The American Episcopacy: Affable Idiots Encouraged to Apply

Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo

When did the Church institute affirmative action to encourage affable idiots in the American Episcopacy?

The Catholic Bishop of Richmond, Virginia, was given advance notice that his own charitable arm, Commonwealth Catholic Charities of Richmond, had signed consent forms and was about to help a Guatemalan girl, a foster care client of his agency, obtain an abortion. The bishop would have us believe that there was nothing that neither he, nor the Catholic Charities Executive Director could do to stop the abortion that their own staff had authorized.

The typical diocesan bishop oversees a huge network of parishes, schools, youth and seniors programs, hospitals, colleges, clinics, social welfare programs, stock and real estate portfolios, and cemeteries, and yet we are asked to believe that Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo could not intervene with his own staff to save a life. And if he is unable to intervene to save a life, what confidence should any parent have that he could/would intervene to prevent their child from being sexually molested by his clergy or staff?

If a bishop is this ineffective, how is he allowed to remain in office? How is it that no matter how grievous the moral lapses and shocking the scandal, a bishop never resigns in disgrace or is censured by his fellow bishops? Even the U. S. Congress censures errant colleagues and has expelled Members of Congress from time to time.

Is such a bishop even eligible to remain in office? The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

"Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. 'A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae' by the very commission of the offense, and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law."

Given this teaching, is the Bishop of Richmond even a Catholic in good standing?

Governor Frank Keating, who had the opportunity to see the American hierarchy close up as Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' National Review Board, likened them to the Mafia. He said:

To resist Grand Jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my Church."

And yet these same bishops have the audacity to lecture Congress on social justice issues, foreign affairs, tax and budget policy.

If the hierarchy in the United States and Rome is incapable of ridding itself of these rogues and charlatans, then American Catholics need to refuse them funding and force their resignations, as the Catholics of Boston did with Cardinal Law. The faithful have a right to holy bishops. As followers of Christ they have a responsibility to do all in their power to ensure a Church worthy of its founder.

Bishop knew of abortion plan

Told 'there was nothing he could do'

From The Washington Times

By Julia Duin

The Roman Catholic bishop of Richmond was told that a diocesan charity planned to help a teenage foster child get an abortion in January and did not try to prevent the procedure.

Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo "was told erroneously that everything was in place and there was nothing he could do to stop it," said Steve Neill, Bishop DiLorenzo's communications officer. "He is very apologetic about the whole episode.

"It is very awkward, it is very embarrassing. A human life was taken. He certainly has not taken it lightly in any way. He is clearly opposed to abortion."

Mr. Neill said the bishop was informed Jan. 17, the day before an abortion was performed on the 16-year-old Guatemalan girl, who was a foster care client of Commonwealth Catholic Charities of Richmond (CCR), a group incorporated under the diocese.

CCR Executive Director Joanne Nattrass also knew about the planned abortion, Mr. Neill said.

"The director was very upset about it and it clearly went against all she stood for as a director of Catholic Charities," he said.

After The Washington Times revealed the abortion on June 18, Ms. Nattrass released a statement on June 19 saying the incident was "contrary to basic teachings of the Catholic Church."

Federal authorities are investigating CCR because the girl was a ward of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS had contracted with CCR to take care of the girl, whose parents are not in the country.

Ms. Nattrass wrote that neither CCR nor diocesan funds paid for the abortion but did not say who did. Federal law forbids any federal funds to be used.

Ms. Nattrass' statement also said a CCR staff member signed the consent form necessary for a minor to have an abortion, even though Virginia law mandates parental consent for anyone younger than 18.

Martin Tucker, a spokesman for the Virginia attorney general's office, would not say whether a state investigation is under way.

After HHS officials learned of the abortion, they complained about the incident on April 23 to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), a parent agency to Catholic Charities. Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo has reasserted his opposition to abortion.

Bill Etherington, an attorney for the diocese and CCR, said Bishop DiLorenzo was given bad information about whether the abortion could be prevented, but didn't elaborate as to how.

"He was told it could not be stopped," Mr. Etherington said. "It was erroneous information. He didn't have to sign off on it. He was not personally involved."

He added, without elaborating, that the underage abortion did not violate state law.

After learning of the federal investigation, Bishop DiLorenzo and two other bishops issued an April 29 letter to the nation's 350 Catholic bishops detailing the botched management decisions that led to the abortion.

"He wrote the letter with the intent that word was going to get out and they should be notified of the circumstances," Mr. Neill said.

Four CCR employees were fired over the incident, and one USCCB official who worked with its office of Migration and Refugee Services was suspended.

"They were so caught up with the plight of the young girl who already had a child," Mr. Neill said. "She was not a Catholic. She got pregnant by her boyfriend, and she was determined not to have the baby."

The unnamed girl had been implanted with a contraceptive device provided by CCR two months earlier, according to the April 29 letter. Catholic doctrine condemns deliberate abortion and the use of contraception as mortal sins. Those who obtain an abortion or help someone else to do so can be excommunicated.

In this case, it was a volunteer, not CCR staff, who drove the girl to the abortion clinic, Mr. Neill said. CCR staff will be having "ongoing formation and education" regarding church teaching on the matter, he added.

The USCCB has refused to comment. A spokeswoman said the matter was a "personnel issue."

Libera -- "Onward Christian Soldiers"

A Real Choice

Patrick J. Buchanan: Who's Planning Our Next War?

War Buddies: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with President Bush

The scenario presented by Pat Buchanan in the following column is horrifying and all too plausible. Certainly our President has all of the arrogance to carryout such a plan, and that he would confide its details to Ehud Olmert, but not to the American people or their representatives would surprise no one. But should a President, who has the confidence and support of 30% of the American people, at best, be allowed to do anything beyond pardon the White House Thanksgiving turkey and preside over the National Christmas Tree lighting? War on a third front will be even more disastrous than the two underway. Congress needs to ensure this does not happen.

Who's Planning Our Next War?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002, President Bush has often said, “The United States will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”

He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, though there is no hard evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program?

William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a U.S. attack on Iran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win. Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free. tors

Yet, to start a third war in the Middle East against a nation three times as large as Iraq, and leave it to a new president to fight, would be a daylight hijacking of the congressional war power and a criminally irresponsible act. For Congress alone has the power to authorize war.

Yet Israel is even today pushing Bush into a pre-emptive war with a naked threat to attack Iran itself should Bush refuse the cup.

In April, Israel held a five-day civil defense drill. In June, Israel sent 100 F-15s and F-16s, with refueling tankers and helicopters to pick up downed pilots, toward Greece in a simulated attack, a dress rehearsal for war. The planes flew 1,400 kilometers, the distance to Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

Ehud Olmert came home from a June meeting with Bush to tell Israelis: “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. … I left with a lot less question marks regarding the means, the timetable restrictions and American resoluteness. …

“George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term. … The Iranian problem requires urgent attention, and I see no reason to delay this just because there will be a new president in the White House seven and a half months from now.”

If Bush is discussing war on Iran with Ehud Olmert, why is he not discussing it with Congress or the nation?

On June 6, Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, “If Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, we will attack it.” The price of oil shot up 9 percent.

Is Israel bluffing — or planning to attack Iran if America balks?

Previous air strikes on the PLO command in Tunis, on the Osirak reactor in Iraq and on the presumed nuclear reactor site in Syria last September give Israel a high degree of credibility.

Still, attacking Iran would be no piece of cake.

Israel lacks the stealth and cruise-missile capacity to degrade Iran’s air defenses systematically and no longer has the element of surprise. Israeli planes and pilots would likely be lost.

Israel also lacks the ability to stay over the target or conduct follow-up strikes. The U.S. Air Force bombed Iraq for five weeks with hundreds of daily runs in 1991 before Gen. Schwarzkopf moved.

Moreover, if Iran has achieved the capacity to enrich uranium, she has surely moved centrifuges to parts of the country that Israel cannot reach — and can probably replicate anything lost.

Israel would also have to over-fly Turkey, or Syria and U.S.-occupied Iraq, or Saudi Arabia to reach Natanz. Turks, Syrians and Saudis would deny Israel permission and might resist. For the U.S. military to let Israel over-fly Iraq would make us an accomplice. How would that sit with the Europeans who are supporting our sanctions on Iran and want the nuclear issue settled diplomatically?

And who can predict with certitude how Iran would respond?

Would Iran attack Israel with rockets, inviting retaliation with Jericho and cruise missiles from Israeli submarines? Would she close the Gulf with suicide-boat attacks on tankers and U.S. warships?

With oil at $135 a barrel, Israeli air strikes on Iran would seem to ensure a 2,000-point drop in the Dow and a world recession.

What would Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria do? All three are now in indirect negotiations with Israel. U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq could be made by Iran to pay a high price in blood that could force the United States to initiate its own air war in retaliation, and to finish a war Israel had begun. But a U.S. war on Iran is not a decision Bush can outsource to Ehud Olmert.

Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullins left for Israel. CBS News cited U.S. officials as conceding the trip comes “just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran’s nuclear complex.”

Vice President Cheney is said to favor U.S. strikes. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Mullins are said to be opposed.

Moving through Congress, powered by the Israeli lobby, is House Resolution 362, which demands that President Bush impose a U.S. blockade of Iran, an act of war.

Is it not time the American people were consulted on the next war that is being planned for us?

McCain's Day of Repudiation

From Real Clear Politics
By George Will

Two of Thursday's Supreme Court rulings -- both decided 5-4, and with the same alignment of justices -- concerned the Constitution's first two amendments. One ruling benefits Barack Obama by not reviving the dormant debate about gun control. The other embarrasses John McCain by underscoring discordance between his deeds and his promises.

The District of Columbia's gun control law essentially banned ownership of guns not kept at businesses and not disassembled or disabled by trigger locks, even guns for personal protection in the home. The issue in the case was: Does the Second Amendment "right of the people to keep and bear arms" guarantee an individual right? Or does the amendment's prefatory clause -- "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" -- mean that the amendment guarantees only the right of a collectivity ("the people," embodied in militias) to "bear" arms in military contexts?

In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, who believes that construing the Constitution should begin, and often end, with analysis of what the text meant to its authors, the court affirmed the individual right. Scalia cited the ancient British right -- deemed a pre-existing, inherent, natural right, not one created by government -- of individuals to own arms as protection against tyrannical government and life's other hazards. Scalia also cited American state constitutional protections of the right to arms, protections written contemporaneously with the drafting of the Second Amendment.

Scalia's opinion, joined by John Roberts, Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy, radiates an understanding that the right to arms is the right of each individual to protect his rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Hence the Second Amendment is integral to the Bill of Rights and is, for weighty reasons, second only to the First.

Obama benefits from this decision. Although he formerly supported groups promoting a collectivist interpretation -- nullification, really -- of the Second Amendment, as a presidential candidate he has prudently endorsed the "individual right" interpretation. Had the court held otherwise, emboldened gun-control enthusiasts would have thrust this issue, with its myriad cultural overtones, into the campaign, forcing Obama either to irritate his liberal base or alienate many socially conservative Democratic men.

The McCain-Feingold law abridging freedom of political speech -- it restricts the quantity, timing and content of such speech -- included a provision, the Millionaires' Amendment, that mocked the law's veneer of disinterested moralizing about "corruption." The provision unmasked the law's constitutional recklessness and its primary purpose, which is protection of incumbents.

The amendment, written to punish wealthy, self-financing candidates, said that when such a candidate exceeds a particular spending threshold, his opponent can receive triple the per-election limit of $2,300 from each donor -- the limit above which the threat of corruption supposedly occurs. And the provision conferred other substantial benefits on opponents of self-financing candidates, even though such candidates cannot be corrupted by their own money, which the court has said they have a constitutional right to spend.

Declaring the Millionaires' Amendment unconstitutional, the court, in an opinion written by Alito, reaffirmed two propositions. First, because money is indispensable for the dissemination of political speech, regulating campaign contributions and expenditures is problematic and justified only by government's interest in combating "corruption" or the "appearance" thereof. Second, government may not regulate fundraising and spending in order to fine-tune electoral competition by equalizing candidates' financial resources.

The court said it has never upheld the constitutionality of a law that imposes different financing restraints on candidates competing against each other. And the Millionaires' Amendment impermissibly burdened a candidate's First Amendment right to spend his own money for campaign speech.

This ruling invites challenges to various state laws, such as Arizona's and Maine's, that penalize private funding of political speech. Those laws increase public funds for candidates taking such funds when their opponents spend certain amounts of their own money or receive voluntary private contributions that cumulatively exceed certain ceilings. Such laws, like McCain-Feingold, rest on the fiction that political money can be regulated without regulating political speech.

The more McCain talks -- about wicked "speculators," about how he reveres ANWR as much as the Grand Canyon, about adjusting the planet's thermostat, etc. -- the more conservatives cling to judicial nominees as a reason for supporting him. But now another portion of his signature legislation has been repudiated by the court as an affront to the First Amendment, and again Roberts and Alito have joined the repudiation. Yet McCain promises to nominate jurists like them. Is that believable?

Chor Mlodych Serc -- "Barka"

"Barka" was a favorite song of the late Pope John Paul II. The English translation is: "Lord, When You Came to the Seashore." Whether you will be spending your summer vacation in the mountains, at a lake, at home, or at the seashore, I wish all of my readers blessed, happy and restful days.

Breaking the Bond of Communion

From National Post (Canada)
Father Raymond J. de Souza

Formal arrangements have yet to be made, but it now appears that the critical decisions have already been taken for a dissolution of the Anglican Communion. Every 10 years, all the world's Anglican bishops meet at the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace. They are scheduled to meet this summer, but already some 250 have decided not to attend, boycotting because of the failure of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, to discipline American and Canadian Anglicans for blessing same-sex unions and ordaining actively homosexual clergy.

Many of those who are not attending Lambeth are in Jerusalem this week for an alternative meeting, to discuss how they see the way forward. The parallel meetings are a clear manifestation that the bonds of communion have broken down. The Archbishop of Canterbury is not in Jerusalem, and is not welcome there. The breach appears irreparable and therefore the Anglican Communion's days as a global community centred in Canterbury are numbered.

That is a sadness for those, like myself, who have affection for the Anglican sensibility. But sensibilities are not doctrines, and it cannot be the case that members of the same communion can hold directly contradictory views on matters of grave importance. The Canadian and American proponents of same-sex marriages are arguing that homosexual acts can be morally good, and even sacramental. The traditional Christian view is that such acts are sinful. That is a gap that cannot be bridged: Either one holds to the ancient and constant teaching of the Christian Church, or one rejects it in favour of a different position. It cannot be that both views exist side-by-side as equally acceptable options.

It is not a disagreement only about sexual morality. It goes deeper than that, to what status the ancient and apostolic tradition has in the Church today. There can be no doubt that the blessing of homosexual relationships is entirely novel and in contradiction to the Christian tradition. So if that tradition no longer holds, it raises questions about the apostolicity of those communities which have abandoned it.

An additional sadness for Catholic and Orthodox Christians is that if the Anglican Communion embraces the path of doctrinal innovation, they will be closing the door on closer ecumenical relations. By unilaterally choosing to do what Catholics and Orthodox have always taught is outside our common tradition, they would be choosing the path of division.

That has already become dramatically evident. I remember being at the opening ceremonies of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 in Rome, when pope John Paul II opened the Holy Door at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside The Walls. He invited the then-archbishop of canter-bury, Dr. George Carey, and an Orthodox archbishop to open the door together with him, three abreast in unity.

By the time of John Paul's death in 2005, matters had deteriorated significantly. The original draft for his funeral called for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople to offer joint prayers at the conclusion of the funeral Mass, but it never came off. By then it was thought more doubtful, above all in the eyes of the Orthodox, that the Anglican Communion was still in the historic tradition of the apostolic faith.

The Jerusalem setting for the alternative bishops' meeting is deliberately evocative -- and provocative. To return to Jerusalem is to return to the roots of the Christian faith, to return to the land of Jesus and the apostles. The choice of Jerusalem is meant to express fidelity to those roots. Yet Jerusalem also represents something more contemporary, namely the shift in gravity in the Anglican world from north to south. The majority of the bishops present in Jerusalem are from the south, in particular Africa, where Anglicanism is growing and vibrant. In contrast, the Lambeth conference will be held in a country where more Catholics go to church on Sunday than Anglicans, despite being outnumbered some 10 to one. The typical Anglican in church on Sunday is far more likely to be a young African than Canadian, American or English.

The see of Canterbury is one of the Christian world's most venerable, being occupied throughout her history by great saints such as Saint Augustine of Canterbury and Saint Thomas Becket. There will be other archbishops after Dr. Williams, but it seems likely now that none will preside over a global communion.

A Reader's Comments and My Response

I received the following, anonymous comment to an older post that I would like to share with readers, since it reflects an attitude frequently heard in regard to Bob Barr's campaign for the Presidency:

Anonymous said...

Oh great. Just what we need, someone to take away votes from McCain and put Obama in the White House. When that happens, I hope you are all satisfied. You might as well vote for Obama. In case you haven't noticed, McCain has an excellent record of bipartisanship.

Unbelievable.

June 25, 2008 10:55 PM

My response follows:

Anonymous, the Republican Party will soon nominate a man who inspires no enthusiasm among most Republicans, and would not even be our nominee had not Democrats crossed over in states like South Carolina to vote for him.

Some of us have come to realize over the past eight years that the lesser of two evils is still evil. I, for one, want no part in evil. You are quite right; "McCain has an excellent record of bipartisanship," and it is on that record of cosponsoring much of the worst legislation of the past generation that conservatives repudiate him. Let the Democrats, whose legislation he has championed and cosponsored, vote for him.

Bob Barr recently told The Associated Press that if John McCain doesn’t win, it’s because McCain is running on the wrong issues:

"If Senator McCain is not successful, it will be because his message and his vision did not resonate with a plurality of the voters."

And he is absolutely right. The Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party has decided they can win with Hillary supporters, mindless "independents," and McCain's admirers in the media, and without conservatives. They repudiate the policies of Reagan and the coalition he built. They will lose, and fortunately, when they do, Democrats will be blamed for bad policy, and not the Republican Party for the equally bad policies of John McCain.

Her Majesty Strips Mugabe of Knighthood

The following is from the superb blog, The Monarchist.

This is not the right time for the mangy old British lion to rise to its height and say this election is not good enough so we'll strip you of your knighthood. — Lord Malloch Brown, British Foreign Office Minister

Robert Mugabe pictured with the Queen during his state visit to Britain in 1994, when he was awarded the honorary knighthood

Despite both Gordon Brown and Lord Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office Minister, indicating in recent days that there would be little point in stripping him of the knighthood, the decision has been taken in view of the extreme nature of his actions in Zimbabwe and the way his regime has attacked opposition members.

The Foreign Office has been in discussions with Buckingham Palace over the move and it has just been agreed that the Zimbabwe president will no longer have the title that was bestowed on him in 1994. The Queen is stripping Robert Mugabe of his knighthood for 'abject disregard for democracy'.

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: "He has mutated into something quite unbelievable. He has turned into a kind of Frankenstein for his people."

In 1994, during the Premiership of John Major, Mugabe was bestowed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath by the Queen. It entitles him to use the letters KCB, but not to use the title "Sir."

