RUTHFULLY YOURS

This is the first of a two-part post on the 21 Egyptian martyrs killed in Libya. This first part is a reflection, as a Christian, on aspects of this event and reactions to it. The second part, ‘A message signed with blood to the Nation of the Cross’ consists of explanatory notes on the texts – spoken and written – which were part of the Islamic State’s film of their ritual beheadings. This post has also appeared on Lapido media.

The Islamic State sent me a letter this week. This letter was in the form of a short film produced by the Islamic State’s Al-Hayat Media centre. This was not addressed to me personally, but to all Christians everywhere. Its title was A Message Signed with BLOOD to the Nation of the Cross. This was a video of the ritual slaughter of the 21 Egyptian Christians. Their blood flowing in the ocean waves was the ‘signature’ at the end of the video.

As I write this it is Ash Wednesday. This is the start of forty days of Lent, a period of fasting and contemplation for Christians all over the world. For many centuries it has been a custom of Christians to receive a mark of the cross in ash upon the forehead as a sign of repentance.

As I received this mark of the cross today I was thinking of the 21 Egyptian Christian martyrs. Copts permanently bear the sign of the cross, tattooed on their wrists, as a sign that they will refuse to renounce their beliefs.

Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote: “In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” On this winter day, awakening to a temperature reading of minus one degree, this old man’s thoughts turned toward global warming (or climate change, as it is now termed), and its relative importance in a world in which one third of the population lives amidst poverty and/or disease, and one in which Islamic extremists have barbarically assaulted Western culture.

Climate change has become a big and emotional political football. Both sides festoon their respective positions. Some on the Right are deniers, as are some on the Left. The former claim that man has had little impact on the environment, despite evidence that carbon emissions are rising. The latter state that if man simply eliminated his carbon imprint the planet would revert to the status quo. The Left, especially, uses embellishment to further their cause. They speak of polar bears disappearing off melting ice floes and forecast that whole communities will disappear into rising seas. Mainstream media news coverage, laced with alarm, furthers their cause.

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2015/02/19/if-only-germany-had-solved-its-unemployment-problem-in-1933-germans-wouldnt-have-become-nazis/?print=1

If Only Germany Had Solved Its Unemployment Problem in 1933, Germans Wouldn’t Have Become Nazis By David P. Goldman

Officially, the election on March 17 is among Israelis. Depending on how we vote, either Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will remain in office and form the next government led by his Likud party, or Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni will form a government.

But unofficially, a far greater electoral drama is unfolding. The choice is not between Netanyahu and Herzog/Livni. It is between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama.

As the White House sees it, if Herzog/Livni form the next government, then Jerusalem will dance to Obama’s tune. If Netanyahu is reelected, then the entire edifice of Obama’s Middle East policy may topple and fall.

Secretary of State John Kerry made clear the administration’s desire to topple Netanyahu last spring during his remarks before the Trilateral Commission. It was during that memorable speech that Kerry libeled Israel, claiming that we would automatically and naturally become an apartheid state if we didn’t give Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the PLO, Jew free, as quickly as possible.

Despite Israel’s venality, Kerry held out hope. In his words, “if there is a change of government [in Israel], or a change of heart, something will happen.”

In Washington, they are practically praying for a Christian terrorist. At a breakfast in January, President Obama reached all the way back to the Crusades for an example of violence purportedly motivated by Christian extremism. Days later, when three Muslims were murdered in Chapel Hill, social media erupted with demands that Christians be called upon to condemn the attacks in the same way that Muslims are called upon to condemn acts of Islamic terrorism, and the disappointment was palpable when the man charged with those murders turned out to be a militant atheist and Rachel Maddow fan who was angry about a parking dispute.
State Department flack Marie Harf, fresh off her jobs-for-jihadis bit, offered up Joseph Kony — a practitioner of Ancholi mystical traditions with 88 wives, a flair for Biblical apocalypticism, and, if we take him at his word, 13 spirits (one of them Chinese) dwelling within him — as an example of “Christian militant” terrorism. This isn’t new: Timothy McVeigh (agnostic) and John Salvi (a schizophrenic who believed himself to be one of the thieves crucified with Jesus and who obsessed over an imaginary scheme in which the Vatican would issue its own currency) have been presented from time to time as evidence that the violent jihadist tendency is not limited to the religion of which jihad is a central tenet. Meanwhile, in the real world . . . President Barack Obama, who still believes that his job consists of giving speeches, convened a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism,” the purpose of which was to provide a platform for the president to give a keynote speech. In it he insisted, as he does, that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, and that arguments to the contrary only lend credibility to the Islamic terrorist organizations that have nothing to do with Islam.

