The Armenian genocide was also a jihad

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Pope Francis embraces Catholicos Karekin II, the spiritual leader of the Armenian
Apostolic Church, during a mass in St. Peter's Basilica marking the
100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

Unlike some of Pope Francis's other headline-generating pronouncements, his description of Turkey's mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as "genocide" was anything but inadvertent.

Speaking at the Vatican during a Sunday mass to mark the centenary of the slaughter, the pope said it is "widely considered the first genocide of the 20th century" — a quote from Pope John Paul II, who used nearly the same words in 2001. But Francis went further, equating the destruction of the Armenians to the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet bloodbaths under Stalin.

And he linked the genocidal Ottoman assault on Armenia, the world's oldest Christian nation, with the epidemic of violence against Christians today, especially by such radical Islamist terror groups as ISIS, Boko Haram, and al-Shabaab.

Turkey reacted angrily, recalling its ambassador to the Vatican and accusing Francis of distorting history and spreading prejudice. On Twitter, the Turkish foreign minister denounced the pope for fueling "hatred and animosity" with his "unfounded allegations."

That was no surprise, given the government's vehement history of denialism on the subject. To this day, the use of the word "genocide" to describe the killing of the Armenians is a criminal offense in Turkey, and Turkish diplomats labor mightily to defeat genocide-recognition efforts worldwide.

The journalist Thomas de Waal wrote recently in Foreign Affairs that "no other historical issue causes such anguish in Washington." The political debate over "the G-Word" has consumed countless hours, even as the historical debate — as the pope suggested — has been largely resolved. As de Waal explains, Turkey is so adamant for reasons both material and psychological.

Some Turkish politicians fear that acknowledging the Ottoman-perpetrated genocide could trigger claims for financial reparations or territorial concessions. But beyond that is "the emotive power of the word," which was coined in the wake of the Holocaust and is indelibly linked in the public mind with the absolute evil of the Final Solution.

"No one willingly admits to committing genocide," writes de Waal, and many Turks seethe at "being invited to compare their grandparents to the Nazis."

Yet Turkish authorities weren't always so reluctant to accurately label the genocidal evil unleashed against the Armenians a century ago.

Talaat Pasha, the powerful Ottoman interior minister during World War I, certainly didn't disguise his objective. "The Government … has decided to destroy completely all the indicated [Armenians] persons living in Turkey," he brusquely reminded officials in Aleppo in a September 1915 dispatch. "An end must be put to their existence … and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to conscientious scruples."

Read the Jacoby Column

US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, flooded with accounts of the torture, death marches, and butchery being inflicted on the Armenians, remonstrated with Talaat to no avail. "It is no use for you to argue," Morgenthau was told. "We have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians…. The hatred between the Turks and Armenians is now so intense that we have got to finish them. If we don't, they will plan their revenge…. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia."

If some of them survived, it wasn't for lack of effort by the killers. Of the roughly 2 million Armenians living in the country in 1914, 90 percent were gone by 1918.

The death toll was well over one million; innumerable others fled for their lives. To read eyewitness descriptions of the ghastly cruelties the Armenian Christians were made to suffer a century ago is to be reminded that the jihadist savagery of ISIS and al-Qaeda is not an innovation.

That key fact is one the pope, to his credit, refuses to downplay: Armenians were victims not only of genocide, but also of jihad. In imploring his listeners on Sunday to hear the "muffled and forgotten cry" of endangered Christians who today are "ruthlessly put to death — decapitated, crucified, burned alive — or forced to leave their homeland," Francis was reminding the world that the price of irresolution in the face of determined Islamist violence is as steep as ever.

The jihadists of 1915 murdered "bishops and priests, religious women and men, the elderly, and even defenseless children and the infirm." The world knew what was happening; the grisly details were extensively reported at the time. Just as they are now, and with as little effect.

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Saudis betray the U.S. with double edged sword

Saudi betrays the United States with a double edged sword from the files of Ken LaRive at the Examiner.com

Time to Take My Slice of the Pie

The year 1983 is still remembered here in Louisiana. It was the year that Saudi opened the oil valves of OPEC, flooding the world with cheap oil.

Our President Reagan used that well-designed opportunity to send the USSR economy into a tailspin, who struggled with totalitarian communism that ended in a total collective default.

In the middle of their own Vietnam in Afghanistan, trying to secure a pipeline there, and up to their necks in debt trying to keep up in an escalating cold war, the combination was lethal... and as they defaulted on their dept to our Western Banks, their country, along with a bound social system, disintegrated...