A Thin Line Separating Islamism from Nazism? An Interview with Algerian Novelist Boualem Sansal

From World Politics Review

By Grégoire Leménager

A former official in the Algerian civil service and the author of four previous novels, the Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal has recently published a new book titled Le village de l'Allemand: "The German's Village." Via the reflections of two brothers of Algerian origin living in the Parisian banlieues, it tells the story of the brothers' father: Hans Schiller, a hero of the Algerian war of independence as a member of the National Liberation Front (FLN) -- and, as so happens, before that an officer in the dreaded Nazi paramilitary force, the SS. For Boualem Sansal, "the line separating Islamism from Nazism is a thin one." Grégoire Leménager spoke with him for the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. The interview appears in English for the first time in World Politics Review.

Le Nouvel Observateur: Your novel takes its title from the story of a Nazi war criminal, a former member of the SS, who went into exile in Algeria, where he trained FLN fighters and became a hero of the Algerian war of independence. . . . Is this a real story? How did the novel come about?

Boualem Sansal: "The German's Village" comes from a real story and the flood of questions that it inspired. One day, at the beginning of the 1980s, while I was on a business trip in the Sétif region of Algeria, I stopped in a small town [identified as Aïn Deb in the novel] whose exotic "look" intrigued me. It didn't blend in to the local landscape, it had a certain feel of "somewhere else." I had a coffee in the town and then when I arrived at my destination, I asked the people who were waiting for me there about it. I barely was able to say "On my way here, I stumbled upon a strange town that made me think of [the French comic book character] Astérix the Gaul" and they proudly exclaimed, "Oh! That's the German's village." They explained to me that the village was "governed" by a German man: a former SS member and former mujahideen, who was a naturalized Algerian citizen and who had converted to Islam. He was regarded as a hero in the region: as a kind of saint who had done a lot for the village and its inhabitants. I sensed that my interlocutors felt real admiration when they talked about the man's Nazi past. This didn't surprise me: the Hitler salute has always had its partisans in Algeria, like in many Arab and Muslim countries - and undoubtedly even more so today by virtue of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq war. In order really to impress me, they underscored that this German had been dispatched by [Egyptian president Gamal Abdel] Nasser to serve as an expert advisor to the general staff of the ALN [Armée de libération nationale -- the armed wing of the FLN] and that after the war he taught at the prestigious military academy of Cherchell. He was "somebody," in effect. . . .

Since that time, I've often thought of his story. I find that there are lots of interesting aspects: the romantic and adventurous side of this European coming to Algeria to fight for its independence, his retirement in a small town in the middle of nowhere, his conversion to Islam, the esteem he came to enjoy in the eyes of the locals. And then there is the dark side of the story: that of an SS officer who served in the death camps.

N.O.: How could this latter aspect remain hidden?

B. Sansal: In thinking about that, I came to reflect on something of which I was somehow aware, but to which I had never attached particular importance: the Shoah was never spoken about at all in Algeria -- or if it was spoken about, then it was presented as a sordid invention of the Jews. I was shocked when I realized this. The fact is that to this day Algerian television has never shown a film or documentary on the subject, no Algerian official has ever said a word about it and, as far as I know, no Algerian intellectual has ever written on the topic. . . .

N.O.: Your novel presents a new and extremely dark vision of the relations between "the crescent and the swastika" (as the title of a book that appeared in 1990 [in French] put it). Especially inasmuch as in the background one can make out the role played by the Egyptian secret services of Nasser. . . . This aspect of the past is largely unknown, if not indeed purposely obscured, and it takes us far away from the Manichean visions of the process of decolonization that are so common. Doesn't this amount to a new way for you to deconstruct the history of Algeria's national liberation?

B. Sansal: When I decided to make the history of this German man the guiding thread of the novel, I found that I was confronted by numerous questions without answers. . . . I gathered some testimonials here and there and I dug into the historical literature, in order to reconstruct the possible trajectory of this man and, more generally, of the Nazi war criminals who found refuge in the Arab countries.

As I progressed in my research on Nazi Germany and the Shoah, I more and more had the feeling that there is a substantial similarity between Nazism and the political order that prevails in Algeria and in many other Arab and Muslim countries. One finds the same ingredients, and we know just how powerful they are. In Germany, they managed to transform a cultured nation into a narrow-minded sect devoted to the extermination of the Jews; in Algeria, they led to a civil war that attained extremes of horror -- and we still don't know everything about what happened. The ingredients are the same in both cases: a one-party state, the militarization of the country, brainwashing, the falsification of history, the exaltation of the race, a Manichean vision of the world, a tendency to claim victimhood, the constant assertion that there is a conspiracy against the nation (Israel, the United States, and France are invoked one after another by Algerian authorities when they find themselves in trouble -- and sometimes too our neighbor Morocco), xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism elevated to the status of dogmas, a cult of the hero and of the martyr, glorification of the supreme leader, omnipresence of the police and of police informants, inflammatory speeches, highly disciplined mass organizations, large public demonstrations, religious indoctrination, incessant propaganda, the generalization of a wooden repetitive public discourse [langue de bois] that is deadly for thought, gargantuan projects that exalt the sense of power (for example, [Algerian President Abdelaziz] Bouteflika's plan to build the third largest mosque in the world in Angers, whereas we already have more minarets than schools), verbal attacks against other countries concerning anything and nothing at all, the resuscitation of old myths for current purposes. . . .

N.O.: What is especially striking in reading your novel is clearly this mirroring of the Nazism of the past and the Islamism of today. In his journal, Rachel insists on the specificity of the Shoah. But his brother Malrich, who sees the imam of his banlieue as a sort of SS, goes so far as to write: "When I see what the Islamists do here and elsewhere, I say to myself that if they ever come to power they'll outdo the Nazis." To what extent do you share this point of view?

B. Sansal: We live under a "National-Islamist" regime and in an environment that is marked by terrorism. We know well that the line separating Nazism from Islamism is a thin one. Algeria is perceived by its own children as an "open-air prison," as some say, or a "concentration camp," as others say who die little by little in its ghettoes. One doesn't only feel imprisoned by walls and impenetrable borders, but also by a shadowy and violent political order that leaves no place even for dreams. . . .

N.O.: How does one fight against the terrorist threat? Your book poses the question repeatedly, but it hardly gives any response. . . .

B. Sansal: The struggle against Islamism, which is the matrix of terrorism, requires the engagement of Muslims and of their theologians. It is up to them to save their religion and to reconcile it with modernity. If they don't, Islam will end up being nothing but Islamism. But the danger in the Arab and Muslim countries is that no theologian dares to undertake this necessary labor of itjihad. And the intellectuals who are engaged in this sort of work in the Western democracies (Soheib Bencheikh, Malek Chebel, Mohamed Arkoun, Abdelwahab Meddeb. . .) are barely heard in our countries. My humble opinion is that Islam has already suffered too much under the influence of Islamism and of Arab-Muslim nationalism. I don't see how it can resume the path of Enlightenment that was once its own. . . .

N.O.: The only solution that is indicated by your novel . . . is language, the word: the care taken to say the truth in defiance of forgetfulness, lies, and silence. Do you think that writing can be a political weapon? When September 11 occurred, you were one of the very first and one of the rare Muslim intellectuals to denounce the fanaticism involved. Do you feel less isolated today?

B. Sansal: The word is everything. It can kill and it can bring to life again. Of course, I'm not saying that I can do that. I write in order to talk to people: to brothers, to friends, to calm passers-by -- and even, if they want, to those who dream of destroying humanity and the planet. . . .

September 11 was a terrible shock for all of us. On that day, we began to understand that Islamism was engaged in an undertaking that is far more radical than we had imagined: We thought its project was to fight against tyrants in the lands of Islam and to institute the sharia. But its real aim is the extermination of the other: the "crusader," the Jew, the atheist, the secular Muslim, the emancipated woman, the democrat, the homosexual -- the list gets longer and longer. It is only limited in carrying out its project by the fact that it lacks weapons of mass destruction. The mobilization in face of such madness has been notably timid. Worse still: here and there one has come to an arrangement with Islamism, one has made concessions (concerning the headscarf, the management of mosques, education, televised sermons, the closing of schools teaching in French), one has abandoned whole geographical areas to its influence (in the cities and in the banlieues). Very few people nowadays dare to confront the question of Islamism head-on and still less that of Islam itself, which has been taken hostage by Islamism. In Algeria, in carrying out the government's policy of national "reconciliation," the very word "Islamism" -- like the word "terrorists" and many others -- has simply disappeared from the official vocabulary. One speaks instead of "those who have gone astray" and who have "been manipulated by foreign influences." One always comes back to this idea of a conspiracy against the Algerian nation.

N.O.: The narrator of your book notes that the book contains "dangerous parallels that could cause him problems." Don't you worry about having problems yourself? You had to retire from your official functions in 2003. And in 2006 your previous book, Poste restante: Alger, was banned in Algeria. Do you think your new book will be authorized? And, more fundamentally, why do you stay in Algeria, when many others have preferred to go into exile?

B. Sansal: The censors are legion in our countries and they are very vigilant. They monitor every word and comma and attitude. Poste restante: Alger was banned even before it got to Algeria. "The German's Village" will certainly be banned too. . . .

Like many other Algerians, young people and less young people, I'm constantly nagged by the desire to "escape" from the camp. And just when I'm about to pack up my bags and get on my way, I always say to myself that it's more intelligent, after all, to disrupt the camp than to leave. Algeria is a big and beautiful country that has come a long way: It has a long and highly interesting history, having rubbed shoulders with all the peoples of the Mediterranean. Algeria was not born with the FLN: It has nothing to do with its culture, its camps, its apparatchiks and its kapos. One sunny day, Algeria will rediscover its way and its land will turn green again. I would like to be there to see it happen.

Grégoire Leménager's interview with Boualem Sansal first appeared in January in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. The above English version has been abridged. The English translation is by John Rosenthal. The full French version is available here on Bibliobs.com, the literary site of Le Nouvel Observateur.

Photo: Boualem Sansal in conversation with Le Nouvel Observateur (video here).

Apostate Clergy and Church Personnel Invest in Culture of Death

From Catholic World News

• Federal election donations: Simon, Denis (CQ MoneyLine)
• Brief biography of Deacon Simon (Girl Scouts)
• Clerical donations: Brooklyn seminarian Robert Mucci gives $1,550 to Obama (CWN)
• Chancery donations: Diocesan finance director Kathleen Laseter gives $1,300 to Obama (CWN) Diocesan officials (Diocese of the Virgin Islands)
• Clerical donations: Deacon (Richard Kovacs) with key role in papal visit supported Dodd for president (CWN)
• Priestly donations: Rhode Island’s ‘diocesan minister for priests’ Father Normand Godin backs Hillary (CWN)
• Priestly donations: 5 Obama contributions from NJ priest (Father Dennis Crowley) involved in Voice of the Faithful (CWN)
• Priestly donations: Prominent Tucson priest Msgr. Arsenio Carrillo backs pro-abortion critic of Archbishop Burke (AP)
• Priestly donations: Prominent San Jose priest Msgr. Eugene J. Boyle gives $4,600 to Hillary (CWN)
• Priestly donations: Louisville priest Fr. John Schwartzlose supported Edwards; opposition to Bush judicial nominee (CWN)
• Priestly donations: Detroit priest, ‘I Loved a Boy’ author Fr. James L. Meyer backs MoveOn.org (CWN)
• Priestly donations: Prominent SF priest Msgr. Bruce A. Dreier gives $500 to Obama (CWN)

Give Parents A Choice In Education, Says Bob Barr

The federal Department of Education is spending almost $70 billion this year on a function not even mentioned in the Constitution. “The Department should be closed down and the money left with the American people to use for education at the family, local, and state levels,” says Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee.

While spending so much money on programs that should not exist, in 2003 the Congress created a small voucher program started for students in Washington, D.C., which has some of the worst schools in the nation. Now the Democratic majority is planning on killing the initiative, putting nearly 2000 students back into the failed public school system. “The only federal education program Congress wants to get rid of is the one doing the most to help poor kids,” observes Barr.

But since education is not a federal responsibility, “a better way to promote educational opportunity is at the state level,” explains Barr. There are now 22 different choice programs in 14 states. Some of those initiatives provide vouchers; others create tax credits. “I commend Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue for recently signing into law legislation creating a state income tax credit for individuals and companies that donate to groups which provide private scholarships for students,” said Barr.

In fact, “private scholarships have become an increasingly important choice mechanism across the nation,” Barr notes. Examples range from the District of Columbia's Washington Scholarship Fund to Portland, Oregon’s Children’s Scholarship Fund. “In this way average people who want to improve education can avoid the political obstacles to reforming the public schools,” he adds.

America’s public educational monopoly is not working. “The failure to adequately educate our children to compete in the international marketplace and to be good citizens in a free society is truly scandalous,” says Barr. “The answers will not come from Washington. Instead, they will come from families across America as they educate their own children, put their children into private schools, and improve the public system,” Barr adds. We expect choice and competition throughout the economy. “It’s time to apply those same principles to education,” he insists.

Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, where he served as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, as Vice-Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, and as a member of the Committee on Financial Services. Prior to his congressional career, Barr was appointed by President Reagan to serve as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and also served as an official with the CIA.

Since leaving Congress, Barr has been practicing law and has teamed up with groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Conservative Union to actively advocate every American citizens’ right to privacy and other civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Along with this, Bob is committed to helping elect leaders who will strive for smaller government, lower taxes and abundant individual freedom.

Dobson Accuses Obama of 'Distorting' Bible

By Eric Gorski
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP)

As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement's biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution.

The criticism, to be aired Tuesday on Dobson's Focus on the Family radio program, comes shortly after an Obama aide suggested a meeting at the organization's headquarters here, said Tom Minnery, senior vice president for government and public policy at Focus on the Family.

The conservative Christian group provided The Associated Press with an advance copy of the pre-taped radio segment, which runs 18 minutes and highlights excerpts of a speech Obama gave in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. Obama mentions Dobson in the speech.

"Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?" referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."

"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament.

"I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said.

"... He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for Obama's campaign, said in a statement that a full reading of Obama's speech shows he is committed to reaching out to people of faith and standing up for families. "Obama is proud to have the support of millions of Americans of faith and looks forward to working across religious lines to bring our country together," DuBois said.

Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama's argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion's terms but in arguments accessible to all people.

He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the "lowest common denominator of morality," labeling it "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."

"Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?" Dobson said. "What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe."

The program was paid for by a Focus on the Family affiliate whose donations are taxed, Dobson said, so it's legal for that group to get more involved in politics.

Last week, DuBois, a former Assemblies of God associate minister, called Minnery for what Minnery described as a cordial discussion. He would not go into detail, but said Dubois offered to visit the ministry in August when the Democratic National Convention is in Denver.

A possible Obama visit was not discussed, but Focus is open to one, Minnery said.

McCain also has not met with Dobson. A McCain campaign staffer offered Dobson a meeting with McCain recently in Denver, Minnery said. Dobson declined because he prefers that candidates visit the Focus on the Family campus to learn more about the organization, Minnery said.

Dobson has not backed off his statement that he could not in good conscience vote for McCain because of concerns over the Arizona senator's conservative credentials. Dobson has said he will vote in November but has suggested he might not vote for president.

Obama recently met in Chicago with religious leaders, including conservative evangelicals. His campaign also plans thousands of "American Values House Parties," where participants discuss Obama and religion, as well as a presence on Christian radio and blogs.

From Our Mail -- Saving Iraqi Christians

Dear Daniel ,

Thank you for e-mailing President Bush to urge them to do more to Save Iraqi Christians.

Already hundreds are dead, and more than 400,000 men, women and children have been driven from their homes. But if we can convince our leaders to make religious persecution in Iraq a priority, we can save many lives.

Please help us spread the word about this crisis before it is too late. Simply share this information (www.SaveIraqiChristians.com) with your friends and family and urge them to join you in standing up for the religious minorities of Iraq.

Thank you again for your help.

Dr. John Eibner
csi@csi-usa.org

The Church of Oprah Exposed

Oprah's remarks rile some evangelical Christians

By HELEN T. GRAY
The Kansas City Star

Oprah Winfrey has offended evangelical Christians, and they are fighting back.

For the first time, 23 Christian newspapers across the country united for a joint investigative project. Their aim was to explore the spiritual beliefs of the popular entertainment mogul.

An article titled “Oprah’s God” ran in all the papers’ May or June issues, along with each one’s local input. Among the papers was Kansas City’s Metro Voice.

“The issue has produced the most feedback of anything we have run,” said Dwight Widaman, Metro Voice publisher and editor.

The effort is a result of mounting discontent over statements Oprah has made. Evangelicals believe her remarks are not in line with biblical Christianity.

Some of these statements were shown on a widely circulated YouTube video called “The Church of Oprah Exposed.” This came to the attention of Lamar Keener, a Christian newspaper publisher and president of the Evangelical Press Association.

“Personally, not being a viewer of any daytime television, I was unaware of both the magnitude of Oprah’s audience and the influence as well as the full nature of her message that is decidedly New Age and very much in conflict with biblical Christianity,” he said in a Christian Newswire report.

This came at a time when Oprah’s loyal fans were reading her latest book club selection, Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. Also, the May issue of O: The Oprah Magazine focused on spirituality. The first feature set the tone for the many articles that followed: “Welcome to the Banquet” was the headline.

Oprah’s empire also was the subject of a recent New York Times article that examined various reasons for an apparent dwindling in her appeal.

It noted that while Tolle’s book “sold faster than any of the previous 60 selections of Oprah’s Book Club, it also has attracted some criticism for Ms. Winfrey on her Web site, where some of her fans have said that the book’s spiritual leanings go against Christian doctrine.”

One segment of the YouTube video, taken from Oprah’s show, is a prime example of what angers many evangelical or traditional Christians.

“There are many paths to what you call God,” Oprah says.

When someone in the audience challenges that Jesus said he was the only way, Oprah retorts, “There couldn’t possibly be just one way.”

Widaman said the beliefs of other entertainers, such as Tom Cruise and Madonna, have come under quite a bit of scrutiny.

“But because Oprah is who she is, the media is much less willing to tackle her strange beliefs because of the power she holds through her production company, television show and magazine,” he said.

“We thought her views warranted examination as anyone who is using their power to spread them,” he said. “She really is using her television show as a pulpit for her gospel.”

In his investigative article, Steve Rabey gives further reasons for Christian discontent.

“Oprah speaks less about salvation through Christ than she does Christ-consciousness,” he writes. “Likewise, she describes heaven not as an eternal destination but an inner realm of consciousness.”

He quotes Larry Eskredge, associate director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College in Illinois: “Oprah’s theology seems to be a version of America’s secular theology of self-improvement, doing good to others and the prosperity gospel.

“She is also able to foster a tremendous sense of community around her TV show. People who watch feel they are involved in a great quest to improve society and improve themselves.”

Rabey says Oprah was raised in a Baptist church and frequently uses Christian language. She also uses her show’s influence to promote Christian projects.

Among Oprah’s supporters are people associated with Unity School of Christianity near Lee’s Summit, where Tolle spoke last month.

“Oprah has made a courageous commitment to raising the level of consciousness on this planet, and we at Unity applaud her for that,” said Paula Coppel, vice president of communications. “Her Web series with Eckhart Tolle was a phenomenal gift to the world and life-changing for many people.

“I have to wonder if Oprah’s critics have read Tolle’s book or watched any of the Web series beyond the inflammatory clips on YouTube.”

Coppel said Unity is “very much aligned” with the principles that Oprah and Tolle have been presenting.

