Friday, November 6, 2009

Major Hasan - Jihadi?


His brother claims he was getting some flak for being a Muslim on the base - BUT Major Hasan felt bold enough to walk around in Arab garb, and spout his opinions that the US shouldn't be in Iraq.

You can see the video from ITN News in the UK of  Major Nidal Malik Hasanin Arab Garb earlier today on Lux et Veritas (here).

It is sickening, this snake in the grass accepts wages from the US Army for the last 6 years and then when he is about to be posted to Iraq he starts protesting. According to the National Post today, he was "mortified";  I suppose killing 13 innocent people didn't come up on his moral radar.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who his family said had been harassed because of his Muslim faith and was "mortified" at the prospect of going to Iraq,
Nidal Malik Hasan was born in Virginia but didn’t think of himself as an American: on a form he filled out at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, he gave his nationality not as “American” but as “Palestinian.” A mosque official found that curious, saying: “I don’t know why he listed Palestinian. He was not born in Palestine.”
The we get the nauseating mantra about anti-Muslim backlash, that we get every time there is a Jihadi atrocity.

CBS news, is more concerned about some supposed back-lash, than the families of the murdered soldiers. Here's the CBS odious headline on their website:
Mosques Up Security in Wake of Ft. Hood 
Anti-Muslim Backlash Immediate over Suspect Accused of Killing 13 at Army Base
It makes me sick - the Jihads are bad enough... but why do our news media turn things upside down?

Remember after 9/11 we heard all about the anti Muslim backlash? It didn't happen, FBI data showed that there were more anti-Semitic attacks than anti-Muslim ones.

But that is a corner-stone of the liberal-left ideology - they judge Jihadis through the lens of their own dogma. The facts don't count when you have a theory.

Why wont these clueless-gorms just look at the facts? Unfortunately that is what libby-leftists do - they stick to their theories at all costs. Refuse to face the facts - just like Chamberlain - waving a piece of paper to the British press on landing back in England after meeting the Nazis leader:
"I have here, an agreement signed by Herr Hitler..."
 Later he said:
My good friends, this is the second time there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Now I recommend you go home, and sleep quietly in your beds
Honour? Now we see newspapers and TV media trying to tie themselves in knots to show that we can have peace with Jihadis - it is just an aberration - if we appease them and speak nicely to them it will all magically go away.

How?

How will it go away? Jihadis have contempt for liberal "weakness" (we see this in the Middle-Easts reactions to Obama's apologetic overtures and unilateral 'we will throw the olive branch and make concessions without asking for anything in return').  They appreciate strength - not weakness. Remember Osama-bin-Laden's "Strong Horse" statement?
when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse. 
The Jihads, the young men that are attracted to the movement - they like a strong horse. Christianity, our Western Democracy with its pluralism and tolerance is an abomination to them. They hate it and they want to destroy ot like they want to destroy the only democracy in the entire Middle East - which is of course Israel.

Folks, we need to protect the moderate Muslims too. We are not doing them any favours by this approach.

Robert Spencer makes some sound points:
Maybe he just snapped, perhaps under the pressure of his imminent deployment to Iraq. But it’s noteworthy that if he did, he snapped in exactly the same way that several other Muslims in the U.S. military have snapped in the past.
In April 2005, a Muslim serving in the U.S. Army, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder for killing two American soldiers and wounding fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait. AP reported: “Prosecutors say Akbar told investigators he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack to achieve ‘maximum carnage’ on his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division.”
And Hasan’s murderous rampage resembles one that five Muslim men in New Jersey tried to carry out at Fort Dix in New Jersey in 2007, when they plotted to enter the U.S. Army base and murder as many soldiers as they could.
That was a jihad plot. One of the plotters, Serdar Tatar, told an FBI informant late in 2006: “I’m gonna do it….It doesn’t matter to me, whether I get locked up, arrested, or get taken away, it doesn’t matter. Or I die, doesn’t matter, I’m doing it in the name of Allah.” Another plotter, Mohamad Shnewer, was caught on tape saying, “They are the ones, we are going to put bullets in their heads, Allah willing.”
Nidal Hasan’s statements about Muslims rising up against the U.S. military aren’t too far from that, albeit less graphic. The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nidal Hasan.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, AB

Video of Major Hasan in Arab garb

From ITN News in the UK: The first video of Major Nidal Malik Hasan has emerged after 13 people were killed at the Fort Hood camp in Texas. 



