Shameless Indifference
The following editorial about the mass slaughter and displacement of Christians was originally publish in an Austrian daily paper. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who recommended it for translation, sends this brief introductory note:
This is an opinion piece by a former US ambassador to Austria. Given his rocky relationship with Austria at the time of his tenure in Vienna, these words are especially significant. One wishes for the same clarity in the utterances of Austrian politicians. They are elusive…The editorial from Die Presse, as translated by JLH:
Christians in the Slaughterhouse — The World Is Silent
US air attacks will not be enough to stop the wave of terror in Iraq
by Ronald S. Lauder
The Near East and parts of Central Africa are in the process of losing entire Christian communities that have lived there in peace for centuries. In the north of Nigeria alone, the terrorist group Boko Haram has kidnapped and killed hundreds of Christians. During the Syrian civil war, which has lasted over three years, half a million Christian Arabs were driven out. And Christians have been hounded and killed from Lebanon to Sudan.
Historians may look back on this era and wonder whether humanity has lost its way. Only a few journalists have gone to Iraq to witness the raging of a Nazi-like wave of terror that is sweeping across that land. For the most part, the UN is silent.
The rulers of the world seem to be occupied with other things in the summer of 2014. There are no flotillas embarking for Syria or Iraq. And all those beautiful people and aging rock stars — why are their social antennae not quivering from the slaughter of Christians?
President Barack Obama is to be applauded for ordering air attacks to save tens of thousands of Yazidis from Sunni fanatics. Unfortunately, air attacks alone are not enough to stop the wave of terror.
A Well-Oiled Murder Machine
The Islamic State is not a loose confederation of jihadist groups. It is a military force which has conquered parts of Syria and Iraq. This terror organization is using money from banks and gold from companies in cities it has conquered. On top of that, they have oil resources and ransom money to finance their murder machine. It has become the wealthiest terrorist group in the world. Where it really excels is in the carnage of its medieval orgies of slaughter, ruthlessly directed against Shi’ites, Kurds and Christians.
Shameless Indifference
“They actually beheaded children and put their heads on sticks,” reports a Chaldean-American businessman named Mark Arabo to CNN. He was describing a scene in a park in Mosul.
Finally, 200,000 Aramaeans fled their ancestral home in Nineveh after already having fled from Mosul. The widespread indifference to IS, with its mass executions of Christians and its deadly confrontations with Israel, is not just wrong, but also shameful.
Israel was among the first countries to come to the aid of the Christians in southern Sudan. In contrast to many places in the Near East, Christians can openly practice their religion in Israel. This bond between Jews and Christians makes sense. We share much more than most religions. We read the same Bible and share moral and ethical values.
Unfortunately, we now share a type of anguish: Christians must die for their faith because they are defenseless and because the world looks on indifferently, Good people must come together and put an end to this gruesome wave of terror. We are not powerless. Jewish people understand only too well what can happen if the world is silent. This campaign of murder must be stopped.
Ronald S. Lauder was US ambassador to Austria in 1986-87. He is currently president of the Jewish World Congress.
David Wood: ISIS is Just Like Mohammed, Only With Modern Technology
Below is the full contribution by David Wood of Acts 17 Apologetics
to “It’s the Real Islam”, a video project that was crafted as an
analytical response by four experts on shariah to the first ISIS
propaganda video.
For those who missed it, watch “It’s the Real Islam”.
If you want to watch the ISIS propaganda video — the subject of this analysis (WARNING, it’s violent, gory, and utterly horrible) — it’s here.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for all his hard work in putting this compilation together.
Previous posts about “It’s the Real Islam: a response to the Islamic State”:
Continue reading →
For those who missed it, watch “It’s the Real Islam”.
If you want to watch the ISIS propaganda video — the subject of this analysis (WARNING, it’s violent, gory, and utterly horrible) — it’s here.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for all his hard work in putting this compilation together.
Previous posts about “It’s the Real Islam: a response to the Islamic State”:
Continue reading →
Posted in Arab Spring, Counterjihad, History, Islamic Atrocities, Middle East, Religion, Sharia, USA | Leave a reply
When is it Lethal to Kick the Can Down the Road?
Wretchard talks about the common problem many “leaders” are prone to: choosing to look away from the power of exponents in a given problem. Don’t you wonder if this blind spot is due to the nature of their jobs, or perhaps the general incompetence of those who lust after leadership positions?He brings up the seeming paradox in that old story we all tripped over in grade school math. As he says, it’s an object example of the dangers accruing to that sort of blindness and then gives us an up-to-the-minute sad example of people who will suffer because of their leaders’ mistakes — willful or not:
That property was invoked by Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg who warned Deutsche Welle that Liberia and Sierra Leone are now lost to Ebola.At the end of that quote he provides two jarring graphs to show Ebola’s spread in those countries from March or so till now. They’re worth perusing to get an idea how fast this disease goes through a population, but I leave it to you whether or not to study them. The sharp rise is certainly disturbing, but we’re given no demographic information on those who contract the disease.
“The right time to get this epidemic under control in these countries has been missed,” he said. That time was May and June. “Now it will be much more difficult.”
