Democrat Party Vision of Socialist Utopia

Socialism is just a milestone on the road to communist utopia!

As Vladimir Lenin helpfully explained, “The goal of socialism is communism.”

Democrats – Socialists Progressing Toward Communism

The chairman of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA has penned a 2,023-word manifesto making the critical point that American Communists are eager to work with the Democratic Party to advance the modern communist agenda and achieve communist goals.

Communist Party chairman John Bachtell published his essay last week at People’s World, a “daily news website of, for and by the 99% and the direct descendant of the Daily Worker.”

“[L]abor and other key social forces are not about to leave the Democratic Party anytime soon,” Bachtell promised. “They still see Democrats as the most realistic electoral vehicle” to fight against perceived class enemies.”

http://moonbattery.com/?p=54759

Obama Wants Egypt's Pro-Christian President Removed

Obama embraces the Muslim Brotherhood and its goal of Sharia Law through Jihad.

President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi became the first Egyptian president to ever visit a Christian Church on Christmas.

El-Sisi visited St. Mark Cathedral and spoke to the congregation on Christmas day.  His speech was repeatedly interrupted by applause from the jubilant congregation.

President el Sisi has repeatedly told audiences that Islam needs a reformation and Muslims must rid their religion of violence and extremism.

Today the Obama State Department held meetings with Muslim Brotherhood leaders to strategize how to rid Egypt of Al-Sisi.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/01/figures-obama-meets-with-muslim-brotherhood-to-strategize-how-to-rid-egypt-of-pro-christian-president/

The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders this week for a meeting about their ongoing efforts to oppose the current government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, who rose to power following the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Brotherhood, in 2013.

One member of the delegation, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol, according to his Facebook page.

That delegation member, Waleed Sharaby, is a secretary-general of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council and a spokesman for Judges for Egypt, a group reported to have close ties to the Brotherhood.

The delegation also includes Gamal Heshmat, a leading member of the Brotherhood, and Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery, a Brotherhood member who served as a parliamentarian from Luxor.

Jeb Bush Says "Be Polite" to Illegal Aliens

Speaking at the National Automobile Dealers Association on Sunday, hoping to drum up support for a 2016 presidential bid, pro-amnesty, pro-Common Core establishment Republican Jeb Bush indicated that illegal aliens would leave the country if they were only asked to leave in a polite manner. 

“”We ought to be able to figure out where they are and politely ask them to leave,” said the squishy Bush.

In April of 2014, Bush infamously noted that foreign invaders were somehow only guilty of committing an “act of love.” 

So, would he politely ask ISIS to stop beheading people?

So, would he politely ask the Iranians to stop dropping nukes on Israel?

What a putz!

Breeding Like Rabbits

Pope Francis recently stated that Catholics should not “breed like rabbits.”

He must have been warning that this could happen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lqo9Le6xM0

Even worse, this might happen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgj3nZWtOfA

The Totalitarianism of Same-Sex “Marriage”

What will happen after the US Supreme Court unconstitutionally imposes same-sex “marriage” on every state?   Look to Canada to see what has happened there with new laws and regulations that limit free speech, limit parental rights, limit freedom of religion, and punish those who fail to conform.

The legalization of same-sex “marriage” does not bring with it the innocent blood which cries to heaven, though it is perhaps the single most audacious social engineering initiative in American history. But the way in which it has been imposed in state after state, as courts have seen fit to ignore ballot initiatives, sets the stage for a United States Supreme Court ruling on par with Roe vs. Wade. The Supreme Court has announced it will rule on same-sex “marriage” in this sitting—exactly ten years after Canada legalized same-sex “marriage.” It is important for Americans to look at what has happened in Canada.

On July 20, 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex “marriage.” On that day the sun rose as it always does, people went to work, daily Mass was celebrated in Catholic Churches and daily life continued to unfold as it normally does. In the days and months following there was no massive spike in the numbers of same-sex couples getting “married” (it had already been legal in 8 of 10 provinces since 2003), the speculated upon possibility of same-sex “marriage” tourism from the United States never really materialized and the Canadian flag was not changed from the maple leaf to the LGBT rainbow. But something very significant happened with the legalization of marriage in Canada and it wasn’t about the freedom of gay people to marry, and it wasn’t really about marriage.

July 20, 2005 marked a very significant step towards totalitarianism in Canada.

