RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/maureen-mullarkey/

Among liturgically concerned responses to the previous post, one of them gave me a start:

On Corpus Christi, at a Manhattan parish, we had to sing an entrance song which begins, “We are here to tell our story, We are here to break the bread, we are here to know our rising from the dead … ”

Here to tell our story. The Gospel of Me. The all-encompassing Cosmic Me. The lyrics lend new meaning to the adjective catholic, do they not? The respondent rightly makes fun of it: ”It was like the B-side of a Debby Boone album, except Debby Boone’s lyrics are more coherent.” Yet the lyrics are more ominous than that. Any global extension of the self into the very object of liturgical devotion is deadly. Ovid knew just how lethal self-worship was: Narcissus wasted unto death mooning over his own reflection.

No one needs to have read Keith Campbell and Jean Twenge’s psychological study The Narcissism Epidemic (1999) to know that narcissism spreads like fungus. It advances through the social order, blighting the wits not only of individuals but of populations. Even liturgical culture decomposes under its assault. External realities disintegrate in the drive to construct and celebrate a winsome, elevated self-image.

• • • • •This occurs to me every time I walk past the lawn of the local Episcopal church. Staked in the ground close to the sidewalk is an eight foot banner erected in the wake of the Newtown school shooting. Great block letters trumpet: THEY ARE ALL OUR CHILDREN. Beneath the slogan is a list of endorsing religious groups: the town’s four Christian denominations, the local temple, the Quakers, regional Baháis, and the county Muslim association.

My gorge rises at the sight of it. This is grandstanding clothed as compassion. Counterfeit condolence, the banner comforts no one. Words are not directed to the suffering parents of those murdered school children. They are addressed to our town, not Newtown. An outsized bumper sticker, the banner advertises its own self-admiring stance. That it is still on show six months after the shootings insinuates a political agenda—gun control—for which the deaths of children were expedient. The disguise of fellow-feeling gets thinner each day that the banner stands.

You have to have a taste for tartuffery to greet this display of higher sanctimony as anything but cant. The falsity of it is plain: The children of Sandy Hook Elementary School are not our children. Their deaths have not withered our hopes, crushed our spirits, caused us unimaginable agony. That pain belongs exclusively to the parents who gave those little ones life and love. The solemnity of parental grief is mocked by unctuous affectation in service to an unspoken platform that circumvents informed, serious discussion.

To broadcast one’s own empathy—made without risk or cost—is pharisaical vanity. Signatories to this vulgar pennon offer nothing but cheap grace, bestowed on themselves. My town’s children remain snug in their beds, ATM cards under their pillows. Ivy League visions still dance in their heads. Their birthdays continue.

http://unitedpatriotsworldwide.com/vinienco/ Boston Bomber Indicted, Holder has Final Say on Execution Boston Bomber Indicted, Holder has Final Say on Execution: Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of killing four people in the largest mass-casualty attack on US soil since September 11, 2001. The 30-count indictment filed in […]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Controls/SendFriend.ashx?print=1&type=1&item=13492 Facing a Nuclear Iran: Israel’s Remaining Options Nuclear strategy is a “game” that sane and rational decision-makers must play. From Prof. Louis René Beres In the best of all possible worlds, Iran could still be kept distant from nuclear weapons. In the real world, however, any such operational success is increasingly unlikely. More precisely, […]

Journalist sanctioned for revealing judges indulging in disorderly conduct.

PARIS. The French media usually have a soft spot for whistleblowers, people who reveal matters that the public is not supposed know about. Among recently celebrated leakers are the American soldier Bradley Manning who passed secret military information to WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and now Edward Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong after leaking information on American surveillance.

Not included in this celebrated group is French television journalist Clément Weill-Raynal, who works for the television station France 3. When on assignment to the offices of the Syndicat de la Magistrature, a left-leaning union of judges, a couple of weeks ago, he noticed that the judges had posted pictures of people they disliked on a huge bulletin board – labeled the Mur des cons, the Wall of Scumbags – complete with hostile graffiti against said scumbags.