“Unity teaches that there are many paths to God, that no one path is right or wrong,” Coppel said. “For fundamentalists who are happy with their beliefs, that is fine. We would never call them wrong.

“But we also know there are many Christians with questions who are looking for another way of relating to Jesus and his teachings that is progressive and empowering. We offer that alternative, and Oprah is doing the same thing.”

Coppel said Unity is “quite in sync with Oprah’s focus on the Christ-consciousness within each of us.” She said Unity defines “Christ-consciousness” as “the perfect mind that was in Christ Jesus.” It results from a process of self-mastery and “spiritual unfoldment,” she said.

Loyal and occasional viewers and former fans are divided on Oprah’s spirituality.

“I used to watch her all the time, but for the most part, I don’t even turn her on anymore,” said Bernice McKinney of Kansas City, Kan. “She lost me as an audience.”

McKinney said that if at one time Oprah accepted Christ as her Savior, then she needs to repent and get back to the teachings of the Bible.

“Otherwise, she is going to be held accountable for leading thousands of people astray,” she said. “I’m fearful for her. I just pray for her.”

Meg Shipley of Gardner agrees that Oprah’s spiritual views contradict the Bible.

One example, Shipley said, is Oprah has said that God is a feeling experience and “if God for you is still about a belief, then it’s not truly God.”

Shipley said she also has heard Oprah speak of teachings that God is a jealous God and how that didn’t seem right.

“At first I thought, wow, Oprah sure thinks highly of herself to assume that God is jealous of her,” Shipley said. “But then I began thinking, the verse she references means that God detests idol worship, and since Oprah now has such a huge spiritual following, it could easily be thought that she has followers who worship her, and it may very well be that God is now ‘jealous’ of her, but not in a flattering way.”

But Jessica Mellinger of Olathe praises Oprah for promoting spirituality instead of religion.

“It seems like a lot of people my age (26) are very intimidated by a lot of religion,” she said. “I was not brought up in a strict religious household. Oprah promotes spirituality.

“With spirituality there is a higher power, and you are connecting with your inner self. Oprah is not pushing a religion. She has said numerous times, ‘I believe in God, and whatever you believe in is your choice.’ Her audience is across the world, not just traditional Christians.”

Mellinger said she wants to be more open to other beliefs, and Oprah has shown her how to do that.

Widaman said feedback from the Oprah piece in papers across the country has been mostly positive. But some people have asked why they were picking on Oprah.

“We just wanted to shed light on her beliefs,” he said. “One result we are hoping for is that people would be more cautious in being influenced by her beliefs, especially Christians.”

A Difficult Place for Christians

From Break Point
By Chuck Colson

In early June, the German television network ARD aired a film called “God and the World: The Persecuted Children of God.” The “children” referred to are Iraq’s largest Christian community: the Assyrians. While any attention to the plight of Iraqi Christians is welcome, I only wish that the film could have aired in the country that is in the best position to help them: the United States.

The film tells the story of the suffering and persecution endured by Assyrian Christians through interviews with Christian refugees—or “internally displaced persons,” as bureaucrats call them—who escaped the most dangerous areas.

One Assyrian Christian who did not escape was Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul. On February 29, his car was attacked by gunmen who killed his two bodyguards and stuffed the archbishop in the trunk of their car.

While in the trunk, Archbishop Rahho called his church and told them not to pay any ransom, because the money “would be used for killing and more evil actions.” His body was found in northeast Mosul. An Al-Qaeda member was sentenced to death for his murder.

The archbishop’s death was only the most publicized attack on Christian clergy in and around Mosul. As the New York Times put it, “In the last few years, Mosul has been a difficult place for Christians.”

That is an understatement: As Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the New Republic, “Sunni, Shia, and Kurd may agree on little else, but all have made sport of brutalizing their Christian neighbors . . . .”

Making matters even worse is that American forces did not hesitate to call on Iraqi Christians to serve as interpreters, precisely because they were Christians. Their religion made them easier to relate to. Now, Iraq’s Christians are seen by extremists as “collaborators” and “crusaders.”

Conditions have gotten so bad in parts of Iraq that some Iraqi Christians now celebrate mass “in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead.”

Anyone who knew anything about the history of the region—and its Christian minority—should have seen this coming. That is why Nina Shea of Freedom House, and others, called for special protection for Iraq’s Christians. Their advice was, is, and probably will continue to be, ignored by our government and the “international community.”

The only way this will not happen is if western Christians make their voices heard. To that end, Christian Solidarity International, and others, have launched “Save Iraqi Christians.”

Their goal is to get our government to “defend religious liberty in Iraq and create conditions that allow displaced Christians and other non-Muslim minorities to return to their homeland and live and worship in peace.” We ought to be using our “powerful leverage with government leaders in Baghdad and Kurdish authorities” to develop a “secure homeland province for religious minorities.”

Because without this, a Christian community that survived invasions by the Persians, Muslims, Mongols and Ottomans, might not survive the American liberation of Iraq. They certainly will not survive our indifference.

Terry Wey - Vienna Boys Choir Sing "Standchen" (Schubert)

King's College Choir -- Psalm 50

1 THE Lord, even the most mighty God, hath spoken : and called the world, from the rising up of the sun unto the going down thereof.
2 Out of Sion hath God appeared : in perfect beauty.
3 Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence : there shall go before him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall be stirred up round about him.
4 He shall call the heaven from above : and the earth, that he may judge his people.
5 Gather my saints together unto me : those that have made a covenant with me with sacrifice.
6 And the heavens shall declare his righteousness : for God is Judge himself.
7 Hear, O my people, and I will speak : I myself will testify against thee, O Israel; for I am God, even thy God.
8 I will not reprove thee because of thy sacrifices, or for thy burnt-offerings : because they were not alway before me.
9 I will take no bullock out of thine house : nor he-goat out of thy folds.
10 For all the beasts of the forest are mine : and so are the cattle upon a thousand hills.
11 I know all the fowls upon the mountains : and the wild beasts of the field are in my sight.
12 If I be hungry, I will not tell thee : for the whole world is mine, and all that is therein.
13 Thinkest thou that I will eat bulls' flesh : and drink the blood of goats?
14 Offer unto God thanksgiving : and pay thy vows unto the most Highest.
15 And call upon me in the time of trouble : so will I hear thee, and thou shalt praise me.
16 But unto the ungodly said God : Why dost thou preach my laws, and takest my covenant in thy mouth;
17 Whereas thou hatest to be reformed : and has cast my words behind thee?
18 When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him : and hast been partaker with the adulterers.
19 Thou hast let thy mouth speak wickedness : and with thy tongue thou hast set forth deceit.
20 Thou satest, and spakest against thy brother : yea, and hast slandered thine own mother's son.
21 These things hast thou done, and I held my tongue, and thou thoughtest wickedly, that I am even such a one as thyself : but I will reprove thee, and set before thee the things that thou hast done.
22 O consider this, ye that forget God : lest I pluck you away, and there be none to deliver you.
23 Whoso offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me : and to him that ordereth his conversation right will I shew the salvation of God.

Sweeping New Erosion of American Freedoms - Barr Cites Bush-McCain Contempt for Fourth Amendment

The House just passed the latest version of the FISA bill and it’s quite possible the bill will go to the Senate next week. It’s no surprise that John McCain supports this bill, which erodes privacy rights and provides telecommunications corporations with legal immunity for violating the Bill of Rights. What has surprised and angered the left is Barack Obama’s support of the bill.

“Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay,” said Obama shortly after the bill passed. “So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program.”

Bob Barr released the following statement today:

The House on Friday passed legislation that greatly expands the power of the government to surreptitiously surveil phone calls and e-mails of American citizens. If, as expected, this legislation is passed by the Senate and the President, as promised, signs it into law, it will represent the greatest expansion of the government’s ability to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans ever.

While the Administration will tout this as a bill to “listen in to phone calls with al Qaeda” and other terrorist organizations (a power the government already possesses), the fact is, under this legislation, every phone call or email that takes place between a US citizen in the United States and any person “reasonably believed to be” overseas, can be surreptitiously surveilled by the government without ever going to a judge. Yes – it is that broad.

It also gives telecommunications companies that previously allowed government agents full access to the private records and calls of their subscribers in violation of the 1978-FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) completely off the hook for such privacy-invasive actions; it grants them prospective immunity as well.

The day before the bill passed in the House by a 293-129 margin, Barr issued the following press release:

Bob Barr Urges Congress: No Surveillance of Americans Without Fourth Amendment Protections

Atlanta, GA -- “In asserting his power to conduct warrantless searches of Americans, President George W. Bush has expressed his clear contempt for the Fourth Amendment. So has Sen. John McCain, despite his reputation as a supposed maverick,” says Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate for president. Now the Democratic-led Congress is preparing to approve a so-called compromise that gives the Bush administration almost everything it wants in order to expand dramatically the power of the federal government to surveil American citizens without court orders. “America desperately needs leaders who will stand up for the Bill of Rights,” observes Barr, “not those who flaunt its vital and time-honored protections.”

The president already has the power to conduct surveillance of foreign terrorists. The 30-year old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides for court oversight, along with the requirement that the government get a warrant. “The court has virtually never rejected a request,” notes Barr. “Changes in technology require updating the law, not gutting it.”

However, the bill being advanced by the Democratic leadership “would allow the government to listen to millions of phone calls by Americans with neither an individualized warrant nor an assessment of probable cause,” he adds. Although the law would offer some protection when a particular American was expressly targeted, even then “the proposed rules fall short of what the Fourth Amendment mandates.”

Moreover, the bill would immunize telephone companies from wrong-doing, protecting them against law suits even when the firms violated the law by helping the government conduct warrantless searches. Past cases would simply be dismissed. “Conservatives once said, ‘you do the crime, you do the time,’ but no longer,” observes Barr. Now virtually the entire Republican Party is prepared to sacrifice the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans in favor of federal government power.

And the Democratic leadership is ready to do the same. Congressional Democrats privately say that they don’t want to take the political risk of opposing the president. “But the individual liberty of Americans is not a political football, something to be tossed about when an election looms,” insists Barr. “It is the constitutional duty of lawmakers of both parties to defend the Constitution, even when they believe doing so might be politically inconvenient.”

Advocates of abandoning the Constitution warn us that we live in dangerous times. But Americans have long lived in dangerous times. “That didn’t stop the nation’s founders from creating a Constitution that secured individual liberty and limited government,” notes Barr. “It shouldn’t stop us from following the Constitution today.”

Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, where he served as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, as Vice-Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, and as a member of the Committee on Financial Services. Prior to his congressional career, Barr was appointed by President Reagan to serve as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and also served as an official with the CIA.

Since leaving Congress, Barr has been practicing law and has teamed up with groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Conservative Union to actively advocate every American citizens’ right to privacy and other civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Along with this, Bob is committed to helping elect leaders who will strive for smaller government, lower taxes and abundant individual freedom.

Coming To America

In the past year there has been much discussion about how America needs illegal aliens because of a shortage of American workers. We have read that much of California’s harvest may rot because there are not enough workers to gather it in. There have also been news stories about the shortages of eligible young men and women to serve in our Armed Forces, and America’s aging “baby boomers” worry about whether there will be enough working Americans to pay for the Social Security benefits and Medicare that will be needed by the baby boom generation.

Nature abhors a vacuum, but so too, apparently, does the American economy. Increasingly, thoughtful Americans are considering that this shortage of workers is a direct result of the nearly 50 million lives that were terminated over a thirty year span through abortion.

Georgia’s former Senator, Zell Miller, asks “How could this great land of plenty produce too few people in the last 30 years? Here is the brutal truth that no one dares to mention: We’re too few because too many of our babies have been killed. If those 45 million children had lived, today they would be defending our country, they would be filling our jobs, and they would be paying into Social Security.”

Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries, is more blunt. He states: “The reason we must allow millions of illegal aliens in to fill these jobs is because we have murdered a generation that would otherwise be filling them … sacrificed since 1973 to the god of self-fulfillment.” Colson adds: “Remember the compassionate stuff that the abortionists used to tell us: ‘We are just preventing these poor kids from growing up in deprived, impoverished circumstances?’ Hah! False. What happens is that others come in from abroad to live in those deprived, difficult, and impoverished circumstances and at great public cost.”

Columnist Nathan Tabor points out that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, legalized abortions in America terminated the lives of about 11.9 million babies during 1973-1983. He states that “if those aborted children had lived and grown to adulthood, their median age today would be 30.5 years old.” With tragic and chilling irony, Tabor points to the corresponding number of working-age illegal immigrants now in America, crucial replacement workers in a sense.

Newsweek published a lengthy story about how the “birth dearth” throughout the world will have enormous geo-political consequences. It quotes a new book on the subject that “Never in the last 650 years, since the time of the Black Plague, have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places.” It’s estimated that Germany could shed nearly a fifth of its population over the next 40 years, and some European countries are on such a downward trajectory, it may be impossible for them to ever recover.

There are disturbing exceptions to this phenomenon, however, and the United Nations projects that the Middle East will double in population from 326 million today, to 649 million by 2050. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, along with other Muslim countries like Pakistan.

Human life should never be valued on the basis of what it can do for us or for what it provides for the society in which we live. Human life is sacred, because human life is wonderfully created by God in His own image. Perhaps we are beginning to see the price mankind is paying for rejecting the Author of Life, and for making decisions about which of our children shall live and which shall die.

Those “progressives” that imposed abortion on the United States told us that it would liberate women and free us from Judeo-Christian precepts that merely inhibit freedom, induce shame, and prevent us from enjoying life fully. How arrogant!

It will be a tragic twist of history if, in sacrificing unborn children for the sake of our personal expediency, we find that the price of that terrible slaughter of the innocents is both our freedom and our country.

The liberated new world sought by the progressives is coming into view, and they can rest assured that madrasahs and imams, here and abroad, also eagerly await their dream of a post-Christian world.

Worldwide Anglican Communion At An End

From The Telegraph
By Tim Butcher in Jordan and Martin Beckford

Hardline church leaders have formally declared the end of the worldwide Anglican communion, saying they could no longer be associated with liberals who tolerate homosexual clergy.

The traditionalists dealt a serious blow to the Archbishop of Canterbury by claiming he can no longer hold the church together.

They warned that the church is gripped by its most serious crisis since the Reformation, and could only be saved by the repentance of the Americans who triggered the row by ordaining an openly homosexual bishop, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, five years ago.

The formal pronouncement of the schism is contained in an 89-page document titled “The Way, the Truth and the Life”, which has been drawnup by conservative Anglicans ahead of the breakaway Gafcon summitnext week and which has been seen by The Telegraph.

It is supported by the heads of key African churches including Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda, who represent almost half of Anglican worshippers.

The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, states in one section: “There is no longer any hope, therefore, for a unified Communion.

“Now we confront a moment of decision.

“If we fail to act, we risk leading millions of people away from the faith revealed in the Holy Scriptures and also, even more seriously, we face the real possibility of denying Our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

“We want unity, but not at the cost of relegating Christ to the position of another 'wise teacher’ who can be obeyed or disobeyed.

“We earnestly desire the healing of our beloved Communion, but not at the cost of re-writing the Bible to accommodate the latest cultural trend.

“We have arrived at a crossroads; it is, for us, the moment of truth.’’

He said schism could only be avoided in the unlikely event that churches which tolerate homosexual clergy and same-sex blessings change their ways.

“Repentance and reversal by these North American provinces may yet save our Communion,’’ the archbishop wrote.

He referred to the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of Anglican bishops which takes place next month, as effectively a lame duck event because he and other “orthodox” bishops will not attend.

And he called into question the power of Dr Rowan Williams in a fractured church.

“This very Communion has already been broken by the actions of the American and Canadian churches,’’ he wrote.

“The consequence is most serious, for if even a single province chooses not to attend, the Lambeth Conference effectively ceases to be an Instrument of Unity.

“Moreover, the status of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as convenor and as an instrument or focus of unity, also becomes highly questionable.’’

The final section of the booklet, titled “Our Journey Into The Future’’, was written by Canon Vinay Samuel, an Indian-born theologian based at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.

“We see a parallel between contemporary events and events in England in the sixteenth century,’’ he wrote.

“Now, after five centuries, a new fork in the road is appearing.”

The booklet, written over the past six months, was put together by a group called the Theological Resource Team.

More than 100 of the traditionalists met yesterday at a hotel on the Jordanian shore of the Dead Sea to agree how it would be made public.

There was some disagreement about whether it was a template for a schism, which could lead to a new “orthodox” wing of the church, or merely a realignment of Anglicanism’s power base away from Canterbury.

Next week about 1,000 senior conservative figures, including Archbishop Akinola and other African and South American leaders, will meet in Jerusalem to discuss the way forward at Gafcon.

The city’s annual gay parade is due to take place at the same time.

Barr Is Gaining

An new poll just released by PollPosition (formerly InsiderAdvantage) shows Bob Barr at 6% in Georgia:

A New InsiderAdvantage / PollPosition survey conducted June 18 of registered likely voters in the November presidential contest shows Sen. John McCain leading Sen. Barack Obama by a single point in Georgia, making the race in Georgia a statistical tie. Libertarian Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman from Georgia, received 6 percent of the vote.

Barr is also polling at 10 percent among seniors, according to InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery.

SC Education Superintendent Cited for Illegal Political Activity

From South Carolinians for Responsible Government

Just one day before polls opened for last Tuesday’s political primary elections, Superintendent Jim Rex sent out an illegal email from his campaign account to his supporters, advocating the defeat of a long list of candidates Rex identified as supporters of school choice reforms.

The email sent by Rex, a sitting public official not seeking reelection this year, clearly stated that it was paid for by his campaign account and specifically advocated for the defeat of twenty-one House and Senate candidates in races throughout the state. This type of candidate-specific independent expenditure by a public official from his campaign account is a clear violation of South Carolina’s ethic laws (8-13-1340(A)).

“It is disappointing to see that Rex is willing to break the law in an unapologetic defense of his failing public schools,” explained Randy Page, President of South Carolinians for Responsible Government (SCRG). “As a public official charged with running the State Department of Education, his job is to effectively administer that agency, not to lobby for political candidates or push his anti-reform status quo legislative agenda.”

Rex’s illegal attack on running candidates came just days after public school officials in Lexington School District One sent a similar political email. Using school computers and employee email addresses, Lexington One’s Communication Director Mary Beth Hill implored district staff to vote against any and all candidates receiving donations from school choice supporters and then directed readers to anonymous political blogs that attacked school choice advocates.

With a high school graduation rate of just 55 percent, South Carolina’s public schools are the nation’s shame. This despite per pupil spending of more than $11,000 for each of the 700,000 public school students in South Carolina. When public officials like Rex and Lexington One Superintendent Karen Woodward illegally meddle in legislative races their actions make it clear: South Carolina’s public school bureaucracy is a partisan political machine fanatically dedicated to blocking substantive education reform.

Crackdown on Chinese Christians Launched at Two Month Olympic Countdown Mark

From Christian Solidarity Worldwide

With two months to go until the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, a fresh report detailing the persecution of Christians in China is launched today.

The report, ‘China: Persecution of Protestant Christians in the Approach to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games’, highlights the current government crackdown on China’s unregistered Christians.

Also covered in the report is the disturbing news that Christians have been arrested and fined for seeking to help the victims of the tragic earthquake in Sichuan Province.