Free speech, the rights of parents, the right to preach and practise one’s religion and the worn and tattered fibers of normative decency were all deeply damaged. With the legalization of same-sex “marriage” what had been aberrant only a few years earlier became entrenched as a legal right, and what had been a normal and natural view of sexuality had been reduced to the retrograde thinking of hate crime dinosaurs.

Terrence Prendergast is the Catholic archbishop of Ottawa. Speaking at St. Thomas University in Minnesota in 2012, he outlined the consequences of same-sex “marriage” in Canada. His list included: restrictions on freedoms, forced sex education, sexually confused children, sexual experimentation among children, muzzling and debilitating the Church, more births out of wedlock, more in-vitro fertilizations, more abortions, more poverty, more misery, more disease, more addictions and higher health care costs.

Calgary bishop Frederick Henry was called before a Human Rights Commission Tribunal in 2005 for writing a letter defining Catholic teaching on same-sex “marriage.” 

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/totalitarianism-sex-marriage

70 Years Ago Today

The following article from The Daily Telegraph (minus the short poem by John Donne added by me) http://www.telegraph.co.uk should be required reading by everyone on this Holocaust Memorial Day.

No Man Is An Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Is The World About To End?

Are we at the End of Times?   Is the world about to end?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides us with a general order of events at the End [CCC 673-677]. Chronologically they are,

1. the full number of the Gentiles come into the Church

2. the "full inclusion of the Jews in the Messiah's salvation, in the wake of the full number of the Gentiles" (#2 will follow quickly on, in the wake of, #1)

3. a final trial of the Church "in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth." The supreme deception is that of the Antichrist.

4. Christ's victory over this final unleashing of evil through a cosmic upheaval of this passing world and the Last Judgment.

As Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) pointed out (in the context of the message of Fátima), we are not at the end of the world. In fact, the Second Coming (understood as the physical return of Christ) cannot occur until the full number of the Gentiles are converted, followed by "all Israel."

Approved Catholic mystics (Venerables, Blessed and Saints, approved apparitions) throw considerable light on this order, by prophesying a minor apostasy and tribulation toward the end of the world, after which will occur the reunion of Christians.

Only later will the entire world fall away from Christ (the great apostasy) and the personal Antichrist arise and the Tribulation of the End occur.

http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/endtimes.htm

See also:  Catholic View of the End Times and Tribulation:

http://taylormarshall.com/2015/01/062-catholic-view-end-times-tribulatoin.html

I Will Go Now to Innisfree

Lake Innisfree, Sligo, Ireland

I WILL ARISE AND GO NOW, AND GO TO INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight ‘s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go no, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Wlliam Butler Yeats
1865-1939

In The Bleak Midwinter

"In the Bleak Midwinter" is a Christmas carol based on a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti written before 1872 in response to a request from the magazine Scribner's Monthly for a Christmas poem.^[1] It was published posthumously in Rossetti's Poetic Works in 1904.

The poem became a Christmas carol after it appeared in The English Hymnal in 1906 with a setting by Gustav Holst.

Harold Darke's anthem setting of 1911 is more complex and was named the best Christmas carol in a poll of some of the world's leading choirmasters and choral experts in 2008.

King's College Cambridge 2005 #4 In the Bleak Midwinter Gustav Holst

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hs9-Sxf9j4

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk,
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air -
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part;
Yet what I can, I give Him -
Give my heart.

Edgar Allan Poe's Hymn

Edgar Allan Poe’s Hymn to Our Lady

January 24, 2015 by Kathy Schiffer 

By Oscar Halling [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Did you know that Edgar Allen Poe once penned a hymn to Our Lady?

Poe, the tortured poet of the American Romantic Movement, is best known for his stories of mystery and the macabre–stories like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and famous narrative poems like “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee.”

His onomatopoeic poem “The Bells,” which was published after his death in 1849, is believed to have been inspired by the bells of the tower at Fordham University, near his home.  It relies on iambic pentameter in the haunting repetition of “the bells, bells, bells, bells, the tintinnabulation of the bells….” to capture the reader’s imagination.

But amidst the haunting poetry and prose which characterize the work of the troubled artist, one poem stands alone as evidence of his spiritual hunger.