The female president of the union indicated that the journalists must not film the bulletin board. Weill-Raynal nevertheless filmed the wall with his cell phone.

Days later and by a circuitous route the news of the Wall of Scumbags broke on the Atlantico website and from there it splashed all over the mainstream media. The result was indignation – not at the fact that judges kept a list of enemies, but against Weill-Raynal, who had “illegally” filmed the evidence.

Before the identity of the culprit was revealed, the left-leaning daily Libération had this to say: “it shows how news can be twisted for political purposes.” One of Weill-Raynal’s colleagues noted: “his right wing commitment is no secret.” Others remarked that he was controversial because he “’led the campaign against Charles Enderlin,’ accused of faking images in a report on the death of a Palestinian child in 2000.” Dispatch International wrote about this so-called al-Dura affair on January 31 and May 29.

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2013062832790/world/terrorism/2013-lives-up-to-its-name-twin-evils-consummated-in-kosovo-and-croatia-the-triumph-of-terror-and-fascism.html

DID YOU EVER STOP TO THINK THAT WE, THE UNITED STATES, WITH HELP FROM THE UK “CREATED” A JIHADIST STATE TORN FROM SERBIA’S HISTORIC HEARTLAND? WHILE THE WORLD WAS GETTING A GREAT LOOK AT THE “BENEVOLENCE” AND “INTERFAITH TOLERANCE” OF SYRIA, EGYPT, IRAN, LYBIA ETC. THANKS TO THE IDIOCY OF RICHARD HOLBROOKE AND A COMPLIANT AND CULPABLE CLINTON/ALBRIGHT TEAM WE ACTUALLY CREATED A NEW ISLAMIC STATE IN KOSOVO TO ADD TO THE GROWING CALIPHATE…..RSK

Israeli Paper Wants Israel to be 100th Kosovo Recognizer as Kosovo’s Mengele Commemorates Jewish Cemetery, Nazi-unrepentant Croatia Joins E.U. on Monday.

The year 2013 will witness a twin evil—imminently. As Kosovo is finally surrendered to terrorists by the nation it gave birth to (Serbia)—entering the “family of nations”—the E.U. this Monday will welcome the never de-Nazified Croatia as its newest member. It will be the consummation of backwards Western Balkan policy of the 90s, when the fascist remnants of both Kosovo and Croatia managed to recruit not only the world to its corner but also unlikely Jewish cheerleaders. Sadly, the cheering continues—from the pages of Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and neoconservative Weekly Standard, to the Holocaust Museum in Skokie.

The leftist Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz recently ran an opinion piece arguing that Israel must become the 100th country to recognize Kosovo statehood. For Israel’s own sake, no less.

The article, which asks Israel to lay the foundation for its own demise by supporting a precedent for its own dismemberment by separatists, was a cheap rehashing of ‘90s-born pop platitudes and myths, referencing Milosevic’s “nationalist speech” (it was quite the opposite) and describing the Albanian goal as “the national aspirations of an oppressed people [who] suffered massacres, rapes and ethnic cleansing” – every charge that’s been debunked for more than a decade now, including by Serb-hunting Hague tribunal itself. The article was replete with Pristina-Washington talking points (Pristina is the Kosovo capital): “unique case, modern-dressed girls and alcohol sold freely — no chance of Islamization.” The staff writer, Adar Primor, even cited the old, since-reduced figure of “quarter of a million” dead in the Balkan wars.

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=3040

This year’s Vidovdan in “multi-ethnic,” “democratic,” “minorities-protected,” “mature,” “independent,” “come-a-long-way” Kosovo:

Religious leader: Serbian buses attacked in Kosovo

BELGRADE, Serbia, June 28 (UPI) — Schoolbuses carrying Serbs from a religious celebration in Kosovo were attacked by stone-throwing mobs, witnesses said.

There were at least two incidents, Radio B92 in Belgrade, Serbia, reported. Buses were damaged and a number of people injured, including three children, witnesses said.

The buses were carrying worshippers from a celebration of St. Vitus Day at a shrine near Pristina, the Kosovar capital. St. Vitus, a Sicilian martyred under the Roman Empire, is venerated in Slavic countries.

