Please read the following article. Michelle Bachmann has been a champion in trying to alert America to the impending danger of the "Stealth Invasion" of America. The hatred for President Trump, coupled with the emotional irresponsibility of millions of religious cronies (calling themselves Christians) are collaborating with this invasion.  They are financially backed by a globalism "world order" to denounce the GOD of the Bible while claiming to be the emissaries of God. This is, indeed, a revolution that the Bible warned us about, but a warning that comfortable Christians and churches are NOT heeding. 

http://mobile.wnd.com/2017/02/christian-activists-head-to-mosques-to-resist-trump/

'Christian' activists head to mosques to resist Trump

'Love your neighbor as yourself – pray to support Muslims'

Published: 10 hours ago. Updated: 02/03/2017 at 9:11 PM

WND Exclusive

A protest rally against President Trump’s so-called ‘Muslim ban’ Friday, Feb. 3, 2017, at JFK Airport in New York.

A national coalition with ties to George Soros was behind a national day of “solidarity” with Muslims Friday that included rallies at airports and prayer vigils at mosques.

The National Partnership for New Americans sponsored a “day of action” to protest Donald Trump’s 90-day moratorium on travel from seven countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen – which the groups are calling “unconstitutional” and a “Muslim ban.”

The NPNA was funded with a $200,000 grant from Soros’ Open Society Foundations in 2011.

Friday’s action is to be followed up by another on Feb. 22 when the NPNA coalition plans to flood congressional offices with protesters at the district level, sending an army of advocates for immigrants and refugees.

But Friday’s event was no ordinary protest. Many non-Muslims entered mosques and joined Muslims in the Jummah prayer, which is the most heavily attended prayer of the week at mosques around the world and widely referred to as the “Friday call to prayer.”

Some of the secular and ostensibly Christian activists posted on social media that they felt “inspired” to join in the prayers to Allah.

@PaxChristi_Int Grateful and inspired to pray today with Masjid Muhammad Mosque, Washington DC #WeAreAllAmerica

— Marie Dennis (@marieadennis) 2:24 PM - 3 Feb 2017

Fr. Tony Pizzo, pastor of St. Rita Catholic Church, stood inside a mosque in Chicago and said “We are here to pray with you and pray for you.” The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago tweeted its appreciation for the priest’s solidarity:

"We are here to pray with you and pray for you." Father Tony Pizzo, St. Rita Catholic Church #WeAreAllAmerica #NoBanNoWall #WelcomeRefugees

— CIOGC (@CIOGC) 1:58 PM - 3 Feb 2017

Church World Services, one of nine volunteer agencies that contracts with the U.S. State Department to resettle refugees in dozens of U.S. cities and towns, tweeted a picture of what appeared to be an Episcopal priest inside a mosque, saying true Christians “know that the narrative going around about Islam isn’t true.”

"Christian brothers and sisters know that the narrative going around about Islam isn't true. Love is greater than fear." #WeAreAllAmerica

— CWS (@CWS_global)1:55 PM - 3 Feb 2017

The NPNA coalition includes a large swath of the interfaith movement in America – a blend of Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups – teaming up with immigrant rights activists.

Allying themselves in this project with Muslim groups such as CAIR and the Council of Muslim Organizations are various Christian organizations such as Church World Services, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, World Relief and others involved in the resettlement of refugee in the United States.

The role of inter-faithism and Christian compromise in the resettlement of thousands of Muslim refugees into U.S. cities is just one of the disturbing elements exposed in the brand-new investigative work “Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad,” which former Rep. Michele Bachmann is calling the “must read book of 2017.”

These groups present themselves as charitable advocates for the downtrodden when in fact most of the money that flows into their coffers comes from government grants.

“It’s not charity if you are taking other people’s money by force, through public tax dollars, and using it to do what you consider to be the Lord’s work,” says Ann Corcoran, who follows the refugee industry and blogs at Refugee Resettlement Watch.

The six religious organizations involved in the resettlement of refugees also sign a contract that forbids them from sharing their Christian or Jewish faith with the refugees.

The NPNA is using the Twitter hashtag #WeAreAllAmerica and #MuslimBan, encouraging people to show up at mosques and airports with signs that say “We Are All America.”

The day of action and mosque attendance was planned Monday during a conference call led by Chicago community organizer Josh Hoyt.

Hoyt’s talent for community organizing is such that in September 2011 he joined a team of Americans in a new group spun off from ACORN that traveled to Cairo, Egypt, to help teach Muslim Brotherhood activists how to better agitate during the Arab Spring uprising in that country.

