I have had this video of my dog Tubok posted as part of my “About Me”. For those of you who can use a smile today, here he is in all his glory – one of God’s beautiful creature:
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Mad Intelligence: The Secularist Response to Islam – Crisis Magazine.
Sample read:
“The contemporary attacks on Christianity, moral and political, are redolent of the Decian persecutions, and yet an instinct of much of the secularist media is reluctance to report, let alone condemn beyond formulaic protocols, the beheading of Christian infants, the crucifixion of Christian teenagers, the practical genocide of Christian communities almost as old as Pentecost, and the destruction to date of 168 churches in the Middle East. Very simply, this rhetorical paralysis betrays a disdain for Judaeo-Christian civilization and its exaltation of man in the image of God with the moral demands which accrue to that. Their operative philosophy, characteristic of those who are empirically bright but morally dim, is that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” There is, for instance, the alliance of the inimical Pharisees and Herodians to entrap Jesus (Matt. 22:15-16). That is the logic of the asylum where very smart people are also very mad. For Christ the Living Truth, it is worse than clinical insanity: it is, using his dread word, hypocrisy.
Many European sophisticates, such as the “Cliveden Set,” promoted the Nazis. Even some prominent Jewish voters and other minorities supported them, until the Nuremburg Racial Laws of 1935. This was so because the Nazis were seen as a foil to the Bolsheviks and a means to social reconstruction. Conversely, many Western democrats over cocktails supported the Stalinists because they were perceived as the antidote to the Nazis. The U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies, 1936-1938, wrote a book Mission to Moscow that whitewashed the blood on the walls of Stalin’s purges. In 1943, with the active cooperation of President Roosevelt, Warner Brothers made it into a film that was hailed in the New York Times by Bosley Crowther as a splendid achievement, praising the ambassador’s “Acute understanding of the Soviet system.” If the Nazis seemed an antidote to the Bolsheviks and vice versa, those unleashed bacilli nearly destroyed the world. Satan is a dangerous vaccine.
Secularists play down Islamist atrocities because they seek to eradicate the graceful moral structure that can turn brutes into saints. Heinous acts are sometimes dismissed as “workplace violence.” There even are those in high places who pretend that Islamic militants are not Islamic and foster the delusion that false gods will not demand sacrifices on their altars. These elites are like Ambassador Davies who said, “Communism holds no serious threat to the United States.” Naïve religious leaders who live off the goodwill of good people, will even say that Christians and those who oppose them share a common humane ethos, a similar concept of human rights, an embrace of pluralism, and a distinction between political and spiritual realms. Secularists who imagine good and evil as abstractions, do not consider the possibility that hatred of the holy will take its toll in reality. By ignoring the carnage committed by the twentieth century’s atheistic systems, they fit the definition of madness as the repetition of the same mistake in the expectation of a different result.
That mad kind of intelligence is offended by the precocious audacity of Winston Churchill writing in The River War at the age of twenty-five: “were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it [Islam] has vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” For the secularist whose religious crusade against religion does not understand the world or its history, prophecy is the only heresy, and his single defense against false prophets is feigned detachment. Indifference is the fanaticism of the faint of heart. By not taking spiritual combat seriously, and by seeking an impossible compromise with the opposite of what is good, human wars cannot be avoided. There are different kinds of war, and only prudence tempers both pugnacity and pacifism. James Russell Lowell opposed the Mexican War and approved the Civil War, but with a sane intelligence: “Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.”
If some unruly Presbyterians had flown airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, secularist observers would have eagerly been searching Calvin’s “Institutes” to find the roots of such misanthropy. Instead, in our present circumstance, confronting the abuse of truth and reason by the enemy of their enemy, secularists would rather sink into denial, like Ambassador Davies telling his wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post, that the gunshots coming from the Lubyanka Prison were just the sound of street repairmen. To deny the ultimate truth of Christ, who suffered for others in an inversion of the habit of carnal men to make others suffer, is to deny the economy of salvation itself. The Qu’ran (Sura 4: 157-158) says of Jesus, “they killed him not.” St. Paul says, “For many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping), that they are enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18).”
The Wrath of God blazes forth
As left to myself,
I behold myself.
Where is His image in me?
What have I done ?
Where God is not,
Only Hell resides.
Life has become my agony,
With self-inflicted wounds.
Unchanging Purity of Being,
Fire of Love,
I, now, the antithesis,
Banishing God to the periphery
Holding Him at bay.
My kingdom, my way!
Sin rages in His absence,
A counterfeit of life,
For where the Creator is not,
There is only dissipation.
Creating nothing;
Loving no one,
I built a world apart,
Overruled His Plan,
Overturned His “Shalt Nots”
With tolerance and choice.
There is no compromise for Truth.
Sin is always a choice,
Or it is not sin.
The Wrath of God blazes forth.
Consumes the idol, self.
Now, to turn, to choose anew,
To turn again before the final hour,
While it is still Day,
No more to turn away!
So splendid a freedom is love
That it can not come to be
Without an altar,
And in the Fire of Love,
To sacrifice my “Me”.
©2014 Joann Nelander
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I’m passing this on because knowledge is better than the confusion that comes with politics and ambiquity:
via WHO | Ebola virus disease.
Key facts
“Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness in humans.
The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission.
The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks.
The first EVD outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests, but the most recent outbreak in west Africa has involved major urban as well as rural areas.
Community engagement is key to successfully controlling outbreaks. Good outbreak control relies on applying a package of interventions, namely case management, surveillance and contact tracing, a good laboratory service, safe burials and social mobilization.
Early supportive care with re-hydration, symptomatic treatment improves survival. There is as yet no licensed treatment proven to neutralize the virus but a range of blood, immunological and drug therapies are under development.
There are currently no licensed Ebola vaccines but 2 potential candidates are undergoing evaluation.”
Transmission
It is thought that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are natural Ebola virus hosts. Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.Ebola then spreads through human-to-human transmission via direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.
Health-care workers have frequently been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed EVD. This has occurred through close contact with patients when infection control precautions are not strictly practiced.
Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola.
People remain infectious as long as their blood and body fluids, including semen and breast milk, contain the virus. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.
Symptoms of Ebola virus disease
The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms is 2 to 21 days. Humans are not infectious until they develop symptoms. First symptoms are the sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding (e.g. oozing from the gums, blood in the stools). Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.Diagnosis
It can be difficult to distinguish EVD from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis. Confirmation that symptoms are caused by Ebola virus infection are made using the following investigations:antibody-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)
antigen-capture detection tests
serum neutralization test
reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay
electron microscopy
virus isolation by cell culture.
Samples from patients are an extreme biohazard risk; laboratory testing on non-inactivated samples should be conducted under maximum biological containment conditions.Treatment and vaccines
Supportive care-rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids- and treatment of specific symptoms, improves survival. There is as yet no proven treatment available for EVD. However, a range of potential treatments including blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies are currently being evaluated. No licensed vaccines are available yet, but 2 potential vaccines are undergoing human safety testing.Prevention and control
Good outbreak control relies on applying a package of interventions, namely case management, surveillance and contact tracing, a good laboratory service, safe burials and social mobilisation. Community engagement is key to successfully controlling outbreaks. Raising awareness of risk factors for Ebola infection and protective measures that individuals can take is an effective way to reduce human transmission. Risk reduction messaging should focus on several factors:Reducing the risk of human-to-human transmission from direct or close contact with people with Ebola symptoms, particularly with their bodily fluids. Gloves and appropriate personal protective equipment should be worn when taking care of ill patients at home. Regular hand washing is required after visiting patients in hospital, as well as after taking care of patients at home.
Outbreak containment measures including prompt and safe burial of the dead, identifying people who may have been in contact with someone infected with Ebola, monitoring the health of contacts for 21 days, the importance of separating the healthy from the sick to prevent further spread, the importance of good hygiene and maintaining a clean environment.
Controlling infection in health-care settings:
Health-care workers should always take standard precautions when caring for patients, regardless of their presumed diagnosis. These include basic hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, use of personal protective equipment (to block splashes or other contact with infected materials), safe injection practices and safe burial practices.Health-care workers caring for patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola virus should apply extra infection control measures to prevent contact with the patient’s blood and body fluids and contaminated surfaces or materials such as clothing and bedding. When in close contact (within 1 metre) of patients with EBV, health-care workers should wear face protection (a face shield or a medical mask and goggles), a clean, non-sterile long-sleeved gown, and gloves (sterile gloves for some procedures).
Laboratory workers are also at risk. Samples taken from humans and animals for investigation of Ebola infection should be handled by trained staff and processed in suitably equipped laboratories.”
read more via WHO | Ebola virus disease.
Read the whole story: Unbroken: Louis Zamperini Life Lessons | The Art of Manliness.
“When Louie was captured by the Japanese, and imprisoned on Kwajalein, he wondered why he wasn’t executed like the other Marines who had once shared his cell. As his internment progressed, he found out.
One day, he was taken from his prison camp to a radio station that broadcast Japanese propaganda programs. His hosts treated him kindly and showed him around the premises. There was a cafeteria with hot, heaping portions of American-style food, and clean hotel-style beds with sheets and pillows. Louie could stay here, the men told him, and never have to return to camp, never have to see the Bird again, if he would simply do a little broadcast for them. The message they wanted him to read wasn’t overtly traitorous, it just expressed his astonishment that the US government had declared him dead, and hurt his family with the news, when he really was alive and well. But as Hillenbrand explains, Louie knew its purpose was to “embarrass America and undermine American soldiers’ faith in the government.” He realized he had been kept alive because his prominence as an Olympic runner would make him a more effective propaganda tool. And he understood that once he read one message for them, they’d ask him to read increasingly critical ones, and there would be no way out. Though refusal meant returning to a wooden slab infested with bed bugs, starvation rations, and the endless beatings of a mad man, Louie declined the offer. The Japanese broadcasters pressed, warned he’d be punished, and still he refused. Acceptance was not even an option for Louie: “I’d taken an oath as an officer.” “
Read the whole story: Unbroken: Louis Zamperini Life Lessons | The Art of Manliness.
via Unbroken: Louis Zamperini Life Lessons | The Art of Manliness.
via Stepping Up Blog
“In June, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur was named National Father of the Year. The honor came just three months after he moved his family to the Philippines to lead the U.S. Pacific campaign of World War II, a level of honor and responsibility realized by few men. His statement in receiving the award truly revealed his heart and priorities.”
“By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder-infinitely prouder-to be a father.
A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life.
And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, ‘Our Father Who Art in Heaven.’”
In the early days of that war and campaign, MacArthur acknowledged his dependence on a Heavenly Father when he composed “A Father’s Prayer”:
“Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.
“Build me a son whose wishes will not take the place of deeds; a son who will know Thee-and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.
“Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail…”
“Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.
“And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously.
“Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the meekness of true strength.
“Then, I, his father, will dare to whisper, ‘I have not lived in vain.’”
What is your Father’s Prayer for your children? You’ll probably never achieve the level of accomplishment of General Douglas MacArthur, but when all is said and done, what will make you whisper “I have not lived in vain”?
via FBI warns media: Journalists “desirable targets” for the Islamic State : Jihad Watch.
Oh, the ingratitude! After all the mainstream media has done to keep the Western public ignorant and complacent about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat! Perhaps we should send some of our large coterie of pro-jihad journalists over to the Islamic State. Christiane Amanpour, Spencer Ackerman, Niraj Warikoo, Jennifer Fermino, Bob Smietana — what a wonderful time they would have, and we would be treated to a series of puff pieces showing the good side of those poor, misunderstand jihadis. Then they would put down their scimitars and show us Islam’s peaceful and tolerant side.”FBI warns media: Journalists ‘desirable targets’ for ISIL,” by Dylan Byers, Politico, October 23, 2014:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a bulletin to reporters on Thursday warning that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had identified reporters and media personalities as “desirable targets” for retribution attacks against the United States.
via FBI warns media: Journalists “desirable targets” for the Islamic State : Jihad Watch.
via FBI warns media: Journalists “desirable targets” for the Islamic State : Jihad Watch.
When I worked NICU, I cared for a preemie that fit in my hand just like this. Though it was tiny, and it’s skin so thin I could see the veins that circulated its blood, there was no doubt that this was a human being, young, out of the womb or in the womb, fully human,fully alive!
Anyone think its not a person?
Prayer for anyone considering abortion, or troubled by their pregnancy:
Lord of Life and Love
O Lord of Love and Life,
Bless me and Your child entrusted to my care and keeping.
Though the forces of Hell conspire against me,
You, O God, are for me,
And for my little one growing beneath my heart.
May the beating of our hearts proclaim You Holy,
And this life sacred to Your glory.
God is for us!
May no power on earth,
No friend, no relative, no worldly voice,
Or power from the Pit,
Persuade me otherwise.
O Lord of Love and Life
Bless us.
No words are needed.
Honor says it all.
Joann Nelander Studio 