Mideast Christians under siege

More Islamic hypocrisy, the so-called religion of peace and tolerance. My ass!

Crucifying the copts
Mideast Christians under siege
by



Benny Avni


It's shaping up to be a bad Christmas for one of the oldest Christian sects in the Middle East, where Christianity was born -- and an even bleaker future for Egyptian Copts.

Police fired live ammunition last month at Copts protesting the government-halted construction of a house of worship, the Church of the Virgin Mary and Saint Michael Archangel, supposedly for failure to acquire the proper permits. At least 100 emonstrators were arrested, 60 injured -- and a 19-year-old Christian student died from a gunshot wound.

The anger quickly spilled to émigré Coptic communities from Australia to Europe to midtown Manhattan.

The attack on Egypt's Christians go far beyond denial of church permits, said Magda Gendy, who articipated in the peaceful East Side demonstration along with thousands of other Egyptian-American Copts last week. Increasingly, Christian girls aged 12 to 16 are being kidnapped, forced to marry Muslim men and convert to the religion of their "husbands," she told me.

But while Copts -- 10 percent of Egypt's mostly Muslim population of 80 million -- have always suffered discrimination, this incident presents a new and dangerous turn.

"Before, it used to be just the Muslims" who attacked their Christian neighbors, Gendy said. "Now it's the government." Copts blame the district's governor, Sayyed Abdel Aziz, a former army general.

Like most officials in the government of the aging President Hosni Mubarak, Aziz simply denies permits for any Christian symbol of worship -- from churches to cemeteries.

Aziz "wanted to burn the church," said Sam, who only gave his first name for fear of retaliation against his family back in Cairo.

The only political opposition allowed in today's Egypt is that centered on a mosque. By turning a blind eye to attacks on Christians -- or worse, joining them -- the government helps to deflect public anger caused by the fast-deteriorating economy.

As things get worse, the memory of days when Copts held high government positions fast fades. "Hillary Clinton needs to speak out more often," one demonstrator after another told me last week.

Yes, a State Department report last month noted that Egypt's "government failed to prosecute perpetrators of violence against Coptic Christians in a number of cases," and concluded that the country's Christians "face personal and collective discrimination." But Mubarak's government shrugged off the report, saying that it would only listen to "internationally recognized" authorities, such as the United Nations.

Clinton certainly can do a lot of good this holiday season by highlighting the plight of Christian minorities in Egypt and the rest of the Arab Middle East.

Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups (Shiite as well as Sunni) increasingly attack Christians from Iraq to the Palestinian territories. In Lebanon, the once influential Maronite community is split up and quickly losing political power as the Iranian-backed Hezbollah is taking over. Why?

According to a major Vatican report issued last spring, bishops from across the Middle East blamed the decline of Christianity in the region on political "instability" -- as in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Speaking in Cyprus, Pope Benedict XVI made an appeal for "international efforts" to resolve the region's conflicts, "especially in the Holy Land."

Praying for Palestinian-Israeli peace may be appropriate, but the pope surely knows that Israel (despite increasing harassment by Muslims in the country's Arab towns) is practically the only place in the region where a Christian minority thrives.

The report elsewhere fingers "political Islam," which -- along with those who let it flourish, such as Egyptian government officials -- tolerates no other religious or secular beliefs.

In fact, one of the top regional emissaries cited in the Vatican report, Turkey's top bishop, Luigi Padovese, was assassinated as the report was issued in June. According to the Turkish press, the man who stabbed him to death yelled "Allahu Akbar!"

John Wayne in Big Jake

It’s very hard for me to pick a favorite John Wayne film.

But Big Jake is one that I find watching more times than others. It’s not as good as The Searchers, Stagecoach or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it doesn’t have to be.

Wayne is such a bigger than life presence that he makes an average western film memorable. Richard Boone is also very good in this 1971 film about a grandfather, Wayne, on a quest to recover his kidnapped grand son.

Worth picking up.

Thanks to repeal of DADT, soldiers can’t use phony “I’m Gay” declarations to get out of military service with honorable discharges

The Left and the Homosexual lobby have sold the American people a bill of goods by portraying the plight of homosexuals surviving in the United Sates armed forces under conditions that prohibit them from being their true selves.



What a crock!



The Left never needs to worry about facts to sell their ideas. It’s always about a template that suits a particular agenda, namely homosexuals not being able to shout, “We’re here we’re queer, so why can’t I tell the world?”



But, facts are stubborn things and the facts are that a whopping majority of homosexual discharges under DADT were made by men just wanting to get our of the military without even being homosexuals at all.



AFA.net reports that according to National Review Online, there may be a whole lot of homosexuals who just got an unpleasant surprise. With the repeal of the law prohibiting homosexual service in the United States military, they just lost their “get out of jail free” card.



The hyperventilating out-of-the-mainstream media has been full of supposed stories of horrific discrimination against homosexuals in the military which they say resulted in many of the best and brightest getting ash-canned from the military through invidious witch-hunts.



However, the facts tell a much different story. And while facts have never troubled the left, let alone played a significant role in any single part of their worldview, these facts actually should be sobering for our pretty-in-pink wannabe soldiers.



It turns out - get this - that 85% of all homosexuals who got discharged on the basis of the law that prohibits open homosexual service in the armed services threw themselves out of the military.



This little factoid is not the fanciful production of AFA or FRC. It comes straight from the Pentagon itself.



In other words, these gay soldiers didn’t get outed by some snitch. They outed themselves. They went to their commanding officer and said, I’m gay, get me out of here.