Joshua Hoyt

Hoyt’s ACORN spinoff, called Organizers Forum, announced at the time it was involved in “exciting changes” to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power:

“Our fall 2011 International Dialogue will be located in Egypt where we will meet with labor and community organizers and other activists in Cairo. There are exciting changes and developments that are currently taking place in Egypt with elections coming soon to determine leadership transitions in what has been an autocratic regime, now challenged by the Muslim Brotherhood and succession and democracy issues.”

Hoyt, as director of the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, is going all out to stop President Trump’s reforms of the refugee resettlement program.

“They will whine about refugees but when you look at this list and know what they are planning, it is open borders they are really pushing for—illegals, legal immigrants, it is all the same to them,” wrote Corcoran. “In fact, on the call they said they would link their national policy agenda to emotions by using individual refugee sob stories. Refugees as pawns for their radical political agenda?”

As of Friday there were 14 states and the District of Columbia listed as hosting rallies in support of Muslims. Cities on the list included Chicago, New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, Miami, Greensboro, North Carolina; Fairfax and Alexandria, Virginia; Reading, Pennsylvania; Billings, Montana; Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Silver Spring and Hagerstown, Maryland; and Boise, Idaho.

The Oregon-Idaho Methodist Conference tweeted a photo of a boy prostrating on a prayer rug in a mosque with the words “Prayer IS action.”

Love your neighbor as yourself; pray to support Muslims @12pm. http://greaternw.org/a-call-to-pray … #WeAreAllAmerica #UMC @Freshface65

— OR-ID Methodist Conf (@UMOI) 12:30 PM - 3 Feb 2017

One of the participating mosques that welcomed non-Muslim supporters to join it for Friday prayers was the Islamic Society of Western Maryland in Hagerstown. This mosque was identified as having connections to radical Islamic elements in the undercover investigative book “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America” by David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry.

The FBI was investigating this predominantly Pakistani mosque for suspicious activity in 2004 and the imam immediately brought in a CAIR lawyer Shama Farooq to help coach him on how to answer the investigators’ questions.

Below is an excerpt from the book:

Finally, she advised, “You are not required to tell the which Islamic centers you attend, how many times a day you pray, who you give charity to, and which organizations you are associated with.”

“Definitely,” she stressed, “do not address any questions relating to terrorism or violence and their place in Islam.”

That was step number one. Then Farooq and Ahmed went to lunch the day of the scheduled interview with the FBI—September 1, 2004—to review her ground rules, the secret CAIR memo details. They agreed she would sit in on the meeting.

Following lunch, they went back to his office and continued to “discuss strategies,” including introducing her to the agents only as “a sister in Islam,” while not identifying her position with CAIR up front. And she again specifically advised Ahmed not to answer any questions regarding information he may know about terrorism and violence.

The agents arrived at Ahmed’s office on time, and over the course of their interview, Farooq stepped in to stop Ahmed from answering several questions she felt could “incriminate” him, even though she was not his attorney.

As a result, Ahmed withheld critical information from the FBI.

The role of inter-faithism and Christian compromise in the resettlement of thousands of Muslim refugees into U.S. cities is just one of the disturbing elements exposed in the brand-new investigative work “Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad,” which former Rep. Michele Bachmann is calling the “must read book of 2017.”

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http://thepowerofideas.ideapod.com/neuroscience-behind-introverts-might-think-much/

The Neuroscience Behind Why Introverts Might Think Too Much

January 28, 2017

We’ve come to understand that both introverts and extroverts do things differently. Extroverts tend to speak their mind and have no problem expressing their feelings to a large group of people. Introverts on the other hand appear to be more reserved, think clearly before speaking and obtain energy from doing independent activities.

A particularly interesting area to study is how the brain works differently for both ends of the spectrum. German psychologist Hans Eysenck researchezxd the brain of an introvert and found that introvert’s have naturally high cortical arousal, meaning their ability to process information per second is higher than the average extrovert.

For an introvert in a heavily stimulated environment, such as large groups of people with loud noises and movements, they will most likely get more overwhelmed and exhausted from the brains cortical activity.

The definition of introverts can be hard to describe however,  It’s not to be confused with people who are shy. Some introverts love hanging out in big groups and have confidence in speaking aloud but there’s just a few things that introverts seem to have stronger traits in.

Here are the five traits you see in introverts

They’re Deep Thinkers

Introverts do a LOT of thinking. They have monologues in their minds about situations and go deep into complexities about things which often ends up being unnecessary. They like to contemplate multiple scenarios and work out solutions for each. Good amounts of an introvert’s day is spent on thinking deeply.