Poe wrote “Hymn” after a noon-time stop into a church staffed by the Jesuits.  While walking along the noisy street, Poe heard the clear ringing of a church bell.  “Why,” he wondered, “would the bell be ringing at this time of day?”  A Jesuit explained that the bell rang at noon, as well as at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., to call the faithful to pray the Angelus, the prayer which reflects on the Incarnation of Christ and on Mary’s “fiat,” her “yes” to the announcement of the archangel Gabriel.

Poe had never before heard of the traditional prayer, but the story inspired him to write the following poem:

“Hymn”

At morn–at noon–at twilight dim–
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe–in good and ill–
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee
Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine.

The Angelus derives its name from its opening words in Latin, “Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ.”

And here, in case you’ve forgotten, are the words of the Angelus:

V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
 Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with Thee;
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death. Amen
V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word.
 Hail Mary, etc.
V. And the Word was made Flesh.
R. And dwelt among us.
 Hail Mary, etc.
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

LET US PRAY
Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts,

that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an angel,

may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection.

Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2015/01/edgar-allan-poes-hymn-to-our-lady/#ixzz3PrBryC5J

I Am Charles Martel

Remember when the French actually fought back against Muslim aggression and invasion?

Remember when we spent that night at the Holiday Inn in Tours, but we never saw anything historic? 

Do the French even have monuments to Charles Martel?

Interesting 8-minute video explains how the French stopped the raping and pillaging Muslim advance in Tours, France.

Je Suis Charles Martel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-cPxNkrD9k

The slogan Je Suis Charles Martel is beginning to make its way around Saint Blogs.  Here is some information on the grandfather of Charlemagne who stopped the advance of Islam into what became France in 732 at the battle of Tours.

Charles Martel, “The Hammer”, led a life of conflict.  An illegitimate son of Pepin of Herstal, Mayor of the Palace and the true power behind the Merovingian puppet kings, after the death of his father he had to fight his father’s legitimate offspring who sought to deprive him of any share in his father’s inheritance.  Fortunately for Charles a streak of military genius ran through him, and he won battles against the odds, using force multiplying stratagems, including feigned retreats, and attacking in the middle of the day when armies of his time normally took a siesta.  By 717 he was in control of Neustria, showing mercy unusual for his day in letting his defeated adversaries live and treating them with kindness.

The 28 year old ruler now entered a round of endless wars with neighboring kingdoms, gradually extending his power, and building up a professional force of infantry to supplement the peasant levies that made up the vast bulk of most Frankish armies.

A friend and patron of Saint Boniface, he also began the alliance between the rulers of the Franks and the Popes.  He contributed much land to the Church, but roused ecclesiastical ire when he took some back to support his troops.  He might have been excommunicated if both Church and State had not suddenly confronted a common foe.

In 711 the forces of Islam began the conquest of Spain, helped along by Christian traitors.  Within a decade almost all of Spain had fallen, with small proto-kingdoms of Spaniards clinging to a precarious independence in the mountains of northern Spain.  Mohammed had died less than a century before in 632, and in that intervening period Islam had conquered the Middle East, northern Africa and seemed poised to do the same in Europe against the petty Christian kingdoms that specialized in ceaseless internecine war, seemingly weakening themselves before  their Islamic foes lifted a finger.

With Spain subdued, Muslim raids into what is now France became common.  In 732 Abd-al-Raḥmân, governor of Muslim Spain, led a predominantly cavalry army of 25,000 men north on a great raid beyond the Pyrenees, perhaps the prelude to a war of  conquest.

Charles Martel rallied together an infantry army of 15,000, and in early October 732 his army and that of Abd-al-Raḥmân confronted each other for seven days outside of Tours, Martel making certain to occupy the high ground.   Martel had his army drawn up in a huge phalanx.  Tiring of the stalemate, on October 10, 732 Abd-al-Raḥmân launched cavalry charge after cavalry charge against the Franks.  A Muslim chronicler tells us what happened next:

And in the shock of the battle the men of the North seemed like a sea that cannot be moved. Firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice; and with great blows of their swords they hewed down the Arabs. Drawn up in a band around their chief, the people of the Austrasians carried all before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts [of the foe].

Martel launched an attack on the enemy camp, causing Abd-al-Raḥmân to order a retreat to his camp.  The retreat became a rout after Abd-al-Raḥmân  was killed in the fighting.

A Christian chronicle sums up the outcome of Tours:

Prince Charles boldly drew up his battle lines against them [the Arabs] and the warrior rushed in against them. With Christ’s help he overturned their tents, and hastened to battle to grind them small in slaughter. The king Abdirama having been killed, he destroyed [them], driving forth the army, he fought and won. Thus did the victor triumph over his enemies.