In the middle of that well-orchestrated process, our American Oilfields were devastated. Here in Lafayette, Louisiana, seven out of nine local banks went belly up, and it took six years to get back a little over 50 percent. With that year as a benchmark, we never have... And the dreams to become energy independent, also dissolved...


The sword slices Russia...

The USSR, is not the Russia of today...

All of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, but planned for decades, the banking cartels and the MIC, (military industrial complex), war corporations and bankers are now promoting another economic cold war with Russia, and OPEC/Saudi seems to be stepping up to again destroy Russia. Why, and how?

And ISIS, the perfect distraction, an enemy unheard of just a few months ago, is driving around in US Humvees and flashing brand new weapons seemingly made for our military, and the complexity and convoluted truth of this matter leaves the American Spirit fearful, and confused... But profits are escalating, and the military industrial complex gun-running is staying busy fighting another faceless enemy, supplying both sides.

And in the middle of this new Banker orchestration, Mr. Putin is warning them to release their strangle hold on his country with threats of another European War... And as the Russian Economy sinks, and the Ukraine just can't make up its mind who to pay tribute to, opportunity is rifle... and as the Carpet Baggar laughs, another resounding milestone goes virtually unnoticed by the common people... that we are now well over 18 trillion in debt.

And some of us are tired of fear, and of being a sacrificial lamb for a One World Government... we want our country back.

And the sword slashes ...

Today, the American Oilfield is facing another devastating blow as Saudi is again flooding the market with oil, sending prices below $50 US. Too cheep to drill, the layoffs in the oil-patch are beginning in earnest.

Amazingly, we were posed for another boom by speculators just last year, not only to become energy independent, but with our new (so called) American technology in Fracking, we now have a 100 year surplus of that product. The transition from oil to gas promises to usher in a new age of clean and abundant fuel.

It could be a long standing and viable economic boom for America, but the valves are open, and instead of managing the flow, they are attempting to destroy both America and Russia, for profit.

And the sword slashes...

This year, in 2015, for the first time in 45 years... where an LNG terminal in Alaska supplies Japan with LNG, we will be exporting natural gas all around the world from a terminal that costs billions to build, right here in Louisiana.

So amazingly viable, they are widening the Panama Canal to accommodate the new giant LNG transport ships, with unlimited financing from around the world, and have in-hand signed contracts that blue-lines that industry for years to come.

A second project has recently been approved to build, and that will double the previous export opportunities of Cheniere Energy, the first one up and running this very year...

Slash!

As it seems most everything in this world, especially when it is about power, control, and fear that oils that great war machine... the world is not the same as 1983. There are new names, new enemies, but the controlling power is the same... Similarly, we were just about to become energy independent again, here in America, and our previous suppliers, who have made trillions... do not want to see western dependence end.

We must look closely at why we are being force-fed low-quality oil from Canada with the attempt to take up the slack, carving up our country with another pipeline? They want to send that oil to our own Cancer Ally to refine, because they have the pressure of environmentalist to contend with, same as those who do not want the pipeline here. Think about that for just a moment! Is it the environment, or is it some company's bottom line?

I'll bet that it is a profit margin every time...And though it is promoted by media to be American oil, North America is not the United States of America. It is a ruse... When we say “Drill here. Drill now!” we are not talking about Canada, Mexico, or the dying Venezuela, but the United States of America. That sir, is energy independence... And as I am a Libertarian, I say, America First. Put America first. Drill in the United States of America!

Slash!

OPEC/Saudi does not like Russia because they are considered competition, along with all BLOC countries. Just a few years ago the Jewish Communist Oligarch that had the country by the throat since the Bolshevik Revolution, was disbanded, and a new Capitalistic government has emerged from the ciaos of rogue power structures that some have called Mafia.

Fortunately, however, out of the fray, both civil liberties and Christianity is on the rise, just as ours are dissolving. Orthodox Christianity, in Russia, is vying to become the national religion, and though Mr. Putin is reluctant to accept this ideology of Church State, he has come forward with a public statement that he considers himself a Christian.

This has caused a national furor, a new love of country, where just sixty years ago all religions were dismantled or went underground. The horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution is still remembered, and they do not want that to return.