They Analyze Experiences

Adding to the deep thinking, a lot of analysis comes to play with past, present and future experiences. Introverts take facts and experiences from the past and link them with new facts and experiences. They like to be nostalgic but also like to prepare for the future from learning from the past. They like to draw a big picture in the heads to see how things connect, using a lot of problem solving skills.

They Look at Multiple Perspectives

Introverts don’t tend to be the loud one in the group, they tend to do a lot of observing when other people speak. Observations of social situations on how people react and perceive is a strong feature of an introvert’s personality. They quickly learn multiple ways of seeing things, and tend to know how to adapt themselves to better communicate with others.

They are Naturally Empathetic

As patient and active listeners, an introvert is someone that will offer great comfort and support when others are down. They are empathetic and accepting of others, and have realistic answers to solve problems.

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http://www.businessinsider.de/bald-men-are-more-successful-intelligent-and-masculine-science-says-2017-1?IR=T

Bald men are more successful, intelligent and masculine — science says

• Valentina Resetarits und Gisela Wolf
 
• 25.01.2017, 17:02 
• 411,572

Getty Images

What do Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Frazier and Steve Ballmer have in common? They are tremendously successful. And also bald.

Coincidence? Probably not. Men with bald heads are often seen as more dominant and successful by everyone around them, according to a study of the University of Pennsylvania.

The american scientist Albert E. Mannes, who just happens to be bald himself, conducted a study in 2012 with 59 subjects. He wanted to find out how people react to men with shaved heads by showing them a series of pictures.

The subjects got to see each photo twice, once of a man with a full head of hair and once of the same man with his hair shaved off. The subjects reported that they thought the bald men were more dominant, bigger and stronger.

One interesting detail: They had to be completely hairless. Bald patches or pattern baldness was seen as less attractive and weaker.

Seth Godin: "Bald men stand by what they have"

The tech-entrepeneur Seth Godin has been bald for 20 years now. He tried to explain why bald men tend to be seen as more dominant to the Wall Street Journal: "I'm not saying that shaving your head makes you successful, but it starts the conversation that you've done something active."

But bald men are not just more powerful, they are also seen as more intelligent. A global study conducted by the psychologist Ronald Henss of the University of Saarland with over 20.000 subjects suggests that bald men are estimated to be older, but also seem wiser and more intelligent.

For a long time scientists believed that bald men were also more sexually potent because hair loss correlates with levels of testosterone.

But unfortunately it doesn’t quite work out that way. Hair loss is not directly caused by testosterone, but by the hormone DHT. DHT is a derivative product of testosterone, but it only affects hair follicles and has no effect on the rest of the body.

But dear baldies, don’t be discouraged: Many people still believe that bald men are more potent. A view that is only strengthened by the no-hair styles of recognized sex symbols like Jason Statham, Bruce Willis and Michael Jordan. Which places you and your masculinity in very good company indeed.

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http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/03/three-trends-for-the-next-50-years/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=three-trends-arlookalike

Three Trends for the Next 50 Years

I’m not a big believer in the future. I mean, it will exist—we know that. But that’s about it.

CXO Advisory Group has analyzed the predictions of hundreds of pundits. Are the talking heads on TV right or wrong?

You know, the ones who say Ebola will end the world, or the ones who said Enron was just having accounting problems.

It turns out the pundits’ predictions are right only 47% of the time. I think they are being nice to the pundits. I would say pundits are right about 12% of the time.

But I pulled that number out of a hat, and they did a statistical study, so who knows?

I don’t like making predictions. They get in the way of my digestion. All of that future thinking clogs up the pipes.

But there’s a great way to evaluate whether a prediction is true or not. It involves a simple phrase we all know: “This time things will be different.”

We know that phrase is always wrong. We know that things stay the same.

I’ll give a great example: my 15-year-old doesn’t have email. She doesn’t really use a computer except for homework. But she does use her phone. She texts everyone.

Email has been popular for almost 20 years. But the phone has been popular for over 100 years.

Not that new things are bad. We’re not using the phone from the year 1900. We’re using a phone that is a more powerful computer than the top supercomputers from 20 years ago, and it fits into our pocket.

Two things happen:

• what was popular in the past will be popular for at least as long in the future (expect at least another 100 years of teenage girls texting relationship advice to their friends); and

• what was popular in the past will improve.