After Tours, Charles spent the rest of his life fighting off Islamic invasions from Spain.  Much hard fighting remained ahead, but Tours was the turning point.  The Franks would remain Christians and they ensured that Europe would remain Christian, thanks to God and the hard fighting Charles Martel and his Frankish infantry.

- See more at: http://the-american-catholic.com/2015/01/21/je-suis-charles-martel/#more-57517

Vote Democrat - Vote Socialism!

1. Socialism and communism are the same ideology

Communism is an extreme form of socialism. From the ideological standpoint, there is no substantial difference between the two. In fact, the communist Soviet Union called itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991) and communist China, Cuba and Vietnam define themselves as socialist nations. All communist countries legalized abortion. Communist China and its infamous “one-child policy” goes one step further by forcing mothers to have abortions.

2. Socialism violates personal freedom

Socialism seeks to eliminate “injustice” by transferring rights and responsibilities from individuals and families to the State. In the process, socialism actually creates injustice. It destroys true liberty by taking away the freedom to decide all matters that pertain to the individual. The will of the State replaces the laws of morality and thus opens the way to abortion.

3. Socialism violates human nature

Socialism is anti-natural. It destroys personal initiative, a fruit of our intellect and free will, and replaces it with State control. It tends to totalitarianism, with its government and police repression, wherever it is implemented.

4. Socialism violates private property

Socialism calls for “redistribution of the wealth” by taking from the “rich” and giving to the “poor.” It imposes taxes that punish those who took greater advantage of their productive talents, capacity to work or thrift. It uses taxation to promote economic and social “egalitarianism,” a goal that will be fully achieved, according to The Communist Manifesto, with the “abolition of private property.” Thus, the destruction of property takes away the conditions for the healthy functioning of the family.

5. Socialism opposes traditional marriage

Socialism sees no moral reason for people to restrict sex to marriage, the indissoluble union between a man and a woman. Furthermore, socialism undermines private property, which Friedrich Engels, founder of modern socialism and communism along with Karl Marx, saw as the foundation of traditional marriage.

6. Socialism opposes parental rights in education

Socialism has the State control the education of children. Almost from birth, children are to be handed over to public institutions, where they will be taught what the State wants, regardless of parental views.

7. Socialism promotes radical equality

A supposed absolute equality among men is the fundamental assumption of socialism. Therefore, it sees any inequality as unjust in itself. Private employers are quickly portrayed as “exploiters” whose profits really belong to their employees. This radical equality also favors “sexual equality” and the destruction of the family.

  

8. Socialism promotes atheism

Belief in God, Who unlike us is infinite, omnipotent and omniscient, clashes head-on with the principle of absolute equality. Socialism therefore rejects the spiritual, claiming that only matter exists. God, the soul and the afterlife are illusions according to socialism.

9. Socialism promotes moral relativism

For socialism there are no absolute truths or revealed morals that establish standards of conduct that apply to everyone, everywhere and always. Everything evolves, including right and wrong, good and evil. There is no place for the Ten Commandments, neither in the private mind nor in the public square.

10. Socialism mocks religion

According to Karl Marx, religion is “the opium of the people.” Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, agreed, “Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”

https://www.americaneedsfatima.org/Family-Christian-Marriage/ten-more-good-reasons-to-fight-against-abortion.html?utm_source=sm-anf&utm_content=E.15007_Split2

Council of Europe - Same-sex Marriage is a "human right"

European socialists advancing their agenda . . .    Socialists in the USA sure to follow their lead . . .

Why is same sex “marriage” a priority for Enda Kenny?

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Gertrude

Reprinted by kind permission of the Editor, Catholic Voice, Ireland.

Published: 22 January 2015

by Deacon Nick Donnelly

In January 2014, Enda Kenny legalised the national tragedy of abortion in Ireland. This year he seems set on pitching the country headlong into the nonsense of gay marriage announcing the date of his gay marriage referendum in the run up to Christmas. Tánaiste Joan Burton’s enthusiastic endorsement of the referendum gave the misleading impression that it originates in will of the people. She said: “The fact that this referendum is now to take place is a mark of the progress that has taken place in this country in recent years and decades, and indicates the extent to which attitudes to lesbian and gay people have changed.”

