Thursday, December 14, 2017



What the War Over Jerusalem is Really About

It's not about a "piece of land here or there", as the PA's top Sharia judge clarifies, it's a religious war.

Hamas has announced that President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has opened the "gates of hell." Its Muslim Brotherhood parent has declared America an "enemy state."

The Arab League boss warned that the Jerusalem move "will fuel extremism and result in violence." The Jordanian Foreign Minister claimed that it would "trigger anger" and "fuel tension."

"Moderate" Muslim leaders excel at threatening violence on behalf of the "extremists". The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) warned that recognizing Jerusalem will trigger an Islamic summit and be considered a "blatant attack on the Arab and Islamic nations."

PLO leaders and minions meanwhile made it quite clear that now the dead peace process is truly dead.

A day later, the peace process is still as alive and as dead as it ever was.

Since the chance of a peace process is about the same as being hit by lightning while scoring a Royal Flush, that "chance" doesn't amount to anything. The peace process has been deader than Dracula for ages. And even a PLO terrorist should know that you can't threaten to kill a dead hostage.

The only kiss of death here came from Arafat. Peace wasn't killed though. It was never alive. Because a permanent peace is Islamically impossible.

"The world will pay the price," warned Mahmoud Habash, the Palestinian Authority's Supreme Sharia judge. Habash isn't just the bigwig of Islamic law, he's also the Islamic adviser to the leader of the Palestinian Authority. And Abbas, the terror organization's leader, was there when Habash made his remarks.

Previously Habash had declared that the Kotel, the Western Wall of the fallen Temple, the holiest site in Judaism, "can never be for non-Muslims. It cannot be under the sovereignty of non-Muslims."

While the official warnings from the Palestinian Authority, the Arab League and assorted other Islamic organizations have claimed that recognizing Jerusalem threatens the non-existent peace process, Habash had in the past had made it quite clear that the issue wasn't land, it was Jihad.

"The struggle over this land is not merely a struggle over a piece of land here or there. Not at all. The struggle has the symbolism of holiness, or blessing. It is a struggle between those whom Allah has chosen for Ribat and those who are trying to mutilate the land of Ribat," Habash had declared.

Ribat means that Israel is a frontier outpost between the territories of Islam and the free world. The Muslim terrorists who call themselves "Palestinians" have, according to the Abbas adviser, been chosen for "Ribat" to stand guard on the Islamic frontier and expand the territories of Islam.

The sense of Ribat is that the Jihadists may not yet be able to win a definitive victory, but must maintain their vigilance for the ultimate goal, which a Hadith defines as performing Ribat "against my enemy and your enemy until he abandons his religion for your religion."

That is what's at stake here.

It's not about a "piece of land here or there", as the PA's top Sharia judge clarifies, it's a religious war. And Israel is not just a religious war between Muslims and Jews, but a shifting frontier in the larger war between Islam and the rest of the world. It's another territory to be conquered on the way to Europe. And Europe is another territory to be conquered on the way to America.

There can be no peace in a religious war. Nor is there anything to negotiate.........

President Trump made the right decision by refusing to let our foreign policy be held hostage. We don't win by giving in to terrorists.

We win by resisting them. Or else we'll have to live our lives as hostages of Islamic terror.

Jerusalem is a metaphor. Every free country has its own Jerusalem. In America, it's the First Amendment. Our Jerusalem is not just a piece of land, it's a value. And the Islamic Jihad seeks to intimidate us into giving it up until, as the Hadith states, we abandon our religion for Islam.

Moving the embassy to Jerusalem will do much more for America than it will for Israel.

The Israelis already know where their capital is. We need to remember where we left our freedom. Islamic terrorists win when they terrorize us into being too afraid to do the right thing.

President Trump sent a message to the terrorists that America will not be terrorized.

Previous administrations allowed the terrorists to decide where we put our embassy. But Trump has made it clear that we won't let Islamic terrorists decide where we put our embassies, what cartoons we will draw or how we live our lives. That is what real freedom means.

SOURCE





Obama-Appointed Judge: Salvation Army—Not Catholic Church—Can Advertise on D.C.’s Metro

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, issued an opinion on Saturday permitting the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to ban an advertisement by the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., while allowing one by the Salvation Army, which, like the archdiocese, is also a Christian organization.

The ad that the Catholic archdiocese proposed running on the back of Metro buses featured only four words: "Find the Perfect Gift." But it also included silhouetted images of three shepherds, two sheep, and a number of stars-including one particularly bright star. The Catholic ad also featured a web address (FindThePerfectGift.org) and a hashtag (#perfectgift).

This is the ad from the Archdiocese of Washington that Metro refused to run on buses:

The Salvation Army ad, which WMATA did allow to run on Metro buses, was wordier.

