RIP Charlie Hebdo: - casualty of the Islamic war on the West

The victims of today's massacre -- for that's what it was -- are casualties of the Islamic war against the West.

The BBC's religious affairs correspondent, Caroline Wyatt, writes:

These latest shootings may be the work of "lone wolves" but their consequences will ripple across Europe and provoke much soul-searching about the failure of integration over the past decades.

Immigrant communities are already being viewed with increasing suspicion in both France and Germany, with their significant Muslim populations, and even in the UK.

In all three, mainstream political parties are being forced to confront popular discontent over levels of immigration and the apparent desire of some younger, often disaffected children or grandchildren of immigrant families not to conform to western, liberal lifestyles - including traditions of religious tolerance and free speech.

Through all this, ultra-PC Western politicians and the lamestream press still shy away from speaking the truth, that the three men being hunted are Islamic terrorists. "They were French citizens", we are told, and "they spoke perfect French."

What we are not told is that they were of North African descent, three of the five million Muslims living in France. That's 7.5% of the French population, the largest Muslim population in Europe. They may be in Europe, but as followers of the Prophet, they are not of Europe. And that's the truth.

St. Elias Ukrainian Catholic Church Christmas news

Archpriest Roman Galadza, Pastor of St. Elias Ukrainian Catholic Church, in Brampton, Ontario, has sent us this beautiful picture of the church building, as it was a year ago, before the great fire last Easter, which razed it to the ground.

 

Father Galadza writes:

A year ago, we were preparing to celebrate the Feast [of the Holy Theophany, the Nativity of Christ], as we had so many times before, in the beauty of God's temple, St. Elias, our spiritual home. There was so much to look forward to. Now, this temple is gone and we are forced to adjust, accepting God's will and the challenge of truly believing that "God is with us!"

As for the status of reconstruction of the temple, our architectural team is working on the drawings, intending to submit them to the city for approval shortly. Insurance coverage is sufficient to begin the work while donations toward the Building Fund will enable us to furnish the interior.

If all goes well, the foundation work will begin in May with completion by summer of 2016. We look forward and pray for the day when, God willing, what was will be -- once again!

If you would like to contribute to the Building Fund, please click here to make a donation online through CanadaHelps.  Or you can send a cheque in Canadian or US dollars, payable to St. Elias Building Fund, to St. Elias Church, 10193 Heritage Road, Brampton, Ontario, L7A 0A1, Canada.

French satirical paper latest target of Islamic terrorists

As 2014 ends, so 2015 begins, with followers of the Prophet killing infidels in countries which insist on meddling in the Middle East. The USA, of course, Canada, Australia, and now France. Today in Paris, black-hooded gunmen shot and killed at least 12 people -- the body count still hasn't been finalized -- at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical publication similar to Britain's Private Eye or "America's Finest News Source", The Onion.

Two flics (French cops) are believed to be among the dead, and at least another 10 people -- they're still counting as Walt writes -- were injured in the "carnage." A police spokesthingy said the attackers escaped in two vehicles [In Paris traffic? How?! Ed.] and are still at large.

French President François Hollande, France's hugely ineffectual and unpopular president, ordered top government officials to convene an emergency meeting. "This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it," he told reporters, "and we plan to harrumph about it very loudly indeed."

M Hollande also said French police have thwarted several other planned attacks "in recent weeks." He refrained, however, from identifying the attackers as Muslims. So why does Walt fearlessly call them "Islamic extremists"? Well, what do you think?

How about if I tell you that Charlie Hebdo was firebombed in November 2011 after publishing cartoons lampooning Muslim leaders and putting an image of the Prophet Mohammed on its cover. A year later, the magazine published more Mohammed drawings amid an uproar over an anti-Muslim film. The cartoons depicted Muhammad naked and in demeaning or mildly pornographic poses. As passions raged, the French government rebuked Charlie Hebdo for political incorrectness.

Today, the last tweet on Charlie Hebdo's account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria. Witnesses to the massacre said they heard the gunmen shouting "We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed!"

The "radicalized Muslims" who have perpetrated the recent attacks in the USA, Canada and Australia have given the "war" on ISIS by America and its coalition of the somewhat willing as the motivation for their terrorist acts. ISIS has published several videos in which young, Western terrorist wannabes have said they're coming to get us, in our own countries and cities. As today's outrage demonstrates, they weren't kidding.

Walt is waiting to see what the French government will actually do to counter the threat of Islamic terrorism. Following today's shooting, the office of the French prime minister announced that the country has raised its anti-terrorism alert to its highest level. So what?

Thanks to political correctness and the "enlightened" immigration policies of its liberal governments, France is full of Muslims, some of them "moderate" and some of them, errr, not so "moderate". There's no getting rid of them, and there's no living with them in peace.

What we are seeing now, in France and the rest of the West, are the first shots in sectarian warfare -- Muslims vs "infidels" -- which can only get worse. The sad thing is so few of our political leaders had the vision to see this coming. See "Charles De Gaulle warns about Muslim immigration" (WWW, 25/8/12).