But is this really anything to do with the will of the people of Ireland?

How has gay marriage rocketed to the top of Kenny’s agenda?

Have you ever asked yourself the question, how has gay marriage rocketed to the top of so many governments’ busy legislative agendas? Does this juggernaut to legalise gay marriage originate from the citizens of the Republic, or rather from the Irish ruling elite’s collaboration in a pan-European social engineering project agreed by politicians in 2010?

Christopher Booker, a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph, outlined the details of what he believes is a social engineering project to make sense of the spectacle of David Cameron tearing the Conservative party apart through his determination to legalise gay marriage. According to Booker, the advance of same sex marriage across Europe is a carefully worked out scheme hatched out by the Council of Europe and cabinet members of David Cameron’s Conservative and Liberal Coalition government. Four years ago, ministers from the 47 member countries in the Council of Europe agreed a “Recommendation” on “measures to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity”. In 2011, Cameron’s government committed the UK Foreign Office and its new Gender Equality Office to fully implement the 2010 Council of Europe plan. Later that year, when the UK assumed the six-monthly chairmanship of the Council of Europe it put gay marriage at the top of Europe’s agenda. Cameron’s government even invested £100,000 in creating a dedicated LGBT unit in Strasbourg to plan the implementation of the project. Christopher Booker writes:

‘Britain was so keen to take the lead that, on March 27 last year [2012], the UK’s representation in Strasbourg organised the council’s first “closed conference” (ie, public not admitted), to agree detailed plans for the June 2013 implementation… A speech by the British judge, Sir Nicolas Bratza, then head of the European Court of Human Rights, signalled that the court was ready to declare same-sex marriage a “human right”, as soon as enough countries fell into line.’

Simply put, Enda Kenny and his government can be seen as implementing a British plan to undo the institution of marriage in Ireland. 

https://catholicismpure.wordpress.com

The Earliest Christian Teaching on Abortion

From sometime in the first (or early second) century A.D.:

“There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and great is the difference between these two ways. And now this is the way of life: First, you shall love God, who made you…

The second commandment of the teaching is:

You shall not murder;

you shall not commit adultery;

you shall not corrupt children;

you shall not be sexually immoral;

you shall not steal;

you shall not practice magic;

you shall not engage in sorcery;

you shall not murder a child in an abortion

nor shall you kill one that is born.”

(Greek ou phoneuseis teknon en pthora oude gennēthen apokteneis)

--Didache 1:1, 2:1-2 (My translation)

Notice here that the Didache uses the term “murder” (Greek phoneuō) when speaking about the destruction of the “child” (Greek teknon) in the womb. This word—unlike the more general word for "kill" (Greek apokteinō)—is taken directly from the Septuagint version of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not murder” (Greek ou phoneuseis) (Exod 20:15). In this way, the Didache roots its teaching against abortion directly in the second tablet of the Decalogue regarding love of neighbor.

In The Bleak Midwinter

"In the Bleak Midwinter" is a Christmas carol based on a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti written before 1872 in response to a request from the magazine Scribner's Monthly for a Christmas poem.^[1] It was published posthumously in Rossetti's Poetic Works in 1904.

The poem became a Christmas carol after it appeared in The English Hymnal in 1906 with a setting by Gustav Holst.

Harold Darke's anthem setting of 1911 is more complex and was named the best Christmas carol in a poll of some of the world's leading choirmasters and choral experts in 2008.

King's College Cambridge 2005 #4 In the Bleak Midwinter Gustav Holst

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hs9-Sxf9j4

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk,
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air -
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part;
Yet what I can, I give Him -
Give my heart.

Coming To Your Neighborhood Soon

Interesting pictures in this video . . .

How Islam is Taking Over The World: Islamization Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpM6QKaAgP0

Muslim population: rising 10 times faster than rest of society
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news...

Muslim Europe: the demographics transforming our continent 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world...

The Crusades - A Logical Response to Islamic Invasions and Atrocities

Interesting video with good pictures . . .

Did Islamic Atrocities Provoke the Crusades?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imTY5izhTDo

Donate to support Real Crusades History:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr...

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Real-C...

This video discusses the Islamic violence against Eastern Christians in the Syrian region during the Middle Ages, and how it provoked the Crusades as a defensive response. The idea that the Crusades were an unprovoked act of violence against Islamic civilization is simply nonsense and not historical. This video makes use of several important medieval primary sources from the Middle East, including Aristakes' 11th Century Armenian History, and the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian. 