It included an image of a red Salvation Army donation bucket on one side and the face of a man on the other. Between these two images were the following words: "Give Hope/Change Lives/He could have been sleeping on a street this winter./Thanks to you, he's safe and warm. Your donations MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN./GIVE TO THE SALVATION ARMY and give your neighbors food, shelter, and a second chance."

Below that message it made a plea, and, like the Catholic ad included a web address and a hashtag. It said: "DONATE NOW. SALVATIONARMYNCA.ORG/#REDKETTLEREASON."

The web address included in the Salvation Army advertisement that the Washington Metro accepted was for the National Capital Area Command of Salvation Army. At that website, the Salvation Army has posted its mission statement.

That statement-on the website advertised on Metro buses-says: "The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of the Universal Christian Church. Its message is based on the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of God. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination."

WMATA, which accepted and ran on its buses the Salvation Army ad, refused to run the "Find the Perfect Gift" ad from the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. WMATA said it would not run the Catholic ad because the ad was prohibited by the agency's "Guideline 12."

Guideline 12, which WMATA adopted in November 2015, states: "Advertisements that promote or oppose any religion, religious practice or belief are prohibited."

The Archdiocese of Washington sued WMATA last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It argued that its rights to freedom speech, the free exercise of religion, due process and equal protection were being violated. The archdiocese asked for immediate injunctive relief so that its ad could run during the current Advent season leading up to Christmas.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson, whom Obama nominated to the court in 2011, ruled that there was no reason to believe WMATA had violated any of the rights of the Catholic Church-even the right to equal protection of the law, given that Metro ran the Salvation Army's ad but not the Catholic ad.

The judge argued that the Salvation Army's ad did not "promote or advance religion" while the Catholic ad did.

"While the Salvation Army is a Christian organization, and its  charitable efforts, like those of the Archdiocese and other religious organizations, may be motivated in some measure by religious beliefs, the ads it chose to display on the buses do not promote or advance religion.

"Therefore," the judge concluded, "WMATA's policy is not likely to be found to violate the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause on the grounds that it has been inconsistenly applied."

In a footnote to her opinion, Judge Jackson argued that even though there were few words on the Catholic ad, the images of shepherds and a star "telegraphs a religious message"-thus, in her view, making it unacceptable, as per Metro's policy, for posting on a Metro bus in Washington, D.C.

"But," Judge Jackson wrote, "plaintiff also acknowledged that the images of the shepherd and the star of Bethlehem are part of the iconography traditionally used to depict the night Christ was born, and that the ad, notwithstanding its simplicity, telegraphs a religious message even before one takes the website into consideration."

SOURCE     





Moral Values and Customs vs. Laws

By Walter E. Williams

I'm approaching my 82nd birthday, and my daughter will occasionally suggest that modernity is perplexing to me because I'm from prehistoric times. As such, it points to one of the unavoidable problems of youth — namely, the temptation to think that today's behavioral standards have always been. Let's look at a few of the differences between yesteryear and today.

One of those differences is the treatment of women. There are awesome physical strength differences between men and women. To create and maintain civil relationships between the sexes is to drum into boys, starting from very young ages, that they are not to use violence against a woman for any reason. Special respect is given women. Yesteryear even the lowest of lowdown men would not curse or use foul language to or in the presence of women. To see a man sitting on a crowded bus or trolley car while a woman is standing used to be unthinkable. It was deemed common decency for a man to give up his seat for a woman or elderly person.

Today young people use foul language in front of — and often to — adults and teachers. It's not just foul language. Many youngsters feel that it's acceptable to assault teachers. Just recently, 45 Pennsylvania teachers resigned because of student violence. Back in what my daughter calls prehistoric times, the use of foul language to an adult or teacher would have meant a smack across the face. Of course, today a parent taking such corrective action risks being reported to a local child protective service and even being arrested. The modern parental or teacher response to misbehavior is to call for "time out." In other words, what we've taught miscreants of all ages is that they can impose physical pain on others and not suffer physical pain themselves. That's an open invitation to bad behavior.

It has always been considered a good idea to refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage or at least adulthood. During the sexual revolution of the 1960s, lessons of abstinence were ridiculed, considered passe and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortion. Out-of-wedlock childbirths are no longer seen as shameful and a disgrace. As a result, the rate of illegitimate births among whites is over 30 percent, and among blacks, it's over 70 percent.

For over a half-century, the nation's liberals — along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals and the courts — have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values. Many in today's generation have been counseled to believe that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what's moral or immoral, right or wrong, is a matter of convenience, personal opinion or what is or is not criminal.

