Sweden - The New Evil Empire, Suppressing the People By Rapist Mercenaries

Quick brief-

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/14/food-stamp-glitch-leaves-walmart-shelves-bare-like-a-tornado-had-came-through/

A problem with government-issued food stamp and/or welfare cards resulting in cards that showed no purchase limit had (given the current state of US society) predicable consequences:

"Shelves at Walmart stores in Louisiana were cleared in a shopping frenzy over the weekend after a glitch in the Electronic Benefits Transfer system allowed government food stamp recipients to make purchases without spending limits.

For two hours Saturday night, customers rang up overflowing cartloads of food at stores in Springhill and Mansfield, La., after cashiers allowed them to use their EBT cards anyway despite not showing limits, KSLA-TV reported..........."
I suggest watching the video in the link at top.

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Considering our traditional view of Scandinavian countries, the phrase "Evil Empire" of course sounds ridiculous - that is until one understands the crimes that are being perpetrated on their citizens (as with all of Western Europe). Even Ronald Reagan was mercilessly attacked by the Leftist press, both on the US and Western Europe, for the coining of that term in the 80's. 

Typing "indigenous", "native", "rape, or "gang-rape" in the search bar on the upper right of this page will produce several posts treating the horrors that are becoming the norm for Western Europeans who do not enjoy the fortune of living in rural areas and have thus far not been plagued by the rampant violent crime brought to their nations by the Multiculturalists of the Left.

Fjordman, as he usually does, presents a clear picture of a People who have been targeted for (firstly) marginalization coupled with maximization to be followed by a status of second-class citizens with no recourse to justice of any kind - this in a land that their ancestors settled roughly 4,000 (some having arrived long before that) years ago. A large share of the suppression of the People is being undertaken by the rapist mercenaries that have been (and are still being)  imported by the Left in order to break down a society once- envied for its formerly peaceful environment. 

Hat tip to Gates of Vienna.

http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/10/sweden-a-new-hell-for-women/

Note that rape in Scandinavian nations was once, before the post-multicultural/Islamic immigration period, so rare as to be comparatively nonexistent. 

".......By any estimate, we are in all likelihood dealing with hundreds of thousands of rapes per generation, perhaps between half a million and one million. That’s an incredibly large number for a country with just over nine million inhabitants. It resembles war. Tens of thousands of these victims are children...........

A report from 2011 showed a shocking rise in the number of consummated rapes against children under the age of 15. The number rose from a little over 200 in 1995 to about 1400 in 2008. The curve was then still rising. It is conceivable that some of this could be related to a change in the legal definition of rape, but the increase is so staggering that is highly likely to reflect a very real increase in the number of rapes in Swedish society.

The Danish author Morten Uhrskov Jensen looked into the official numbers and found that in the first seven months of 2013, Stockholm County alone registered 300 — three hundred — reported rapes of minors under the age of 15. That’s more than 500 a year, if the trend continues. This figure was for a single region only, not for the entire country.

Minors under the age of 15 are children by virtually any definition. Moreover, as mentioned previously we always have to take into account that not all such cases are reported. We are thus dealing with in all probability thousands of child rapes annually in Sweden, and by extension tens of thousands per decade.

As Morten Uhrskov Jensen stated, these figures are nothing less than horrific for what used to be a peaceful Scandinavian country. These victims are not just faceless numbers in a statistic; they are very real human beings. Many of them have their lives destroyed. In some cases, the victims have become so traumatized that they’ve taken their own lives. The families of the victims will also be affected by the trauma of such crimes.

One should keep in mind here that this comes on top of various types of sexual harassment and abuse that are not technically classified as rape. Besides, we have countless other cases of non-sexual abuse, assault, robberies, harassment and violence targeting people of both sexes on a regular basis. In combination, this generates an atmosphere of violence and fear.

There were rapes in this region before non-European mass immigration, of course, but not nearly as many as now. In addition to sheer numbers, the brutality has gotten worse, sometimes involving sadistic torture. Gang rapes used to be exceedingly rare in Scandinavia, but sadly, this is no longer the case. As we have just seen above, the number of rapes involving minors and children has also shown a shocking increase.

Rape of men, too, used to be uncommon in this part of the world. Not anymore. A 17-year-old boy reported being gang raped by several men in the town of Växjö in southern Sweden. In 2012, 132 men in Sweden reported being raped. Once more, we have to assume that quite a few people don’t file a report at all. The humiliation, shame and stigma attached to being a male rape victim are presumably at least as strong as for female victims.

The Swedish mass media and political elites are very careful not to suggest any connection between these rapes and mass immigration from Third World countries. Yet there is every reason to suspect that such a connection exists. We know from other Western European countries that immigrants from certain regions and cultures, particularly from the Islamic world and Africa, are disproportionately represented as perpetrators in rape cases......

A report from 2006 detailed how being a Swedish girl or young woman increasingly means feeling unsafe in your own country. They are scared of being raped, a possibility that appears very real to them. Many are planning how to go home at night, how to defend themselves or how to run all the way home if they have to.

[Comments from a "Swedish" Muslim about raping Swedish girls as opposed to Muslims]

“It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid, in an interview about a gang rape involving immigrant perps. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably f***ed before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame.” He claims that it is “far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean.” Hamid laughed over his own choice of words. “I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get f***ed to pieces.”...........


Suggesting that the ongoing rise in violent crime might have something to do with mass immigration of alien and aggressive cultures is quite literally banned by law. In March 2007 during a rally supported by SSU, the Social Democratic Youth League, a man carried a sign reading, “While Swedish girls are being gang raped by immigrant gangs the SSU is fighting racism.” He was promptly arrested and later sentenced to a fine. His crime? He had “expressed disrespect for a group of people with reference to their national or ethnic background.” The local court rejected the man’s free speech argument because even free speech has its limits, and he had clearly acted in too provocative a manner.

While the rape numbers are horrific, they make up just one element of the spread of violent crime. Sweden used to be a safe country not so many decades ago. Yet Swedish streets are now plagued by muggings, shootings, robberies, gang rivalries and mafias on a scale previously unknown in modern Scandinavian history.........

In late August 2013, at the exact same time as prominent [Read elitist]  non-Muslim Swedish women were donning the veil to show “solidarity” with Muslims, seven Afghan Muslim asylum seekers were convicted of brutally gang-raping a Swedish woman in the small town of Mariannelund. Another man who masturbated next to the woman’s head while the other seven were raping her for hours was acquitted, though. He received 130,000 kroner in damages for his ordeal. This was sponsored by Swedish taxpayers, presumably including the family of his victim.

Because of such examples, the writer Eva Agnete Selsing [Her post at bottom] in Denmark has come to the conclusion that “Sweden is the Evil Empire.” She was referring to a new kind of totalitarianism and Utopian ideology of open borders...........

Is that comparison [of the Soviet Union] to Sweden hyperbole? Maybe, maybe not. Selsing was not arguing that this new form of Multicultural totalitarianism was as militant and violent as some of the earlier totalitarian movements, but that doesn’t mean that it is not harmful or dangerous. In her view, the explosive cocktail of extreme political correctness and rampant mass immigration is creating a “catastrophe” in Swedish society. The ruthless authoritarian suppression of dissent upheld by the ruling elites and the media establishment has transformed Sweden into something approaching a “prison of the mind.”