Schmidt-Chanasit expects the virus will “become endemic” in this part of the world, if no massive assistance arrives.
With other words: It could more or less infect everybody and many people could die.
The only thing that can be done now, he dolefully said, is to prevent the virus from spreading to countries like Senegal and Nigeria. The compartment is flooded. Dog the watertight door if you want to save the ship. Is he right?…
But scary or not, this information is useful to those willing to contemplate further inferences.
First, Wretchard lists the duelling institutes and agencies who want to be the one claim credit for “conquering” this scourge before it spreads past Africa. The list includes the World Health Organization and the Center for Communicable Diseases, etc. However, these places are bureaucracies and as Wretchard reminds us, “the power of nonlinear rates of propagation often explain why bureaucracies are caught flat-footed by events. A problem is ‘small’ until suddenly it is not”.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Though he doesn’t say so, it is necessary to remind oneself that by their very nature, bureaucracies are unable to be agile or creative. Instead, their main concern is the prevention of encroachments on their turf and the growth of the organization. It is this characteristic which will make ObamaCare an eventual FAIL. Our “Affordable” Care (the rates of which appear to be rising and increasingly excluding those who need it) will never be found in the same realm as cutting edge care; the former has a built-in avoidance system. Thus, the cut-out for, say, concierge medicine will grow with time (cf. Cuba’s private medical care for outsiders), just as ObamaCare will ossify, making the gap between the top and bottom rungs in our healthcare system all the more evident, just as they are now in our “justice” system and our “education” bamboozle.
So if these flat-footed bureaucracies cannot outrun the events, what do they do? From experience, by now you know the drill for dealing with uncomfortable facts and inconvenient truths. The experienced bureaucrat has a cafeteria of choices available to address the problem at hand:
- ignore
- stonewall
- deny
- minimize
- demonize
- lie like a rug
- shun/ridicule the messenger
- re-name (using a more benign term)
- claim it’s stale-dated
- redact it
- dis-remember it
- swear ignorance
- decline to comment
- change the subject
- lose your records
- leave for a more pressing meeting — your golf game
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Thus Wretchard asks rhetorically what many people are wondering: when will Ebola be brought under control? He thinks it’s an open question due to the nature of the problem:
The power of fires, epidemics — even ISIS — to surprise illustrates that we often have a smaller margin that we think. That is why phenomen[a] with the potential for exponential growth must be hit early and hard.He cites some Obama opinions which demonstrate, at least implicitly, that our president doesn’t think in scientific terms, or even very logically. Obama “opens his mouth in order to damp down reality and then changes the subject when his previous words… well, when they seem even more uninformed and impulsive than usual. You begin to wonder if any of his inner circle, his advisory team, ever take the time to trot over to his golf cart to tell him when things change, or even — heaven forefend — that he may have misstated a crucial situation.
Wretchard notes:
Only early this year the president thought ISIS was a ‘jayvee’ team. Now he’s looking for help to damp it down. It’s hard not conclude that it got the jump on him.In truth, Obama was as clueless about ISIS as he was when he drew that red line for Syria. You know, the “what-red-line” red line that he trusted the winds to scour away. In a half-way ‘normal’ presidency, the incumbent would be hounded relentlessly for that one. But this is the Nobel Prize presidency, the one which means you never have to walk your words back to some semblance of a truth firmly ensconced in reality.
When Wretchard winds up his reflections on “the lackluster showing of scientists world-wide” to comprehend “the seriousness of Ebola”, he says of their predictions, “…The truth is probably more prosaic. They were faked-out by self-deception and complacency.”
But complacency in the scientific world is a feature, not a bug. Those scientists-for-hire think small; for the most part they are simply small cogs in a large governmental or quasi-governmental organization; complacency follows on in the wake of job security. Can you imagine, say, Thomas Edison working in a modern laboratory? Would his insanely long hours and endless failures be a part of his annual evaluation? Would he be promoted or take the month-long vacations that were his “right”?
Wretchard’s words about self-deception/complacency do have a certain ring. It is possible to conceive them, a few generations from now, carved on an Obamanian monument? I see them, in a smaller script, right under the words UNPARALLELED HUBRIS. If ever there was a more regal complacency than Obama’s I’ve not seen it. Oh, wait: I forgot Wallis Simpson. But, as they say in Obamaland, “that was all so long ago.”
Wretchard says it is difficult for politicians to comprehend there are “certain classes of problems where it is absolutely lethal to kick the can down the road”. I’ll second his notion and add that this may be especially true for the politician/bureaucrat who reigns secure and complacent in the modern welfare state. But don’t tell them that: it would merely mean they’d have to hide the can.
"Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9
When enemy forces threatened to attack God's people, [King] Jehoshaphat simply turned His eyes and heart to His faithful Lord and expressed his faith:
“O Lord God of our fathers, are You not God in heaven, and do You not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations, and in Your hand is there not power and might, so that no one is able to withstand You? ...we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, BUT OUR EYES ARE UPON YOU." 2 Chronicles 20:6, 12
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