As the Olympics draw closer, sources have recently reported that the Ministry of Public Security has received funding from the Chinese Central Government to increase its campaign of eradicating house churches throughout China. Among the tactics used to restrict religious believers is the targeting of multiple well-established churches in Beijing last month, directives to landlords to refrain from renting to those engaging in religious activities and controls to prevent those engaged in ‘illegal’ religious activities from participating in or attending the Games.

Alongside these specific measures, the report highlights the disturbing trend of increasing persecution of China’s unregistered Christians in the run up to the Olympics, including the use of separatism charges against Christians in Xinjiang, a level of expulsion of foreign Christians not seen since the 1950s, the largest mass sentencing of house church leaders in 25 years and targeted repression of the Chinese House Church Alliance.

The report is produced by Christian Solidarity Worldwide in association with China Aid Association (CAA), an organisation at the forefront of documenting religious persecution against China’s Christians. The President of CAA, Bob Fu, will be in London speaking on Wednesday 11 June at the Foreign Press Association, where he will show footage of firsthand testimony from persecuted Chinese Christians. Joining Bob Fu will be Chun Ki Won, an activist who has been imprisoned in China for helping North Korean refugees, who was involved in the escapes covered in the BBC documentary broadcast last week, Korea: Out of the North. Excerpts of the footage will also be shown. CSW’s National Director Stuart Windsor will also speak, providing a brief overview of China’s domestic and international human rights violations.

Mervyn Thomas, Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s Chief Executive, said: “As we mark the two month countdown to the Beijing Olympics today it is truly disturbing to report the deteriorating picture for China’s unregistered Christians. As China takes her place in the spotlight for the Olympic Games it is important to highlight that she must play by international rules, including her binding international obligations on human rights.”

The report is available at: http://www.csw.org.uk/indepth/chinareportjune2008.htm.

Please Help a Worthy Cause

The Habele Outer Island Education Fund, a South Carolina based nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of educational opportunities in Micronesia, is seeking a large volume of t-shirts to complement their scholarships and book donations in the impoverished region.

Campaigns, schools, or civic organizations that may have left-over t-shirts or other clothing suitable to a tropical climate, and would like to help a very worthy cause, should send them to Habele at 701 Gervais Street, Suite 150-244, Columbia, SC 29201.

Habele is an IRS recognized 501(c)(3), so all donations are tax deductible.

An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore is an Energy Guzzler

Energy Guzzled by Al Gore’s Home in Past Year Could Power 232 U.S. Homes for a Month

Gore’s personal electricity consumption up 10%, despite “energy-efficient” home renovations

NASHVILLE - In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

In February 2007, An Inconvenient Truth, a film based on a climate change speech developed by Gore, won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research uncovered that Gore’s Nashville home guzzled 20 times more electricity than the average American household.

After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.

Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria.

“Actions speak louder than words, and Gore’s actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity,” Johnson said. “Gore is exploiting the public’s concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile.”

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a Nashville-based free market think tank and watchdog organization, obtained information about Gore’s home energy use through a public records request to the Nashville Electric Service.

Foundation Helps Families and Saves Catholic Schools

The following shows what can be done IF the bishop is committed to Catholic education. Let's hope the Archbishop of Newark and other serial school liquidators, who see the closing of Catholic schools as a quick solution to financial problems (buggery bills?), will take note.

From Newsday
By Bart Jones

Catholic schools are closing around the country, but on Long Island not one has shut its doors since 2005.

The Tomorrow's Hope Foundation may be part of the reason, and part of why declines in enrollment in the Diocese of Rockville Centre have dipped sharply in the last three years.

The not-for-profit foundation, created in 2005 at the urging of Bishop William Murphy, who was concerned about the decline, has raised $4.7 million for student scholarships, including $1 million at this year's annual gala alone, said its executive director, Kathy Brand.

The group has handed out a total 2,900 scholarships to elementary school students, ranging from $500 to $2,000 each year, Brand said. Average annual tuition on Long Island for one child is $3,944.

"Tomorrow's Hope is making an extraordinary difference for the Catholic schools on Long Island," said Sister Joanne Callahan, superintendent of the Diocese of Rockville Centre's school system. She said the program has been key in slowing a decline in enrollment. In the five years prior to the group's founding, the system was losing an average of 1,325 students a year. That has declined to between 500 and 600 students a year, a decrease she called "unbelievable."

The program allows many families to keep their children in Catholic schools. Tricia Nunez, of Hampton Bays, said her family has not taken a vacation in nine years in part so they can pay tuition for her four children to attend Catholic schools.

Her children, 6 to 16, attend Our Lady of the Hamptons Elementary School in Southampton and McGann-Mercy High School in Riverhead. The combined bill is $17,000 a year, she said, but Tomorrow's Hope has helped with $3,000 in scholarships for the youngest children. "It's meant the world to us," Nunez said.

Nationwide, Catholic schools continue to lose students at an alarming rate, said Sr. Dale McDonald of the National Catholic Education Association. Enrollment has dropped from 5.2 million in 1965 to 2.2 million today. This past year alone, 169 Catholic schools closed.

Other groups are doing work similar to Tomorrow's Hope around the country to slow or reverse the decline, but experts said the Long Island organization is off to a fast start -- perhaps partly due to its high-powered board of directors.

It is headed by Lewis Ranieri, a former chairman of Computer Associates International Inc. Its board includes Peter Quick, former president of the American Stock Exchange; former Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato; and former Rep. Rick Lazio. The group raises money mainly through direct mail, its annual gala and other events. Scholarship recipients are assessed confidentially.

Jose Avila, 39, a graphic designer from Brentwood, said his wife, Carolina, attended Catholic schools from kindergarten to university in their native Colombia, and their dream has been to send their two daughters, Maria, 8, and Sari, 5, to St. Joseph's Academy in Brentwood. But he said it would be impossible without help from Tomorrow's Hope.

"It's been a blessing for us," he said.

Ronald Reagan Closer to Place of Honor in US Capitol

From The Reagan Foundation

Since 1864, each American state has been authorized to send two statues of heroic people from their state to be honored in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

In 2006, the California Legislature decided to honor Ronald Reagan with one of their two statues. The Reagan Foundation recently announced artist Chas Fagan has been selected to create the statue of President Reagan.

Fagan was selected from among numerous artists who submitted designs and models for the Reagan statue.

“I think Chas Fagan has done a wonderful job of capturing my husband,” said former First Lady Nancy Reagan. “I am honored that this statue will reside in our Capitol for years to come.”

President Reagan’s statue will replace that of Thomas Starr King, a Unitarian minister from San Francisco whose speeches were credited with keeping California in the Union during the Civil War. An occupant of Statuary Hall since 1931, the Starr statue will be moved to a place of honor at the California state capitol in Sacramento.

California’s other statue honors Father Junipero Serra, who established missionary outposts throughout California in the 1700s. When Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his first term as governor of California in 1967, he took the oath of office on a Bible brought to California by Father Serra.

Irish Miracle

From The Wall Street Journal
By Norman Stone

The Irish find themselves for the first time ever being showered with compliments from the English. This writer -- a Scot -- does not really approve of Ireland's independence. They are us, bless them, and their independence has been a bore, a little bit like East Timor's. Friends, family, writers -- all belong to an Ireland that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Now that greatness has been manifested. The Irish have done a miracle and wrecked the latest project of the European Union, in a referendum where general cussedness has been expressed. The proposed changes to the way Europe works amount to a constitution, but the powers-that-be tried to smuggle it through as a treaty. The British were supposed to have a referendum as well but since everyone knows that Europe is just not a popular cause, the government weaseled out of one. The French and Dutch did hold referendums three years back and the formal constitution was turned down.

The Europeans -- at any rate the official classes -- would dearly love to project themselves as a Great Power, American-fashion, and in 2004 produced a constitution. It was prepared in an extraordinarily clumsy way, with vast gatherings presided over by the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, in a style that Margaret Thatcher found profoundly irritating ("Olympian without being patrician"). The best constitutions either do not exist, as with England, or they are short, as with 1787 in Philadelphia. The Germans had a shot at a constitution in 1848 and invited all their professor doctor doctors to have a say. There are few occasions to bless the arrival of the Prussian army and that was one: The beards were bayoneted.

You might even make a rule about this: The longer the constitution, the shorter its life. The Weimar Republic is a classic case, and it taught the West Germans in 1949 what not to do in such documents; the German basic law is almost a model. The other rule is of course not to let professors of political science anywhere near such documents.

The European constitution is a lengthy and unreadable one because so many different interests had to be squared. Thus for instance, toward the end of the near-five-hundred page effort, the "Sami" or, as they used to be called, Lapps get a look-in.

Now there was a certain obvious sense in getting the European institutions to work better. They go back 50 years or so, and even the present flag is vaguely copied from the banner of the Coal and Steel Community in 1951; the assembly and the court were thought up then, and maybe someone even conceived of an anthem. The founder, Jean Monnet, found it insufferably boring, and you could even make a case that the creative element in Europe was America. The first suggestion of a common European currency came from the deputy secretary general of the Marshall Plan.

The European institutions worked tolerably for a time with six member states, but even then they were not brilliant. They were secretive and lofty, in that French technocratic style that so irritates others, and the best monument to them is the Common Agricultural Policy, born in 1962 and since then notorious for corruption and unreformability. The institutions were again not very efficient when there were only nine members, in the seventies, and Mr. Giscard d'Estaing made another of his blunders when he tried to make the European cause more popular by arranging for the Community to have a popularly elected parliament. Any journalist with a taste for mockery had a wonderful time in the European Parliament, self-important and powerless.

Now, with 27 member states, there is an obvious need to change the rules, and even for allowing national vetoes to be lifted. One absurd example: Greek Cyprus was let in as a member and now has the power to disrupt Europe's negotiations with Turkey, a country 40 times larger, and in a hugely strategic position. It is also the case, under present rules, that the presidency of the Union shifts every six months round capitals -- Paris one minute, Riga or even Valetta in Malta the next. Those small states do not have the wherewithal for the job, and in some cases have appeared ridiculous. Thus, over the Yugoslav crisis some 16 years back, which was billed to be "the hour of Europe," a Mr. Poos appeared from Luxembourg and lectured the Slovenes as to how they had no right to be nationalistic -- Luxembourg, beside which Slovenia looks positively elephantine. Meanwhile, the Germans have become the most important power in the east and south, and they are also the paymasters.

It is all a strange echo of the world of 1918, after Czarist Russia had collapsed, and various new states emerged -- the Ukraine especially, but also the Baltic republics including Finland. Back then the Germans were intent on setting up a satellite empire. In Hitler's time a quarter-century later this was even more the case, with Slovakia and Croatia (and even, though in a muddled way, Kosovo) emerging as Nazi puppet states. Nowadays, the lines on the map can be strangely similar to those of Hitler's day. But of course we are dealing with an altogether different Germany -- a Germany which, for a long time, simply did not want to have a foreign policy. One foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, once rejected a campaign for Germany to have a seat on the U.N. Security Council with the remark that it would be like giving a liqueur chocolate to an alcoholic.

This new peaceful Germany is one that the Anglo-Saxons always wanted to see -- arguably America's greatest creation, bar Japan -- and she has to deal with big problems -- the Balkans, Russia and the future of Turkey's relationship with Europe. Why make these matters dependent upon the whims of little local politicians in Greek Cyprus or wherever?

Now the Irish, with a referendum, express the general discontent and boredom that the European Union seems to inspire almost everywhere. Some commentators have responded more or less with Bertolt Brecht's line about the East German workers' uprising in 1953: If the people act against the will of the government, then perhaps the government should dissolve the people and elect another in their place. The German foreign minister even said that the Irish could just drop out of the Union for a bit -- an absurd remark.

There have been other lofty tickings-off: How could the Irish be so ungrateful, given what Europe had done for them? But of course the Irish might not see things that way. For instance, free movement of goods and people is not always positive. There has been a crime wave associated with the shift of East European immigrants. Then again, not everyone benefits from the huge rise in property prices which, rightly or wrongly, people associate with the euro; quite the contrary, life becomes very difficult for the young if they do not have parents who can support them. One nasty phenomenon in Spain or Ireland is that the young have to live with their parents and one sign of this is the used contraceptive in the public parks. So it is not altogether surprising that great masses of Irish voters voted against a "Europe" with which they cannot identify.

The sad thing is that Europe deserves better. It is associated with the recovery of a decent Germany, escaping from her awful past and now co-existing on civilized terms with Czechs and Poles and French. Yes, there should have been some briefly worded document to reform the creaking institutions of Europe. But true to form the Europeans mismanaged the entire affair. Having had the original constitution turned down, they should simply have lived with the consequences. Instead, they have behaved in a weaseling and dishonest way that would never have occurred to the great 1950s architects of Europe, men with culture, honesty and a sense of where their extraordinary civilization had gone wrong. Thank God for the Irish.

Mr. Stone is a professor of international relations at Bilking University in Ankara and author of "World War I: A Short History," forthcoming in paperback from Basic Books.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa - "O Mio Babbino Caro" by Puccini

Sanctuary Ranch Is This Way

No American has done more to facilitate the invasion by millions of illegal aliens from Mexico than has President Bush. His refusal to enforce the law (see post below), his perseverance in attempting to grant amnesty and reward law breakers, and his utter indifference to the rapes, murders and other crimes committed by illegals, along with the costs they pose to local, state and federal taxpayers, clearly mark him as a man of exceptional hospitality.

With this in mind, Sunlit Uplands believes that the First Family will surely want to be the first to offer sanctuary and hospitality to the millions they have invited here. We are therefore publishing a map providing every Mexican directions to the President's Crawford ranch. When you get to Crawford, just stop in at the coffee shop and they will be glad to direct you the rest of the way.

Sanctuary Trail from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, to Bush Family Welcome Center, Crawford, Texas

Starting in NUEVO LAREDO, ** on VENEZUELA go toward CESAR LOPEZ DE LARA

Turn Left on CESAR LOPEZ DE LARA(MEX-85)
Continue to follow MEX-85 - go 1.5 mi

Turn Left on 1ER PUENTE ADUANAL - go 0.1 mi

Continue on CONVENT AVE(I-35-BR) - go 0.4 mi

Turn Right on FARRAGUT ST - go 0.2 mi

Turn Left on SANTA URSULA AVE

Turn Right on MATAMOROS ST(I-35 S)

Turn Left on SAN DARIO AVE(I-35 N) - go 0.1 mi

Continue on SAN DARIO AVE(US-83 N)

Take ramp onto I-35 N - go 293.2 mi

Take exit #293A/KILLEEN (TX-317)/FT HOOD (FM-436) onto S HWY BLVD - go 0.4 mi

Turn Left on TX-317 N - go 36.3 mi

Turn Right on 5TH ST(FM-185)

Arrive at the center of CRAWFORD, TX

Mexico Trumps Missouri for Kansas In-State College Tuition

The myriad costs to US taxpayers, depressed wages, crime, and threats to national security posed by the unchecked invasion of illegal aliens across America's southern border, have their roots in the President's refusal to enforce the law.

In 1996, President Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. This legislation prevents colleges from granting in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens unless the college offers the same rates to all legal Americans. In violation of this law, there are currently ten states that grant in-state rates to illegal aliens, while requiring students from other states to pay higher tuition.

On June 19, the U. S. Supreme Court will consider a challenge to a Kansas law that allows an illegal from Mexico to pay the lower in-state rate, but denies the same rate to a legal American from Missouri.

The preeminent organization fighting for immigration sanity, NumbersUSA, is urging all Americans to write to their Representatives and Senators and ask them to "take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that federal laws are enforced by the Executive Branch." The organization rightly believes that it is a waste for the Supreme Court to hear a case when the Executive Branch could settle the matter by simply doing their duty and enforcing the law.

Malik Obama Confirms His Half-Brother Barack Grew Up A Muslim

Malik holds a photo of Obama and him in Muslim dress, reportedly when the two first met in 1985

From Israel Insider

Apparently the Obamas of Kenya have been reading those scurrilous emails to which Barack likes to refer, because they have no doubt -- contrary to the claims of the Obama campaign, that the presidential candidate was raised a Moslem. They take that as a given.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, "Barack Obama's half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background. In an interview with Army Radio he expressed a special salutation from the Obamas of Kenya."

The Obama brothers' father, a senior economist for the Kenyan government who studied at Harvard University, died in car crash in 1982. He left six sons and a daughter. All of his children - except Malik -- live in Britain or the United States. Malik and Barack met in 1985.

In a remarkable denial issued last November that still stands on the official campaign website, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement explaining that "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

Apparently Malik Obama, himself a Muslim, had not read the press release.

Melanie Phillips is the most recent commentator to draw attention to the massive body of evidence that leaves no doubt that Barak Hussein Obama was born a Muslim (Islam is patrilineal) and raised a Muslim (so registered in school, acknowledging attending Islamic classes, reported accompanying his step-father to the mosque, and able to recite the Koran in the original Arabic).

Reuven Koret, Aaron Klein and Daniel Pipes have previously pointed to the attempts by Obama and his campaign to conceal the candidate's Muslim background. The well documented evidence draws upon the on-the-ground interviews by researchers in Indonesia and Kenya, published quotations of Obama's childhood friends and his school records, as well as the candidate's own autobiography.

It is not clear whether Barack Obama will now disown his half-brother Malik, or throw him under the campaign bus, for acknowledging that shared family background. In any case, some one should notify "Fight the Smear" tout de suite. Perhaps they can get him with the program.

Latin Mass to Return to England and Wales

From The Telegraph
By Damian Thompson

The traditional Latin Mass – effectively banned by Rome for 40 years – is to be reintroduced into every Roman Catholic parish in England and Wales, the senior Vatican cardinal in charge of Latin liturgy said at a press conference in London today.

In addition, all seminaries will be required to teach trainee priests how to say the old Mass so that they can celebrate it in all parishes.

Catholic congregations throughout the world will receive special instruction on how to appreciate the old services, formerly known as the Tridentine Rite.

Yesterday’s announcement by the senior Vatican cardinal in charge of Latin liturgy, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, speaking on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI, will horrify Catholic liberals, including many bishops of England and Wales.

The Pope upset the liberals last year when he issued a decree removing their power to block the celebration of the old Mass. Yesterday’s move demonstrates that the Vatican intends to go much further in promoting the ancient liturgy.

Asked whether the Latin Mass would be celebrated in many ordinary parishes in future, Cardinal Castrillon said: “Not many parishes – all parishes. The Holy Father is offering this not only for the few groups who demand it, but so that everybody knows this way of celebrating the Eucharist.”

The Cardinal, who heads the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, made his comments as he was preparing to celebrate a traditional Latin Mass at Westminster Cathedral yesterday, the first time a cardinal has done so there for 40 years.

In the traditional rite, the priest faces in the same direction as the people and reads the main prayer of the Mass in Latin, in a voice so low as to be virtually silent. By contrast, in the new rite the priest faces the people and speaks audibly in the local language.

Cardinal Castrillon said that the reverent silence of the traditional rite was one of the “treasures” that Catholics would rediscover, and young worshippers would encounter for the first time.

Pope Benedict will reintroduce the old rite – which will be known as the “Gregorian Rite” - even where the congregation has not asked for it. “People don’t know about it, and therefore they don’t ask for it,” the Cardinal explained.

The revised Mass, adopted in 1970 after the Second Vatican Council, had given rise to “many, many, many abuses”, the Cardinal said. He added: “The experience of the last 40 years has not always been so good. Many people have lost their sense of adoration for God, and these abuses mean that many children do not know how to be in the presence of God.”