Some important sources:
The full text of Aristakes' History
http://rbedrosian.com/a1.htm

Info on Michael the Syrian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...

An article by leading Crusades historian Tom Madden
http://ignatiusinsight.net/features20...

An excellent book by an Egyptian scholar entitled "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam"
http://books.google.com/books?id=C2Gg...

A Rage Against History - The Wounded Soul of Islam

A rage against history | Professor Clive Kessler

Posted on January 18, 2015 by GC

Clive Kessler is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of New South Wales. He is well known as a scholar of South-east Asia, especially the Muslim bits. In the past week he has published on current events in Europe in an article entitled A rage against historyin New Mandala, an online publication of the College of Asia and the Pacific of the distinguished Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. The ANU is one of the world’s top 50 universities, according to the Times higher education supplement.  It’s an article well worth reading to see the professor’s account of the source of the troubles now being experienced in Europe and a possible remedy for it. But it’s rather long, so I attempt a summary here with selected quotes from the article.

Recent “Islamist” crimes in Europe and elsewhere have their source within the wounded soul of contemporary Islamic civilisation and of the modern Muslim world generally. 

This is because, among other things, Islam sees itself as the successor to and the completion of the Abrahamic faith tradition of ethical and prophetic monotheism. To Judaism and then Christianity. And it sees itself as complete because it sees itself (or so its scholarly traditions assert), unlike Judaism and Christianity, as equipped with a fully developed social and political “blueprint”, a divinely prescribed plan for the organisation and political management of society.

However…

… after Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt the world of Islam was overwhelmed. The collapse and humiliation of the Islamic world was accomplished by what we now call “modernity” —— social, economic, administrative, technical, military, intellectual and cultural. It was defeated and routed by the application of modern attitudes and techniques, born of the Enlightenment and the new scientific revolution, that the European powers commanded and developed and began to deploy ever more thoroughly, and which the world of Islam lacked. That is how Napoleon and those who followed him succeeded; that is what Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt powerfully demonstrated and announced.

Today, the radical Muslims, or militant Islamists, do not merely feel the pain of this deep wound within the soul of Islam. They also seek to act, with violent means, forcibly to “set things right again”. They are possessed and driven by a conviction that “history has gone wrong” on them —— that it has done so wrongly, and so has wronged them —— in defiance of divine historical assurances and guarantees of political primacy, ascendancy, sovereignty and success.

And, it will simply not do to cut these violent people loose, allowing them to do as they please, by saying “what they do has nothing to do with Islam”. It has everything to do with Islam. 

There is no other way to explain it. It makes no sense without reference to Islam. What the violent militants do may have little to do with “Islam as decent, progressive people choose to understand it”. But it exists within, feeds off, and is explicable only within Islam and Islamic terms, and with reference to the travails of modern Islamic history generally.

Please read Professor Kessler’s very thorough article, long though it is, but well worth the effort, if only to see Professor Kessler’s recommendations, at:

http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2015/01/12/a-rage-against-history/

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Pope Retracts "Punch in the Face" Remark and Issues Clarification

Breaking News from Eye of the Tiber:

En route to the Philippines from Sri Lanka yesterday, Pope Francis said that he was ready to “punch” anyone who insults his mother, showing that there are limits to freedom of expression.

“We have a duty to speak openly. To have this freedom, but without offending. It’s true that you cannot react with violence, but if my aide Doctor Gasbarri, who is a friend, badmouths my mother, a punch would be coming for him,”

After Piers Morgan and other pansies reacted hysterically to this joke, the Pope has issued a retraction and a clarification:

“Hold on…let me take that back. I would not punch him in the face. At least not at first. First, I would kick him in the nuts. Then a knee in the face would be coming for him. After this, I would have many options. I could put him in a headlock, a figure-four leg lock, a vice grip, the Colossal Clutch, the Turantual, the Boston Crab…any of these maneuvers would help to rectify the wrong said about my mother.”    

Pope Francis expanded his remarks by begging those who don’t believe him to “try” him if they did not believe him, saying, “try me…say one thing, I beg you…pleeeeaase say something!”

http://www.eyeofthetiber.com/2015/01/16/pope-retracts-punch-in-the-face-remark-says-he-would-kick-them-in-nuts/

Open Letter To Eric Holder

Former FBI Special Agent K. Dee McCown wrote an open letter to Eric Holder. The response has been epic.