One of the most horrific examples is the country’s rape statistics, which are the worst in Europe. Parallel to mass immigration from Third World countries, the number of recorded rapes, also of children, has exploded. Eva Agnete Selsing wonders how the “hypocritical” Swedish political and media elites can sleep at night, knowing fully well what kind of nightmare of violence and street crime they are pushing on their own people. Her conclusion is that “If your actions lead to violence, abuse, threats, repression and social control of your fellow citizens (who have never sought the reality that you have put them in), and you refuse to relate to this, then you are an evil person. And the evil empire consists of human beings.”

Perhaps Swedish authorities should worry more about the incredibly large number of rapes in their own country, and less about transsexuals in Serbia or gay adoption rights in Russia."

-Excerpts from an article by Danish writer Eva Agnete Selsing on the crimes of the Swedish Left:

Google translate does a fair job of providing and English version of the text.

http://www.b.dk/kommentarer/ondskabens-imperium

"Evil empire located on the other side of the strait. Where an explosive cocktail of extreme political correctness, massive immigration and effective sense suppression of dissent, giving a disaster-in-waiting............

For example, the terrifying rape statistics, when Sweden by the UN with the second most rapes per capita in the world.Figures from Brå who prepare Sweden's official crime statistics show that in 2011 alone, almost two out of 50 (3.4 percent) of women aged 16-24 years exposed to a rape.There are probably not talking about reviews, but actually committed rape. They state also that 58 percent of rapes were talking about people who were completely unknown to the vulnerable. Then there is mass immigration, in number far surpasses the Danish (yet). Sweden faced with a very large amount of people who apparently are not interested in becoming integrated and increasingly rampant residential and making life uncertain for both government employees and other citizens. The nasty is that over Sweden - as in Denmark, for that matter - living far from problem areas and therefore do not relate to it. Indifferent to the people who have to live in fear of the so-called 'vulnerable' areas persist elite Swedes with their infamous political shaming of those responding to multicultural inferno. An almost bestial indifference.

Sweden's Evil Empire because here we see 2000 new century totalitarianism unfolded.This-Semitism differs from the previous century's total systems by being neither militant, violent or explicit populist. But it does not make it less dangerous: the combination of scholar-held ideologies that multiculturalism and feminism and reality contempt in a politically correct opinion regimen is fatal to a society. This constituted an attitude jail for those who must live with the consequences of the power elite decisions......

How the hypocrites in the Swedish upper class can see themselves in the mirror day after day, is a mystery to decent people: If your deeds leads to violence, abuse, threats, repression and social control of your fellow citizens (who have never sought the reality that you have put them in), and you can not relate to it, then you are an evil person. And evil empire consists aware of people. Heja, Sweden!

Veterans Tear Down Barricades, March on White House

I find that the importance of the events from yesterday and today can only be diminished by excessive comments.Consequently, I will leave the reader to render his own judgements from excerpts of the accounts:

Mind you, these crowds were not made up of "students" nor were they of people who detest much about the United States (or blame that nation for ruining their lives) - they were tax-paying, patriotic Americans who likely would never have joined a single major protest in their entire lives.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/12/watch-the-moving-moment-when-fed-up-americans-break-through-barriers-at-the-lincoln-memorial-walk-up-the-steps-and-celebrate/  (videos in link)

"Protesters broke down barricades at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Saturday, walking up the steps en masse in a moving scene.

Security from the National Park Service reportedly did nothing to stop them, reports KLTV-TV......

The crowd energized itself by chanting “Tear down these walls!”[Reaganesque] and singing “God Bless America” and other patriotic songs.

“Tractor-trailers headed down 17th Street toward the Mall, blaring their horns. The Metropolitan Police Department blocked off the street, prompting the crowd to head up the street, shouting at the police to move their vehicles,” WTOP reports......"

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/13/we-are-marching-to-the-white-house-to-return-the-barricades-million-vet-march-descends-on-washington/ (powerful video in link)

"....Members of the so-called “Million Vet March” descended on Washington, D.C., Sunday to protest the Obama administration’s decision to close the city’s public memorials.

Thousands of demonstrators arrived early in the morning and tore down barricades that had been set up to block people from visiting the popular attractions, WTOP reports.

The group said military personnel and veterans are “being used a political pawns in the ongoing government shutdown and budget crisis,” according to a statement on its website.

The group also said it has no political leaning, but believes that the closing of memorials is “a despicable act of cowardice.”....."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/13/vets-march-on-washington-roll-into-wwii-memorial-protest-outside-white-house/

"Veterans marched on Sunday in Washington in protest of the partial government shutdown that has kept them and other Americans from visiting war memorials across the country, with support from several star conservatives.

“This is the people's memorial,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told a crowd of several hundred gathered near the WWII Memorial on the closed National Mall, which has become a national symbol of the shutdown and the country’s response. “Simple question: Why is the federal government spending money to keep veterans out of the memorial? Why did they spend money to keep people out of Mount Vernon, Mount Rushmore? Our veterans should be above political games.”

Veterans, including many in wheelchairs, took down police barricades and entered the memorial at about midday as others took the protest to the edge of the White House South Lawn.

“Today somebody’s wife [or] husband is dead in Afghanistan. Is somebody going to pay her husband [or] his wife or their children?” one protester shouted at the White House, referring to the partial shutdown cutting off benefits for the survivors of military personnel.

Some of the metal barricades were carried the roughly half-mile walk from the memorial to the White House, where they were left near the fence in front of Pennsylvania Avenue...."

As Churchill once noted, this may in time prove to be "....the end of the beginning".

French National Front Leader Addresses Immigration Crush

The Left (with Pope Francis recently joining them) have long been in the business of making Westerners feel guilty about the plight of people who illegally enter their nations. As with the sob stories about Mexicans and others from Central American facing criminals, dehydration, and other hazards (while breaking the law) that are routinely leveled at us to make us feel bad, Western Europeans too have been the targets of propaganda designed to cause one to feel guilty about protecting the integrity and security of their nations.

A case in point for Europe is the island of Lampedusa, which lies just south of Sicily. Having the (mis)fortune to be reachable by rickety boats yet a part of the land of good and plenty, illegals from the North African mainland have been inundating this island for many years, with the turmoil in Tunisia and Libya only adding fuel to the fire.

Pope Francis, epitomizing the utter lack of appreciation amounting to disdain that the Catholic Church has come to have for the societies and cultures that both long protected the Church and contributed much to its present form*, used the recent tragedy in which almost two hundred illegals died in a capsizing incident to insist that Westerners commit their already-stretched resources to enable any and all would-be migrants to reach Europeans shores safely.

This amounts to a directive to ignore a truckload of factors: Social service resources are not inexhaustible. For a nation to be prosperous enough to help, it has to be allowed to remain somewhat prosperous. Crimes of violence and fraud escalate exponentially in areas with high concentrations of individuals from Islamic-majority countries. Democratic, Republican, or any representative governments (as many historians such as Roger Scruton - for one, noted) do not function well in nations that do not have a population that has, at the very least, a reasonable degree of cultural cohesiveness; adding more people from utterly foreign cultures than can be successfully integrated is a recipe for a radially-changed electorate - one that will likely create systems of government of the type that the newcomers left in the first place.