However, the new rite will not disappear; the Pope wishes to see the two forms of Mass existing side by side.

Such sweeping liturgical changes are certain to cause intense controversy. At a press conference, a journalist from the liberal Tablet magazine, which is close to the English bishops, told the Cardinal that the new liturgical changes amounted to “going backwards”.

Following last year’s papal decree, liberal bishops in England and America have attempted to limit the takeup of the old Mass by arguing that the rules say it should only be reintroduced when a “stable group” of the faithful request it. But Cardinal Castrillon said that a stable group could consist of as few as three people, and they need not come from the same parish.

The changes will take a few years to implement fully, he added, just as the Second Vatican Council had taken a long time to absorb. He insisted that the widespread reintroduction of the old Mass did not contradict the teachings of the Council.

Obama's Abortion Bombshell: Unrestricted Abortion Over Wishes of Individual States a Priority for Presidency

From LifeSiteNews.com
By Peter J. Smith

Barack Obama, the presumptive pro-abortion nominee of the Democratic Party, has plans to reward the allies that helped him topple Hillary Clinton from her throne by making total unrestricted abortion in the United States his number one priority as president.

In light of Obama's recently achieved status as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Focus on the Family's CitizenLink has decided to remind its supporters that almost one year has passed since Obama made his vows to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that abortion would be the first priority of his administration.

The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,' Obama said in his July speech to abortion advocates worried about the increase of pro-life legislation at the state level.

The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is legislation Obama has co-sponsored along with 18 other senators that would annihilate every single state law limiting or regulating abortion, including the federal ban on partial birth abortion.

The 2007 version of FOCA proposed: 'It is the policy of the United States that every woman has the fundamental right to choose to bear a child, to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability, or to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to protect the life or health of the woman.'

Obama made his remarks in a question-and-answer session after delivering a speech crystallizing for abortion advocates his deep-seated abortion philosophy and his belief that federal legislation will break pro-life resistance and end the national debate on abortion. (see transcript: http://lauraetch.googlepages.com/barackobamabeforeplannedparenthoodaction)

'I am absolutely convinced that culture wars are so nineties; their days are growing dark, it is time to turn the page,' Obama said in July. 'We want a new day here in America. We're tired about arguing about the same ole' stuff. And I am convinced we can win that argument.'

Besides making abortion on demand a 'fundamental right' throughout the United States, FOCA would effectively nullify informed consent laws, waiting periods, health safety regulations for abortion clinics, etc.

Furthermore, medical professionals and institutions that refused abortions also would lose legal protections. FOCA would expose individuals, organizations, and governments - including federal, state, and local government agencies - to costly civil actions for purported violations of the act.

'Thirty-five years after Roe, abortion supporters, like Senator Obama, are dismayed that abortion remains a divisive issue and that their radical agenda has not been submissively accepted by the American public,' states Denise M. Burke, vice president of Americans United for Life.

'Rather than confronting legitimate issues concerning the availability and safety of abortion, they choose to blatantly ignore the concerns and interests of everyday Americans, as well as the growing evidence that abortion hurts women.'

Hillary Clinton, once the longtime Democratic front-runner and anticipated abortion president, conceded defeat last Saturday to Obama, who captured the nomination from her after a long and bitter campaign.

Obama has won the crucial endorsement of abortion activist Frances Kissling, who broke from the ranks of other radical feminist leaders earlier this year to endorse Obama, saying Obama, not Clinton, would better use the bully pulpit of the presidency to accomplish their aims and end the culture wars over abortion.

Libera - "Sempiterna"

EU Wants "Voluntary" Labeling of Blogs

From The Brussels Journal

A quote from a motion for a resolution at the European Parliament:

(...) Whereas weblogs are an increasingly common medium for self-expression by media professionals as well as private persons, the status of their authors and publishers, including their legal status, is neither determined nor made clear to the readers of the weblogs, causing uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits, (...)

[The European Parliament] suggests clarifying the status, legal or otherwise, of weblogs and encourages their voluntary labelling according to the professional and financial responsibilities and interests of their authors and publishers; (...)

In the spirit of the above legislation, Sunlit Uplands has been considering what we might offer in the way of "voluntary" labeling; perhaps something that draws from Jefferson:

Caution: In defense of faith, freedom, western civilization, and the Christian renewal of society, this blog is proudly counter-cultural, politically incorrect, and aspires to be provocative. With Jefferson, we believe that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." This blog may cause statists, secularists, liberals and officious bureaucrats, palpitations, night sweats and difficulty breathing.

Those experiencing shaking, high blood pressure or reddening of the extremities for more than four hours should consult a doctor.

THANK YOU, IRELAND! MILLIONS ARE IN YOUR DEBT

IRELAND SAVES EUROPE

Today is a great day for freedom! Freedom loving people in Europe and around the world owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the Irish people for voting "NO" on the Lisbon Treaty, which is effectively the constitution for a totalitarian superstate that unelected European elites seek to impose on that continent. It would have destroyed national sovereignty, made national parliaments irrelevant, and has even redrawn European maps with new regions and without national borders. It would accomplish, through bureaucratic fiat, what Napoleon and Hitler could not.


From The Telegraph
By James Kirkup, Tom Peterkin in Dublin and Bruno Waterfield in Brussels

Gordon Brown is under intense pressure to declare the Lisbon Treaty dead after Irish voters delivered an overwhelming vote against the European Union's drive toward greater integration.

In the only popular vote on the treaty to be held in the EU, 53.4 per cent of the Irish electorate rejected its terms – plunging the EU's plans to create a new European president and foreign minister into turmoil.

MPs and campaigners from across the political spectrum called on the Prime Minister to halt moves towards British ratification of the text in the wake of the vote, with David Cameron saying the treaty should now be "declared dead".

The agreement, which would sweep away dozens of national vetoes, must be ratified by all 27 European Union members before it can take force next year.

Opponents said the emphatic Irish result meant the project – described as an attempt to revive the defunct EU constitution – should be completely abandoned.

Mr Brown however, is preparing to defy British public opinion by pushing ahead with the treaty's ratification in parliament. Government legislation ratifying the text is due to get its third and final reading in the House of Lords on Wednesday.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: "It is right that we follow the view that each country must follow the ratification process to its conclusion. It is right that we continue with our own process."

Mr Cameron described the Government's plans as the "height of arrogance" and accused the Government of "flying in the face of public opinion."

He said that Mr Brown should go to the commons on Monday to explain what would happen now.

"If this is not dead, we must be able to have the referendum in this country so that we have the chance to pass judgment on this treaty and put the final nail in its coffin," he said.

Ministers privately concede that abandoning the ratification, Britain would seal the fate of the treaty.

Mr Brown is said to believe that doing so would reduce Britain's influence and split the EU, with countries like France and Germany press ahead with their own integration plans.

However, his determination to push ahead with the treaty puts him at odds with British voters, with opinion polls showing that most reject the document.

A Daily Telegraph campaign seeking a UK referendum on the text last year gathered well over 100,000 signatories.

William Hague, the Conservative shadow foreign secretary, insisted that the British parliamentary ratification process must be stopped immediately.

"The Irish people have spoken and they have made clear that they do not want a Treaty that takes so many powers from the countries of Europe and gives it to distant institutions in Brussels," he said.

"Despite all the threats that have been made they have had the courage to make their own decision. They deserve Europe's admiration and congratulations.

The call was echoed by Labour MPs. Frank Field, a leading Labour opponent of the treaty, said the British process should stop at once.

He said: "The result speaks volumes. The people in the one country given a chance to vote have clearly rejected the Treaty. The Government must now withdraw its Bill ratifying the Treaty which should now be dead'.

Ian Davidson, another Labour opponent of the document said: "It is enormously significant that the only people who have had the chance to vote on the treaty have rejected it by a substantial margin. Now is the time for a period of reflection."

However, European leaders were making plans to find a legal way around the Irish 'No' vote.

Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President, was working with EU leaders and diplomats to plan a special "legal arrangement" to bypass the referendum rejection.

In a joint statement with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the French leader insisted the treaty was "necessary" for the EU and would go ahead.

Mr Sarkozy assumes the rotating presidency of the EU next month, and at a summit in Brussels next week he and Mr Brown will insist that the ratification process continues unchanged.

British sources said that the summit is likely to conclude that the Irish vote is a problem for the Irish government, not the rest of the EU.

"The Irish government will have to go away and think about how to proceed, but the rest of us will keep going," said a Foreign Office source.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, insisted that treaty would not be stopped.

"The treaty is alive," Mr Barroso said in Brussels. "The remaining ratifications should continue to take their course."

Every major political party in Ireland had backed a Yes vote, with opposition being led by Libertas, a small, privately-funded campaign group.

Declan Ganley, head of Libertas, said the vote should kill the Lisbon Treaty.

"The No result is the final answer on this particular Treaty That's democracy. That's how it works," he said.

Even the pro-European Liberal Democrats said the Irish result should halt Britain's move to approve the treaty.

Edward Davey, the party's foreign affairs spokesman said: "Once scrutiny of the treaty is completed in Westminster next week its ratification should be suspended."

Bill Cash, the veteran Tory eurosceptic, said: "Gordon Brown must now abandon the British moves to ratify the Treaty and renegotiate the treaties of the European Union. The Conservative party must seize the opportunity to decimate the government's European police and restore democracy to the UK."

Officials in London, Dublin and Brussels were at a loss to explain how Ireland's approval for the Lisbon Treaty can be secured following the result.

In 2001, the Irish rejected the EU's Nice Treaty, but were ultimately pressured into endorsing it in a second referendum after some sections of that text were re-written to address concerns about Ireland's military neutrality.

Privately, some diplomats fear that it will be impossible to address the Irish grievances against Lisbon, which are much wider than the objections raised to the Nice Treaty.

One senior British official said: "With the Nice vote, you could identify specific problems the Irish had with the text, answer them and then move on. But this is less focused, more a general rejection of the whole project, and accommodating it within the process could be very, very difficult."

Brian Cowan, the Irish Prime Minister, appeared to rule out a second Irish referendum to ratify the treaty, insisting that the issue of another vote "didn't arise".

He said: "The result does bring about considerable uncertainty and a difficult situation. There is no quick fix."

When Did The Bible Become 'Hate Speech'?

From National Post (Canada)
By Father Raymond J. de Souza

Four years ago, I wrote an article entitled "Thinly Disguised Totalitarianism" for the religious journal First Things, surveying the erosion of Canadian religious liberty under various regulatory bodies, professional associations and human rights tribunals. I wrote then that "there are no restrictions on freedom of worship in Canada today." That's no longer true.

As Ezra Levant details below, the Stephen Boissoin case is an egregious assault on religious liberty, press freedom and freedom of speech. And for those of us who previously underestimated the threat to religious liberty, it serves as a rude correction.

The judgment of the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission (AHRCC) against the Reverend Stephen Boissoin, a Protestant youth pastor, is a direct violation of his religious liberty. Whatever his "guilt" --and who is not guilty before the human rights commission? -- the judgment requires him to write an apology abjuring his views on homosexuality, and prohibits him and the Concerned Christian Coalition from making "disparaging" remarks about homosexuals.

It is not specified what the AHRCC might consider "disparaging," but simply reading in public -- as in a sermon -- the Biblical admonitions against homosexual acts is not precluded. Indeed, the scope of the AHRCC order is so wide that it effectively says that Rev. Boissoin may not speak publicly on homosexuality ever again, unless he changes his opinion.

Given that the "offence" was a letter to the editor published in the Red Deer Advocate, the judgment by implication would apply the same restrictions to the newspaper itself. The offence was "causing to be published" the letter, which "was likely to expose homosexuals to contempt or hatred because of their sexual orientation." In order for something to be published in a newspaper, both a writer and an editor/publisher are required. Had the complainant in this case named the Red Deer Advocate in his charge, there is every logical reason to expect that the AHRCC would have slapped a perpetual ban on the newspaper publishing any "disparaging" stories on homosexuality.

Rev. Boissoin is not the only Alberta clergyman hauled before the AHRCC. In 2005, Frederick Henry, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Calgary, was brought before the commission for writing a pastoral letter against same-sex marriage to his own flock. Before the AHRCC had a chance to find him guilty, Bishop Henry clarified his remarks and the complaint was withdrawn. It is now clear that had it gone ahead, the AHRCC would have ordered the bishop of Calgary not to speak about same-sex marriage ever again.

There have been numerous other cases too, including ones against the Knights of Columbus and Catholic Insight magazine. We can expect more after this most recent AHRCC ruling.

Until a real court throws all of this out, the ruling against Rev. Boissoin stands. And it is no sure thing that the courts will not accommodate themselves to restrictions on religious liberty, even as they did on free speech when the "hate" speech prohibitions enforced by human rights commissions were first tested at the Supreme Court in 1990. If the courts uphold what the AHRCC did to Rev. Boissoin, religious liberty will be mortally wounded in Canada.

Rev. Boissoin, as one would nobly expect of a clergyman and citizen of free country, has said he will neither write the apology nor pay the "damages" assessed. Unless the courts overturn the AHRCC decision, he will eventually be found in contempt and imprisoned--a prisoner for religious liberty and press freedom.

About 18 months ago, a journalist friend writing a book surveying trends in world Catholicism called to inquire about whether, apropos of my totalitarianism article, I thought it likely that priests in Canada would, in my lifetime, have to go to prison for preaching their faith. I said then what I believed to be true: No. After the Boissoin ruling, that is manifestly not the correct answer.

The Charter of Rights enumerates freedom of religion as its first freedom. Freedom of the press is its second. As a priest first and a journalist second, I should be comforted. Yet I am not. Those freedoms are at risk in Canada, an attack not only on pastors and journalists, but on citizens of a free country. The enemies of liberty got Rev. Boissoin. They tried to get Bishop Henry. They are going after Ezra Levant. Everyone with a pulpit or a column should ask: When will they come after me?

Polish Athlete Hailed for Heroic Defense of Unborn Life

From Catholic World News

A Polish volleyball star who was buried on June 9 is being compared by local Catholics to Blessed Gianna Beretta Molla because of her heroic sacrifice for her unborn child.

Agata Mroz, who was originally known for her athletic prowess, was buried in her hometown of Tarnow. Mroz was pregnant with her first child when doctors discovered she had a fatal case of leukemia. After consulting with her husband, Mroz delayed a bone-marrow transplant until after she gave birth to her daughter Liliana on April 4, 2008.

Polish fans dubbed the national team which Mróz led the "Golden Girls," due to their looks and their successes in international competitions. The national team won the European women’s volleyball championship in 2003 and 2005.

Auxiliary Bishop Marian Florczyk of Kielce, Poland has said that Mroz’s testimony is an example of “love of life, motherhood, the desire to give life, the heroic love of an unborn child.” On June 4, a few hours after Mroz’s death, Polish President Lech Kaczynski announced that she will be posthumously awarded the Polonia Restituta, one of Poland’s highest awards for extraordinary and distinguished service.

Bob Barr on Glenn Beck

The only conservative in the race, Bob Barr, spends a full hour on Glenn Beck's CNN Headline News. June 6, 2008.

Putting Children Last

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Wall Street Journal

Democrats in Congress have finally found a federal program they want to eliminate. And wouldn't you know, it's one that actually works and helps thousands of poor children.

We're speaking of the four-year-old Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides vouchers to about 2,000 low-income children so they can attend religious or other private schools. The budget for the experimental program is $18 million, or about what the U.S. Department of Education spends every hour and a half.

This fight has nothing to do with saving money. But it has a lot to do with election-year politics. Kevin Chavis, the former D.C. City Council member who sits on the oversight board of the scholarship program, says, "If we were going to do what was best for the kids, then continuing it is a no-brainer. Those kids are thriving." More than 90% of the families express high satisfaction with the program, according to researchers at Georgetown University.

Many of the parents we interviewed describe the vouchers as a "Godsend" or a "lifeline" for their sons and daughters. "Most of the politicians have choices on where to send their kids to school," says William Rush, Jr., who has two boys in the program. "Why do they want to take our choices away?"

Good question. These are families in heavily Democratic neighborhoods. More than 80% of the recipients are black and most of the rest Hispanic. Their average income is about $23,000 a year. But the teachers unions have put out the word to Congress that they want all vouchers for private schools that compete with their monopoly system shut down.

This explains why that self-styled champion of children's causes, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Congressional delegate from the District of Columbia, is leading the charge to kill the program. Ms. Norton contends that vouchers undermine support and funding for public schools. But the $18 million allocated to the program does not come out of the District school budget; Congress appropriates extra money for the vouchers.

The $7,500 voucher is a bargain for taxpayers because it costs the public schools about 50% more, or $13,000 a year, to educate a child in the public schools. And we use the word "educate" advisedly because D.C. schools are among the worst in the nation. In 2007, D.C. public schools ranked last in math scores and second-to-last in reading scores for all urban public school systems on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Opponents claim there is no evidence that the D.C. scholarship program is raising academic achievement. The only study so far, funded by the federal Department of Education, found positive but "not statistically significant" improvements in reading and math scores after the first year. But education experts agree it takes a few years for results to start showing up. In other places that have vouchers, such as Milwaukee and Florida, test scores show notable improvement. A new study on charter schools in Los Angeles County finds big academic gains when families have expanded choices for educating their kids.

If the D.C. program continues for another few years, we will be able to learn more about the impact of vouchers on educational outcomes. The reason unions want to shut the program down immediately isn't because they're afraid it will fail. They're afraid it will succeed, and show that there is a genuine alternative to the national scandal that are most inner-city public schools. That's why former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and current Mayor Adrian Fenty, both Democrats, support the program.

"Hopefully," says Mr. Chavis, "Congress will focus on the kids, not the politics here." Barack Obama might call that the audacity of hope, if he finally showed the nerve to break with the unions on at least one issue and support these poor D.C. students.

America's Going Out of Business Sale

Last October I wrote: "in fifty years Americans will look back on Pat Buchanan as a prophetic voice and patriot who could have saved America had we the wisdom to listen to him." That bit of praise was in response to a column in which he described President Bush as:

• "a "Big Government conservative" who repudiated the "government is the problem" philosophy of Reagan. "
  
  
• "one who believes in Wilsonian interventionism, including the use of military force, to advance a 'global democratic revolution' and 'end tyranny on earth.'"
  
  
• "one who believes in open borders, amnesty and 'a path to citizenship' for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens, and smoothing the way for untold millions more to come and 'do the work Americans will not do.'"
  
  
• "a NAFTA-CAFTA man who believes in throwing America's doors open to goods from all over the world, regardless of the protectionist practices of our trade partners. To Bush, free trade is an article of faith and faithful observance its own reward."
  
  

After providing the long list of bitter fruits resulting from these failed policies, Buchanan states that "the trade deficits America has run up in recent decades have helped give rival nations $5 trillion in cash reserves. They have now begun to transfer this enormous cash hoard into sovereign wealth funds -- to buy up America."

I called him "prophetic." Sadly, that is proving to be so:

From the New York Post
By Lois Weiss

The latest Big Apple trophy being coveted by oil-rich sovereign wealth funds is the landmark Chrysler Building.

Sources say the super-rich Abu Dhabi Investment Council is negotiating an $800 million deal for a 75 percent stake in the Art Deco treasure that has defined the Midtown skyline since 1930.