I have two experiences as a pundit for the future:

1.) In 2007 I said on CNBC that Facebook would one day be worth $100 billion. At the time it was worth maybe $1 billion. Everyone on the show laughed. I then invested in every Facebook services provider I could find.

Then, 5 years later almost to the day…

2.) In my book, “Choose Yourself!”, written mostly in 2012 but out in 2013, I said that we can look forward to having a “smart toilet” that will diagnose all of our illnesses in our fecal matter and urine. A mini-lab in our bathrooms.

Anyway, recently, MIT said it’s working on just such a toilet.

Cost: $2,000, but it was going to bring the cost down to $100. Count me in.

But there are 10 trends from the past 100 years that I think are important to respect and will be important trends for the next 100 years. Knowing this can help us make money off of them.

(Note: Want to know exactly how I make money off of trends? I’ve used this copy and paste strategy for years – Learn it here.)

Trend #1: Deflation

Most people are scared to death of inflation.

If most people are scared of something (like Ebola), it probably means it was a media or marketing-manufactured fear that will never come true.

The reality is, we live in a deflationary world.

Warren Buffett has said that deflation is much more scary than inflation. It’s scary to him because he sells stuff. It’s great for everyone else because we buy things. However, to be fair, it’s a mixed bag.

When prices go down, people wait to buy, because prices might be cheaper later. This is why some of the scariest points in our economic history were in the 1930s and in 2009 when there was deflation.

How did the government solve the problem? By printing money and going to war. That’s how scary it was.

To solve the problem, we gave 18-year-old kids guns, sent them to another country, and told them to shoot other 18-year-olds.

People have all sorts of statistics about the government debt and the dollar decreasing 97% in value since 1913, etc.

I don’t care about all of that. I want to make money no matter what.

Here’s what I see: my computers are cheaper. Housing prices haven’t gone up in 10 years.

And people are finally starting to realize that paying for higher education isn’t worth as much as it used to be (too much student loan debt and not enough jobs).

All electricity is cheaper. All books are cheaper. And I don’t have to go to the movies to watch a movie. All my music is basically free if I watch it on YouTube.

Don’t get me wrong: inflation exists because the government and the corporations that run it are preventing deflation. But the natural order of things is to deflate.

Eventually something bad will happen, and the carpet will be pulled out from under everyone. Perhaps if we have an inflationary bubble. Then deflation will hit hard, and you have to be prepared.

In a deflationary world, ideas are more valuable than products. If you have ideas that can help people improve their businesses, then you will make a lot of money. 

[Note: I often talk about this in The Altucher Report, where I give money making ideas for everyone from college students to employees to retirees – Learn more here]

For instance, I know one person who was sleeping on his sister’s couch until he started showing people how to give webinars to improve their businesses. Now he makes seven figures a year.

This “webinar trick” won’t always work. But then he’ll have ideas for the next way to help people.

Ideas are the currency of the 21st century, and their value is inflating, not deflating.

Trend #2: Chemistry

The last 50 years was the “IT half-century,” starting with the invention of the computer, the widespread use of home computers, and then the domination of the Internet and mobile phones.

Okay. Done.

It’s not like innovation will stop in that area. It won’t. Every year computers will get better, more apps will be useful, etc. But the greatest innovations are over for now (DNA computing will happen, but not until after what I’m about to say does).

As an example: the next versions of my laptop and my cellphone have already come out. But, for the first time ever, I have no real need to get them. And I’m an upgrade addict.

But the upgrades just weren’t big enough.

I don’t even think I understand the differences between the next generation of cellphones and last year’s generation (tiny changes in battery and pixel numbers, but only tiny).

Here’s what’s going to change: chemistry. The number of grad students in chemistry is at an all-time low versus the number of grad students in computer science or information technology.

And yet, we’re at a point where almost everything we do requires advances in chemistry rather than IT.

For instance, Elon Musk is creating a billion-dollar factory to make batteries. Well, for Elon’s sake, wouldn’t it be better if we had a more efficient way to use lithium so that batteries can last longer?

DNA computing, while it would create a great advance in computer technology, is almost 100% dependent on advances in biochemistry.

Many people call the US the “Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas.” But what good does it do us if we can’t convert the gas into liquids that fill up our car?

Right now every country uses Fischer-Tropsch technology—a chemical process that is 90 years old—to turn gas into liquids. And it’s expensive to use it. Wouldn’t it be better if someone could develop a groundbreaking change here?

I can list 50 problems that chemistry can solve that would make the world better. But it’s not sexy, so people have stopped studying it. This will change.

