The State Versus Religion and Family

 

In the most recent times there has seemingly been a war waged over who is responsible for raising children. This battle was best epitomized when Hillary Clinton came out and stated at the 1996 Democrat National Convention as if it were established fact, “It takes a village to raise a child,” (Full Speech Below). The entire speech may have been her best presentation despite her almost Al Gore like metered cadence throughout the entire speech though once in a while she appeared almost attached to or excited by what she was proposing and her meter increased briefly. But the advice that the village, a euphemism for the government, is vitally interested in the raising of the child is a direct threat to the stability and autonomy of the family. This has become the watchword for the school teachers who receive additional training through approved courses which instruct that the teachers and school nurse or other medical officer and the principal are the first line of defense against improper ideas and concepts from being introduced to children because parents have been known to introduce archaic religious “indoctrination,” their phrasing, not ours, which must be instead replaced with the new age socialized concepts where the whole society teaches that which is beneficial to the society instead and above that which is beneficial to the family. The society is known by another name, another reference and that is government. But before we can even address the war against parents and government as the first parent of every child, we must first look back at an earlier conflict between science and religion which morphed into a battle between government and religion and has brought us to the world we have today.

 

 

The first concept required is to realize that all relationships whether private, public, familiar, governmental, religious and whatever; can be studied as living entities where the healthy and most adaptable grows in scope, influence and power and the lesser entities wither and eventually die. The earliest times in human existence, even before Homo Sapiens appeared, the basic unit was the family. This was because most of the groupings were clan based and one could tell your stature, standing, history and almost everything else about you by your name as it was an indicator of to what clan from which you arose. Different clans would have cooperative agreements often sealed with the exchange of women to show good faith and create and actual binding between the two families. This also served genetic diversity thus avoiding to some extent the genetic failings such as hemophilia and other disorders. With time clans merged to forge stronger and more capable collections which would supersede the family or clan unit. These groups were the first tribes which granted greater genetic diversity. All of this arose before the first modern man but was instrumental to development of complex society. The tribes grew to include numerous clans with some better at hunting and others at gathering knowing what was and was not edible while still others showed aptitude for healing and tending the young. In these more primitive conditions there were those whose task was the care of the youngest children but as they grew they would be trained in the skill they showed the best attributes by others such as a huntsman would train the young hunters, the gatherers would train the next generation of gatherers and so on. Tribes also began the concept of history, then simply known as the story. The story was one which was uplifting and always made the hunters as great warriors defending the tribe and the gatherer who risked life regularly trying new untested fruits and vegetables and if they survived and approved the tribe would add another plant to their diet which could have allowed the tribe to use previously unexplored lands. Such a person who would live to old age was likely rare but one who had along with the oldest hunters who reached an age where their use became telling of the stories. These positions evolved to become the job of an entire group who were to be the first priests who would eventually weave a set of codes which made the first religions.

 

With the onset of herding and farming, the time of city-states appeared and by now the tribal leaders were chosen by some method of testing or perhaps a single family’s eldest surviving son at the time of their father’s demise became the next ruler and the age of government had begun. It is important to note that the family was the initial and earliest defined obligation followed by clan and then tribe. With tribe we had the loosest governmental forms but religion grew into an actual class with priests who may have also been a warrior class which led the defense or assaults taken on by the tribe. Finally, about the time of the first cities, which would soon become city-states, did actual government take root amongst mankind. This was the first time that there would be actual laws enforced with proscribed punishment or at least delegating the one who proscribed the punishment for a particular crime. There came formalizations with religion already having led the way in this and they were followed by government. There came positions assigned with likely the first being the close guards who protected the ruling figure, then the ranking members of an enforcement group, the forerunners of modern police and judicial system. Often times the judicial system was also run by the clerical priest class as they were also the most learned class. This started the initial conflict between religion and government, even when a wise leader tied religion and government, blurring the difference and thus granting themselves the highest position in governance and religion. This was exactly what the Pharaohs of Egypt did when they proscribed for themselves a godly aura and was closely imitated by the Caesars of Rome.

 

There were a few exceptions to the basic complete authority of the governing leader or even the governing and clerical leaders which we have discussed a few times before, and that was the Torah which was the founding document for the Israelites who became over time today’s Jews. The rules given approximately three-thousand to three-thousand-five-hundred years ago were the framing of some of the ideas used by the Founding Fathers when drafting the United States Constitution leading to the proposed tight restraints on the Presidency. Such restrictions such as a President being withheld from granting themselves property or wealth derived from their knowledge of government workings nor could they simply invent and apply laws without the consent of Congress and were made answerable to both the Congress or the Supreme Court should they stray from the defined limitations of their office. These concepts along with the right of a state to leave the Union if they would so choose and do so in a prescribed manner and other limitations on a President were badly damaged or destroyed by Abraham Lincoln who basically became the government during the Civil War as he all but declared formally a State of Emergency permitting the President all but unopposable powers. Still, the limitations which were first set in Torah, the laws given at Mount Sinai in the book of Deuteronomy 17:14-17 which found their way even presumably to the present day in limits on the President of the United States and were placed as the very first laws limiting the powers and impositions of Kings where it read:

14  When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,”
15  you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. One of your own communities you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who are not of your own community.
16  Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the Lord has said to you, “You must never return that way again.”
17  And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself.