Sava Janjic, a Serbian Orthodox abbott, posted an account of what he said was the most serious attack on Twitter.

“Albanians are en masse stoning Serb school buses. Five buses have been damaged, there are injuries. Witnesses said that groups of Albanianas waited for Serb buses in ambush, some even followed the buses in their cars,” Janjic said. “What were Kosovo police doing?”

Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and is recognized by more than 100 countries, including the United States. Serbia, however, has withheld recognition of its former territory. [I wonder why! Those obstinate Serbs!]

The country is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian. [And so they MUST deserve their own country, which is the whole reason they’re attacking Serbs, don’t you know.] Tensions between the Albanian and Serbian communities in Kosovo remain high.

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/06/30/zimmerman-prosecution-predictably-collapsing/

The state of Florida’s politically-driven decision to charge George Zimmerman with murder has resulted, as some of us predicted it would, in a pathetically weak case. It has taken only a few days of trial to collapse of its own weightlessness – undone, in fact, by the direct testimony of a prosecution witness, as Bryan Preston relates at the Tatler and Ed Morrissey details at Hot Air.

Over a year ago, I explained why this would happen:

When Trayvon Martin was first shot to death nearly two months ago [on February 26, 2012], state authorities sensibly opted not to charge George Zimmerman with murder. It wasn’t that they were looking to excuse wrongdoing. It was that the evidence was insufficient to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt.

Plainly, there was a lack of criminal intent: There was obviously no premeditation; and, alternatively, the facts do not remotely suggest that Zimmerman acted with a “depraved mind regardless of human life” (e.g., the savage indifference of a man who fires into a crowd, heedless of the consequences). To the contrary, the known facts indicate (a) Zimmerman’s concern that Martin was acting suspiciously (the depraved do not call the police, as Zimmerman did, before shooting), and (b) a struggle in which Zimmerman may well have been severely beaten and, in any event, would have a strong basis to persuade a jury that he shot in self-defense.

In advancing that argument, Zimmerman would be aided by Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which gives the law-abiding latitude to use guns for protection….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/its_time_to_junk_oslo.html#ixzz2Xj3aED6Y
Abba Eban, hardly a right-wing hardliner, once famously referred to the 1967 borders between Israel and its Arab neighbors as “Auschwitz borders.” With Israel confined to those borders (at one point less than 10 miles wide), the Arabs controlled the mountain ranges that dominate all of Israel’s population centers as well as the region’s water supplies. Thankfully, Israel has not agreed to return to the Auschwitz borders.

But twenty years ago, Israel did agree to what I shall call the “Oslo Final Solution.” In an act of monumental stupidity, Israel invited the PLO and its genocidal wannabe leader, Yasser Arafat, to set up shop in the so-called West Bank as a prelude to ceding the area to him. In effect, Israel was agreeing to eventually return to the Auschwitz borders.

Events since the infamous handshake on the White House Lawn (between Arafat and Rabin) have demonstrated conclusively that an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria (the biblical names for the West Bank area) would indeed represent an enormous, and likely irreversible, step toward the Arab-envisioned final solution to the Arab-Israel conflict — namely, the destruction of the Jewish State. The Israeli withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza have resulted in enhanced Arab aggression and intransigence and provide an unmistakable model for the horror that would rain down on Israel should Fatah/Hamas take control of Judea and Samaria.

Despite the self-evidence of this assessment, Israeli leaders continue to pursue the chimera of a “two-state solution.” Several (but especially Barak and Olmert) have offered the Palestinian Arabs virtually all that they might have expected under the Oslo accords. But in their blind hatred for the Jewish State, in their revealing lack of interest in setting up a new state of their own, and in their undying expectation that the Jewish state cannot hold out indefinitely, they have spurned the offers and continued to pine for the great Götterdämmerung that they expect must inevitably occur.