Pope Francis is fast establishing himself as a cleric whose voice should be largely ignored by citizens of the very societies that are most associated with the Church that he heads, Note that this coming from a devout Catholic who understands that the Church had better begin to admit to its true identity before the Vatican becomes a body with little or no adherents in the region in which it is located.

Marine Le Pen (I refrained from using her name in the title as Americans would likely assume that I was referring to a member of the Marine Corps), who is the leader of the National Party of France, recently spoke about the need to dismiss the urge to allow feelings of guilt to influence decisions that have to be made that concern the well being of Westerners and their societies. Gates of Vienna has the video of the speech and a more compete commentary(link below):

http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/10/marine-lepen-after-lampedusa-we-must-be-firm/

"Following the tragedy of Lampedusa European Governments prepare to facilitate
the access of foreigners to Europe. It is clear that the diplomacy of emotion is the most dangerous and least adapted to the situation. It is exactly the contrary we have to do.
The moment you let these men and women think they can risk their lives and if they manage to put foot on European territory, they will be saved and they can remain on European territory and they can be taken care of, and their children can be schooled for free
and they can get free medicals, I say “free” in quotation marks of course it’s not “free” it’s paid for by our communities that they get social housing, that they benefit From social services which we cannot afford even for our own compatriots, then they will attempt this adventure and you will be personally responsible MORALLY for the deaths which will happen during this terrible risk taking. Obviously the only means to stop those deaths that multiply is to send a clear signal of firmness, to explain that it’s not worth to attempt this crazy adventure because we will be firm and we will send these illegal immigrants back home this is the only solution which is viable, which is humane, humane, for them and for us."

Good for her. The Left will howl in protest, but she is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, absolutely correct. Westerner should not be penalized for the centuries of effort (not without wars, plagues and other obstacles) that they went through to create what has been bequeathed to them.

*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/09/pope-francis-bringing-church-western.html

*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/10/pope-francis-papal-train-wreck.html

*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/10/pope-francis-iconoclast.html

Dr. Ben Carson - Obamacare is About Control

Gay marriage, gun control, Obamacare, restrictions of property rights, the Common Core Curriculum, birth control and abortion pills for sale to little kids, NSA surveillance of citizens......

...it is all about control - extending the reach of the arm of the state.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/11/who-just-compared-obamacare-to-american-slavery-and-soviet-communism/

"Dr. Benjamin Carson declared Friday that “Obamacare is the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

Carson, a former professor of neurosurgery, oncology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, spoke Friday at the Values Voters Summit in Washington.

“I have to tell you, you know, “Obamacare” is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery,” Carson said. “In a way, it is slavery, in a way because it is making all of us subservient to the government.”.........

“It was never about health care,” Carson continued. “It was about control and that’s why – that’s why when this administration took office it didn’t matter that the country was going off the cliff economically. All forces were directed toward getting this legislation passed.”........

“Vladimir Lenin, one of the fathers of socialism, said that socialized medicine is the keystone to the establishment of a socialist state,” Carson said. “Some people say, oh come on, you’re being paranoid. Why would you bring up something like that. I would say if you know anything about history, how could you not bring that up.”

Dr. Carson makes very good points, even Harry Reid, still jubilant at the continued success of those who would destroy the republic, admitted recently that Obamacare is nothing more than a means to bring about a "single payer system" (their favorite euphemism) - the full takeover of health care by the government of the United States:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/08/10/sen-harry-reid-obamacare-absolutely-a-step-toward-a-single-payer-system/

".......yesterday on PBS’ Nevada Week In Review, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) was asked whether his goal was to move Obamacare to a single-payer system. His answer? “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”.......

Reid said he thinks the country has to “work our way past” insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS’ program “Nevada Week in Review.”

“What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.

When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

Reid noted that he and other progressives fought hard for a “public option” in the exchanges as a Trojan horse for single-payer, but Democrats didn’t have 60 votes in the Senate to achieve it:.......

Reid sees the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance as the primary obstacle to single-payer health care:
Reid cited the post-WWII auto industry labor negotiations that made employer-backed health insurance the norm, remarking that “we’ve never been able to work our way out of that” before predicting that Congress would someday end the insurance-based health care system.

It’s one of the key things to remember when you look at polls saying that Obamacare is unpopular. A small percentage of the people who oppose Obamacare—around 7-10 percent—oppose it because it doesn’t go far enough.

There you have it - and straight from the horse's mouth at that. The provisions of Obamacare were created with the intent to collapse the private health care system so that the only viable option would be for the government to take control of all health care in the nation. 

Embryonic Stem Cells Again Proven Not the Only Option

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/10/10/novel-stem-cell-technique-may-transform-liver-and-pancreatic-transplant/?intcmp=latestnews

This is one of the rare occasions when I treat an issue purely related to science, but when I read the article I was struck with memories from the period of roughly 1998-2005.

Firstly, a brief quote:

"Researchers from the University of Cambridge have developed a new technique for creating stem cells of the human liver and pancreas – a breakthrough that could significantly transform the future of transplant therapies.

The novel method involves altering the signal pathways of cells specific to the human foregut – the upper portion of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Through this manipulation, researchers were able to stop the cells from developing fully and push them into a state of constant self-renewal.

As a result, these “foregut stem cells” can then be further amplified by physicians, who can then form them into liver or pancreatic cells. These cells could potentially be used to treat damaged organs or tissue, in addition to conditions such as type 1 diabetes or metabolic liver disease......"

Most can recall when we were told again and again that the only means of obtaining stem cells that would be viable for growth of organs, skin, nerves, etc, would be through the dark use of human embryonic stem cells. Even at the time, I doubted that this would in fact turn out to be true; medical science is proving to have very few limitations and its practitioners are making gains by leaps and bounds. 

When umbilical and other types of stem cells began to show promise to do the same thing as those taken-from harvested embryos, it was if the Left and its allies were emotionally devastated. For the next few years, it seemed every article about new types of stem cell research provoked a hue and cry from those who so desperately wanted humans to be reduced to the status of crops.

Make no mistake here - that is exactly what the Left desires. 

What vexed me at the time was the utter lack of critical thinking among many of my coworkers in regards to this subject. Not only were they completely trusting of the propaganda that assured us that embryonic cells were the only option, but almost all of them were fully supportive of going forward with the patently inhuman practice of creating human embryos for the purpose of harvesting them. I saw a people who had been convinced that we have an absolute right to anything, regardless of the source, that would help cure our physical afflictions. Many of  the most vocal supporters of using embryos were people who labeled themselves as Conservatives. These would note that they were only conservative on fiscal issues. Well, that's great - be protective of his material blessings while thumbing your nose at your obligation to protect His creation. 

I cannot remember one individual who was willing to admit to himself that this method was sickening at best and also set the stage for the eventual growth of fetuses for the same purpose. 

I was the subject of taunts and accusations that, if I were to become paralyzed, I would be the first person to support the process. My response (not that I am glad to have had this particular one), that if a cure for my severely cognitively disabled son's condition was not sufficient motivation for such a gruesome practice, then I suspect that my own would also prove to be insufficient. In the US, we say "that shut them up".

We have turned away from God - virtually in toto, and we revel in the delusion that we can maintain the prosperity with which he blessed us indefinitely without paying the least bit of attention to Him and his work. As I noted recently, even Pope Francis has repeatedly implied that our purpose here is to do little more than spread the wealth and be nice to each other. To my knowledge, he has not once proclaimed the actual core messages of the Gospel since his installation. 