De Gaulle (1959) and Enoch Powell (1968) were denounced as alarmists and even racists. Today their warnings would be called "Islamophobic". But they were right! The warning bells have been ringing for over half a century. And still the likes of Hussein Obama, Tony Bliar, and Francis the Humble don't get it. Expect more terrorism... coming to your country, your city, perhaps even your neighbourhood... soon!

Різдво Господа нашого Ісуса Христа

Різдво Господа нашого Ісуса Христа

We wish our Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox readers and friends

 

Why the Middle East hates the West - Part I

I think it is not a huge overstatement to say that in the Middle East -- from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the Khyber Pass -- the West (read: the USA and its allies) and its people, are generally despised and loathed. Some of the region's governments -- Iraq and Pakistan, for instance -- make a show of co-operating with American policy, but that is out of fear and/or desire for the largesse of "foreign aid" (read: military aid).

Why is this? At the end of World War II, America was arguably the greatest power in the world, and generally respected (if not loved) for having saved the world for freedom and democracy. How could the rest of the world have won the war without John Wayne? But somehow, the huge reserve of goodwill built up by the USA was frittered away.

Squandered with the best of intentions, to be sure, but squandered all the same. Three incidents or phenomena come to Walt's mind.

Let's begin with Iran. This gentleman -- Mohammad Mosaddeq -- was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 until 1953. Although a Muslim, he championed  secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination, until his government was overthrown in a coup d'état orchestrated by the British MI6 and the American CIA.

Why did they do that? The answer can be spelled out in just three letters: O-I-L. Mr. Mossadeq's most notable achievement was the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later British Petroleum or BP).

But Mr. Mossadeq was only the prime minister. Under a parliamentary system of government, he was answerable to the King (or Shah) of Iran (or Persia, as the country was formerly known).

That was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who reigned -- with the support of both the UK and the USA -- from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Islamic Revolution on 11 February 1979.

He was on the Peacock Throne long before and long after the nationalization of the oil industry, and was not unhappy to see the return of foreign oil firms. Between the oil revenue and the American and British foreign aid, the Shah became one of the richest men in the world. He is said to have had a gold-plated toilet in his private jet, so that he could boast "I shit on gold!"

To be fair, it was Shah Pahlavi who introduced the White Revolution, a series of economic, social and political reforms with the proclaimed intention of transforming Iran into a global power and modernizing the nation by nationalizing certain industries -- not including oil! -- and granting women suffrage. These policies cost him the support of the Shi'a Muslim clergy, as well as the working and merchant classes.

The Shah's recognition of Israel didn't help either, nor did corruption issues surrounding himself, his family, and the ruling elite. Nor did the banning of the Communist Tudeh Party, and a general suppression of political dissent by Iran's notoriously brutal intelligence agency, SAVAK. According to official statistics, Iran had as many as 2,200 political prisoners in 1978.

The factor which contributed most to the opposition to the Shah was the American and British support for his regime. By 1979, political unrest had transformed into a revolution which forced him to leave Iran. Soon thereafter, the Iranian monarchy was formally abolished, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Khomeini, the one who characterized the USA as "the Great Satan".

Note from Ed.: That's enough Mohammeds for one post. Scroll down to read Part II.

Why the Middle East hates the West - Part II

In Part I (above), Walt gave you the Reader's Digest version of how American (and British) support for the despotic regime of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi contributed to his overthrow in 1979 and the establishment in Iran of a true and fanatical theocracy led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

A theocracy  is a form of government in which clergy have official recognition as civil ruler and official policy is either governed by officials regarded as divinely guided, or is pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religion or religious group. That's bad, right? 

Well, that's official US policy. A state or people should not be ruled by people with religious principles! In America, church and state are separate. America's rulers are decidedly irreligious. The principles that govern "the land of the free" are the "principles" of secular humanism, which has become the de facto state religion. 

But let's return to the Middle East. The Shah of Iran was not the only despot supported by the USA. During the Cold War, any dictator who professed to be against the Commies was, ipso facto [That's enough Latin. Ed.], America's friend. By means of foreign aid, military support and the occasional coup (as in Iran), America propped up Chiang Kai-shek, Syngman Rhee, Fulgencio Batista, Ferdinand Marcos, [That's enough dictators. Ed.]

However, the USA had never actually resorted to war to maintain in power a corrupt and incompetent -- but pro-Western -- dictatorship until... wait for it... Vietnam.  Yes, Vietnam -- the longest war in American history, the only undeclared war, and the first war America lost since the War of 1812-14. 

Most people think of Vietnam as being LBJ's war or Nixon's war. In fact, it started on President Eisenhower's watch, in 1954. And it rested on Ike's theory that if the USA "lost" Vietnam, it would next lose Laos and Cambodia, then Thailand, and so on. But hold on (nobody cried). How can you lose something you never had in the first place?