The Chrysler assets would be purchased from TMW - the German arm of an Atlanta-based investment fund that's been eager to cash out of its Chrysler stake.

The deal follows last month's sale of the GM Building and three other Macklowe/Equity Portfolio properties for $3.95 billion to a group of investors
including the wealth funds of Kuwait and Qatar and Boston Properties.

As part of the Chrysler deal, sources said the Abu Dhabi Investment Council would also get part of the skyscraper's signature Trylons retail prize next door.

Tishman Speyer Properties owns the remaining 25 percent stake in the Chrysler Building and operates the landmark at 405 Lexington Ave., along with the Trylons and the newer next door neighbor at 666 Third Ave.

The Trylons space also involves retail portion, which includes the Capital Grille steakhouse and a Citibank branch.

The buildings sit on land owned by Cooper Union, which leased it in a long-term arrangement to others and uses the payments to support tuition for its students.

Recently Tishman Speyer obtained a 150-year extension of the ground lease.

Sources say the deal would leave Tishman Speyer in charge of the building, with the Abu Dhabi fund essentially acting as a silent partner.

Abu Dhabi has also partnered with Tishman Speyer in other deals around the world, sources said. Since TMW and Tishman Speyer sold 666 Fifth Ave. to Kushner Companies for $1.8 billion last year, the Atlanta group began informing the real estate community that it was ready to cash out in the landmark Chrysler Center, as well.

None of the principals involved in the deal had any comment.

Boston Properties closed on its purchase of the GM Building on Monday with investment partners Kuwait and Qatar, and will complete the purchase of three other former Macklowe properties over the next few months.

Developer Harry Macklowe was forced to sell the assets after taking a personal loan on the GM Building and other family assets to raise nearly $7 billion to buy a city package of former Equity Office buildings.

The credit markets tanked right after completing that deal in July and Macklowe was unable to refinance the short-term debt causing him to sell the four buildings to Boston Properties and return the Equity portfolio to lender Deutsche Bank.

Why Is Bush Helping Saudi Arabia Build Nukes?

From the Wall Street Journal

By Edward J. Markey

Here's a quick geopolitical quiz: What country is three times the size of Texas and has more than 300 days of blazing sun a year? What country has the world's largest oil reserves resting below miles upon miles of sand? And what country is being given nuclear power, not solar, by President George W. Bush, even when the mere assumption of nuclear possession in its region has been known to provoke pre-emptive air strikes, even wars?

If you answered Saudi Arabia to all of these questions, you're right.

Last month, while the American people were becoming the personal ATMs of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Saudi Arabia signing away an even more valuable gift: nuclear technology. In a ceremony little-noticed in this country, Ms. Rice volunteered the U.S. to assist Saudi Arabia in developing nuclear reactors, training nuclear engineers, and constructing nuclear infrastructure. While oil breaks records at $130 per barrel or more, the American consumer is footing the bill for Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions.

Saudi Arabia has poured money into developing its vast reserves of natural gas for domestic electricity production. It continues to invest in a national gas transportation pipeline and stepped-up exploration, building a solid foundation for domestic energy production that could meet its electricity needs for many decades. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, would require enormous investments in new infrastructure by a country with zero expertise in this complex technology.

Have Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush or Saudi leaders looked skyward? The Saudi desert is under almost constant sunshine. If Mr. Bush wanted to help his friends in Riyadh diversify their energy portfolio, he should have offered solar panels, not nuclear plants.

Saudi Arabia's interest in nuclear technology can only be explained by the dangerous politics of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, a champion and kingpin of the Sunni Arab world, is deeply threatened by the rise of Shiite-ruled Iran.

The two countries watch each other warily over the waters of the Persian Gulf, buying arms and waging war by proxy in Lebanon and Iraq. An Iranian nuclear weapon would radically alter the region's balance of power, and could prove to be the match that lights the tinderbox. By signing this agreement with the U.S., Saudi Arabia is warning Iran that two can play the nuclear game.

In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "[Iran is] already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. No one can figure why they need nuclear, as well, to generate energy." Mr. Cheney got it right about Iran. But a potential Saudi nuclear program is just as suspicious. For a country with so much oil, gas and solar potential, importing expensive and dangerous nuclear power makes no economic sense.

The Bush administration argues that Saudi Arabia can not be compared to Iran, because Riyadh said it won't develop uranium enrichment or spent-fuel reprocessing, the two most dangerous nuclear technologies. At a recent hearing before my Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman shrugged off concerns about potential Saudi misuse of nuclear assistance for a weapons program, saying simply: "I presume that the president has a good deal of confidence in the King and in the leadership of Saudi Arabia."

That's not good enough. We would do well to remember that it was the U.S. who provided the original nuclear assistance to Iran under the Atoms for Peace program, before Iran's monarch was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Such an uprising in Saudi Arabia today could be at least as damaging to U.S. security.

We've long known that America's addiction to oil pays for the spread of extremism. If this Bush nuclear deal moves forward, Saudi Arabia's petrodollars could flow to the dangerous expansion of nuclear technologies in the most volatile region of the world.

While the scorching Saudi Arabian sun heats sand dunes instead of powering photovoltaic panels, millions of Americans will fork over $4 a gallon without realizing that their gas tank is fueling a nascent nuclear arms race.

Rep. Markey (D., Mass.) is chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Graduate Changes Speech, But Fellow Valedictorian Adds Bible Verses to His

While at the request of school officials one West Ottawa (MI) High School valedictorian removed Bible verses from his graduation speech, another slipped some in.

“If they weren’t going to let Jed speak, I figured I could,” West Ottawa class of 2008 President Andrew Webster said of his fellow valedictorian Jed Grooters.

“What I said is what I truly felt and saying anything else would not have been true to who I am,” Webster said. “I wasn’t expressing the views of the school, I was expressing my own views. ... I was told to write an essay about a life

lesson and I did that.”

Each of the nine valedictorians was asked to prepare a two-minute speech to read at Sunday’s commencement ceremony. The speeches had to be pre-approved by school officials. School officials had asked Grooters to remove an extended Bible quotation from his speech and rewrite it in his own words. If he refused, Grooters would not have been allowed to speak at his graduation.

Grooters’ speech was first rejected because it consisted almost entirely of one long quote, West Ottawa Superintendent Patricia Koeze said earlier this week. The school’s legal counsel advised officials that quoting Scripture at the graduation ceremony was a violation of the “no establishment of religion” clause in the First Amendment, she said.

“You may have heard I will no longer be giving the speech I was going to because it is inappropriate for a graduation setting,” Grooters said Sunday afternoon, eliciting a boo or two from audience members.

He did not read 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 as he had planned. Instead, Grooters put together a few words, ending with: “Jesus loves you and that is the most important life lesson of all.”

He introduced the next valedictorian who had to wait for the standing ovation to die down.

Webster’s original, pre-approved speech was along the lines of “life is a game and we spend too much time spinning around and not focusing on important things,” he said.

Without telling officials, Webster changed his speech to include John 16:33, Ecclesiastes 3:10-14, 4:4, 4:7-8, 5:18-20 and 5:10 — “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.” — and 5:15 — “Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand.”Webster said Grooters had inspired him to be true to himself.

School officials did not approach him after the ceremony and will not reprimand him, they said.

“What I’ll say about that is one of our speeches went longer than what was planned, but overall the kids did a great job,” Principal Kent Henson said after the ceremony.

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x1489203826/Graduate-changes-speech-but-fellow-valedictorian-adds-Bible-verses-to-his

Anglican Traditionalists Wait For Vatican Ruling

From The Church of England Newspaper

AN ANNOUNCEMENT on the Vatican's relationship with the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) may be made following the July 16-Aug 3 Lambeth Conference, sources in Rome tell The Church of England Newspaper.

Leaders of TAC, home to over 400,000 Anglo-Catholics who have left the Episcopal and Anglican churches over the past thirty years, have been in talks with the Vatican over creating an Anglican-rite enclave under the authority of the Bishop of Rome.

While the curia under Pope John Paul II had opposed attempts to bring Anglicans en masse into the Roman Catholic fold, under Benedict XVI the Vatican appears to have adopted a different line. Anglicans wishing to be received into the Catholic Church are welcome to do so, as individuals, rather than as part of a larger ecclesial body. The talks between TAC and Vatican , however, have focused on allowing whole groups to enter the Catholic Church while maintaining their own orders and liturgy.

The National Catholic Register reported that "discussions at the Vatican on devising a possible structure for [TAC] to come into communion with Rome are understood to be nearing completion." It added that during their May 5 meeting, Archbishop Rowan Williams asked Benedict that "any potential announcement be delayed until after the Lambeth Conference."

However, a spokesman for Dr Williams told CEN the report was untrue. The TAC issue "didn't come up with the Pope," a press spokesman for the Archbishop said.

The Rt Rev David Moyer, former president of Forward in Faith USA and a Bishop in TAC, also declined to comment on the negotiations with Rome , stating only that "We in the TAC are on our knees for something positive to happen.We remain very hopeful."

The Bishop of Fort Worth, the Rt Rev Jack Iker -- who is currently in Rome on study leave -- told The Church of England Newspaper "conversations with TAC - and others-have taken place at high levels in the Vatican and that it is thought that the Pope is sympathetic to the dilemma of traditionalists in the Anglican way."

However, no formal dialogue exists between TAC and the Congregation for Promoting Christian Unity -- the Vatican agency tasked with ecumenical relations.

Speculation on a possible Anglican enclave within the Catholic Church comes amidst a tightening of views on women bishops within the Church of England. One traditionalist leader speculated that the House of Bishops' decision to go ahead with women bishops without providing safeguards for those opposed, may have been predicated on the calculation that the Catholic Church would resolve the women clergy issue for the Church of England.

Thomas Tallis -- "Spem In Alium"

This magnificent motet was composed for eight choirs of five voices each. Tallis wrote the piece about 1570 for the birthday of Queen Elizabeth I.

Latin

The original Latin text of the motet is from a response (at Matins, for the 3rd Lesson, during the V week of September), in the Sarum Rite, adapted from the Book of Judith.

Spem in alium numquam habui praeter in te Deus Israel
qui irasceris
et propitius eris
et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis
Domine Deus
Creator coeli et terrae
respice humilitatem nostram


English translation

I have never put my hope in any other but in you,
O God of Israel
who can show both anger
and graciousness,
and who absolves all the sins of suffering man
Lord God,
Creator of Heaven and Earth
be mindful of our humiliation.

Holland, Michigan School District Violates Christian Student's Free Speech Rights

Family Group: Holland schools violate Constitution by censoring Christian valedictorian's "life lesson"

Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals: "The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state."

HOLLAND, Mich. -- West Ottawa Public Schools Superintendent Patricia Koeze's censorship of a Christian high school senior's valedictory address -- planned for graduation ceremonies Sunday -- is a "clear, outrageous, and unconstitutional violation of the student's First Amendment free speech rights," a statewide family values group said Saturday.

The American Family Association of Michigan blasted Koeze's censorship of planned remarks by West Ottawa High School valedictorian Jed Grooters, who included quotations from the New Testament book of Corinthians. AFA-Michigan President Gary Glenn, Midland, said Koeze's action "is a clear case of unconstitutional discrimination based on the content of the student's speech, propped up by some obviously very poor legal advice from the school district's attorneys."

"Since the U.S. Supreme Court long ago prohibited school officials from unconstitutionally forcing students to surrender their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door," Glenn said, "Supt. Koeze's heavy-handed intolerance and discrimination toward this student's expression of his Christian worldview is an engraved invitation for a First Amendment free speech lawsuit against the school system for which local taxpayers would have to foot the bill for attorneys fees and damages."

The Grand Rapids Press Saturday reported that Grooters -- a 4.0 GPA student and eight-time varsity athlete who won the sportsmanship award in three different varsity sports this year -- was asked by school officials to give a valedictory address Sunday talking about a "life lesson" he wished to share with fellow students.
http://blog.mlive.com/grpress/2008/06/west_ottawa_valedictorian_aske.html

But upon submitting a draft of his speech to school officials, Grooters was told he would not be allowed to speak unless he removed his speech's references to the Bible. The student refused, and the matter was referred to Koeze.

According to the Press, Koeze labeled Grooters' comments "a religious speech" and insisted that allowing him to present it during the school's graduation ceremonies would violate the so-called "separation of church and state."

Glenn said the federal Appeals Court which acts on all federal court decisions originating in Michigan has ruled exactly opposite of Koeze's faulty interpretation of the First Amendment.

He cited a April 2006 case in which the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals -- by a vote of 19 to 5 -- upheld a three-judge panel of the court's earlier rejection of the American Civil Liberties Union's claim that a Kentucky courthouse violated the First Amendment by displaying a copy of the Ten Commandments found in the Old Testament of the Bible.
http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/06a0146p-06.pdf

In its ruling, the Sixth Circuit went beyond the specifics of the Kentucky case, issuing a broad statement of the Constitution's original intent, dramatically declaring that religious speech is protected by, not at odds with, the First Amendment.

"The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state," the three-judge panel had unanimously ruled in December 2005 in an opinion authored by Senior Judge Richard Suhrheinrich of Williamston, a graduate of Michigan State University-Detroit College of Law and a full-time faculty member at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing.

The Suhrheinrich-authored decision further characterized the American Civil Liberties Union's repeated references to the so-called "separation of church and state" as "extra-constitutional" and "tiresome."

See page 13 of the Court of Appeals panel's December 2005 decision: http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/05a0477p-06.pdf

"To quote the same Appeals Court that will eventually rule on any free speech lawsuit that results if Supt. Koeze continues to censor Jed Grooters' quotation of the Bible, the superintendent's false claim that the First Amendment requires her to do so is both 'extra-constitutional' and 'tiresome,'" Glenn said. "In fact, the First Amendment requires school officials to both respect and allow Jed to fully practice his First Amendment free speech rights."

Glenn said if the school district refuses to back off its unconstitutional censorship of Grooters' speech Sunday, "Christian legal defense foundations across the country will be waiting in line to provide free legal representation to this courageous, principled young man and his family."

"The question Supt. Koeze and West Ottawa school board members should ponder is how school district taxpayers are likely to feel about being forced to pay attorneys fees and damages when the federal courts reject her blatant violation of Jeb Grooters' First Amendment free speech rights," he said.

The American Family Association of Michigan's mission is to promote and defend traditional Judeo-Christian family values, Glenn said.

****

The American Family Association of Michigan is asking supporters to contact West Ottawa Schools Superintendent Patricia Koeze to voice their objection to the district's censorship and persecution of Christians:

Supt. Patricia Koeze

Phone: 616-738-5700

E-mail: KoezeP@westottawa.net

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Christianity 'Discriminated Against by Gordon Brown's Government'

Christianity is being discriminated against by the Government in favour of Islam and other minority faiths, according to a landmark Church of England report.

From The Daily Telegraph
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones

The Archbishop of Canterbury has endorsed the report.

The damning critique of Labour, which is endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, says ministers are only paying "lip service" to the Anglican Church while "focusing intently" on other religions.

It claims Gordon Brown's Government is failing society and lacks a moral vision for the country.

And in an end to decades of tension between the Church and the Conservatives, the comprehensive study praises the Tories for their "strident" approach to combating poverty.

Instead it says it is Labour which is failing to acknowledge the breakdown in society and excluding vital religious voices.

The report urges the Government to appoint a minister for religion, who would serve as the Prime Minister's faith envoy and utilise the untapped reserves of volunteers in churches and charities.

It states: "We encountered on the part of the Government a significant lack of understanding, or interest in, the Church of England's current or potential contribution in the public sphere.

"Indeed we were told that Government had consciously decided to focus...almost exclusively on minority religions."

The highly critical report, titled Moral, But No Compass - a twist on Mr Brown's claim to have a "moral compass" - carries significant weight as it has been endorsed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and expresses the views of three-quarters of the Church's bishops.

It echoes claims made by the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, last week that the decline of Christian values is destroying Britishness and has created a "moral vacuum" which radical Islam is filling.

The report, which has been seen by The Daily Telegraph, says that while the Government has tried to improve social cohesion, it has failed to appreciate the potential contribution of Christian groups to the "civic health and wellbeing" of society.

"We were told that while capacity studies had been undertaken by Government with regard to British Islam, similar studies had not been carried out for any of the UK's largest faith communities.

"If what we were told is correct, the churches simply do not register on the policy-making radar in serious terms.

"The Government has focused so intensely on minority faiths that it has failed to develop a coherent evidence base for the largest religious body in the UK, the Christian church."

The report adds: "The government is planning blind and failing parts of civil society. The government has good intentions, but is moral without a compass.

"Every participant in our study from the Church agreed that there was deep 'religious illiteracy' on the part of the Government."

A report published in 1985 damned Thatcherism for the growing spiritual and economic poverty in Britain.

But now, in a remarkable shift in the stance of the Church, the Conservatives are praised for their "genuine thirst to understand and combat poverty".

The new study, commissioned by the Church and written by academics based at the Von Hugel Institute at Cambridge University, states: "Despite many voices in the Church telling us, 'there is no difference between any of the parties on these issues,' the reality is otherwise.

"Of all our interviewees, Conservative advisors and politicians were among the most comfortable and enthusiastic regarding involving faith groups in this renewal of the third sector, and believed that Christian churches had something 'unique' to bring to the table as strong local leaders."

Eric Pickles, shadow secretary for communities and local government, said: "David Cameron's Conservatives recognise that we have to tackle a damaged society and that poverty can't be cured without the help of voluntary organisations, such as the Church which plays a vital part.

"The Church has not retreated from the difficult problems faced by many communities."

The Execution of Britain

From The Brussels Journal
By Fjordman

I will defend all Western and indeed infidel countries against Islamic Jihad, but I admit I feel especially close to Britain, not just because of the long cultural and historic ties between Scandinavia and the British Isles, but also because I appreciate the good that has come out of British culture. It makes me all the more sad to see how humiliated this great nation is today, and how many natives feel forced to leave what once was their country.

In May 2008, 18 year-old Ben Smith was stopped in a routine check. The police officer noticed an English flag on the parcel shelf and ordered him to remove it because it was "racist towards immigrants." One of the first things foreign powers usually do when they invade a country is to ban its national symbols. The fact that you can no longer run your flag in parts of Britain – and the Netherlands, Sweden, France, etc. – shows that the country is de facto under occupation, not just by Muslims, but by Multiculturalists and Globalists of all kinds.

In an essay entitled Put away the flags, Howard Zinn, the Leftist author of the best-selling book A People's History of the United States, writes that "On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism – that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder – one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?" He concludes that "We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation."

The problem is, rights can only be protected by sovereign states upholding their territorial integrity. How is "the global community" or "the human race" going to protect Mr. Zinn's liberties? For a free society to function, the state has to pass laws in the best interest of its citizenry and enforce these within its territory. Otherwise, self-government is impossible. In order to defend this territory from outside aggression, people need to identify with it as something more than just a random space on a map. By removing sovereign states, you remove the very foundations of a free society. Maybe some groups actually desire this?

The British Foreign Minister Milliband stated late in 2007 that the European Union should expand to include Muslim nations in North Africa and the Middle East. The French President Sarkozy and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed this early in 2008. Since the EU involves the free movement of people across borders, European leaders are thus opening the floodgates to tens of millions of Muslims at a time when native Europeans already feel like aliens in their own cities. It's the greatest betrayal in the history of Western civilization and it has been planned for many years, as those who have read Bat Ye'or's writings about Eurabia will know.