Nurses to Perform Abortions in California

This travesty makes allowances not only nurses, but midwives as well. Maybe I got this wrong, but aren't midwives in the business of helping women give birth?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/09/us-usa-california-abortion-idUSBRE99815Y20131009

"Reuters) - California's Democratic governor signed a law on Wednesday that will allow nurses and midwives to perform some abortions, a move supporters hope will influence the national debate on abortion even as other states are tightening the rules.

Under the law, the most populous U.S. state would allow nurse-practitioners, nurse-midwives and physician assistants to perform a procedure known as aspiration, which uses suction to dislodge an embryo from the uterine wall during the first few weeks of pregnancy.

Four other states - Oregon, Montana, Vermont and New Hampshire - already allow non-physicians to perform early-stage abortions, but California is the first to codify the practice into law.

"Timely access to reproductive health services is critical to women's health," the bill's author, California state Assemblywoman Toni Atkins said in a statement after Governor Jerry Brown announced the signing of the law, known as AB 154......."

As I have little patience for treating a subject that defies the Creator, dehumanizes women and their unborn, makes psychological problems far more likely for abortion victims*, contributes mightily to a decline in population (for the most blessed of nations in particular), and makes health care into a two-sided world of good and evil, I will refrain from commenting much in this case.

What I will note is that we again see that our nation is divided in to two diametrically opposing camps and, unlike our Civil War, this time armed conflict will not help the problem. Politics and exhortations to step back and think too are proving to yield negative results. The sooner that the People realize that we need to let one side have their way in a separate nation and split our beloved republic, the better for all of us. While we complain and try to persuade others of the efficacy of taking  the right path, more and more young people are being trained in schools to look at horrors such as abortion as a good and necessary thing. With midwives being added to the list of approved killers, something should click in the mind of the reasonable person that this pattern will not stop unless the problem can be isolated. The only means of doing so is to excise the infected tissue and keep the living flesh as clean as possible.

*The post below has three links (near the middle of the post)  that put to rest the claim that abortion does not increase the likelihood of post-abortion psychological trauma. 

*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/02/texas-parents-seek-to-force-abortion.html

Pope Francis Opening Floodgates

For many high-ranking officials in the Catholic Church, the excitement is just too much to bear; they just can't wait to start plastering over practices and disciplines until the Church is neutered to the degree that we have seen in too many Mainline Protestant churches:

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/08/20873638-vatican-tells-bishops-not-to-reform-faster-than-pope-francis?lite

"PARIS, FRANCE — The Vatican warned bishops on Tuesday not to reform faster than Pope Francis, after a German diocese said that some divorced and remarried Catholics would now be allowed to receive communion and other sacraments.

Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi, announcing the pope would hold a special synod of bishops in October 2014 to discuss issues facing the family, said local churches that come up with their own reforms in the meantime could create confusion.

Pope Francis has indicated he could consider exceptions to a Church law that bars remarried Catholics from the sacraments because Rome considers marriage to be inviolable. Many bishops have mentioned this as a growing problem in their dioceses.

The archdiocese of Freiburg in Germany issued a guidebook on Monday for priests ministering to remarried Catholics that spelled out a way for them to express remorse for their failed first marriage and receive communion and other sacraments......"

There is most assuredly more of this to come.  For thirty-five years, the liberals in the Church have, excepting a few hard-core types, sheltered in place awaiting their moment. This is exactly that for which they have waited - a Pope who deliberately misrepresents the Christian concept of love to mean a Barney the Dinosaur "I love you, you love me" video, treats the terrible state of morality in the world  as something to ignore, would open the gates of the West wide open to all comers, uses the world "conscience" to mean telling oneself that you can do what you want despite what God is telling you, dismisses the horrific evils of our world for a focus on unemployment and loneliness, and - worst of all speaks of bringing people to the Gospel as "solemn nonsense".

Thirty-five years is a long time, and the Church-breaking Liberals are like kids who can't wait for their now-formerly strict parents to even go through the motions of giving permission for their next step.

The Church is poised to be rendered irrelevant by its leader.When Christianity is no longer taught or required in practice by the faithful, people will leave. When the Church becomes a partner of the Left in the political spectrum, it will have no further purpose as people don't need yet another body telling them that they are too greedy. 

Unless there is a schism within the Church or a large-scale embracing of Eastern Orthodoxy, what may well soon be Left of Christianity in the West will be the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. These, while sadly eschewing any attachments at all to Western Culture and by extension having a sort of Islamic outlook on the world that breaks down all identifying characteristics into Christians (Which to them does not include Mainline Protestants, Orthodox, or Catholics) and non-Christians, at least preach and defend their particular versions of Christianity. They may preach modern doctrines such as non-regenerating baptism or the Rapture, but most of them do not hide from confronting immorality and will teach the messages of sin and redemption. 

I hope that the leaders of the Orthodox Churches make every effort to get Pope Francis to put a stop to his destructive activity. Such a move would be a reversal of the influence that the West employed against the Arian (The doctrinal crisis, not Aryan) Heresy when many bishops in the East had signed on to the terribly dangerous beliefs about the Son. Barring any success there, the Orthodox would then need to make it known to Catholics that their are options other than joining a church that tells you that your kids should not write letters to Santa Claus, read about pre-Christian heroes, go trick-or-treating on Halloween, or have any childlike fun reading books about mythical creatures. 

School Labels Girl Athlete as Overweight

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/07/school-sends-home-letter-to-mother-classifying-athletic-11-year-old-as-overweight/

Standardized height and weight charts do not work for all people. Often enough, individuals who have naturally strong physiques and/ or regularly engage in strenuous physical activity will, if the standard methods are used, fall into a category that classifies them as overweight.  

In the case of an 11 year-old girl in Florida, school officials seem to have made no effort to note that the height and weight measurement system that they were using did not appear to provide an accurate assessment. True to form for they who have been taught that the system that the experts can't be wrong, they ignored what they saw with their own eyes and robotically recorded that she has a weight problem.

This is the girl:

“Lily is tall, athletic, solid muscle by no means is she overweight,” [The girl's mother Kristen] Grasso told the local news station.

I concur with her mom.

American girls, who are routinely subjected to a nonstop barrage of overt and subliminal messages that tell them that they need to lose weight, have a disproportionate amount of eating disorders in comparison to girls from others countries. Even discounting that sad reality, I find it quite sickening that no one involved was willing to step forward and state the obvious - that the measurement system used provided a plainly wrong assessment for this student. 

So, to do their jobs as initiative-lacking agents of the machine, school staff had the girl going home with the nagging thought that maybe she does need to lose weight.

This is another example of the non-thinking method of going about our lives that has followed the rule of the Progressives. Pathetically few people are willing to raise their hand in protest and note that the emperor has no clothes. 

Does anyone wonder why college students who study to become Kindergarten - Fourth grade teachers are unable to realize that Academia-enforced methods such as "Sight Words/Dolch System"(*See bottom) will not work and subsequently take an obviously non-working system back to their students? 

The culture created by the Progressives smothers any notion of common sense, leaving students vulnerable to whatever drivel is fed to them in class. They who do see that something is wrong with what they are being taught are restrained from speaking up by the other pincer employed by the Progressives - the one that ridicules the thinker and labels him as "resistant to change" or "difficult".