Vietnam was (with Laos and Cambodia) part of French Indochina and the larger French empire. The battle of Dien Bien Phu showed France incapable of hanging onto her colonies. What to do? Let them have their independence? No, that would never do. They might decide to be neutral in the Cold War, or, worse, support the Other Side. So the USA began its first colonial war, fully justifying, in the minds of the rest of the Third World, the use of the phrase "American imperialism".

American imperialism is not just a slogan invented by the Communist propaganda machine. It has been a fact of geopolitics for six decades, and remains so today. Today, though, the "empire" which the USA is fighting to maintain is in the Middle East. It is the "empire of oil".

Can the imperial storm-troopers quell the rebellious Islamists of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran? Don't bet on it. (Lifetime pct .983) We'll look at what happened to an earlier empire in Part III, below.

Why the Middle East hates the West - Part III

Right... American imperialism... the wars of the American empire, the "empire of oil". [Hey, wasn't there a company called "Imperial Oil" in Canada? Ed.] Yes, Ed., indeed there was! It was part of the Standard Oil empire, and retains the brand name "Esso" to this day. But let's move on...

If you buy Walt's argument that the USA is fighting in the Middle East to protect its empire against Islamic nationalist fanatics, you might pause to consider the fate of previous empires. The Russians and "Soviets" tried twice to invade and conquer Afghanistan. So did the British, who in the first half of the 20th century considered all of the Middle East, from the Gulf to Pakistan, to be within their sphere of influence.

Going back to ancient history, the Greeks had some success in that region. Alexander the Great penetrated as far as Kafiristan, a historical region that covered present-day Nuristan Province in Afghanistan. (If you've seen the admirable movie version of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, you'll know where I'm going with this.)

The Roman Empire, at its greatest extent, included the Holy Land, as well as Syria and "Mesopotamia" (more or less the same as northern Iraq), the very land which ISIS is fighting to take over today. That area was one of the first parts of the Roman Empire to fall. The Romans just gave up on it. They didn't know about the oil!

As Edward Gibbon tells us -- click here to read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as an e-book -- the Roman Empire imploded. It decayed and crumbled from within, doomed by its abandonment of the principles and policies that made it great. The Romans lost their respect for their gods and for decent living. They put pleasure ahead of civic duty, and gave themselves over to hedonism and excess.

The same thing happened in America, then "the rest of the West", in the 1960s. I refer to the rise of the hippie "movement" and the era of "flower power". Sex, drugs and indolence became a way of life for hundreds of thousands of (mostly white, middle-class) American youths. Such gurus of hippiedom as Timothy Leary encouraged young people to "turn on, tune in and drop out", and that's exactly what they did.

So what (I hear you ask). The toxins of those days have been neutralized by the materialism and hard times of the 80s and 90s. Yes, the drugs are still there, but you don't see all those dirty kids panhandling on the streets any more. Young people are going to school, working, having families, much as before. The hippie daze was just a blip.

Maybe so (I answer), but the West never recovered its respect for religion, its sense of community and ideals of civic duty and national pride. Mark Steyn and others have quite rightly drawn parallels with the decline of Rome and the decline of America today. See also James Burnham's Suicide of the West (Random House 1970), written at the height of the hippie craze.

What does the hippie craze have to do with the hatred of America exhibited in much of the world -- especially the Middle East -- today? It's this. How can you love or even respect a nation which does not love or respect itself?

A half-century ago, before the hippies exported their scruffy lifestyle to the rest of the world, Americans were generally respected, even admired. Foreigners had never seen Americans wandering around their streets naked and stoned, begging for spare change, epitomizing decadence. Then came the hippies.

The reaction of people in places like Afghanistan was summed up by a director of that country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, quoted by Suzanne Labin in Hippies, drogues et sexe -- translated in English as Hippies, Drugs and Promiscuity (Arlington House 1972):

The West [he said] has always been the symbol of culture, of enterprise, of civility, of power, of artistic splendor for us. And now we have the children of this West in the streets of Kabul: dressed  like tramps, stretched out on tables, begging in the streets, scornful of learning, spending full-time on drugs or, at best, guitars. We have the impression that the marrow of your civilization is rotting. [Emphasis mine. Walt]

The sons of our more prominent families have traditionally had only one aspiration: to go study in the brilliant West. Now they don't want to go any more, and besides, their families -- in whom the traditions of good breeding, of order, and of respect for the traditional ways are still very much alive -- agree that their  children should not go off into your world of perdition. The hippies have turned our youth away from the West.

The people of the Middle East -- "moderate Muslims" as well as Islamic extremists -- reject Western society as it now appears, dominated by what I'll call the American "culture of whatever". There is no sense of responsibility, only of "rights". There is no morality, no sense of right and wrong, not even in the Church. ("Who am I to judge?")

What is left of the "hippie culture" is the idea that anything goes. "If it feels good, do it." And, "If you don't want to do it, you don't have to." The people of the Middle East -- not to mention the rest of Asia, Africa and Latin America -- don't want their society to become like ours. Who can blame them?!