Not because it’s a futurist trend, but because for 3,000 years, changes in society were largely due to chemistry advances (e.g., harvesting wheat) rather than computer advances. I’m just taking an old trend and saying, “Hey, don’t forget about it. We still need it.”

A simple example: DuPont and Dow Chemical, the two largest chemical companies, have had 50% and 38% year-over-year earnings growth respectively compared with Apple (12%). But nobody cares.

(Related: Find out the group of chemistry related stocks I think are ready to produce triple-digit gains for investors here)

Trend #3: Employee-free Society

Before 200 years ago, we never really had employees. Then there was the rise of corporatism, which many confused with capitalism.

I’m on the board of a $1 billion in revenue employment agency. It’s gone from $200 million in revenues to $1 billion just in the past few years. Why did we move up so fast when the economy has basically been flat?

For two reasons:

1. The Pareto principle, which says that 80% of the work is being done by 20% of the people. So a lot of people are being fired now, since 2009 gave everyone the carte blanche excuse.

2. Regulations that are too difficult to follow. It’s getting pretty difficult to figure out what you need to do with an employee. Health care is a great example, but there are 1,000 other examples.

So what’s happening, for better or worse, is a rising wave of solo-preneurs and lifestyle entrepreneurs—exactly what happened for the hundreds of years that capitalism was around before stiff and rigid corporatism (teamed with unions) became the primary but fake “stable” force in our lives.

This is why companies like Uber are flourishing. You have a workforce (the drivers), logistics software in the middle, and people willing to pay for that workforce.

Our GDP and our startups are going to start to drift in the Uber direction. Uber in San Francisco last month did three times as many rides as all the cab drivers in SF combined.

Corporate life was never really stable, and now we know that.

The problem is: while we were all in our cubicles (and I’ve been guilty of this for many years as well), we stopped being creative, stopped having ideas, and just took orders from the gatekeepers: bosses, colleagues, government, education, family.

We let other people choose what was best for us instead of doing the choosing ourselves. If you let someone else do the choosing for you, the results won’t be good, and you’ll get resentful. Bad things will happen.

I won’t give a direct tock tip on this right here, I do that every month in my Altucher Report. This is not about stocks. It’s about taking an approach where you get your life back so you can have wealth and abundance over the next 50 years.

One thing to try is to write down 10 ideas a day. This exercises the idea muscle and gets you 100x more creative than the average person over time.

They could be business ideas, ideas to help other businesses, book ideas, or even ideas to surprise your spouse. Another trick is to take Monday’s ideas and combine them with Tuesday’s ideas. “Idea sex” is an awesome source of creativity.

Ideas are the true currency of this next century. I don’t care about the dollar or gold or health care. Any movement in those will just create opportunities for people who know when to take advantage of them.

The key is to become an idea machine.

People say “ideas are a dime a dozen” or “execution is everything.” These statements are not really true. It’s difficult to come up with 10 new ideas a day (try it), and execution ideas are just a subset of ideas.

I was going to make this 10 trends I see coming over the next 10 years. But at 1,900 words, I already shared three solid ones. If you want to learn the other 7, I explain them in detail and how to make money off of them in my new book.

These trends are already here, they’re already deeply affecting our society, and being ready for them will be the key to success in the coming years.

Here’s how to be prepared. 

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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430152/abortion-roe-v-wade-unborn-children-women-feminism-march-life

When Abortion Suddenly Stopped Making Sense

January 22, 2016 4:00 AM  

At the time of the Roe v. Wade decision, I was a college student — an anti-war, mother-earth, feminist, hippie college student. That particular January I was taking a semester off, living in the D.C. area and volunteering at the feminist “underground newspaper” Off Our Backs. As you’d guess, I was strongly in favor of legalizing abortion. The bumper sticker on my car read, “Don’t labor under a misconception; legalize abortion.”

The first issue of Off Our Backs after the Roe decision included one of my movie reviews, and also an essay by another member of the collective criticizing the decision. It didn’t go far enough, she said, because it allowed states to restrict abortion in the third trimester. The Supreme Court should not meddle in what should be decided between the woman and her doctor. She should be able to choose abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

But, at the time, we didn’t have much understanding of what abortion was. We knew nothing of fetal development. We consistently termed the fetus “a blob of tissue,” and that’s just how we pictured it — an undifferentiated mucous-like blob, not recognizable as human or even as alive. It would be another 15 years of so before pregnant couples could show off sonograms of their unborn babies, shocking us with the obvious humanity of the unborn.