    K. Dee McCown

    College Station, Texas

    December 28, 2014

    Attorney General Eric Holder

    U.S. Department of Justice

    950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

    Washington, DC 20530-0001

    Dear Attorney General Holder,

    It is unlikely that we met while I served in the FBI. That being said, we served at the Department of Justice (DOJ) during the same years and on the same “team” conceptually speaking. During my service in the FBI I worked with a number of U.S. Attorney Offices in the United States to include a tour at FBIHQ where I worked with the Department of Justice (Main) on a daily basis.

    I begin my letter with this comment to highlight that I am not a bystander on the topic of law enforcement in the United States. I worked and managed a variety of federal investigations during my 12 years of service in the FBI, to include the management of several Civil Rights cases in the State of Texas. In fact, during my last tour in the Bureau, I was an FBI Supervisor responsible for managing federal investigations in nine (9) Texas counties, many of which were rural; in places where one would suspect racism to flourish given the narrative often pushed by Hollywood and urban progressive elites like yourself. I performed this mission diligently and under the close supervision of two FBI managers; an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) and Special Agent in Charge (SAC,) both of which happened to be African American and outstanding law enforcement professionals. I also performed this mission serving side by side with a variety of law enforcement agencies at the Federal, State and local level.

    I have observed you closely during your tenure as Attorney General and notably during these last tumultuous years; watching you negotiate a number of controversial public matters to include the ATF Fast and Furious scandal, Black Panther Party intimidation at voting booths, IRS targeting of American citizens (citizen groups opposed to the Obama Administration,) the ignoring of US Immigration laws, DOJ criminal indictments of select news reporters and your management of several high profile criminal investigations involving subjects of race, notably African Americans.

    Until today, I chose to hold my tongue. However, with the assassination of two NYPD Lieutenants last weekend in New York City, at the hands of a African American man with a lengthy criminal record, fresh from his participation in anti-police activities; coupled with numerous “don’t shoot, hands up,” and “black lives matter” anti-police protests (some of which are violent) occurring daily around the nation, I am compelled to write you this letter.

    To be blunt Mr. Holder, I am appalled at your lack of leadership as the Attorney General of the United States and your blatant politicizing of the Department of Justice. Your actions, both publicly and privately, have done nothing to quell the complex racial issues we face in our country and have done everything to inflame them. As the “top cop” of the United States, you share in the blame for much of the violence and protests we are now witnessing against law enforcement officers honorably serving throughout our nation.

    During one of your first public speeches as Attorney General you made it a point to call America “a nation of cowards” concerning race relations. That speech, followed by other public announcements where you emphatically opined that the odds were stacked against African Americans in regard to the enforcement of law, your intention to change the law and permit convicted felons to vote after incarceration, and your changes to federal law ending “racial profiling,” are poignant examples of how detached you remain from the challenges faced by law enforcement officers serving in crime ridden neighborhoods throughout the nation. These opinions are also indicative of a man that lives and works in the elitist “bubble” of Washington D.C.

    Your performance, as the nation’s Attorney General, during the Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, Florida and the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri clearly highlights your myopic view on this topic. Contrary to your embarrassing prejudgment in the Brown case and evasive post trial remarks on the Martin case, neither Brown nor Martin were targeted and/or killed because of their African American race. Rather, as non-emotive investigations determined, both teens died as a consequence of their own tragic and egregious behavior; behavior that involved a violent assault on a law abiding citizen in the Trayvon Martin case, and a violent assault on a young police officer in the Michael Brown case. Yet you, as the number one spokesman for law enforcement in the country, blame the deaths of these men on years of institutional racism and the alleged epidemic targeting of African American men by police departments around the country; nothing could be further from the truth. Following the Michael Brown case Grand Jury decision all you could muster was the following comment:

    “The Department of Justice is currently investigating not only the shooting but also the Ferguson police department in what is called a “patterns and practices” inquiry to determine if the police department has engaged in systematic racism.”

    So, let’s get this straight. At a decisive moment in history when our nation required a strong and unbiased voice from its’ senior law enforcement official, you Mr. Holder, made it your personal mission to join with other racial antagonist and politicize a tragic event, accusing a young white police officer of a racially motivated killing in what we now know was a justified self-defense shooting of a predatory felon. Your behavior is unbelievable. You sir, have sacrificed your integrity on the altar of political expediency. You, Mr. Holder, are the “coward” and hypocrite you so loudly denounce when speaking of broken race relations in America.