A similar event occurred is March of this year:

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/03/10-year-old-athlete-too-fat-says-mass.html

"The state of Massachusetts thinks 10-year-old Cameron Watson is fat, and they sent a letter to his family letting them know.

The multi-sport athlete and wrestling champion is roughly 94 pounds, but his school said in a letter that based on his BMI, the child is overweight.

“I wrestle, play football, baseball, I ride bikes, play basketball, baseball, MMA,” Cameron objected. “I know I’m not obese so I don’t really care about the letter…I just crumpled it up.”........

"...The system of arbitrarily using height/weight charts or Body Mass Indicator standards is an example of how the state wants to neatly define everyone while ignoring anything unique about an individual. These systems can only be used to get a tentative assessment, not to determine conclusively whether or not a person needs to lose weight....."

*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/01/common-probably-all-too-common-theme-of.html

"They" will not stop unless we break with them politically. We can't keep running around putting out fires while a conflagration rages in all quarters of our society.

Pope Francis Follow-Up

I had little time and less patience than I would have preferred when I posted yesterday, so I thought that I should ensure that the reader knows that I am not in any way a radical traditionalist in Church matters.

Many will ascribe my attitude towards the actions and testaments of Pope Francis to a strong resistance to change such as that demonstrated by Catholics who broke or almost broke away from the Church in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. Although I was born just after the end of the Council and cannot claim any experience with the "old ways", I submit that I would have supported the Council had I lived through its changes.

The only liturgical change that I would have strongly opposed was the move to have the priest facing a direction oppose the parishioners. Note the slight difference in wording that says a lot -Liberals are fond of speaking disparagingly of the days when "the priest stood with his back to the congregation". This description is deliberately inaccurate. The intention was that all present were performing a gesture that conveyed a sense of directing our prayers towards God. Once the Priest turned around and said prayers one way while the faithful said prayers in the other direction (like we were having a conversation with each other as opposed to speaking to God), the stage was set for the horrid semi-circular churches that have the priest standing in the middle like a pop singer. My diocese has one church that was beautifully designed and built in the traditional manner but years later was subjected to a sickeningly destructive act that had the altar moved to a side wall to conform with the desires of iconoclastic liberals.

Medieval, or Church ( which has appreciable differences from Classical Latin), Latin is a wonderful language for the mass and I support the continued use of it, but I hold that in general masses in the vernacular are better for getting young children and other newcomers to properly understand the liturgy. In my opinion - a phrase employed in this blog but rarely, some Latin and the Greek Kyrie/Christe Eleison  should have been retained for parts of the mass with the bulk of the liturgy being in the vernacular.

What actually went wrong after Vatican II was the attacks that were leveled on Church doctrine and discipline ( none of which was changed in the least) by Liberals, by both high-ranking clergy and lay persons. Disappointed that they did not get their way with a compete revamping of doctrine and church disciplines, the Beast (Not the demonic one but the collective human one), immediately set to work with a massive propaganda program  that continues today - the false claims that any wrongful act or practice (or proposed ones) being done or called for "is in the spirit of Vatican II".
--------------------------------------------------------------------
-From a previous post:

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/02/episcopal-priest-joins-in-on-lies-about.html

"The main problem for the Church has been the bold-faced lies that have been heaped upon her for supposed failures to implement changes that were falsely attributed to the "Spirit of Vatican II" or other vague references to intentions of the Council founders or attendees that never existed.

Again. this council has been the subject of more outright lies than any governing body/convention/committee in the history of the world.

In today's society, where honesty means little, one can pretend to be of the opinion that a Council decided on positions and practices that were completely contrary to what the actual signatories wrote and signed to document as their decisions. If that course is not chosen, then one can just pretend that the council did in fact decide or desire whatever one in his delusional mind would have wanted and hope that no one checks by reading what the council wrote.....

..[engaging in]............the worn out, patently false, claims about what Vatican II is, was, or was supposed to be. Please, pretending to be under the impression that the "Spirit of Vatican II" was not followed, realized, or brought to fruition is just ridiculous. It also insults the intelligence of all of us. The Second Vatican Council was never suppressed, cut short, failed to be put into operation, or anything else of that nature. The source of these sort of false claims originated with radical Leftists, feminists, and others who saw that the Church never had any intention to do to itself what the Episcopal would. When their dreams of deconstructing the Church were dashed with the realization that no one involved with the Council wanted any part of such action, they proceeded to Plan B- creating a whole web of lies about the intentions of those who brought about Vatican II. If they could not get Vatican II to be about things that they wanted, then they would pretend that it had been so, but that unseen forces would not let the desired changes occur.

The claim that the Second Vatican Council was supposed to actually change the doctrines or organisation of the Church may very well be the Hoax of the Century. Practices changed, not doctrines or the priesthood. We have had enough of those who identify themselves as Catholics claiming that the latter were changed or was supposed to have changed also. We don't need people completely outside the Church joining in with them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are the problems with Pope Francis:

His concept of Social Justice ignores rights of property and national sovereignty. It starts with the false assumption that the legitimate concerns (because these are already occurring) about losses of national identity, security, violent crime,etc of Westerners are unfounded or irrational. He will turn away far more believers than he will convert with such dismissive talk. 

-If he turns away enough members, then he will ultimately have less people to listen to his demands.

He appears to have little or no interest in his main job of teaching others about man's fall, sin, and redemption. In fact, he seems to be fine with truncating the Gospel message to do away with personal holiness and bringing others to Christianity. Sounding like a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist, he reduces the New Testament to an exhortation to love without any correction and to give until our nations are in no better position that the nations which many fled in the first place. 

-People adhere to Christianity because of ts message, not a severely paired down version that makes the church an irrelevant and unneeded sister of the Left. When Christians grow weary of their clergy refusing to teach Christianity they will stop going to mass; very possibly eventually winding up in a Fundamentalist Church that - desperate its bizarre theology, at least makes an effort to teach about sin and redemption. 

Not all traditional and practices are eternal, but one of the greatest attributes of the Church is her timelessness. Traditions reflect a connection with the past as well as exist as symbols that tell a message. Putting a (albeit temporary thus far) stop to the making of Monsignors - a title that hearkens back to the days when the church had accomplished so much good work is a tragedy. With the inclusion of a girl in the foot-washing portion of the Holy Thursday Liturgy, we have a toying with a solemn ceremony that Jesus (who broke all sorts of traditions but of course would not turn things upside-down) that reminds us of an act that he performed with his Apostles shorty before his redemptive sacrifice. 

-Disposing of a sense of connection with the past will result in an exodus from the Church 

I am very tired. Maybe I will continue with this topic tomorrow.


http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/09/pope-francis-bringing-church-western.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/10/pope-francis-papal-train-wreck.html

Pope Francis The Iconoclast

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=19047

I had heard nothing about this doozy when it occurred, and only caught wind about it today:

"Pope Francis has stopped conferring the title “monsignor” on priests.

The Italian daily Il Messagero has reported that shortly after his election, the Pope instructed the Secretariat of State to stop approving requests for priests to be given the rank of monsignor. The Pope said that the moratorium on granting the title should continue at least until October; it is not clear whether he will continue the new policy beyond that time.....