We also thought, back then, that few abortions would ever be done. It’s a grim experience, going through an abortion, and we assumed a woman would choose one only as a last resort. We were fighting for that “last resort.” We had no idea how common the procedure would become; today, one in every five pregnancies ends in abortion.

Nor could we have imagined how high abortion numbers would climb. In the 43 years since Roe v. Wade, there have been 59 million abortions. It’s hard even to grasp a number that big. Twenty years ago, someone told me that, if the names of all those lost babies were inscribed on a wall, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the wall would have to stretch for 50 miles. It’s 20 years later now, and that wall would have to stretch twice as far. But no names could be written on it; those babies had no names.

We expected that abortion would be rare. What we didn’t realize was that, once abortion becomes available, it becomes the most attractive option for everyone around the pregnant woman. If she has an abortion, it’s like the pregnancy never existed. No one is inconvenienced. It doesn’t cause trouble for the father of the baby, or her boss, or the person in charge of her college scholarship. It won’t embarrass her mom and dad.

Abortion is like a funnel; it promises to solve all the problems at once. So there is significant pressure on a woman to choose abortion, rather than adoption or parenting.

A woman who had had an abortion told me, “Everyone around me was saying they would ‘be there for me’ if I had the abortion, but no one said they’d ‘be there for me’ if I had the baby.” For everyone around the pregnant woman, abortion looks like the sensible choice. A woman who determines instead to continue an unplanned pregnancy looks like she’s being foolishly stubborn. It’s like she’s taken up some unreasonable hobby. People think: If she would only go off and do this one thing, everything would be fine.

But that’s an illusion. Abortion can’t really turn back the clock. It can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so that she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle. When she first sees the positive pregnancy test she may feel, in a panicky way, that she has to get rid of it as fast as possible. But life stretches on after abortion, for months and years — for many long nights — and all her life long she may ponder the irreversible choice she made.

Abortion can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle.

This issue gets presented as if it’s a tug of war between the woman and the baby. We see them as mortal enemies, locked in a fight to the death. But that’s a strange idea, isn’t it? It must be the first time in history when mothers and their own children have been assumed to be at war. We’re supposed to picture the child attacking her, trying to destroy her hopes and plans, and picture the woman grateful for the abortion, since it rescued her from the clutches of her child.

If you were in charge of a nature preserve and you noticed that the pregnant female mammals were trying to miscarry their pregnancies, eating poisonous plants or injuring themselves, what would you do? Would you think of it as a battle between the pregnant female and her unborn and find ways to help those pregnant animals miscarry? No, of course not. You would immediately think, “Something must be really wrong in this environment.” Something is creating intolerable stress, so much so that animals would rather destroy their own offspring than bring them into the world. You would strive to identify and correct whatever factors were causing this stress in the animals.

The same thing goes for the human animal. Abortion gets presented to us as if it’s something women want; both pro-choice and pro-life rhetoric can reinforce that idea. But women do this only if all their other options look worse. It’s supposed to be “her choice,” yet so many women say, “I really didn’t have a choice.”

I changed my opinion on abortion after I read an article in Esquire magazine, way back in 1976. I was home from grad school, flipping through my dad’s copy, and came across an article titled “What I Saw at the Abortion.” The author, Richard Selzer, was a surgeon, and he was in favor of abortion, but he’d never seen one. So he asked a colleague whether, next time, he could go along.

Selzer described seeing the patient, 19 weeks pregnant, lying on her back on the table. (That is unusually late; most abortions are done by the tenth or twelfth week.) The doctor performing the procedure inserted a syringe into the woman’s abdomen and injected her womb with a prostaglandin solution, which would bring on contractions and cause a miscarriage. (This method isn’t used anymore, because too often the baby survived the procedure — chemically burned and disfigured, but clinging to life. Newer methods, including those called “partial birth abortion” and “dismemberment abortion,” more reliably ensure death.)

After injecting the hormone into the patient’s womb, the doctor left the syringe standing upright on her belly. Then, Selzer wrote, “I see something other than what I expected here. . . . It is the hub of the needle that is in the woman’s belly that has jerked. First to one side. Then to the other side. Once more it wobbles, is tugged, like a fishing line nibbled by a sunfish.”

He realized he was seeing the fetus’s desperate fight for life. And as he watched, he saw the movement of the syringe slow down and then stop. The child was dead. Whatever else an unborn child does not have, he has one thing: a will to live. He will fight to defend his life.

The last words in Selzer’s essay are, “Whatever else is said in abortion’s defense, the vision of that other defense [i.e., of the child defending its life] will not vanish from my eyes. And it has happened that you cannot reason with me now. For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?”

