April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

violence

A primer on Hezbollah

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After seeing this quote pasted into a story about Canadian citizens being brought home from Lebanon

His appearance came on the same day that the White House warned it had evidence that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are trying to destabilize and overthrow Lebanon’s government.

Echoing the U.S. warning, the minister said Lebanon could again erupt into violence.

“Hezbollah are a terrorist organization armed to the teeth. They are like the Taliban on steroids,” he said. “They are a very dangerous organization.”

I decided to educate myself a little more on the Hezbollah.

The Dominion has a very informative article

Interestingly, both Jean Chretien and Bill Graham, then Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs respectively, resisted placing Hezbollah on the terrorist list. Chretien met with Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, in Beirut in October 2002. On November 28, a new set of groups was banned–and Hezbollah was still not among them. Irwin Cotler denounced the omission as “inexplicable and, given their [Hezbollah’s] murderous ideology, unconscionable.”

B’nai Brith responded the next day, on November 29, with a press conference in which they announced a lawsuit against the government, brought on the grounds that the government was failing to protect Canadians by refusing to ban Hezbollah.

The following day, November 30, the National Post picked up a story from the Washington Times claiming that, at a Beirut rally, Nasrallah had condoned and encouraged suicide bombing. Nasrallah was alleged to have said: “Suicide bombings should be exported outside Palestine”; and “I encourage Palestinians to take suicide bombings worldwide, don’t be shy about it.”

Two weeks later, after going to Beirut to investigate, CBC journalist Neil MacDonald exposed the story as a fabrication.

snip

MacDonald reported on CBC on December 11 that, “Ottawa now knows that the Nasrallah quotes in the Washington Times about exporting suicide attacks were almost certainly never uttered.”

However, the alleged comments by Nasrallah had already received enough attention to force the government’s hand; a special Cabinet committee meeting was held the evening of December 10, 2002, in which it was decided to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The Canada Gazette, official newspaper of the government, reported, “The change has been made on the basis of the close connection between the organization as a whole and the Hezbollah External Security Organization, and the recent statement by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, encouraging suicide bombings.”

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.*

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*Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, 1948


You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon. ~David Lloyd Georg


If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. ~Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War

Gulf War Syndrome

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die. ~Jean-Paul Sartre


We saw the lightning and that was the guns and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped. ~Harriet Tubman

[Read more…] about Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.*

Where’s a millstone when you need one?

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It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. (Luke (ch. XVII, v. 2)

Apparently on that Christ and today’s church would disagree.

Deliver Us From Evil is a film that chronicles the abuses by Father Oliver O’Grady.

He was the closest thing to God they knew. Bob Jyono can still picture the priest he and his wife, Maria, called Ollie, a family friend who often spent the night in their Lodi home, saying his morning prayers with a Bible in his hands.

“And all during the night, he’s molesting my daughter — not molesting, raping her! — at 5 years old,” wails Jyono in “Deliver Us From Evil.” It’s a devastating documentary about Oliver O’Grady, the notorious pedophile priest who sexually abused children, including a 9-month-old baby, in a string of Central California towns for 20 years — and the Catholic bishops who moved him from parish to unsuspecting parish, allegedly covering up his crimes.

The church knew what he was doing and at one point helped him avoid prosecution by telling the police they would move him somewhere there were no children a complete falsehood. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.(perhaps that does not cover lying to protect a pedophile)

Father O’Grady is decidedly unrepentant;

He wears a sly smile as he says what arouses him: “How about children in swimsuits? I’d say, yeah. How about children in underwear? I’d say, yeah. How about children naked? Uh-huh, yeah.”

And the church of course is praying for the hearts and souls of those he hurt. Denouncing him as evil, thanking those who brought his heinous crimes to light…or not..

The film also points to the culpability of church officials, like Mahony, who has been named in numerous civil suits by victims of priestly abuse. “They banked on our silence and our shame,” Jyono said. “That’s how they got away with it for so long.”

snip

In a phone interview with The Chronicle, Tamberg said, “Everyone should be saddened by the kind of emotional and spiritual devastation that these kind of child molesters can wreak on individuals and families. That said, this movie is incredibly biased and omits many facts that would’ve changed the assumption the movie makes.”

The movie, Tamberg added, “is chock full of attorneys and expert witnesses who make millions of dollars every year in abuse litigation against the church. It’s a big advertisement for them.”

What facts could change the assumption that the church knew full well of his activities and allowed them to occur?

Maybe this fact?

The leaked Vatican document proves that under his papacy his deputy Cardinal Radzinger reissued the Vatican directive “Solicitacciones Criminale” of Pope John XXIII instructing Roman Catholic bishops to protect sex pervert pedophile and homosexual and lesbian pedophile priests and nuns at the expense of not protecting the little children whom these criminal perverts destroy. The directive also instructs the protection of clergy who have sex with animals.

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
They’re all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world…but the church not so much…