A priest is ordinarily raised to the status of “monsignor” on the recommendation of his diocesan bishop. However, all such honorary titles require the approval of the Holy See"

Firstly, here is a link for those who are not sure of, or are not familiar with, the meaning of the title of Monsignor as (formerly) used in the Catholic Church:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10510a.htm

I am growing quite concerned with the activities of Pope Francis. Upon his election, he deliberate avoided wearing the traditional vestments for a newly-elected Pope. Soon after that, he flippantly included a female in the solemn foot-washing portion of the Holy Thursday liturgy. By September of this year, he was stating that we should find better things about which we should voice our concerns than abortion and the arch-aberrant gay marriage onslaught. He moved quickly on to telling Westerners that they should open their national doors to most anyone who arrives with a request to stay. In the same interview he added the implication that Westerner's perfectly understandable fears of loss of national identity, rise of violent crime, "loss of security", and loss of employment to newcomers, (all of which have been plainly occurring for a long time) were not rational and thereby should be dismissed.*

Not content to rest with these remarks, Pope Francis changed gears, seeking out an atheist journalist to tell him that any attempt to bring the interviewer to Christianity was "solemn nonsense", to speak of Christian love without any reference to correction or holiness, to use the word 'conscience" in the modern secular sense that utterly ignores the fact that true feelings of conscience do not contradict God's Word, and to tell us that, with all of the horrors of our world, the two worst evils are youth unemployment and lonely elderly people.**

With the revelation that early in his Papacy he ordered a moratorium on the conferring of the time-honored title of Monsignor being added to this list, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that we have a full-blown iconoclast sitting on the Chair of Peter. 

This Pope has been a high-ranking official of the Church for too long be unaware of the core elements of Christianity. He is too educated to be ignorant that prosperous and secure nations can be wrecked by unrestrained immigration of peoples from very different cultures and that Western Culture itself is a key element in the formation of the Western Church.(Also in *)

When someone who cannot be assumed to act in ignorance consistently makes statements contrary to the good order of the societies that protected and helped form the Church, and deliberately acts as if the core beliefs of the body which he heads do not exist or are not necessary, then I hold that we are witnessing one who has come, not to lead, but to destroy - either that or Pope Francis lost his mind before his election.

*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/09/pope-francis-bringing-church-western.html

**http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/10/pope-francis-papal-train-wreck.html

School Parents Feign Fear at Sight of Cop-Dad's Gun While in Uniform

Fro what I have experienced, this is not unbelievable at all. It is nothing more than another example of the state to which your society has sunk, and I have an anecdote to back up my opening sentence.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/03/the-unbelievable-reason-this-police-officer-dad-was-told-not-to-visit-school-while-in-uniform/

"The image of a uniformed police officer dropping off his daughter at her elementary school was apparently too scary of an image for some parents in Mesa, Ariz. It’s not his uniform that is making them uncomfortable, it’s the gun holstered on his hip.

The principal at Entz Elementary School hasreportedly asked the father not to wear his police uniform on campus ever again because parents are concerned that he carries a firearm.

Now, “a lot of people” are “shocked and upset” over the decision, KSAZ-TV reports.

The officer, Scott Urkov of the Coolidge Police Department, only dropped his daughter off at her school........"

I would bet any amount of money that the very same parents who complained to the principle would stand by cowering while students were truly in danger and express their relief when they see a police car coming down the road. Once the threat is over, however, they pridefully insist that the same cops refrain from going near the school.

Back in January of this year, I recounted my experience with this snobbish, pseudo-intellectual, and self-righteous insistence that we as a people should make ourselves as sheep-like as possible. This one had nothing to do with parents who would be the first to shrink from acting in the event of an actual threat and do nothing but await the arrival of the cops - it was all the work of the school administrators.

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/09/deaf-students-sign-gesture-too-weapon.html

"....I am reminded of an incident to which I was assigned back in my days as a Police Bomb Technician. A local High School had received a threat. We responded, performed a threat assessment, took measures that we felt were appropriate, and notified the School Principal that were confident that the school could return to its schedule. With the investigation to identify the actor having been turned over to detectives, we went to the main office in order to take some necessary information for our reports. While waiting for the Principal to finish a telephone conversation, we were engaged in conversation by the Vice-Principal. He was a nice enough guy, but his comments betrayed the sheep mentality that too many of us have today. The gentleman remarked that the Principal was not sure, once he had been notified about the threat, whether or not he was going to report the threat to the police. "Because, he was worried about - (Then whispering to us) the guns." (meaning our firearms and those of the local police".

Those who now me personally can imagine how indescribably steamed I got at the thought that a man who is responsible for the safety of his students would be pridefully stupid enough to entertain the possibility of ruling out making notifications to the police. He had greater concern that the cops would then enter the school while in possession of firearms than he did about the possibility that a destructive device may have been placed in the school. Nothing flips my lid more than a mixture of pride and stupidity gift-wrapped to look like honest concern (Please apply that to the School Officials in the case of the deaf boy). Needless to say, I made no comment and blank-stared the man until he got the hint. I was in uniform and thus representing my employer, so I felt that debate was not appropriate. I saved my anger for the parking lot and the presence of my coworkers...."

We as a people have enthusiastically adopted the outlook that the Left told us that we wanted. We have slowly turned ourselves into haughty idiots who assure themselves that is they who are the intelligent ones. We are too good to have to ever see a weapon. We forbid our children from the most natural act of role-playing with toy or imaginary weapons. We instill in them the aberrant idea that the use of weapons is an inherently inhuman act. 

For boys in particular, this can be terribly damaging to his sense of identity. The male brain, (and rarely with females), is literally bathed with doses of testosterone in utero. Among the results of this phenomena is the tendency of males to act out acts of fighting, an extraordinary healthy practice if given  proper direction and equally unhealthy if suppressed, channeled improperly, or left unchecked. 

A boy that learns to fight "the bad guy" (Power Rangers has been a typical means of this for about twenty years) will  grow up with a normal outlook on life and appreciate the significance of his place in society. He will play-act fighting, enlist others in his imaginary crusades against evil, often using sticks for makeshift swords and turning many objects into "guns". Girls occasionally will join in with this type of play, but gradually they begin to recognize that when trouble arrives it will be the guys who are doing most of the fighting. Females with healthy attitudes will not suppress this natural reality but be appreciative of it.- note the accounts of ancient Celtic/Gaulish and German women who are recorded as baring their breasts to their men and exhorting them to fight well enough to save them from being made "slaves of the Romans".

One who has had this path of learning suppressed will be more prone to turn out like one of my son's high school teachers, who described  to his class the feelings of abject fear that he experienced the one time that he ever held a firearm in his hands. In short, as a man he was utterly worthless and, aside from maybe being a nice guy, of little value to society. He was very much like the parents - both men and equally twisted women, in the article above. 

Here is another excerpt. The Roman people of the fifth century AD remind me of of many Americans today. Long safe from external threats that require the enlistment of local men to fight, an army that by the fifth century point has consisted almost solely of barbarian auxiliaries/foederates (today many  parents insist that their child "will never be in the military") and accustomed to lives spent in peace and consumerism, they had nothing left to fall back on to defend themselves once the last Romano-Vandal General Stilicho was murdered on the order of the emperor.