The truth of what he saw disturbed me deeply. There I was, anti-war, anti–capital punishment, even vegetarian, and a firm believer that social justice cannot be won at the cost of violence. Well, this sure looked like violence. How had I agreed to make this hideous act the centerpiece of my feminism? How could I think it was wrong to execute homicidal criminals, wrong to shoot enemies in wartime, but all right to kill our own sons and daughters?

The truth of what he saw disturbed me deeply. There I was, anti-war, anti–capital punishment, even vegetarian, and a firm believer that social justice cannot be won at the cost of violence.

For that was another disturbing thought: Abortion means killing not strangers but our own children, our own flesh and blood. No matter who the father, every child aborted is that woman’s own son or daughter, just as much as any child she will ever bear.

We had somehow bought the idea that abortion was necessary if women were going to rise in their professions and compete in the marketplace with men. But how had we come to agree that we will sacrifice our children, as the price of getting ahead? When does a man ever have to choose between his career and the life of his child?

Once I recognized the inherent violence of abortion, none of the feminist arguments made sense. Like the claim that a fetus is not really a person because it is so small. Well, I’m only 5 foot 1. Women, in general, are smaller than men. Do we really want to advance a principle that big people have more value than small people? That if you catch them before they’ve reached a certain size, it’s all right to kill them?

What about the child who is “unwanted”? It was a basic premise of early feminism that women should not base their sense of worth on whether or not a man “wants” them. We are valuable simply because we are members of the human race, regardless of any other person’s approval. Do we really want to say that “unwanted” people might as well be dead? What about a woman who is “wanted” when she’s young and sexy but less so as she gets older? At what point is it all right to terminate her?

The usual justification for abortion is that the unborn is not a “person.” It’s said that “Nobody knows when life begins.” But that’s not true; everybody knows when life — a new individual human life — gets started. It’s when the sperm dissolves in the egg. That new single cell has a brand-new DNA, never before seen in the world. If you examined through a microscope three cells lined up — the newly fertilized ovum, a cell from the father, and a cell from the mother — you would say that, judging from the DNA, the cells came from three different people.

When people say the unborn is “not a person” or “not a life” they mean that it has not yet grown or gained abilities that arrive later in life. But there’s no agreement about which abilities should be determinative. Pro-choice people don’t even agree with each other. Obviously, law cannot be based on such subjective criteria. If it’s a case where the question is “Can I kill this?” the answer must be based on objective medical and scientific data. And the fact is, an unborn child, from the very first moment, is a new human individual. It has the three essential characteristics that make it “a human life”: It’s alive and growing, it is composed entirely of human cells, and it has unique DNA. It’s a person, just like the rest of us.

Abortion indisputably ends a human life. But this loss is usually set against the woman’s need to have an abortion in order to freely direct her own life. It is a particular cruelty to present abortion as something women want, something they demand, they find liberating. Because nobody wants this. The procedure itself is painful, humiliating, expensive — no woman “wants” to go through it. But once it’s available, it appears to be the logical, reasonable choice. All the complexities can be shoved down that funnel. Yes, abortion solves all the problems; but it solves them inside the woman’s body. And she is expected to keep that pain inside for a lifetime, and be grateful for the gift of abortion.

Many years ago I wrote something in an essay about abortion, and I was surprised that the line got picked up and frequently quoted. I’ve seen it in both pro-life and pro-choice contexts, so it appears to be something both sides agree on.

I wrote, “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

Strange, isn’t it, that both pro-choice and pro-life people agree that is true? Abortion is a horrible and harrowing experience. That women choose it so frequently shows how much worse continuing a pregnancy can be. Essentially, we’ve agreed to surgically alter women so that they can get along in a man’s world. And then expect them to be grateful for it.

Nobody wants to have an abortion. And if nobody wants to have an abortion, why are women doing it, 2,800 times a day? If women doing something 2,800 times daily that they don’t want to do, this is not liberation we’ve won. We are colluding in a strange new form of oppression.

*     *     *

And so we come around to one more March for Life, like the one last year, like the one next year. Protesters understandably focus on the unborn child, because the danger it faces is the most galvanizing aspect of this struggle. If there are different degrees of injustice, surely violence is the worst manifestation, and killing worst of all. If there are different categories of innocent victim, surely the small and helpless have a higher claim to protection, and tiny babies the highest of all. The minimum purpose of government is to shield the weak from abuse by the strong, and there is no one weaker or more voiceless than unborn children. And so we keep saying that they should be protected, for all the same reasons that newborn babies are protected. Pro-lifers have been doing this for 43 years now, and will continue holding a candle in the darkness for as many more years as it takes.