    Further to this point Mr. Holder, law enforcement officers around the country remain dismayed and shocked at the counsel you keep; that being your close relationship with none other than Al Sharpton, a racist “shake down artist” who spreads hate, divisiveness and the promotion of anti-law enforcement sentiment throughout the country; a tax evading fraudster who has unbelievably visited the White House over 80 times in recent years. It is simply beyond my comprehension as a former federal law enforcement professional, that you, the Attorney General of the United States, joined arms in common cause with a charlatan like “the Reverend” Al Sharpton; and it speaks volumes to your personal character and lack of professional judgment.

    Violent crime, out of wedlock births, drug abuse, rampant unemployment and poverty found in many low-income minority neighborhoods are not a result of racist community policing and racial profiling as you so quickly assert, and frankly most law abiding Americans are exhausted of hearing this false narrative repeated time and again by you and others in the racial grievance industry. While no one, me included, would ever suggest that African Americans have not suffered from institutional racism in the past, I would strongly argue that we no longer live in the Mississippi of 1965, nor do we live in a country that even closely resembles the “Jim Crow” South of yesteryear. Those days, thankfully, are in the past as are the generations of Americans that supported such egregious behavior and endured such suffering.

    Rather, Mr. Holder, we live in a day and time where the root cause of many problems faced in our African American communities can be attributed to the breakdown of civil order due to the rejection of institutional and family authority and the practice of counter-culture values; and most notably, from the absence of strong male leadership in fatherless black families. The reason that our local police officers are so often entwined in tragic events in black communities is because it is the police that have filled the void in these communities that should be occupied by moral and strong black men leading family units with Godly values. You, Mr. Holder, especially, should be thanking the police rather than persecuting them for the gap they fill in these communities because if it were not for the intervention of local police many African American neighborhoods would be in a state of total anarchy.

    Yet tragically, you and your race-baiting colleague Al Sharpton (a paid media personality under contract with MSNBC news) choose to remain silent because to publicly speak this self-evident truth threatens to not only alienate and offend the most loyal voting constituency of the Democratic Party but diminish your and Al Sharpton’s self-serving power base in these suffering communities. God forbid that you would suggest individual citizens accept responsibility for their own behavior and the collective failure of their communities; it is so much easier for you and others like you to make excuses, play the victim card, and pander rather than address the real root causes that plague many low income neighborhoods.

    Mr. Holder, the public is aware of FBI statistics that tell a different story than the one you and Sharpton preach. We know that young African American males, representing a tiny fraction of the U.S. population, are by far the greatest perpetrators of violent crime in America when compared to their peers in other ethnic groups, and, we know that citizens of African American descent overwhelmingly make up the majority of their victims. We also know that incidents where white police officers shoot and kill black perpetrators are rare and on the decline. We know further that although there are legitimate and bona fide Federal Civil Rights investigations in the United States worthy of pursuing, they are miniscule when compared to the false narrative portrayed by you, President Obama and Sharpton declaring rampant discrimination against African American men by police officers throughout the country. You are just plain wrong.

    In closing Mr. Holder I will leave you with this thought; you were given a rare opportunity to lead with integrity during a variety of divisive and controversial issues during your tenure as the 82d Attorney General of the United States and rather than be a man of moral courage you chose instead to cower, further inflame racial tensions, advance false narratives and play progressive political activist.

    Time and again you chose to “politicize” the mission of the Department of Justice rather than pursue justice and now, tragically, we are witnessing the fruits of your irresponsible behavior in the murder of two innocent police officers in New York City, assassinated by a man motivated by the flames of racial hatred that you personally fanned. How many more police officers will be injured or die in the coming days because of the perilous conditions you helped create in this nation. You, President Obama and Al Sharpton own this problem lock, stock and barrel and now it is your legacy.

    As thousands of NYPD officers turn their collective back on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, another dishonest politician and Sharpton disciple, so too do countless Federal law enforcement officers turn our backs on you.

    K. Dee McCown

    FBI (1997 – 2008)

    CC: Senator Mitch McConnell

           Senator John Cornyn

           Senator Ted Cruz

           Senator Harry Reid

          The Honorable Bill Flores

          The Honorable John Boehner

          The Honorable Nancy Pelosi