/2020 - The last remaining active director of the Czech New Wave, Karel Vachek, has finished the longest-ever Czech film, which clocks in at six hours

Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy by Karel Vachek

One of the most original Czechs, the last remaining active director of the Czech New Wave and a former head of FAMUs Documentary department, Karel Vachek, has a new oeuvre travelling the festival circuit. Following his previous efforts, Zvi, the Prince of Pornofolk Under the Influence of Griffiths Intolerance and Tatis Mr. Hulots Holidays or the Foundation and Doom of Czechoslovakia (1918-1992) from 2006 (147 minutes long) and Obscurantist and His Lineage or the Pyramids Tearful Valleys (2011, 199 minutes), he has made yet another of his film-novels, Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy, which clocks in at 335 minutes (split into four acts). The cinematic essay explores politics, philosophy, religion and art.

Fifty years since the Prague Spring and 30 years after the Velvet Revolution, the director shows the exposition, collisions, crises and catharsis of post-November society in a documentary fresco of personal memories, staged scenes and archives of collective memory. While assessing social development, the auteur sees the future as lying in the direct democracy enabled by humans interconnected via the internet. The synopsis alludes to some of the motifs in the sprawling work: Democracy can be saved through creative laughter, dissolving the untouchability and hypertrophic egos of the representatives of state institutions. The internet frees society from the representatives of the non-functional connecting link that prevents direct communication between citizens and the institutions of power.

Vachek reveals more in the directors notes: My whole life story will run through the entire movie for a laugh, as the epicentre of the film is the directors office at FAMU, where he discussed various issues with important peers and his students over the course of his 25-year teaching career (in the directors explanation, he notes that almost 100 personalities from Czech and Slovakian theatre and television appear in front of the camera as a sort of collective hero).

Karel Vachek is an auteur whose works constitute an individual category all of its own in Czech cinema. He proves that, through film, you can not only think about the people and events from contemporary history, but also about the causes and general movements that make them work, noted the board of the Czech Film Fund in 2015 when it approved financial support for the project.

The film will screen at the 49th edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam, in The Tyger Burns (Perspectives) section, while the IFFRs programmers stated, Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy feels like the sum total of Vachek's cinema: a classification-defying behemoth of a film, discursive like crazy, ironic, ferocious, ballsy the way public intellectuals rarely are these days.

Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy was staged by Mikul Novotn and Radim Prochzka, of Background Films, and was co-produced by Slovakian producer Robert Kirchhoff (atelier.doc), Czech Television and Universal Production Partners (UPP). The Czech Film Fund and the Slovak Audiovisual Fund supported the film. Background Films is handling the world sales.

You can watch the trailer (in Czech) below:

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Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy ready for the festival circuit - Cineuropa