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/06/30/a-young-jewish-mans-lethal-arab-spring-delusion/

Andrew Pochter, then a recent alumnus of the State Department’s National Security Language for Youth Program, published a report June 8, 2011 for Al Arabiya on his impressions of the Arab Spring uprisings in Morocco. Entitled, “The Acquisition of Reality,” the callow Mr. Pochter lauded Moroccan despot King Muhammad VI’s release of 90 imprisoned jihadists (arbitrarily designated “Islamists” and “Sahrawis,” i.e., the latter being “nationalists” cum jihadists), while lamenting,

This seems to be a good start, though it is important to keep in mind that over 100 political prisoners still remain behind bars.

Just two years later, the well-intentioned, if naïve Pochter’s tragic delusions about the ugly reality of the Orwellian-named Arab spring were shattered, instantaneously, by lethal violence. While photographing demonstrations in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria this past Friday (6/28/13), near an office of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, Pochter was stabbed, and suffered a fatal chest wound.

Veteran international journalist Jon Williams tweeted that, as per unnamed “intelligence sources,” Pochter’s assailant questioned the young man whether he were an American, before plunging a knife into the victim’s chest. If Williams’ account is confirmed, this would mark the second time in two months that an American was targeted for stabbing in Egypt. On Thursday, May 12, 2013, Chris Stone, an Associate Professor of Arabic, and Director of the Arabic Program at The City University of New York was stabbed in the neck outside the US embassy’s Cairo headquarters. Stone’s attacker, Kafr El-Sheikh, was motivated by his professed hatred of the US, and Americans. Stone survived the attack, but as Al-Ahram reported, the knife lodged in his neck had to be removed by a surgical operation. Ironically, Stone, who had penned anti-Israel vitriol, and supported demands that the New York Police Department terminate its legitimate (and successful) anti-jihad terror surveillance activities, was recently appointed head of the Center for Arabic Study Abroad by the American University in Cairo, and, as Al-Ahram highlighted, “praised for his pro-Palestine views and his interest in Arab culture.”

The late youth Andrew Pochter was described in an Al-Arabiya tribute by his former Moroccan Arabic teacher as similarly “filled with the Arabic language and with the Arab world.” Prochter attended Kenyon College, where he was a religious studies major, who co-managed the college’s Hillel, and had just completed his sophomore year. Prior to his fateful sojourn in Egypt, Pochter interned for AMIDEAST, an American nonprofit that focuses on the Middle East and North Africa, and studied regional politics. His mother, Elizabeth Pochter, maintained that her son read poems to his girlfriend about the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” and insisted that somehow the endless jihad against The Jewish State, “wasn’t just about some detached war to him, but a struggle that he passionately wanted to resolve.” Elizabeth Pochter added, according to a statement by Kenyon College, that her Jewish son,

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352370/bin-bayyah-bungle-andrew-c-mccarthy

‘Who is a civilian?” The Muslim Brotherhood’s chief jurist, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, was asking the question rhetorically. It was 2004 and the sheikh, globally renowned as Sunni Islam’s most influential sharia scholar, felt obliged to dilate on Muslim law’s distinction between civilians and combatants. After all, a couple of his edicts had caused some confusion.

Two days after the atrocities of September 11, 2001, Qaradawi declared, “We, in the name of our religion, deny the act and incriminate the perpetrator.” Although he expressed skepticism that Muslims were behind the attacks on the United States, his pronouncement was taken as an implied condemnation of al-Qaeda.

An apparent rebuke from a figure of such stature elated American progressives, who look upon the Brotherhood as a cure, rather than an incubator, for violent jihadism. For once, the Left could feel comfortable forgetting that Qaradawi is a rabid anti-Semite whose gory enthusiasm for the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, the Hamas terrorist organization, is most notable for its paeans to suicide bombing — or what the sheikh prefers to call “martyrdom operations.”

But the treacle that Brotherhood eminences serve up for voracious Western consumption is rarely repeated in speeches to their core Arabic audience, swelled to the millions by the popularity of media mogul Qaradawi’s weekly al-Jazeera program, Sharia and Life. This is the audience to which Qaradawi typically spouts such venom as: “The Israelis might have nuclear bombs but we have the children bomb, and these human bombs must continue until liberation. Calling for peace at this time is treason.”