The Visigoths had nothing to stand in their way:

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/07/sheep-culture-feeding-on-dark-knight.html

".....In 410 AD the Visigothic King Alaric approached the Gates of Rome. What was left of the Roman army had been unable to challenge this march on the city. The people had long been unaccustomed to do any of their own fighting. After being giving of the terms, which included the removal of vast amounts of money and treasure, he was asked by the city's delegation what would be left of them.
Alaric replied "Your Lives"

-Others have not been as generous as Alaric when it comes to allowing people to be secure in their lives and bodies. Read the excerpts from the American Thinker article quoted below to see some examples of what can happen to unarmed peoples. (Bolded text)

The Left is so distraught at the thought of people being able and willing to take decisive action to eliminate violent threats that they would rather we be a society of pure victims. Worse still, many people have accepted this argument and called for the disarming of the entire population. I have met many an adult American man who is perfectly fine with the thought of having no effective means whatsoever of protecting even his home....."

I do not have the patience to reason with unreasonable people; they disgust me too much.

Netanyahu Tells UN Family Story UN to Illustrate Need for State of Israel

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/01/watch-benjamin-netanyahu-tell-u-n-members-the-gripping-story-of-how-his-grandfather-was-brutally-beaten-by-an-anti-semitic-mob/

The video of the speech by Israeli Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu needs little comment - he makes his point clearly enough to make any attempted elaboration superfluous.

The only clarification that I will make is to provide a brief historical background to the Maccabees, the Jewish resistant group which Netanyahu noted had come to the mind of the Prime Minister's grandfather as he lay dazed and severely beaten by anti-Semites.
e
At the end of the Babylonian exile (some time after the destruction of the Babylonian Empire) the Jews had been allowed to return to their homes under Persian rule. When Alexander the Great defeated Darius II, the Jews lived free of molestation under his rule and for the most part continued to do so under the Macedonian successor kingdom of the Seleucids.

As the power of the Seleucid state later waned, a king named Antiochus Epiphanes decided that, to solidify the power of the weakening kingdom, he needed to end the ethnic, religious, and cultural identities of hitherto somewhat autonomous peoples. The Jews, although they had absorbed a number of Hellenistic cultural practices but remained quite distinct with their ancient religion, were targeted for forced acceptance of all religious practices of the Macedonian rulers.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Maccabees.html

"A brief Jewish rebellion only hardened his views and led him to outlaw central tenets ofJudaism such as the Sabbath and circumcision, and defile the holy Temple by erecting an altar to the god Zeus, allowing the sacrifice of pigs, and opening the shrine to non-Jews."

More gruesome details are included in the First and Second Books of Maccabees. One example follows. Note how the brothers and their anguish-ridden mother refuse even to speak Greek when addressing their tormentor. 

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=4353562

" 2 Mac.7[1]

It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and cords, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh.
[2] One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, "What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our fathers."
[3]

The king fell into a rage, and gave orders that pans and caldrons be heated.
[4] These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on.
[5] When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying,
[6] "The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song which bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, `And he will have compassion on his servants.'"
[7]

After the first brother had died in this way, they brought forward the second for their sport. They tore off the skin of his head with the hair, and asked him, "Will you eat rather than have your body punished limb by limb?"
[8] He replied in the language of his fathers, and said to them, "No." Therefore he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done.
[9] And when he was at his last breath, he said, "You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws."
[10]

After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands,
[11] and said nobly, "I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again."
[12] As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man's spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing.
[13]

When he too had died, they maltreated and tortured the fourth in the same way.
[14] And when he was near death, he said, "One cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!"
[15]

Next they brought forward the fifth and maltreated him.
[16] But he looked at the king, and said, "Because you have authority among men, mortal though you are, you do what you please. But do not think that God has forsaken our people.
[17] Keep on, and see how his mighty power will torture you and your descendants!"
[18]

After him they brought forward the sixth. And when he was about to die, he said, "Do not deceive yourself in vain. For we are suffering these things on our own account, because of our sins against our own God. Therefore astounding things have happened.
[19] But do not think that you will go unpunished for having tried to fight against God!"
[20]

The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Though she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord.
[21] She encouraged each of them in the language of their fathers. Filled with a noble spirit, she fired her woman's reasoning with a man's courage, and said to them,
[22] "I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you.
[23] Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws."
[24]

Antiochus felt that he was being treated with contempt, and he was suspicious of her reproachful tone. The youngest brother being still alive, Antiochus not only appealed to him in words, but promised with oaths that he would make him rich and enviable if he would turn from the ways of his fathers, and that he would take him for his friend and entrust him with public affairs.
[25] Since the young man would not listen to him at all, the king called the mother to him and urged her to advise the youth to save himself.
[26] After much urging on his part, she undertook to persuade her son.
[27] But, leaning close to him, she spoke in their native tongue as follows, deriding the cruel tyrant: "My son, have pity on me. I carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you for three years, and have reared you and brought you up to this point in your life, and have taken care of you.
[28] I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.
[29] Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God's mercy I may get you back again with your brothers."
[30]

While she was still speaking, the young man said, "What are you waiting for? I will not obey the king's command, but I obey the command of the law that was given to our fathers through Moses.............

The king fell into a rage, and handled him worse than the others, being exasperated at his scorn.
[40] So he died in his integrity, putting his whole trust in the Lord.
[41]

Last of all, the mother died, after her sons."

The revolt led by Judas Maccabeus (The Hammer) was shockingly successful given the power of Macedonian/Hellenistic armies of that time. Their guerrilla tactics were so successful that the king sent ever larger forces against the Jews. These were dealt crippling defeats.

The war lasted around ten years, culminating with Jewish independence.

With that in mind, please watch Netanyahu's speech he described the state of mind of his grandfather as he collected his thoughts after being beaten.

Pope Francis - Papal Train Wreck

In a recent post, I argued that Pope Francis was effectively ignoring both the rights of Westerners to determine the fates of their respective nations and - even worse, the symbiotic relationship that allowed Western Culture and the Western Church (including Protestantism) to develop in the manner that they did.

I made the following remark in the post linked below:

I am beginning to come to the belief that Pope Francis has all the makings of a train wreck; not the old-fashioned type mind you, but one that involves high-speed trains.http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/09/pope-francis-bringing-church-western.html

Today, a contributor sent me a link to an article that covered yet another interview with Pope Motor-Mouth, and this time His Holiness, inexplicably, outdid himself.

To sum up Francis' comments, he used the term "conscience" in the modern secular sense. This aberration leaves out any admission that feelings that truly that arise from one's conscience are a direct result on the Natural Law and thus cannot go against God's will. He also made the following remark concerning the making of any effort to bring someone to Christianity  - "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense".
He also made what I assert is a plainly sinful claim that the greatest problems in the world today are "youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old." Euthanasia, abortion, the destruction of the family, mass sexual crimes against innocents, murders, and war were left out of the Pope's top two.

The Pope's idea of Christian love is one that can safely ignore the responsibility of the believer to act as a representative of the Faith, be it primarily by word or action.

Jesus clearly loved the woman caught in adultery, but he also directed her to "go and sin no more". No Gospel, epistle, or any great Christian writer would give the impression that love without instruction and correction is sufficient in any way.

God have mercy on us - the man who sits on the chair of Peter seems to be little more than a moral relativist who has a very low appreciation of  true evil and the core message of the Gospel - sin, redemption, and a call to personal holiness.