Society's first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions and moral values. Customs, traditions and moral values are those important thou-shalt-nots, such as thou shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and shalt not cheat. They also include respect for parents, teachers and others in authority, plus those courtesies one might read in Emily Post's rules of etiquette. These behavioral norms — mostly transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings — represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience, trial and error, and looking at what works and what doesn't.

The importance of customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching. There are not enough cops. Laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct in producing a civilized society. At best, the police and the criminal justice system are the last desperate lines of defense for a civilized society. Unfortunately, customs, traditions and moral values have been discarded without an appreciation for the role they played in creating a civilized society, and now we're paying the price — and that includes the recent revelations regarding the treatment of women.

SOURCE





UK: Urgent call for new divorce laws as judges demand overhaul of ‘corrosive’ system

Senior judicial figures have called for an end to “unjust” and “outdated” divorce laws as The Times begins a campaign to modernise family legislation.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the lord chancellor to two prime ministers, and Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former lord justice of appeal and president of the High Court family division, join other legal grandees to condemn the “antediluvian, damaging” 50-year-old laws governing marital break-ups. They are backing this newspaper’s demand for sweeping reform, including:

 *  The abolition of the need during divorce proceedings to allege fault or blame, which has caused people to remain locked for years in loveless marriages.

 *  The end of the so-called meal ticket for life maintenance awards.

 *  Statutory backing for prenuptial contracts.

The call comes two weeks after a report by the Nuffield Foundation, which condemned divorce laws in England and Wales for forcing couples to make false and exaggerated allegations of adultery or bad behaviour, causing bitterness and harming the mental health of children.

Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia, the barrister for several senior royals, and Baroness Deech, the former chairwoman of the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, are also among those backing divorce reform as part of The Times’s Family Matters campaign, which joins forces with the former High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge to push for new laws to modernise and protect marriage.

Sir Paul, chairman of the Marriage Foundation, an organisation that has pushed for more support for couples experiencing marital difficulty, in an attempt to stem the tide of family breakdowns, said that the institution needed to be for “everyone from all walks of life, not just the better off”.

He added: “We must urgently do something about the laws on marriage and divorce. These are antediluvian and no longer fit for purpose. Our chief concern is to address the impact of the breakdown of relationships, particularly where there are children. These breakdowns have devastating consequences for both adults and children that can last for decades.”

Although laws should ease the pain of the separation process, they do the opposite, according to Sir Paul. “They fuel acrimony, hostility and pain — and make good long-term relationships between two parents caring for children impossible.”

Lord Mackay, who as lord chancellor under Margaret Thatcher attempted the last reform of divorce laws, said that he still supported change and removal of the need to allege blame. He is among many to have been concerned by the recent case of Tini Owens, who has been refused a divorce from her millionaire husband despite the couple living apart for almost three years.

“Marriage is a two-sided arrangement and involves children as well,” Lord Mackay said. “Unless both parties are willing to continue, it is difficult to have anything that can properly be called marriage.” The need to allege fault had a “corrosive effect on relationships”, he said. “It does not help to heal in any way… and of course [it] is very damaging to the children.”

Lord Mackay’s reforms reached the statute book as the Family Law Act 1996 despite a storm whipped up by Tory MPs and in the tabloid press. “There was concern that it undermined marriage,” he said. “But people did not understand how it worked. All it was doing was removing the unnecessarily provocative material from the separation.”

The act was approved by parliament 20 years ago and had the backing of Cardinal Hume, then the most senior Roman Catholic in Britain, as well as the Church of England. It was never implemented and was removed from the statute book by David Cameron’s coalition government. “Every year that passes is doing unnecessary damage to the possibility of satisfactory arrangements on breakdown,” Lord Mackay said.

Baroness Hale of Richmond, president of the Supreme Court, and Sir James Munby, president of the High Court family division, are known to favour reform. Sixty per cent of divorces in England and Wales are based on allegations of fault — ten times the number in Scotland or France, the Nuffield report says. Elsewhere fault has largely been abolished.

Lady Butler-Sloss, who sits as a crossbench peer, said: “The law on divorce is unsuitable, hypocritical, out of date, unfair, unkind . . . and very damaging to the children.” Allegations of fault “immediately raise the temperature, needlessly”.

Lady Shackleton said: “The pendulum has swung far too far in the direction of vesting control in the judges rather than parliament. Reform is urgently overdue.”

Sir Alan Ward, a former Court of Appeal judge and family specialist, said: “The disconnect between the letter of the law and the practice is now risible. The law was last reformed 50 years ago. The changes since then have transformed all social values, from behaviour towards women to the religious imperative requiring the upholding of the sanctity of marriage as a vital foundation of public morality.”

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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