Indeed, OPEC/Saudi, the country where our new President bowed to their Murderous Oil Prince, has a great manipulative power over our Congress, and together with AIPAC, now controls our country from the inside out... Our Congress is the best money can buy, and it seems evident that they do not care one iota for our civil liberties, our economy, our constitution, our sovereignty, our natural God-given rights, and are bought and paid to promote their corporate sponsors.

They are traitors... And they should be fired. Term limits would help, but only an informed populous could have any hope in achieving that lofty ideal... Individual responsibility seeks truth, and both are in short supply.

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Author's Note: Yesterday I picked up my new Christmas shotgun at my local shooting range. Parked in front I saw several State Police cars with one that had SUPERVISOR printed on the door in silver letters.
On my way out I noticed him looking at some leather holsters, and with a spur-of-the-moment decision walked up to him, trying to project calmness... “Sir,” I said, “may I ask you a question?” I tried to smile.

“Sure.” he said, and he looked at me right in the eyes.

“Well, I know this is out of the blue, but I'd like to ask you if you are an Oath Keeper.”

His mind clicked, and I could see the wheels turning...”Yes, yes I am sir, and why do you ask?”

I could feel the blood moving to my face, with a lump in my throat too, just like the thirty other times I have done this...“Well, you took an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies both domestic and foreign.” I said, “Do you read the Constitution?”

“Yes I do read the Constitution, and yes I take my oath very seriously.”

I put my hand out to him, and he took it with a strong grip, and I said "Thank you for your service..." And for just a moment more we held eye contact, and what I saw there gave me hope, and a love too, for my country and this fine young man who is on the front lines. And as I turned and walked out, I heard him say:

"Thanks for asking."

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Christian persecution in our U.S. Army

Disturbing Christian persecution in US Army from the files of Colonel Allen B. West

Meet Lieutenant "Jerry Boykin"

I received a very disturbing letter and call to action from a mentor, friend, American warrior, and Executive Vice President of the Family Research Council, Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin.

Lieutenant General Boykin is a founding member of America’s elite Delta Force.

Today General Boykin still fights, and for all the right causes, such as that of Army Chaplain Captain Joseph Lawhorn. Lawhorn is just another victim of the secular humanist policy influence led by Mikey Weinstein against the Judeo-Christian faith heritage in our military. Weinstein has advocated for Christians in the military to be punished for professing their faith.

But as you can see in this below letter of admonition, Captain Lawhorn’s commander at Ft. Benning, Colonel David G. Fivecoat issued the Army Chaplain a letter of concern for speaking of his faith –a letter that will go into Lawhorn’s personnel file that has adverse consequences for selection for promotion. Why in God’s name would Fivecoat be concerned about an Army Chaplain speaking of his faith during suicide prevention training?

Ladies and gents, please join in and sign the petition to have this letter removed and perhaps a letter of reprimand should be placed in Col Fivecoat’s personnel file. Thus incident is appalling and we should all be outraged over the persecution of Christian faith in our military. Scroll down to read the letter.

December 17, 2014

Dear Friend,

This cannot stand. When a military chaplain cannot openly speak about his faith, military disarmament has reached a level that no budget cuts could ever produce.

On November 20th, Capt. Joseph Lawhorn, U.S. Army Chaplain at Fort Benning, participated in a mandatory suicide awareness and prevention briefing in which he gave a presentation describing resources – both spiritual and secular – that were available for handling such grave mental health situations. He went further and discussed his personal struggles with depression, describing the spiritual and religious steps that helped him during those dark times in his life.

As a result of the chaplain’s discussion of his faith, he was called into his brigade commander’s office on Thanksgiving Day. There Col. David G. Fivecoat issued Chaplain Lawhorn a Letter of Concern that is to remain in his personnel file for the duration of his stay at Fort Benning.

This type of letter can be devastating for career military personnel and would likely prohibit further professional advancement of Chaplain Lawhorn.

The fact that a chaplain was reprimanded for discussing his faith in a suicide prevention course is beyond belief. It casts a chilling effect upon other chaplains and military personnel who would speak about their faith. How else would a Christian chaplain be expected to respond to a crisis that is plaguing our men and women in uniform?

This kind of intimidation must be eradicated from our armed forces. Please join me in signing our petition to Secretary of the Army John McHugh to rescind the Letter of Concern and to reprimand Col. Fivecoat for violating protections afforded to all military personnel enacted into law in the National Defense Authorization Act.