I believe native Europeans should seriously consider creating a European Indigenous People's Movement to protect our interests. Our authorities currently reward those who use violence and punish those who don't. Native Europeans are ignored if we protest peacefully against mass immigration or the expanding pan-European superstate. Muslims get concessions while we are treated with increasing hostility from those who are supposed to be our leaders.

Muslims in Jordan, a country that takes part in the Barcelona process of "Euro-Mediterranean cooperation" and thus a likely future EU member, recently sued the Danish cartoonists who drew Muhammad for "blasphemy" against Islam, a "crime" that potentially carries the death penalty according to sharia law. Not too many years into the future, we could face a situation where citizens of, say, Denmark could be arrested by their own authorities and handed over to be tried for "crimes against Islam" in one of the Arab "partner countries" of the EU. If this sounds unthinkable to you, look at the case of the Dutch cartoonist who was recently arrested by a dozen police officers for the crime of publishing cartoons insulting immigrants.

PM Tony Blair expressed "profound relief" over the end of a hostage crisis in 2007 where British soldiers had been kidnapped by the Islamic Republic of Iran, telling the mullahs that "we bear you no ill will." Blair will be remembered as one of the worst leaders in history. Even Chamberlain didn't flood his country with enemies and present this as something positive. Mass immigration has been going on for decades but showed a spectacular increase under Blair's and Brown's Labour regime. The spike was so powerful that it is tempting to speculate whether the authorities had deliberately set out to dismantle their own nation.

According to newspaper columnist Leo McKinstry, the English are being turned into second-class citizens in their own country: "England is in the middle of a profoundly disturbing social experiment. For the first time in a mature democracy, a Government is waging a campaign of aggressive discrimination against its indigenous population."

Similar things are happening all over the Western world, not just in England or Britain, but Britain is definitely one of the worst countries, yes. I've been debating with people which country is most likely to get the first Eurabian civil war triggered by mass immigration. There are several possible candidates, but my money is on Britain, because the anger among ordinary citizens is only rivaled by the brutal political repression tactics.

In a survey published in April 2008, one in three medical doctors in Britain said that elderly patients should not be given free treatment if it were unlikely to do them good for long. At the same time, Muslim men with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits. The "welfare state" now means that the natives should watch grandma die because she's getting old anyway and we need the money to pay Muslims with multiple wives and numerous children so that they can feel comfortable while colonizing the country.

Also in April 2008, David T, a stunned dad and his little boy, were banned from swimming at a popular public sports center in east London because this was a "Muslim men-only swimming" session. Several Christian priests have been physically attacked by Muslims in east London, leading one bishop to worry about "no-go-zones" for Christian in some parts of the country. In early June, a Muslim police community support officer ordered Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. They were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. In March 2008, two Islamic terrorists were moved to different prisons after complaining that their fellow inmates were "too white." Dhiren Barot had masterminded a radioactive bomb plot involving limousines packed with nails and explosives and Omar Khyam plotted to blow up the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent.

How do native Brits react to this? Well, some get angry, as they should. Bryan Cork, 49, was jailed for six months for "racist slurs" after he had shouted insults at Muslim worshippers outside a Cumbria mosque, including "proud to be British" and "go back to where you came from." This was after the London Jihadist bombings in 2005. Judge Paul Batty told him that racism in any form would not be tolerated. I hear much talk about "national suicide" these days, but Mr. Cork apparently had no desire to commit national suicide, he was held down by his own authorities for refusing to accept the organized destruction of his nation. What we are dealing with here isn't suicide; it's an execution of an entire nation, perhaps an entire civilization, the greatest civilization ever created by man.

Even children face this kind of ideological intimidation. Codie Stott, a teenage British schoolgirl, was forced to spend hours in a police cell after she was reported by her teachers for "racism." She had objected, in the mildest possible terms, to being placed during class with a group of South Asian immigrants who talked among themselves in a language she didn't understand. For this, she was dragged to the local police station and had her fingerprints and photograph taken. 18-year-old Jamie who has Down's syndrome and the mental age of a five-year-old was charged with "racism" after an argument with an immigrant. Meanwhile, the UK is being brought to its knees in an epidemic of violent crime and white native girls get raped by immigrants in spectacular numbers, just like all over Western Europe.

Why do people still take this lying down? I wonder about that sometimes. Maybe they feel that their votes don't matter and have resigned into a state of quiet apathy. Since many are dependent upon government support and being branded a "bigot" could cause you to lose your livelihood, people still have too much to lose by openly opposing these policies. Such subtle blackmail can be quite effective in suppressing dissent. This could, however, change rapidly in the event of a serious economic downturn. Another crucial element is confusion. People are deliberately kept in the dark by the media and the authorities regarding the full scale of what they are facing. Combined with Muslim violence and intimidation of critics, we have a climate of fear and confusion. People who are scared and confused can be easily controlled.

I've recently been re-reading the books of American evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond, especially Guns, Germs, and Steel. He has some points, but his most important flaw is his complete failure to explain how the Greater Middle East went from being a global center of civilization, which it was in ancient times, to being a global center of anti-civilization. This was not caused by smallpox or because zebras are more difficult to domesticate than water buffaloes. It was caused by Islam. Diamond, with his emphasis on historical materialism, fails to explain the rise of the West and especially why English, not Arabic, Chinese or Mayan, became the global lingua franca. What's so special about those rainy and foggy islands?

As Australian author Keith Windschuttle told a New Zealand audience, "The concepts of free enquiry and free expression and the right to criticise entrenched beliefs are things we take so much for granted they are almost part of the air we breathe. We need to recognise them as distinctly Western phenomena." He warns that the survival of this great achievement now depends entirely "on whether we have the intelligence to understand their true value and the will to face down their enemies."

No other civilization on earth ever created an equivalent of the European university system. One of the most important reasons why Europe surpassed China during the early modern age is more political freedom and free speech. The reason why English became the dominant language is because Britain and its offspring enjoyed great political liberty even by Western standards, and a corresponding economic dynamism.

Probably no empire in world history has been more benevolent than the British Empire, yet a report from February 2008 recommended that patriotism should be avoided in school lessons because British history is "morally ambiguous." I suppose Islamic history isn't, with almost 1400 years of brutal Jihad warfare on several continents?

I'm sure the British are being told that the ongoing mass immigration is a result of their "colonial history." I live in a country with no colonial history, yet we are still subject to mass immigration. We are also being told that we should allow Pakistani or Nigerian flags to celebrate our Constitution Day because this will be "good for integration." This has nothing to do with colonialism. So what does it have to do with? Well, I'm starting to wonder whether it has something to do with the Western love affair with free speech and political liberty. Those who desire a world where society is regulated and everybody does what the authorities tell them to do fear this Western preference for political self-determination.

If we look at the West during the past thousand years, we have generally enjoyed an unusually high degree of freedom and power sharing. This has been the case more in some periods and countries than in others, but in the big scheme of things this remains true. However, although this arrangement has been good for our civilization as a whole, some of our elites apparently are jealous of the more authoritarian system in other cultures. They want to turn the West into a "normal," meaning more corrupt and less free, civilization, aided by the forces of globalization. We are witnessing rising nepotism, and perhaps those at the top desire this.

The political elites no longer believe in stupid things such as borders, cultures and national sovereignty. Islam upsets their world-view, so they ignore it and move on with their project of globalization, anyway. The most hardcore Leftists actively side with Islam because its hatred of the West and its concept of a global umma coincide with their own globalist outlook. Yes, I know that Socrates stated "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world," but I don't think he meant it quite as literally as Western elites do now. Socrates didn't have an entire village of Muslims transplanted to his street during the space of a single generation, and he didn't have his daughters or female relatives raped by Muslims in his own country.

Our traditional freedoms were the result of a specific culture, developed over centuries of hard struggles. Maybe other cultures have to go through similar struggles of their own to achieve this, and some will perhaps never be able to do so. We should protect our freedoms at home before we try to export them, and we should protect them by preserving the European-derived culture which created them.

Our enemies, internal and external, want to destroy the Western world because we represent liberty, and they want to destroy Britain in particular because it gave birth to the most powerful pro-liberty culture within the Western tradition. I hope the British can regain their strength and throw off their traitor class, but they need to do so soon. We cannot allow the greatest nation in human history to be destroyed by the planet's most barbaric cultures. The British people, like their Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish and Danish counterparts, have every right to desire self-determination and self-preservation, and limit or even completely halt immigration as they see fit to ensure this. Those who say otherwise are evil, and need to be exposed as such. The Western world is under attack by a global Islamic Jihad. To support continued mass immigration of Muslims in this situation should be regarded as high treason, and punished as such.

See also:
Creating a European Indigenous People’s Movement, 6 April 2008

Fjordman is a noted Norwegian blogger who has written for many conservative web sites. He used to have his own Fjordman Blog in the past, but it is no longer active.

A D-Day Tribute

Phony Pflegerism

From The American Spectator
By George Neumayr

The very left-wing Catholic clericalism from which Obama hopes to derive votes in the fall served as the pretext for his leaving the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Just as Jeremiah Wright's over-the-top sermons could not have come as a surprise to Obama, so Father Michael Pfleger's hyper-partisanship would have been known to him as well.

But Father Pfleger's timing and choice of a target were poor: his antics hit the Internet just as the Wright furor had begun to dissipate and instead of attacking a Republican for racism he selected Hillary Clinton. Maybe at another moment in the campaign this wouldn't have mattered -- Geraldine Ferraro's comments saying Obama had an unfair advantage due to race might have even lent the sermon some plausibility -- but as Obama began his courting of Hillary's support he found it all very annoying.

Yet normally the Democrats encourage priests and religious to misuse their office, to treat the binding teachings of their church as debatable while treating the platform and causes of the Democratic Party as doctrine; to put on their religious garb at political meetings, then take it off for catechesis.

The Drinans and Pflegers can't muster up much enthusiasm for the magisterium of the Church but left-wing politics brings out their zeal. Disagree with Church teaching? That's okay, they think.

But disagree with the Democratic Party's specific proposals for this or that tricky, prudential issue on which reasonable people could disagree? That's not. Dissenters inside the Church brook little dissent when it comes to left-wing politics.

SO WHILE OBAMA severs his association with Trinity Church on the pretext of offense at left-wing Catholic clericalism, he plans in the coming months to recruit practitioners of it.

Obama has formed a "Catholic advisory committee." Among the national co-chairs of his committee are Sister Jamie Phelps, O.P., Professor of Theology at Xavier University, and Sister Catherine Pinkerton with the Congregation of St. Joseph, standard issue leftists both.

As long as priests and religious in the mold of Pfleger aim their partisan arrows at the right targets, Obama won't mind. He needs them to choose fidelity to the Democratic Party over fidelity to the teachings of the Church -- to treat the former as absolute and the latter as relative.

And if John McCain, as is likely, blurs the moral differences between the parties, Obama's task will become all that much easier. Look how little it takes to get a Douglas Kmiec to come over to his side. That McCain finds religious talk off-putting while Obama gravitates to quasi-religious rhetoric won't help matters either.

WHAT COMPLICATES Obama's project is that Pope Benedict XVI has asked the bishops to knock off the clericalism and restrict their political participation to "non-negotiable" principles that represent not personal opinions but moral truths.

Some bishops are following his lead, if only incrementally. They are taking steps to end open scandals, starting with the immediate one of Catholic politicians who support abortion.

A more spiritually serious Catholic Church is bad for the Democratic Party but critical to the common good. The clericalism of the last four decades marginalized the moral authority of the Church at the very moment American society needed it most. It made the American Church seem like just one more irrational special interest group clamoring for attention over the din of democracy.

This model of political participation was justified on the spirit-of-Vatican-II grounds that without it the Church couldn't speak to the "whole world." But as Pope Benedict understands, that model ensures it never will.

In the end the world isn't interested in the erratic opinions of men but the voice of God. It is only when the Church restricts its political participation to the articulation of universal moral principles rooted in the reality God made that it can speak to all men authoritatively.


George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report and press critic for California Political Review.

The Clintons: Power At Any Cost

From National Post

Father Raymond J. De Souza

Whatever else he might accomplish, Senator Barack Obama has prevented the restoration of the Clintons. That alone is cause for rejoicing.

How did he do it? It was partly about him, but mostly about her. Many have remarked that in the identity-politics world of the Democratic Party, the first credible black candidate trumped the first credible woman candidate.

That is largely true, but it is not a phenomenon of the Democratic Party alone. Americans as a whole are eager to give their support to blacks who manifest aspirations of racial harmony. Consider the last 25 years. The most popular comic: Bill Cosby. The most popular athletes: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. The most popular talk-show host: Oprah Winfrey. The most popular general: Colin Powell. Obama demonstrated the same holds true in politics.

Yet a freshman senator with an ultraliberal voting record does not win the nomination without deep weakness in the competition. Obama became the chosen instrument for those who fervently wished to prevent the Clintons from coming back. In this race, being the not-Clinton was as important as being black.

When the Democratic Party rules committee decided last weekend to give Obama several dozen delegates from the disputed Michigan delegation, it marked the end of Clinton's slim chance to win the nomination. But it was back in Michigan on Jan. 15 when the formidable power of being the not-Clinton first became clear.

In Michigan, Clinton was the only name on the ballot, the others having withdrawn their names to conform with the rules against too-early primaries. Competing against no one in what was considered a meaningless primary, Clinton won 55% of the vote. But a staggering 40% of Democratic primary voters went out in the middle of winter to vote for "uncommitted," i. e., to vote for anyone but Hillary Clinton.

That was the key to this election year -- the determination of so many to stop the apparent Clinton juggernaut. It is the flip-side of the Obama phenomenon -- just as he makes Americans feel better about their country, the Clintons make Americans feel dirty.

It's not just that both of them are "extraordinarily gifted liars," in the words of former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey, though Hillary's make-believe story about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia confirmed that. It's not just their shady associations, though Bill's lucrative post-presidential life has been filled with those. It's not just their willingness to damage their party for their own good, though their explicit racial campaigning shocked even their progressive supporters.

It's not just the sexual harassment, the cash-for-pardons, the preening sense of entitlement, the perpetual claims of victim-hood, the general all-purpose tawdriness of it all. It is something deeper, a sense that this couple exists solely, exclusively, totally and utterly for the pursuit of power. It is what they have devoted their entire adult lives to. Power cannot corrupt them, as the perpetual search for power has long since rendered them free of any principles or honour to corrupt.

In one of the various personas Hillary adopted for the campaign, she would regularly boast that she had "35 years of experience" in making change. That's her entire life since leaving college. It was not a good line, for it reminded voters what is fundamentally creepy about the Clintons, that they have spent their entire adult lives running for the highest office open to them. And when Bill achieved the presidency at a young age, the only thing left was to start running Hillary, which she began to do before she even left the White House. The Clintons are morally repellent to many Americans not because of any particular abuse of power, but because they are the purest symbol of the pursuit of power at any cost. They degrade the office they seek because all they know how to do is to seek office.

Some years ago, when Anthony Hopkins played Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's 1995 film about the former president, Nixon was shown brooding in the White House the night before his resignation. He comes upon the portrait of JFK, his archrival, and says: "When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are."

Americans look at the Clintons and see what they do not want to become. And so Hillary and Bill have been rejected. Enjoy the four years -- at which point they will be back. It's all they know how to do.

Barr's Message Appeals To Youth Vote

By Shana Kluck

Congressman Barr appeared on The Colbert Report this evening, earning the coveted “Colbert Bump.” Robert Stacy McCain reports at the American Spectator that Colbert’s interview was “surprisingly respectful” and “allowed the candidate to answer at length”.

Some of Bob’s responses-

[Libertarians] are a big swing vote this time because Americans are finally realizing, at long last, that the current two-party system, the Democrats and the Republicans, have failed and failed miserably, and will simply give them more of the same.

A lot of people, particularly a lot of younger people, are completely fed up with the system, they’ve seen the corruption of the system that has given us bigger government no matter which party’s in charge, they see the future as fairly bleak under the current system, and they’re ready to vote Libertarian for the first time.

R.S. McCain also reports-

Barr’s mention of younger voters was tailor-made for Colbert’s cable-TV audience, which skews young — more than two-thirds of his half-million or so nightly viewers are under 35. And the Libertarian message has strong appeal to young voters, who are generally less influenced by the Republicans’ social-conservative and national-security messages that resonate with older voters.

Referring to the potential impact of his campaign, Barr was quoted, off-camera, as saying-

It’s our plan to do a lot more than to throw a monkey wrench. We aim to make it a three-way race between equals.

Read more- Laughing Last & ajc.com- Bob Barr takes on Comedy Central’s Colbert

The Biggest Pork Bill Ever!

In today's Wall Street Journal, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) reveals that the Senate is considering the biggest pork bill in the history of the nation.

We Don't Need a Climate Tax on the Poor

By JAMES INHOFE

With average gas prices across the country approaching $4 a gallon, it may be hard to believe, but the U.S. Senate is considering legislation this week that will further drive up the cost at the pump.

The Senate is debating a global warming bill that will create the largest expansion of the federal government since FDR's New Deal, complete with a brand new, unelected bureaucracy. The Lieberman-Warner bill (America's Climate Security Act) represents the largest tax increase in U.S. history and the biggest pork bill ever contemplated with trillions of dollars in giveaways. Well-heeled lobbyists are already plotting how to divide up the federal largesse. The handouts offered by the sponsors of this bill come straight from the pockets of families and workers in the form of lost jobs, higher gas, power and heating bills, and more expensive consumer goods.

Various analyses show that Lieberman-Warner would result in higher prices at the gas pump, between 41 cents and $1 per gallon by 2030. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says Lieberman-Warner would effectively raise taxes on Americans by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. The federal Energy Information Administration says the bill would result in a 9.5% drop in manufacturing output and higher energy costs.

Carbon caps will have an especially harmful impact on low-income Americans and those with fixed incomes. A recent CBO report found: "Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households."

The poor already face energy costs as a much higher percentage of their income than wealthier Americans. While most Americans spend about 4% of their monthly budget on heating their homes or other energy needs, the poorest fifth of Americans spend 19%. A 2006 survey of Colorado homeless families with children found that high energy bills were cited as one of the two main reasons they became homeless.

Lieberman-Warner will also hinder U.S. competitiveness, transferring American jobs overseas to places where environmental regulations are much more lenient. Instead of working to eliminate trade barriers on clean energy and lower emitting technologies, the bill imposes a "green," tariff-style tax on imported goods. This could provoke international retaliatory actions by our trade partners, threatening our own export markets and further driving up the costs of consumer goods.

My colleague, Sen. George Voinovich (R., Ohio), warned last week that Lieberman-Warner "could result in the most massive bureaucratic intrusion into the lives of Americans since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service." Mandating burdensome new layers of federal bureaucracy is not the solution to America's energy challenges.

This bill is ultimately about certainty. We are certain of the huge negative impact on the economy as detailed by numerous government and private analyses. We are certain of the massive expansion of the federal bureaucracy.

And we are certain the bill will not have a detectable impact on the climate. According to the Environmental Protection Agency's own analysis, by 2050 Lieberman-Warner would only lower global CO2 concentrations by less than 1.4% without additional international action. In fact, this bill, often touted as an "insurance policy" against global warming, is instead all economic pain for no climate gain.

Why are many in Washington proposing a bill that will do so much economic harm? The answer is simple. The American people are being asked to pay significantly more for energy merely so some lawmakers in Washington can say they did something about global warming.