Gurth Whitaker
Lux et Veritas

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

US House backs resolution condemning Goldstone report

Some sanity reigns in the US and the EU


 
Further to my post on Lux et Veritas earlier (here)

According to the JP (full report here)
The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a non-binding resolution on Tuesday condemning the Goldstone Report, that accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, and calling on the Obama administration to oppose its endorsement.
...and the EU is showing some backbone too:
Meanwhile, European nations launched intense negotiations with Arab states, ahead of a UN General Assembly debate on the report. 
In an attempt to scuttle efforts by Arab states to bring the matter to the Security Council, and from there to the International Criminal Court, EU states were backing new language emphasizing accountability for crimes against humanity and calling on Israelis and Palestinians to launch investigations into war crimes. 
The Obama administration has already condemned the report, which was expected to go to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, as unhelpful to its efforts to revive stalled Middle East peace talks.

Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said:
"I think the UN report is unbalanced, and unfair, and inaccurate,"
Pandering to the propaganda of the Arab and Muslim states does not help move towards peace in Israel-Palestine; on the contrary it is a barrier because it gives hope to all those that support Palestinian terrorism will eventually be victorious in its stated aims to destroy Israel.

What is needed is for the message to go out to the Palestinians that there is only one outcome and that is a peaceful one - not a military victory through terrorism and destruction of Israel.

The lasting principle should be that Israel has the right to defend herself against attack.

To put it simply, there can be no peace until Israel's right to exist is recognised throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

The content of the resolution is very encouraging, clearly identifying Hamas' responsiblity; a large portion of the report is included below with some key phrases high-lighted.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB

The actual words of the motion passed by the House of Representatives is interesting & illuminating:

RESOLUTION
Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora.
Whereas, on January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed Resolution A/HRC/S-9/L.1, which authorized a `fact-finding mission’ regarding Israel’s conduct of Operation Cast Lead against violent militants in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009;
Whereas the resolution pre-judged the outcome of its investigation, by one-sidedly mandating the `fact-finding mission’ to `investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by . . . Israel, against the Palestinian people . . . particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression’;
Whereas the mandate of the `fact-finding mission’ makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel’s defensive measures;
Whereas the `fact-finding mission’ included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel’s actions `war crimes’:
Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate gave serious concern to many United Nations Human Rights Council Member States which refused to support it, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon,Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;
Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate troubled many distinguished individuals who refused invitations to head the mission; Whereas, on September 15, 2009, the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ released its report;
Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead;
Whereas the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself, admit that `we did not deal with the issues . . . regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding
officers `in the fog of war.’;
Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward, Richard Goldstone, the head of the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’, is quoted as saying, with respect to the mission’s evidence-collection methods, `If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.’;
Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to self-defense, and never noted the fact that Israel had the right to defend its citizens from the repeated violent attacks committed against civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations operating from Gaza;
Whereas the report largely ignored the culpability of the Government of Iran and the Government of Syria, both of whom sponsor Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations;
Whereas the report usually considered public statements made by Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently giving uncritical credence to statements taken from what it called the `Gaza authorities’, i.e. the Gaza leadership of Hamas;
Whereas, notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim;
Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did not consider the admission of a Hamas official that Hamas often `created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against [the Israeli military]‘ specifically to `constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack.’;
Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission’s report by selecting and prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others, as the report acknowledges when it notes that `those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups . . . from a fear of reprisals’;
Whereas even though Israel is a vibrant democracy with a vigorous and free press, the report of the `fact-finding mission’ erroneously asserts that `actions of the Israeli government . . . have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions . . . is not tolerated’;

See more of the House Resolution at the Washington Independent here

US Congress votes on condemnation of the ignominious Goldstone Report




This today  from UN Watch:
Today will be an important trial for the cause of truth, justice and peace.
The U.S. Congress will be voting this afternoon on a superb condemnation of the ignominious Goldstone Report, in advance of a United Nations resolution to be debated tomorrow.