According to the Pentagon, “approximately 85% of discharges for homosexual conduct have been made on the basis of statements by the Service member.”



And even more distressing for our would-be limp-wristed enlistees, the Pentagon adds helpfully that “approximately 25% of these discharges have occurred in the first four months of a Service member’s service.”



In other words, homosexuals - or people who suddenly discovered latent homosexual tendencies when they could use it to parachute out of the military - signed up for the all-volunteer army, got a few weeks into basic and said, forget this noise. I’m outtahere.



All they had to do was admit they were gay - whether they were or not - and they got their walking papers along with an honorable discharge.



And don’t think for a moment that straight soldiers didn’t perjure themselves - claiming they were gay when they weren’t - just to go back home to Momma.



According to NRO:

As one Col. Om Prakash put it in a 2009 report for the U.S. War College, one possible explanation for the rise of discharges for homosexuality observed after DADT was that “given the recent reduction in stigma associated with homosexuality in society at large, simply declaring one is homosexual, whether true or not, is the fastest way to avoid further military commitment and receive an honorable discharge.”



Well, all that’s gone now, both for gays and straights willing to tell odious lies about themselves. If a homosexual signs up now, he’s stuck with the whole magilla. Go to your superior officer now and say, hey, I’m a flaming homosexual, I hate the army, let me out of here, the superior officer will say, tough darts, those days are gone. You’re stuck with us now, Nancy-boy.



So, who’s sorry now?



More details here



Memeorandum

On President Obama's Hawaiian Reading List: Book on President Reagan

I knew Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan was a great president. Sorry Barack, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

The Drudge Report says the White House says that President Obama plans on spending some of his Hawaiian vacation reading, and among the books on his list is one about President Reagan.
Obama will be digging into Lou Cannon's biography, "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime."

The president has been reading up on books about other presidents in the past few months. Most recently before the midterm elections, he was reading "The Clinton TAPES" by Taylor Branch, among others.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a briefing Wednesday that reading will be part of Obama's vacation plans, "He'll read a good amount of stuff. He'll have, obviously, his daily intelligence briefing, as well as probably a novel or two."

More details here


Everything Reagan says about Jimmy Carter can be easily transferred to Barack Obama since their policies exactly the same. There's nothing new about Obama. He implementing the same Liberal/Progressive policies these people have been wanting to foist on the American people since Roosevelt.


Do you really think any of the things that Reagan preached like government being the problem instead of the solutioin is going to sink into Obala’s Leftist brain?

Mememorandum

meorandumDon’t hold your breath!

NY gov David Patterson commutes sentence of wrongly convicted John White in racially charged case

Gov David Patterson did a tremendous thing by commuting the sentence of John White, an African Americad dad, who was defending his home and his family aginast a White mob of teenages out to get his son. White shoud have neve been convicted in the shooting of white teen who had no business terroringm the White’s home in the dead of night. See prior post here




ABC Local News reports that New York Governor David Paterson on Thursday commuted the sentence of a Long Island man convicted in a racially-charged shooting.

John White was found guilty of manslaughter in the 2006 shooting of 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro, who was killed outside White's home in Miller Place.

He claimed Cicciaro threatened to attack his son.
A judge sentenced White to two to four years in prison, a fraction of the maximum. He finally went to prison in July this year after his appeals were rejected.

Paterson did not issue a pardon, but commuted White's sentence to time served.

"Our society strives to
be just, but the pursuit of justice is a difficult and arduous endeavor," Paterson said. "While the incident and Mr. White's trial engendered much controversy and comment, and varying assessments of justice were perceived, its most common feature was heartbreak. My decision today may be an affront to some and a joy to others, but my objective is only to seek to ameliorate the profound suffering that occurred as a result of this tragic event."

The commutation is conditioned upon White not engaging in subsequent violation of law.

The case began in 2006, when White's son Aaron woke him to say that Cicciaro and a gang of friends were heading to their home for a fight.

John White admitted to taking a gun and shooting Cicciaro in the face, but he said he did it out of fear it was a lynch mob attack.

More details here

Justice has been served!

Muslim Group Launches “Christmas Is Evil” Poster Campaign

Don't you love Muslims?

From Gateway Pundint

How very leftist of them…A radical Muslim group launched a “Christmas is evil” poster campaign hoping that their efforts would help destroy Christmas.The Daily Mail reported:

Fanatics from a banned Islamic hate group have launched a nationwide poster campaign denouncing Christmas as evil.

Organisers plan to put up thousands of placards around the UK claiming the season of goodwill is responsible for rape, teenage pregnancies, abortion, promiscuity, crime and paedophilia.

They hope the campaign will help ‘destroy Christmas’ in this country and lead to Britons converting to Islam instead.

Memeorandum

Caprice Bourret strutting her little black bikini stuff at Saint Barthelemy.

The Daily Mail reports that most mere mortals struggle to look good on the beach, what with the heat, unflattering sun cream slathered on, and wet hair.

But not model and lingerie mogul Caprice Bourret, 39.

She seemed uncannily ready for her close-up, as she sauntered casually in a tiny bikini - and full-make-up - at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint Barthelemy.

Mind you, to her credit, the model did to have an emergency on her hands, which perhaps explained the lack of clothes on her hike.

Ms Bourrett appeared to be desperately trying to get a message on her BlackBerry - after all, how else can you discuss your next modelling picture opportunity with photographers?

Still, most people would want to show off if they had such a stunning figure in a teeny black two-piece to show the folks back home what they're missing.

More details here