Let Republicans unleash him on the Duchess of Chappaqua. Atop years of management experience, a glistening conservative-reform record, and eleven consecutive victories for county and state offices among reliably Democratic voters, Governor Scott Walker (R., Wis.) offers Republicans this secret weapon: a battle-tested executive who is immune to the Richie Rich caricature that Democrats hurl at GOP nominees.
Especially opposite Hillary Clinton, Walker — not Jeb Bush — is fully vaccinated against the Left’s class-warfare virus. Scott Walker and a man out standing in his field. Democrats stereotype the Republican party as the natural habitat of rich old white guys. Yes, Walker is a white guy. However, being Caucasian is not a choice, and fair-minded liberals would forgive him that. It should help that Walker secured ever-higher reelection margins as executive in Milwaukee County. Its 27 percent black population is twice that of the nation. Walker would be age 49 on inauguration. Jeb would be 63. Hillary would be 69. The “cranky geezer” rap that helped sink John McCain would miss Walker, especially beside Hillary, who clearly is no spring hen. As for “rich,” the late governor Ann Richards (D., Texas) famously slammed Poppa Bush. “Poor George.

In yet another deplorable display of betrayal, the Obama administration belatedly acknowledged that it is withholding information from Israel pertaining to the P5 + 1 talks with Iran. The administration’s shocking announcement followed initial denials by both the State Department and the White House that they were engaged in this type of duplicitous conduct against a strategic ally. Fearing fallout from the revelation, the White House claimed it acted to prevent the Israelis from leaking “cherry-pick[ed]” information and failing to properly contextualize.

The revelation demonstrates three unwavering facts. First, the White House has probably already caved in to nearly all of Iran’s demands and fears that premature release of facts highlighting Obama’s capitulation will influence congressional leaders to take action against any deal that enables the mullahs to maintain threshold status. Second, it makes evident the lengths to which the Obama administration will go to sabotage an alliance that has endured for over 65 years. And third, it demonstrates the administration’s outrageous hypocrisy for when it comes to damaging leaks; it is the Obama administration and not Israel that maintains an awful track record.

It didn’t take long.

Less than a month after the Charlie Hebdo murders and the slaughter of four Jews at a kosher supermarket in Paris, Islamic State (IS, or ISIS) has sent a warning now to Belgium: “This,” they wrote in a letter to Het Laatste News (HLN), “is only the beginning.”

The letter, received by HLN’s editors on Feb. 4, referred also to a series of attacks in France that pre-dated the Paris massacres: “What happened in France will happen, too, in Belgium,” the typewritten letter stated in perfect French, “and from Belgium, IS will conquer all of Europe.”

We wait in vain for a leader who acknowledges that Islam, a creed devoted to conquest, remains true to its 1300-year tradition of violence, oppression and treachery. What we get instead are lickspittle political opportunists prepared to betray Western civilisation.

What do the events in Denmark and the town of Al Baghdadi have in common? Demonstrations of worldwide mass derangement syndrome caused by geo-political maltreatment perhaps? This might be favoured by those whose white guilt and heightened social conscience overwhelm cognitive abilities. President Obama would undoubtedly plump for violent extremism, which by his reckoning is haphazardly and illegitimately choosing Islam on which to hang its hat.

Those not severely stunted by fears of contributing to Islamophobia might well use the ‘I’ word and identify the commonality as violent Islamic extremism.

Those who have studied Islamic scripture, like Robert Spencer, go further and attribute the root cause of all Islamic terrorism to “a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers”. Egypt’s President Sisi seems to be an unlikely ally. Else why call upon imams to revolutionise the faith, as he urged on New Year’s Day at Al-Azhar University in Cairo?

The Keystone XL pipeline has now been approved by both houses of Congress and will be sent to the president’s desk within the next ten days. Obama has vowed to veto the bill, and it will be interesting to hear his excuse for doing so. Having stated time and again that he “has not made up his mind,” he will have to come up with something decisive that has occurred within the past few weeks. Or perhaps he is just a slow thinker.

The reality is that Obama seems to have made up his mind a long time ago. He remained “undecided” so as to avoid the issue during the 2012 and 2014 elections. Now that he is a lame duck, his true colors are coming out. Obama opposes the pipeline because his big-money environmental backers oppose it. End of story.

Not that the president is going to admit that his veto is payback for his largest campaign contributions — or a down payment for future donations to his party. Tom Steyer, the Democratic Party’s biggest donor in the 2014 election cycle, ponied up an estimated $80 million. Even though that money failed to retain control of the Senate, environmentalists made their point. If Democrats want to have a chance in 2016, they need to suppress fossil-fuel development over the rest of Obama’s term. That is what the expected veto is all about.