The Goldstone Report is a 500-page document that reverses perpetrator and victim, falsely accuses Israel of “deliberate attacks” against civilians, and ignores the genocidal anti-Semitism of the Hamas terrorist organization. (For more see here). 
Here's what peace activist and philosopher Moshe Halbertal writes in the latest edition of The New Republic: "The Goldstone Report as a whole is a terrible document. It is biased and unfair."

Tomorrow, the United Nations General Assembly will begin debate on an Arab-sponsored resolution to pressure the Security Council into referring Israel to the International Criminal Court.

Genocidal Sudan is a leading supporter.
According to Richard Falk, the U.N.'s permanent investigator of alleged Israeli crimes -- who accuses the U.S. of being behind the 9/11 attacks -- the Goldstone report is a key weapon in "the legitimacy war." On that, he's right. And so what the United states and other Western democracies say and do will be critical. 
I had to read that twice! The "UN's permanent investigator of alleged Israeli crimes" is a 'truther'!

Richard Falk "accuses the US of being behind the 9/11 attacks." This is the UN? Oh yes, I remember the organisation that allowed Yassar Arafat to speak to the general assembly with a gun. Din't Arafat win
a Nobel Peace Prize?

Help! The world has been hi-jacked by crazy people.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB

Monday, November 2, 2009

Calgary Men's Cursillo Weekend


I arrived home last night from the Calgary Men's Cursillo Weekend renewed and elated from the proceedings.

It was held at Entheos, about 20 minutes west of Calgary, a quiet and tranquil spot with beautiful grounds.



The Cursillo weekend started on Thursday evening, and on Sunday evening everyone left for home, and they were more than pleased with the weekend - I would say delighted from what I saw.

The Cursillo movement is world-wide, and the branch that I attended is part of the Anglican Cursillo movement, under the Diocese of Calgary, however there were several participants from other denominations who attended.

The Cursillo weekend is open to other denominations, in fact they are always very welcome. It should be said, that all believers in Jesus Christ are brothers and sisters and part of one church, the different branches have different ideas of worship and some different interpretations, but all are brothers and sisters and all members of one true church.

I heard testimonies from some of the men from other denominations, and in every case they said it was a very positive experience; I heard one man say that he was very glad to discover a different form of worship from his own faith tradition, and he was surprised in a positive way.

I attended a weekend during the fall of 2007 as a participant, and a couple of months ago I was invited to attend again as a volunteer in some role to help make the weekend a success for the participants, just as others had done for me two years ago.

After some thought, I responded to that invitation with a glad heart, however I had some questions as to how it would work for me. Now I know, and I am very glad that I answered that invitation - it has been a great experience for me.

What can I say about Cursillo to convey something of what this weekend meant to the participants and to this who are working to make it a success?

The first thing I can say is that it is founded on Christian love, which is at the heart of the Christian Gospel (good news).

Love is at the core of the weekend; Christ's love for the world is continued by His Church in community. Christ was at the centre of a community with His disciples and followers, Christ was the centre of the community of believers in the early church, and He is the centre of the Church today. (Unfortunately I must qualify that statement; He is the centre of the true church, sadly there are many churches who claim to be Christian but they teach something else; they adopt the title "christian" but sadly they are not.)

Here's a snippit from the Calgary Cursillo website (here) on the purpose of the weekend:
The weekend is an opportunity to meet other individuals who are seeking to strengthen their faith.
It provides an opportunity through shared prayer, worship, singing, study, fellowship, discussion, and love to experience the reality of the gift of God’s grace.
What does Cursillo do for those who attend?
It helps to renew and deepen Christian commitment. Cursillo is one of many renewal movements.
Many people have said Cursillo provides an important learning experience which causes many to feel like newly made Christians with a purpose and with support.
This is from the Cursillo Website of the National Episcopal Church in the US (Episcopal in the US is part of the world-wide Anglican Communion) read more here.



A mule deer buck stands guard. Entheos, Alberta, 2009

Cursillo is world-wide there will probably be an organisation available to you wherever you live, so if you would like to know more about Cursillo you can contact the local organisation. If you have a problem to find it please fell free to email me at gurth.whitaker@gmail.com, and I will make sure you get the information and alert the organisation wherever it is.



Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB