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Patrick Madrid podcast: the Vatican on Christian Persecution in Mideast, What it means to be fully human and Relativism according to Jean Vanier, and Reincarnation – all on this podcast with on the ground input from the Assyrian community.
Has a Christian Holocaust begun? When will West wake up to ISIS threat | Fox News.
The recently displaced archbishop of Mosul, Iraq was speaking with particular candor when I met him last fall in the Middle East.
He said, “People in the West say ‘they don’t know.’ How can you not know? You either support ISIS or you must have turned off all the satellites. I am sorry to say this, but my pain is big.”
Like so many Christians in Iraq and Syria who watched ISIS kidnap their leaders, burn their churches, sell their children, and threaten all others with conversion or beheading; the archbishop wonders how it is that these maniacs so easily took his home city this summer?
The people whose lives have been threatened or destroyed by ISIS just don’t understand how this pre-modern evil could run unchecked.It is a good question.
Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city and was once the home of Iraq’s most vulnerable and persistent Christian community, tracing their lineage nearly to the time of Christ.
Now there are no Christians left.
All of this happened under the watchful eye of West, and while you’d hope that the humanitarian threat alone would have motivated the West to act, you would be certain that Mosul’s strategic importance would do so.
Neither proved true.
Mosul was easily taken by ISIS troops, riding in on their decrepit pick up trucks with guns bolted to them. Her ancient streets have since been turned red with innocent blood, and the city has become a base for a jihad that rages wildly throughout the entire region and boils underground in scores of countries throughout the world.
The archbishop’s perspective represented the sentiment of nearly everyone I have met or have communicated with in the region. The people whose lives have been threatened or destroyed by ISIS just don’t understand how this pre-modern evil could run unchecked.
They wonder how it could be that it took the most powerful nations in the world, using airstrikes, over four months with the help of Kurdish forces to defeat a few hundred jihadists waging war in the town of Kobani, and how it is that ISIS has been able to openly run its “state” from a self-determined capital city called “Raqqa” without the daily threat of hundreds of unrelenting airstrikes. They also wonder how it is that Turkey’s border remains so porous allowing jihadist after jihadist to readily join ISIS.
The examples of Western inaction are unending.
At present, as many as 300 Assyrian Christians remain in captivity having been kidnapped two weeks ago as ISIS assaulted ten Assyrian, Christian villages along the Khabour River in Syria. That assault was conducted by a group of ISIS fighters travelling in a convoy of more than 40 clearly marked ISIS vehicles directly toward these vulnerable, Christian villages.
How is it possible that Western satellites didn’t spot a forty-car ISIS convoy in route to unarmed Christian villages in Syria, and if it was spotted how is that it wasn’t destroyed?
Washington Times, By R. James Woolsey and Peter Vincent Pry – – Monday, March 2, 2015
Our attention these days with regard to security is understandably riveted on the Islamic State, or ISIS, and its hideous decapitations, rapes and live immolations. We must deal with the Islamic State, but it is not the gravest threat we face. The Israelis are right — we should awaken to the fact that the coming of a nuclear Iran holds special dangers and requires particularly urgent attention. There are four driving reasons.
First, the Mideast abounds in clashing religious beliefs, but there is special danger in the Shiite doctrine held by many Iranians, including some of Iran’s national leaders: The return of the hidden Imam will bring the war that ends the world and creates heavenly bliss for believers. As America’s dean of Mideast studies, Bernard Lewis, puts it: During the Cold War, Mutual Assured Destruction was a deterrent; today it is an inducement.
Second, Iran works very closely with North Korea on its nuclear and missile programs. Consequently, it has the ballistic missile capacity to launch weapons of substantial size and intercontinental range against us, or to orbit satellites above us.
So troubling is this capability — in the hands of either Iran or North Korea — that nine years ago, based on the ability of North Korea’s Taepodong missile to carry a nuclear warhead to intercontinental range, the current secretary of defense, Ashton Carter, and a prominent former secretary, William Perry, urged in a 2006 oped a pre-emptive strike against the then-new North Korean long-range missiles on their launch pads. As the two secretaries put it then, “Intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy.” Their view was that our ballistic missile defense capabilities were unproven and should not be relied upon for such an important task. “Diplomacy has failed,” they said, “And we cannot sit by.”
Third, Iran now is either very close to being able to field a nuclear weapon or it should be regarded as already having that capability. As William Graham, who served as President Reagan’s science adviser, administrator of NASA and chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, as well as many of his distinguished colleagues, such as Henry Cooper, who was director of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and Fritz Ermarth, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have put it:
“Regardless of intelligence uncertainties and unknowns about Iran’s nuclear weapons and missile programs, we know enough now to make a prudent judgment that Iran should be regarded by national security decision makers as a nuclear missile state capable of posing an existential threat to the United States and its allies.”
Iran’s progress toward having a nuclear weapon that can be orbited or delivered by a long-range missile will not be halted by the concession-rich compromises proposed by the administration’s arms control negotiators in Geneva. North Korea already has this capability. As it appears now, Iran will have it before long. What are the consequences for our vulnerability to these two rogue states?
The new factor that makes one or a few nuclear warhead-carrying missiles launched into orbit much more dangerous than during the Cold War is the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the critical infrastructures that are the foundation of modern societies, especially the national electric grid. Electronics are increasingly vulnerable to EMP — more than a million times more vulnerable (and, yes, also much more capable) than they were at the dawn of the age of modern electronics a half-century ago. Moore’s Law has not been kind to our electronic vulnerabilities.
Consequently, even one nuclear warhead detonated at orbital altitude over the United States would black out the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for months or years by means of the electromagnetic pulse it would create. The Congressional EMP Commission assessed that a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill nine of 10 Americans through starvation and societal collapse. Islamic State-like gangs would rule the streets.
Just such a scenario is described in Iranian military documents.
Read more via When Iran goes nuclear – Failure to protect the nation would amount to dereliction of duty | The Counter Jihad Report.
True Medical Rarity: Baby Born Inside Amniotic Sac.Newser) – Silas Johnson recently entered the world through emergency cesarean section at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, but what makes his case truly extraordinary is that he was born at 26 weeks with his amniotic sac still perfectly intact around him, holding the placenta and umbilical cord as well, reports KHON2. “It was a moment that really did, even though it’s a cliche, [make us catch] our breath,” says neonatologist William Binder. “It really felt like a moment of awe.” Mom Chelsea Philips had no idea until her mom showed her a picture later. “He was kind of in a fetal position and you could see like his arms and his legs curled up,” she says. “It was actually really cool to see, and when I heard that was actually really rare, I was like, oh my gosh, you’re a special little baby.”
In fact, it’s in just 1 in 80,000 births or so that the thin, tough membrane still covers part of a newborn’s body, and it’s typically the head, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. But being born “en caul,” as it’s called, where the entire body is still surrounded by the sac (with the placenta providing oxygen), is a true medical rarity most OB-GYNs will never see. The doctor “was in awe when the baby just popped out completely enclosed,” per a Cedars-Sinai statement. “They had just a short amount of time to get the baby out of the sac and … he had to puncture the sac with his fingers.” Silas, now nearly 3 months old, is healthy and expected to leave the hospital around his due date next month. (One girl was born in China last year at 23 weeks.)
<a href=’http://www.lifenews.com/2013/04/10/babies-born-alive-during-abortions-more-common-than-you-think/?utm_content=buffer8dc47&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer’>Babies Born Alive During Abortions More Common Than You Think | LifeNews.com</a>.
On March 29, Live Action covered the debate in the Florida legislature on a bill that would require doctors to give medical care, including transport to a hospital, to babies who are born alive during abortion procedures. A Planned Parenthood representative attempted to answer questions on why Planned Parenthood opposed this legislation. In a shocking video, she said that the decision about what to do with a living, breathing, born infant should be up to the doctor and the woman having the abortion. In other words, it should be permissible to kill that baby.
The belief that once a baby is marked for abortion, he should be killed regardless of whether he is in the womb or out of it is shocking to many people. But how common is the phenomenon of babies born alive after abortions? The truth is, we don’t know. It is likely that most of the cases never come to light. But enough of them have been documented to show that it does happen. In the upcoming series of articles, I will highlight some cases where babies were born during abortion procedures and were denied the right to life.
In 1999, “Baby Hope” was born despite the fact that her mother was in the middle of an abortion procedure. The facts are as follows.
Abortionist Dr. Martin Haskell was performing a partial-birth abortion on a young woman. In a partial-birth abortion, just like in the more commonly used D&E abortion, the woman’s cervix is dilated with laminaria, which are small sticks that gradually expand. She is then sent home. The actual killing and removal of the baby is usually done a day or two after the insertion of the laminaria, after they have been given time to work.
In this particular case, after leaving the clinic, the woman began experiencing cramps and went to the emergency room of Bethesda North Medical Center in Cincinnati, where she gave birth to a living baby girl. According to an article in The Southeast Missourian, the baby was put into a dish and set aside to be disposed of. Nurse Shelly Lowe witnessed the baby gasping and moving after she was told to take “it” to the lab. She reportedly said, “I don’t think I can do that[.] … This baby is alive.”
The doctors refused to give any medical care to the baby, who was estimated to be at least 22 weeks old. Lowe named the child Hope and held her until she died, wrapping her in a blanket and singing to her. Lowe said, “I wanted her to feel that she was wanted. … She was a perfectly formed newborn, entering the world too soon through no choice of her own.”
Baby Hope lived for three hours with no medical care, while local Lowe held her and other nurses watched. According to the article “The Story of Baby Hope” by Liz Townsend:
“Hospital workers who cared for Baby Hope report continuing feelings of sadness and grief, but also peace — “peace that she was comforted, held close, and even sang to until she took her last breath,” according to nurse Connie Boyles. Emergency room technician Shelly Lowe held the baby until she died three hours and eight minutes after her birth. “I sat and held her. I felt no one should die alone,” said Lowe at an April 20 news conference held by local pro-life groups. “We had her baptized. I named her Hope because I’d hoped she would make it.”
Joann Nelander Studio 