Here before is is proof positive that Catholics are not bound by declarations of the Pope that do not concern definitive statements on faith and morals. Pope Francis is speaking as a private theologian in this case, and very badly so. He statements may and should be dismissed, but I fear that too many of the faithful of today do not have the understanding of what should be accepted when the Pope speaks and what should not.

As a devout Catholic, I find that it is a sad day when I have to acknowledge that the Southern Baptists are thinking far more rightly than is a leader of the Church.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/pope-francis-stirs-debate-yet-again-with-interview-with-an-atheist-italian-journalist/2013/10/01/9e7a6790-2acb-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_print.html

"....A top official with the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, took the unprecedented step of rebuking Francis, writing that the pope’s interview was “a theological wreck” and that Francis was dabbling dangerously in relativism.

“What these interviews seem continually to do is what evangelical theologian Carl Henry warned Protestants of in the 20th century, of severing the love of God from the holiness of God,” wrote the Rev. Russell Moore, a past dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and head of the convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “We must speak with tenderness and gentleness, but with an authoritative word from God.”....."

When word broke that a Jesuit had been appointed Pope, I had grave concerns. The Jesuits of today are as foreign to the society that was founded by Ignatius of Loyola as animists are to Jews. Friends and colleagues were quick to assure me that this particular Jesuit was one of the few good guys in the Society of Jesus and that things would turn out fine. While noting that God certainly saw this tragedy long before we did and that nothing done here can stop His plan, I still maintain that I do not have to take this lying down. We are not predictors of the future, and we are not allowed to do nothing while God works. If your child has an illness, you do everything in your power to assist him in recovering. One of our primary jobs is to do what we can to oppose wrongdoing, and I will continue to speak the truth and publicly note when Church leaders do and say wrong.  

The full interview can be read here:

http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2013/10/01/news/pope_s_conversation_with_scalfari_english-67643118/

Obama, Holder Dealt Legal Blow on Fast and Furious

For those who are unaware of the Fast and Furious scandal, the three links below, along with an excerpt from my first post on this issue are included before the main post.

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2011/10/fast-and-furious-lapierre-speaks-out.html

It entailed having Federal Agents browbeat licensed firearms dealers into making firearms sales with which they themselves either not comfortable or would refuse to do without a DEA agent telling him to make the sale.
The weapons were ostensibly allowed (under the eyes of federal agents) to be brought across the border for the purposes of investigating where the weapons would wind up. Surprise! - They wound up in the hands of drug cartels!

This is not the case of an agent setting up a sting-type sale of a fake missile, explosive, drugs, etc. to a criminal or terrorist for the purpose of making an arrest. We are asked to believe that it would be of benefit to investigating agents to see where real guns would go.

I find this entire thing to defy any rational attempts at explanation. For years, the American public was fed cooked statistics to lead us to believe that the less than third world - horror show of mass murders, shootouts with Mexican Police and military, and Mexico’s descent into narco-state status was the result of American gun dealers and their customers who were supposedly supplying the criminals with the tools to commit their atrocities. A favorite statistic was that 90% of guns recovered in Mexico and then traced were found to have originated in the US. The part of the story that was not put out was that a tiny fraction of recovered guns were in fact traced in the first place. Only guns that appeared to have been likely to have come from the US were put through the tracing process. The result of that practice was the magic number that was used in an attempt to sway the American public to support more restrictive gun laws in the US.

One of the weapons sold in this operation was used in the Murder of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December..........
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2011/11/erick-holder-declines-to-apologize-for.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/06/holder-feeling-pressure-from-issa.html

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Main post, with a hat tip to our contributor Catalus.

With the truckload of Obama administration scandals, it is easy to get lost in the mix. We have hit the two-year anniversary of the point when, after the scandal came to light with the murder of Agent Brian Terry, Obama and his stooge of an Attorney General Eric Holder began the process of covering up the details of the program.

When the Congressional investigation of the scandal reached threatening proportions, Obama fell back and declared that numerous documents and communications pertaining to the channeling of weapons to Mexican cartels were protected by Executive Privilege and thus not available to the investigators.

The process has been painfully slow and Obama still has Holder doing his best to stymie the investigation. Recently, a request that the lawsuit to challenge the citing of Executive Privilege be dismissed resulted in a key loss for the administration.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/10/federal_judge_rejects_eric_holders_attempt_to_keep_fast_furious_documents_from_house_committee_inves.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/fast-and-furious-doj-documents-97604.html#ixzz2gTkr51VC

-From The American Thinker:

"The purported "most transparent administration in history" lost another round in its efforts to hide documents form the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Rep. Darrell Issa. Josh Gerstein reports in Politico:

In a ruling Monday night, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson turned down the Justice Department's request to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege to prevent some records about the administration's response to the "Operation Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal from being turned over to Congress.

"This case presents the sort of question that the courts are traditionally called upon to resolve," Jackson said in her 44-page decision, issued more than five months after lawyers argued the issue in her packed courtroom and more than a year after the House committee filed suit. "Dismissing the case without hearing it would in effect place the court's finger on the scale, designating the executive as the victor based solely on his untested assertion that the privilege applies," she wrote. (snip)

The legal fight arose after the Justice Department refused to comply with House subpoenas seeking information about the response to "Operation Fast and Furious," a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives undercover operation targeting gun trafficking along and across the Mexican border......"

The fight is by no means over at this point, but at least the lawsuit will go to trial.

-on a lighter note, a group of US WWII veterans did not let the closures that resulted from the government shutdown stop them from visiting the WWII veterans memorial. Just like when they were young, the veterans (with a little help this time*), moved through the barricades and completed their mission:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/01/greatest-generation-veterans-to-face-barricades-at-memorial-in-their-honor/?intcmp=trending

"What was meant to be a final gathering of heroes Tuesday instead became a final victory for dozens of World War II combat vets who refused to let the government's budget battle block a visit to their memorial in the nation's capital.

With bagpipers playing "Amazing Grace," nearly 200 veterans from Mississippi and Iowa swept past barricades and security guards at the World War II Memorial in Washington in order to keep a commitment to visit the site, which was closed today due to the partial government shutdown. The veterans, in their 80s and 90s, were accompanied by Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., a former Marine who earlier vowed not to let the National Park Police keep them from a planned visit to the open-air monument.

"Well, I would have been so down-and-out if I got all the way up here and wasn't able to get in," Navy veteran Oscar Leroy Russell, 90, who is blind after he suffered a stroke, told FoxNews.com.

Some veterans on hand wiped away tears when they saw a crowd waving the American flag as they came out of their bus.

"These men and women didn't cower to the Japanese and Germans," Palazzo said. "I don't think they're about to let a few National Park Police stand in their way."

Palazzo, who was joined by several other members of Congress, moved the barricades at the memorial and police did not try to stop the veterans' access.

"I’m not going to enforce the 'no stopping or standing' sign for a group of 90 World War II veterans," a U.S. Park Police officer, who declined to give his name, told The Washington Post. “I’m a veteran myself.”

The veterans are traveling as part of Honor Flight, a program that enables World War II veterans to partake in an expense-paid trip to view the memorial. Tuesday's trip is the second-to-last flight, with the last scheduled for November. But prior to their arrival early Tuesday, there was fear that the government shutdown and federal worker furloughs would mean no access to the monuments on the National Mall.

But with lawmakers leading the charge, the American military heroes, some in wheelchairs, surged into the memorial........"