I understand all the reasons why the movement’s prime attention is focused on the unborn. But we can also say that abortion is no bargain for women, either. It’s destructive and tragic. We shouldn’t listen unthinkingly to the other side of the time-worn script, the one that tells us that women want abortions, that abortion liberates them. Many a post-abortion woman could tell you a different story.

The pro-life cause is perennially unpopular, and pro-lifers get used to being misrepresented and wrongly accused. There are only a limited number of people who are going to be brave enough to stand up on the side of an unpopular cause. But sometimes a cause is so urgent, is so dramatically clear, that it’s worth it. What cause could be more outrageous than violence — fatal violence — against the most helpless members of our human community? If that doesn’t move us, how hard are our hearts? If that doesn’t move us, what will ever move us?

In time, it’s going to be impossible to deny that abortion is violence against children. Future generations, as they look back, are not necessarily going to go easy on ours. Our bland acceptance of abortion is not going to look like an understandable goof. In fact, the kind of hatred that people now level at Nazis and slave-owners may well fall upon our era. Future generations can accurately say, “It’s not like they didn’t know.” They can say, “After all, they had sonograms.” They may consider this bloodshed to be a form of genocide. They might judge our generation to be monsters.

One day, the tide is going to turn. With that Supreme Court decision 43 years ago, one of the sides in the abortion debate won the day. But sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the grave. The time is coming when a younger generation will sit in judgment of ours. And they are not obligated to be kind.

— Frederica Mathewes-Green is the author of Real Choices: Listening to Women; Looking for Alternatives to Abortion.

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/gaslighting-know-it-and-identify-it-protect-yourself

Gaslighting: Know It and Identify It to Protect Yourself

Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power. And it works too well.

Gaslighting is a tactic of behavior in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality.  It works a lot better than you may think.  Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting.  It is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders.  It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize how much they've been brainwashed.  In the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind. 

People that gaslight use the following techniques:  

1. They tell you blatant lies.

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You know it's an outright lie.  Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face.  Why are they so blatant?  Because they're setting up a precedent.  Once they tell you a huge lie, you're not sure if anything they say is true.  Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal. 

2.  They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof. 

You know they said they would do something...you know you heard it.  But they out and out deny it.  It makes you start questioning your reality - maybe they never said that thing.  And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs. 

3.  They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition. 

They know how important your kids are to you, they know how important your identity is to you.  So that is one of the first things they attack.  If you have kids, they tell you that you did a disservice by having those children.  They will tell you that if only you weren't _____________, you'd be a worthy person.  They attack the foundation of your being. 

4.  They wear you down over time.

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This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting - it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often...and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting - it is that effective.  It's the "frog in the frying pan" analogy - the heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what hit it. 

5. Their actions do not match their words.

When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying.  What they are saying means nothing.  It is just talk.  What they are doing is the issue. 

6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you. 

This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don't have value - is now praising you for something you did.  This adds an additional sense of uneasiness.  You think, "Well maybe they aren't so bad."  Yes, they are.  This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter - and again, question your reality.  Also look at what you were praised for - it is probably something that served the gaslighter. 

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7.  They know confusion weakens people. 

Gaslighters know that all people like having a sense of stability and normalcy.  Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything.  And humans' natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable - and that happens to be the gaslighter.  

8.  They project.

They are a drug user or a cheater - yet they are constantly accusing you of that.  This is done so repetitively that you start trying to defend yourself - and are distracted from the gaslighter's own behavior. 

9.  They try to align people against you.

Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what - and they use these people against you.  They will make comments such as "____________ knows that you're not right", or "___________ knows you're useless too".   Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things.  The gaslighter is a constant liar.  When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don't know who to trust or turn to - and that leads you right back to the gaslighter.  And that's exactly what the want.  Isolation gives them more control.  

10.  They tell you or others that you are crazy.

This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter - because it's dismissive.  The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control.  It's a master technique.  

11.  They tell you everyone else is a liar.

By telling you that everyone else (your family, the media) is a liar, it again makes you question your reality.  You've never known someone with the audacity to do this, so they must be right, right?  No.  It's a manipulation technique.  It makes people turn more to the gaslighter for the "correct" information - which isn't correct information at all.

The more you are aware of these techniques, the quicker you can identify them before you fall into the gaslighter's trap.  

Copyright 2017 Sarkis Media 

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