I have been battling global warming alarmism since 2003, when I became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. It has been a lonely battle at times, but it now appears that many of my colleagues are waking up to the reality of cap-and-trade legislation.

The better way forward is an energy policy that emphasizes technology and includes developing nations such as China and India. Tomorrow's energy mix must include more natural gas, wind and geothermal, but it must also include oil, coal and nuclear power, which is the world's largest source of emission-free energy. Developing and expanding domestic energy sources will translate into energy security and ensure stable supplies and well-paying jobs for Americans.

Let me end with a challenge to my colleagues. Will you dare stand on the Senate floor in these uncertain economic times and vote in favor of significantly increasing the price of gas at the pump, losing millions of American jobs, creating a huge new bureaucracy and raising taxes by record amounts? The American people deserve and expect a full debate on this legislation.

Mr. Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, is ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Christian Preachers Face Arrest in England

From The Telegraph
By David Harrison

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham (England).

Warned: Arthur Cunningham [left] and Joseph Abraham

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.

Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.

Mr Abraham said: "I couldn't believe this was happening in Britain. The Bishop of Rochester was criticised by the Church of England recently when he said there were no-go areas in Britain but he was right; there are certainly no-go areas for Christians who want to share the gospel."

Last night, Christian campaigners described the officer's behaviour as "deeply alarming".

The preachers, both ministers in Birmingham, were handing out leaflets on Alum Rock Road in February when they started talking to four Asian youths.

A police community support officer (PCSO) interrupted the conversation and began questioning the ministers about their beliefs.

They said when the officer realised they were American, although both have lived in Britain for many years, he launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Cunningham said: "I told him that this had nothing to do with the gospel we were preaching but he became very aggressive.

"He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."

The preacher refused to give the PCSO his address because he felt the officer's manner was "threatening and intimidating".

The ministers claim he also advised them not to return to the area. As he walked away, the PCSO said: "You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned".

West Midlands Police, who refused to apologise, said the incident had been "fully investigated" and the officer would be given training in understanding hate crime and communication.

Iraqi Bishop Begs Help for Christian Minority

From Catholic World News

"Do not leave us isolated and abandoned," an Iraqi bishop pleaded as he accepted an award for defending the faith.

Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk received the Defensor Fidei prize in Milan for his activities on behalf of Iraq's embattled Christian minority. In his acceptance speech he urged international pressure on Iraq to protect Christians in the face of Islamic pressure, the AsiaNews service reported. The Chaldean Catholic prelate said that the Church is Iraq is threatened by a "terminal exodus" of Christians, as the result of "ethnic-religious cleansing" by Muslim zealots. He begged Christians in the Western world to "take stock of the seriousness" of the situation, and "apply diplomatic and political pressure to the United States, the Iraqi government, and also to the countries that support the Islamization of Iraq."

Archbishop Sako spoke at length about the Christians who have fled from Iraq and now live, often under desperate conditions, in neighboring countries. After centuries of faithful witness in Iraq, he said, the Christian presence must be preserved.

[For a more detailed account see the AsiaNews web site.]

Lisbon Treaty Song

People Died for Your Freedom; Don't Throw It Away!

Bob Barr -- THE Conservative Running Against Two Liberals

On Bloomberg TV, Congressman Barr states three reasons why he decided to enter the race for President-

• The need to decrease the federal government
• Implement a rational foreign policy
• Restore the civil rights trampled on by the current administration

Ireland Sees Growing Opposition to European Constitution

From the Los Angeles Times

By Kim Murphy Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

CANVASSING: Maire Hoctor, right, Ireland’s minister of state for elder affairs, tries to convince a voter in Nenagh to vote “yes” in the June 12 referendum on the EU treaty.

The June 12 vote on the Lisbon Treaty now seems less certain, as opposition groups, some businessmen and farmers raise concerns about sovereignty.

NENAGH, IRELAND — The "Yes on the EU" bus rolled into town blaring a foot-stomping "Galway Girl" from its megaphone one afternoon last week, but what it got was a whole lot of no.

An Irishman has always been a hard sell, and never more so than when issues of sovereignty are at stake. "People died for your freedom," declares one of the signs that have popped up in this agricultural town as Ireland prepares to vote June 12 on the European Union's new constitution. "Don't throw it away."

Farmer Ida McLoughlin isn't sold on the other posters plastered around town: "Vote yes for jobs, the economy and Ireland's future."

"Since the EU, all you see are 4x4s going down the street and big buildings going up. The thatched cottages are gone," McLoughlin said. "You have all these Johnny-come-lately people who were poor and got rich, and they're dreadful people. We've lost our Irish values."

Adoption of the so-called Lisbon Treaty requires ratification by all 27 member states of the EU, which could take a much more prominent role on the world stage under the streamlined diplomacy and beefed-up military readiness the document envisions.

Fourteen nations have ratified the agreement through their parliaments, and the remainder are expected to do so by the end of the year. Only Ireland's constitution requires a referendum -- and that could make or break the long-awaited constitution.

The Irish government, most business leaders and political parties of nearly every stripe have come out overwhelmingly in favor of the Lisbon Treaty, pointing out how Ireland's membership in the EU over the last 35 years has helped transform the Emerald Isle of 4.1 million people from an impoverished backwater dependent on Britain to one of Europe's most robust economies.

But a newly vigorous opposition composed of farmers, a few wealthy businessmen with vague connections to the U.S. defense establishment and the leftist Irish republican party, Sinn Fein, have gained quickly in recent polls, and the outcome is suddenly no longer a sure thing.

It is not clear what happens if Ireland says no -- except that the union would surely be plunged, as it was when France and the Netherlands voted down an earlier EU constitution in 2005, into uncertainty and more tedious negotiations on what EU leaders say is a badly needed framework for decision-making among its suddenly more numerous member states.

"It would put us in the very tortured position of going back to the drawing board," said Marc Coleman, a Dublin-based economic analyst.

The treaty signed in Lisbon in December would help Europe project itself more forcefully on the international stage by creating a European Council president and foreign affairs representative while outlining a framework for EU troop deployments in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

The treaty would broaden and establish a legal basis for the EU's lawmaking powers in some areas while making them subject much more directly to national parliaments and citizens initiatives. It would set out voting weights between large and small countries, improve cross-border cooperation in areas such as crime fighting and climate change and streamline the European Commission to a manageable decision-making body of 18.

Under the treaty, member nations still would retain their historic veto power in crucial areas such as defense, foreign policy, taxation and social security, but not on issues like immigration and energy policy.

Voters in overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland worry that the nation would be forced to expand abortion rights (no), forfeit its long tradition of military neutrality (no) or give up the holy grail of the Celtic Tiger economic miracle, Ireland's 12.5% corporate tax rate (probably not, though some in Europe would like to try).

Treaty opponents say the government is too smoothly dismissing what may be legitimate fears and is too quick to warn that Ireland would incur the wrath of the rest of Europe if it voted no.

"People always say Ireland is in very good standing at the European level. But why wouldn't we be? We haven't invaded one of the partner countries, we haven't partitioned them. But we're also a small member state, and in the power structure that is the EU, small states have to be very careful in how they protect their status and institutions," said Mary Lou McDonald, a member of the European Parliament with Sinn Fein.

Here in County Tipperary, the "Yes on the EU" bus was stopping in front of village cafes and bakeries; young activists from the majority Fianna Fail party trailed out in yellow T-shirts. They smiled and passed out leaflets touting EU membership as a bonanza for Ireland -- the country received 58 billion euros in European funds for agriculture, infrastructure and other programs from 1973 to 2003. Its exports to other EU states increased from 45 billion euros in 1997 to 87 billion in 2006.

Maire Hoctor, a Fianna Fail lawmaker and a minister of state from Nenagh, strolled the sidewalks, stopping for hugs, handshakes and an occasional tongue-lashing. She was joined by party colleague Jim Casey, mayor of North Tipperary.

"They're not going to give us anything. They're going to take it away, for sure," said Bernie O'Brien, an elderly woman who resisted their overtures.

"I remember when we had nothing in this county: We had a one-way ticket to Britain, and that was our lot," Hoctor told her.

Much of the opposition in rural Ireland involves an issue that has nothing to do with the EU treaty at all: agriculture proposals submitted last month to the World Trade Organization by the European trade commissioner, who is Britain's former envoy to the British province of Northern Ireland.

Irish farmers say the trade proposals could put 50,000 cattle farmers in Ireland out of business by easing importation of Brazilian and Argentine beef and driving down prices. The Irish Farmers Assn. says it will urge its members to vote "no" on the EU treaty if Ireland doesn't exercise its EU veto to block the trade proposals.

"It's just going to decimate farms," McLoughlin told Hoctor. "Sure, we've gotten subsidies from the EU. We got the check in the post, like everyone else. We were bought. We were humiliated. My husband has been told what to grow, when to grow it."

Casey said the issue shouldn't be used to block a treaty that will be good for Ireland.

"We've always negotiated good deals for the farmers in Ireland in Europe, and I'm convinced that will continue," he said. "The EU has provided well for farmers. Since we entered Europe, everything has gotten much, much better." T

he other main source of opposition has come from a group called Libertas, fronted by two wealthy businessmen who have had extensive contracts with the U.S. military. This has caused some in the Irish media to speculate that the group is advancing the agenda of U.S. conservatives, some of whom worry that a stronger, united Europe would undermine U.S. interests on the continent.

But Ulick McEvaddy, a former military intelligence officer whose company has contracts for aerial refueling with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps and who is one of Libertas' biggest supporters, said he was worried about threats to Ireland's independence.

"We're handing over direct responsibility and huge issues of sovereignty to the Brussels parliament," McEvaddy said. "If they believe in this great experiment, put it to all the people of Europe."

Even in County Tipperary, some are willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

"Europe hasn't let us down yet," said Mick Connell, a member of the local council in Templemore, not far from Nenagh. "That should be good enough."

Buchanan and Churchill

From Chronicles Magazine
by Thomas Fleming

Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan. New York: Crown. 544 pp. $25.95

A Review published in The Wanderer . Since this is my unedited text, any errors are the fault of the author and not of The Wanderer. Check out their website at http://thewandererpress.com/.

In his latest book, Patrick J. Buchanan has confronted one of the dominant historical myths of the 20th century, the myth of “the last good war” and the heroic British Prime Minister who not only rallied his nation to victory but, unlike Franklin Roosevelt, refused to be taken in by the schemes of Joseph Stalin. In describing this consensus of history teachers, editorialists, and History Channel watchers as a myth, I do not mean to say that it is entirely or even predominantly untrue. Myths usually include more than a little truth, but myth-makers whittle and polish the rough edges of reality in order to produce a fable that can be easily learned and repeated. Inevitably, reality is further distorted with every retelling until we are left with a simplistic morality play in which virtuous Yankees defeat wicked Confederates, or high-minded cowboys and frontiersman defend their women from murderous thieving redskins—though this latter example, like so many American myths, has been turned upside down, converting the thieving redskins into peace-living Native Americans, whose superior civilization was destroyed by greedy and violent capitalist exploiters.

According to the myth of the World Wars, the United States entered World War I to stop two evil and militaristic German Empires from conquering and subjugating the peace-loving peoples of Europe. The noble Woodrow Wilson, at the end of the war, proclaimed the lofty principles of world peace and self-determination that were invoked to destroy the Prussian war machine and break up the Austro-Hungarian Empire into happy little states inhabited by contented peasants. Ignored in the blissful recitations of the myth are several inconvenient facts: Neither Slovak nor Croat peasants were especially content to be included in states run, respectively, by Czechs and Serbs; the Prussian war machine was no more a threat to world peace than the war machines created by their enemies; and many European and American statesmen viewed the Versailles Treaty as the direct cause both of the rise of Hitler and the second World War. Equally ignored is the Wilson administration’s shaky legal basis for entering into a conflict that appeared to concern the United States very little and in which both sides were guilty of violations of international law.

In this wonderful book, which should be read by all Americans who love their country, Patrick Buchanan has launched a devastating attack on the myth. Because the author makes no assumptions about the historical literacy of the United States, people who have not recently boned up on the history of 20th Century can use this volume as a refresher course that narrates the big events and portrays the leading figures. Buchanan makes the period come alive, as he highlights the ambiguous character of many eminent statesmen of the 20th century. The central figure, of course, is the brilliant and mercurial Winston Churchill, who changed sides so often that hardly anyone trusted him. Rejoining the Conservative Party in 1924, which he had abandoned for the Liberals 20 years earlier, Churchill quipped, “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.” Churchill was nothing if not ingenious.

Buchanan is quite right to emphasize the political influence of Churchill’s family—he was directly descended from John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough–but he might well have devoted a few pages to pointing out that Marlborough was a glory-seeking general and statesman, who betrayed the king who had relied on him and spent much of his career jockeying for power. Winston, who wrote a massive biography of his famous ancestor, modeled his own career on Marlborough’s.

The Churchills tended toward melancholy and dissipation: Winston’s father Randolph was like his son an unreliable maverick, whose irregular habits may have caused the illness (probably syphilis) that took his life at an early age. Winston’s son Randolph is best remembered as the binge-drinking companion we meet in Evelyn Waugh’s diaries. It is remarkable that Winston, who suffered from his family’s predilection for alcoholism, accomplished as much as he did.

Unlike many revisionist historians, Buchanan does not demonize Winston Churchill or deny his excellent qualities: the keen intelligence that early on discerned the Soviet menace, the battlefield valor that would be translated into the moral courage to take unpopular positions, and the political astuteness that enabled him to hold the reins of power throughout most of the War.

He does, however, draw up a formidable set of charges against him: recklessness as the First Lord of the Admiralty who clamored for war with the German empires, folly in arguing for military retrenchments in the dangerous period between the two wars and in urging capitulation to U.S. demands to put and end to the alliance with Japan, an action that served to justify the Japanese attack on Britain’s far-eastern passions, arrogance in securing sanctions that gave Mussolini, by now fearful of Hitler, no choice but to cement his alliance with Germany, obtuseness in writing the entirely unnecessary blank check to Poland, guaranteeing her security and making the Second World War inevitable and giving international legitimacy to Stalin, and finally, his stubborn intransigence toward Nazi Germany that prevented any possibility of a negotiated settlement that would have eliminated or reduced the slaughter of the war and possibly saved the lives of millions of European Jews. When these charges are added to Churchill’s apparent inability to understand Stalin’s plans to take over Eastern Europe, they make a serious indictment of an allegedly great statesman’s career.

The net result of Churchill’s blundering and blindness was the loss of the British colonial empire, the enslavement of Eastern Europe, and a Cold War the weighed heavily on American taxpayers for four decades. Churchill does not bear the burden alone. It goes without saying that equally grave mistakes were made by colleagues like Anthony Eden and by Franklin Roosevelt and his successive cabinets, but the debunking of Churchill’s infallibility is an important step toward recovering a sane and balanced view of the world wars.

Buchanan has made a strong case for the prosecution, though he may not have quite secured a conviction. It is not easy to evaluate Hitler’s motives, and, while he might have been content to have left Britain alone, it is in the nature of ideological empires to expand. One emergency after another is required to justify the assumption of so much power, and the wealth brought by conquest is the fuel that permits the total state to continue functioning. Mussolini may have allowed himself to be driven into the Fuhrer’s arms, but he had his own imperial ambitions that would have sooner or later dragged Italy into imperial adventures the Italian army was not prepared to sustain.

Sober or drunk, Churchill made more than his share of mistakes, and while his admirers have painted altogether too flattering a picture of their hero, one should beware of trusting too much to the judgment of his sometimes envious rivals. David Lloyd-George and Stanley Baldwin had good reason to be suspicious of Winston, but neither Lloyd-George’s hysterical bellicosity nor Baldwin’s pacifism, in retrospect, evince much deeper wisdom or patriotism than Churchill’s own ad hoc approach to foreign affairs, as helter-skelter as his policies sometimes seems. In his diary Count Ciano, who was Mussolini’s son-in-law and foreign secretary, compared the Duce with Churchill, and envied the British their possession of a prudent diplomat who (unlike his own boss) did not make a fool of himself in his public performances.

Mr. Buchanan’s title would suggest that the scope of his book is limited to what historian John Lukacs has called “the duel” between Churchill and Hitler. In fact, half of the book is devoted to events that took place before the outbreak of the war and nearly one fourth to the origins of World War I, the conduct of the war, and its aftermath. While this broader canvas permits the author to paint his anti-myth with broader strokes, it means that he cannot go into the documentary details that would render his arguments more persuasive to careful readers of history. On the other hand, by beginning his tale in the early 20th century (apart from a few broad references to earlier decades), he is unable to set the Great War in its proper context, which certainly includes France’s burning desire to get revenge for her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

These are minor quibbles. Buchanan is not an historian but a journalist and polemicist, using an historical backdrop for contemporary political debate. He states his aim directly, even bluntly in the introduction:

“There has risen among America’s elite a Churchill cult. Its acolytes hold that Churchill was not only a peerless war leader but statesman of unparalleled vision whose life and legend should be the model for every statesman, To this cult, defiance anywhere of U.S. hegemony, resistance anywhere to U.S. power becomes another 1938. Every adversary is “a new Hitler,” every proposal to avert war “another Munich.” Slobodan Milosevic, a party apparatchik who had presided over the disintegration of Yugoslavia—losing Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia—becomes the Hitler of the Balkans for holding Serbia’s cradle province of Kosovo. Saddam Hussein, whose army was routed in 100 hours in 1991 and who had not shot down a U.S. plane in forty thousand sorties, becomes “an Arab Hitler” abut to roll up the Persian Gulf and threaten mankind with ‘weapons of mass destruction.’”

So, to undermine the neoconservative campaign for U.S. global hegemony, Buchanan has set out to destroy the myth of the “necessary war” that justifies our latter-day imperialism. It is a bold thesis, one that needs stating, and it would be churlish, probably, to point out that when Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia in June of 1991 and Croatia in September, the President of the Federal Executive Council was a Bosnian Croat Ante Markovic, not Milosevic, who was then only Prime Minister of Serbia. And, while Sadddam’s war machine may not have amounted to much in the second Gulf War, he had provoked the Iran-Iraq War in which he used chemical weapons that killed vast number of Iranian civilians. If Saddam represented no direct threat to the United States, he was, nonetheless, a violent dictator who threatened not only Iran but also Israel.

I cite these two examples, especially the former, to give some idea of the difficulty of writing historical essays without a very firm grasp of the evidence. If there is a serious flaw in Buchanan’s book, it is the heavy reliance on secondary sources—recent biographies and history books—and the neglect of primary sources, even when they are easily available in published form. An egregious omission is Warren Kimball’s edition of the Churchill/Roosevelt correspondence, but the correspondence and papers of most of the major statesmen he discusses are accessible. These are minor matters, perhaps, and they should not distract us from Buchanan’s accomplishment.

In examining the career of Winston Churchill, Patrick Buchanan has made a highly valuable contribution to American political debate. In praising and recommending the book, I should be less than candid if I did not acknowledge my friendship with the author and my profound agreement with his overall point-of-view. When Christian conservatives seek to understand the revolution that has devastated the world of their fathers, they cannot do better than to turn to Pat’s spirited defense of old republican principles and his relentless attack on the sacred cows who have too long monopolized the pastures of the American conservative mind.

Maureen Hegarty -- "Sweet Heart of Jesus"