With your help, we can help put on notice those who would be emboldened to take similar actions against chaplains in the future that actions like this cannot stand. Please sign this petition.

Sincerely, Boykin ~ USA (Retired.) Executive Vice President

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Hating Santa Claus

Hating Santa Claus from Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Read Caruba On Line at Facts-not-Fantasy

I receive Free Inquiry magazine monthly even though I never subscribed to it. The magazine is read by atheists who prefer to be called “humanists.” The Council for Secular Humanism that publishes the magazine has “Affirmations of Humanism” that begin with the assertion that they are “committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.”

I try to apply reason to everything I write and the best science available if the topic involves science. The problem is that most problems arise out of a lack of reason. Almost always, emotion is the factor most in evidence.

Given the horrors of war, all well documented, one might think that nations would do everything possible to avoid it. Instead, war remains a top priority in a world where conflict exists everywhere. Nations must arm themselves against their neighbors. Appeasement never works. Denying the evil intentions of a nation doesn’t work. Relying on an “international” organization, the United Nations, doesn’t work.

I don’t think I have spent a day of my life when war or terrorism was not active somewhere in the world. Read world history. It is one long record of wars. The only thing "reason" can tell you is that some nations and people are just downright evil.

Atheism or humanism attracts people who take pride in their intellect, their knowledge, and their rejection of religions, all of which they deem to be advocating the “supernatural” because they depend on the faithful’s belief in an omnipotent God.

Humans have done this, as best as one can determine, since their earliest beginnings, though they tended initially to deify mountains and other natural phenomenon. Add in a belief in unseen demons that afflict one with disease and you have a humanity that, in many parts of the world, exists today.

The Christian holy day of Christmas, the birthday of Jesus, has taken on worldwide dimensions, celebrated in some fashion by Christian and non-Christian alike.

Though not generally known, December 25 is the birthday of a former pagan god called Mithras. He was the son of the virgin Anahita. He is described as wrapped in swaddling clothes, placed in a manger, and attended by shepherds. Mithras was considered a great traveling teacher and he had twelve companions or “disciples.” He performed miracles. And, if you’re thinking that the early Christian leaders adapted these elements to attract believers in Mithras to believe in Jesus, you’re right.

All religions except Judaism adapted in the interest of acquiring more adherents. Judaism resisted this and remains small in numbers even if it remains large in the minds of non-Jews who regard it with a combination of awe and indignation.

Neither Jews, nor other non-Christians, are about to give up an element of Christmas loved by all, Santa Claus.

Well, not all. Ryan T. Cragun, an atheist, a sociologist, and the author of “On the‘Evils’ of Santa Claus” in the December edition of Free Inquiry is clearly not a fan of Santa Claus.

He says of himself and his wife, “when we gave religion the boot over a decade ago” they decided “that we would continue to celebrate a completely secular Christmas.” So you can be an atheist, but you can still celebrate a holiday devoted to the man who Christians deem the son of God? When the Cragon’s had a child they wanted to share joy of the Christmas season with him. That’s called having it both ways.

Cragun, however, began to see Santa Claus as a stand-in for God. Why else does he have the power to know if you’ve been “naughty or nice”? Why else does he have the ability to bestow or withhold presents if a child has failed to measure up by being nice?

Cragun regards this as “a pernicious invasion of personal space.” As an atheist he objects to the “idea that some supernatural entity is always watching you—and in some traditions can also read your mind. Why is this potentially abusive? Because it gives people the sense that they are never really alone.” As far as Cragun is concerned, Santa Claus “serves as a legitimizer of monotheism,” the belief in a universal God of all mankind.

At this point I should “confess” (pun intended) that I have always believed in God and, despite my intellect, my ability to reason, and my particular faith, I think Santa Claus is one of the great metaphorical inventions of mankind; a saintly, jolly old man who flies around the world giving gifts to children, reminding them of the value of being “nice.” That is how Santa reflects the moral message of Christmas no matter what religion one practices or not.

Among the Humanist statement of principles is the following:

“We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.”

A lot of that seems to have been borrowed from Judaism and Christianity, and with unseen irony Cragon says “I’m fully in favor of a secular Christmas—let’s steal the holiday back from the Christians who hijacked it from the Romans, from the pagans, and from nature.”

Since we are all—old and young—surrounded by images of Santa Claus between now and Christmas day, it’s likely the Cragon’s little boy will make up his mind at some point that it was fun to believe in Santa Claus and pass the tradition along to his children.

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