 

Meanwhile, somewhere between the gathering at Mount Sinai where the Israelites responded to the coming giving of “The Law” said, according to many translations, “We will obey and we will listen,” and today in much of Europe and the developed world where the people would not even listen to the religious codes and laws, let alone obey them as religion has been supplanted by government and the new priests are the lawyers who believe themselves the ultimate interpreters and applicators of the law twisting it to their will and whim. At some point around the rise of Persia and the rise of Rome religion and government became permanently separated in what would become Europe and much of the rest which came under either Greek or Roman rule. This began the contest between the two main centers of power outside the family unit. At that time the two still crossed boundaries with government infringing on religion for their advantage and religion infringing on government very much to their advantage. A sign of both comes as part of the Inquisition. Where it was an obvious usurpation of prosecutorial powers taken into the hand of the Church striping that power for the priest class who acted as judge, jury and often executioner, their prosecutions were also abused by government to destroy adversaries or other challenges to the throne or regional power structures. At the same time King Philip II of Spain used the purification edicts from the Church in Spain to raise and launch the famous invasion fleet of the Spanish Armada against England and Queen Elizabeth I which ran afoul of vicious storms and the fleet of English gunboats which were smaller, faster and more maneuverable capable of passing between the huge troop carrying Armada frigates who when firing at the English fleet had their shot pass over the top of the low slung English ships and simply blasted the other Armada ships in their own fleet. Almost all of the Spanish ships sunk and the remainder limped home and that ended this threat to England and its Church of England, a Protestant Church closely tied to the Tudors after being created by Henry VIII. The creation of the Church of England was another perfect example of religion out of the needs of the ruling monarch. Henry VIII needed a divorce which the Pope refused him; so he made his own Church after he went home.

 

Spanish Armada of Giant Frigates Holding Hundreds of Troops
and Cannon Ports Only capable of Shooting Over the English
Fleets Comprised of Sleeker and Low Slung Ships with
Deck Cannons and by the Hand of G0d Seen as the Weather

 

Over the ensuing years as science explains more and more of the unknowns and all appears to be explainable, the place of religion has diminished in the developed world. The need for religion to explain those things we did not understand had been greatly diminished but the final understanding is just as far out of the grasp of science now as it has ever been. The question surrounding the why, what and who caused the explosion which science has named the Big Bang is unknown and seemingly will remain unknown for the foreseeable future. Using Einstein’s equation of E=MC2 where ‘C’ is the speed of light which is times itself and multiplied just by the weight of the objects in our own little solar system and one gets a very large number and should that computation be done for all of the presumed objects just in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and that number almost becomes unimaginable and finally, if we add the viewable estimated number of Galaxies which the Ultra Deep Field Hubble Telescope took of a postage stamp piece of the sky thought to be virtually empty by all previous observations and that number is unimaginable by the average physicist, let alone the rest of us (see image below).

 

Ultra Deep Field Hubble Telescope Picture
Each Smudge and Pinprick of Light is an Entire Galaxy

 

Using science as a weapon of ultimate destruction, government in the developed world has assailed religion attempting to make any religious belief or system presumably archaic, its practices the equivalence of a rain dance, the prayers comparable to a voice at a séance, and its commandments, covenants, decrees or other rulings as the equivalence to Ouija board revelations. Concurrently government has replaced religion as the determiner of right and wrong, the provider of charity, the reason for a Sabbath renamed weekend, collector of alms as an integral portion of taxes and slowly rendered any expression of religious observance unacceptable in public. About the only suppressive action government has yet to take concerning religion has been to make religion illegal. The reason is likely because should they actually make religion illegal, religion would likely make a comeback just because it was outlawed. Especially any reference to Judaeo-Christian ethics,codes, holidays, prayer, deity, prophet or Bible passage, the government put the final clasp subduing even the slightest religious thought from the marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, ignoring the dangers, those in governments are permitting Islamic religious teachings claiming that it is study of culture and comparison of governance and civics. This plus an extra-judicial importance placed on a statistically insignificant threat posed by anti-Islamic acts which have remained relatively constant since 2002 after a noticeable rise in the second half of 2001 while anti-Semitism acts are rising in some locations many folds but these acts are minimized or completely ignored. There have been those who have theorized the governments’ in the developed world preferences for Islam stem from the Islamic anti-Semitic and anti-Christian ethos and actions. This may also be behind the initial rush for European and developed nations taking in of “Syrian refugees” while not considering taking in Christian refugees facing persecutions in the Sudan and other nations in the Middle East and North Africa.

 

Finally we get to the family and the initial start of governmental infringements on the family unit. One of the initial assaults on the family used the equality for women fight to weaken any male claim of being better suited at any particular field of employment due to the differences which were previously thought to differentiate men and women. The most ridiculous of the denied differentiations was the strength requirement as it was agreed that strength requirements for men had to be restructured for women such that they required a similar percentile for women to be passed. One of the first to be altered was the strength testing to be a firefighter. The requirement for men to carry a full body double along with his fire suppression and breathing gear including wearing the mask down two flights of stairs and out of a building under fire simulated conditions had to be scalable. They had to take the weight of the dummy and scale it to meet the same percentile as women as it took for men to pass as well as scaled gear weight and so forth. This required new sized dummies and smaller breathing apparatus and other expenses just to train and test women applicants. The argument made by one Fire and Rescue company in court that in an actual fire the size of the person who may need be carried would not be scalable was rejected when they had a number of fire squad captains admit that they often set an order of people entering a building or if inside chose the largest and strongest to be tasked with such carries and thus the test really was not about actually carrying a real person from the building but actually a strength test and thus would meet those requirements for scalable testing. This argument was also the initial scaling of military combat arms testing including for Ranger, Green Beret, Seal and other special forces testing and training. The real aim was just as much blurring differences between men and women and removing any male dominated jobs from having such as their label. This blurring has continued that there exist work environments where the surname for all employees has been simplified to the unisex denotation using the letter ‘M’ for both genders. Then came the real punch to the gut, when some schools began to use a new picture book titled “Heather Has Two Mommies,” to depict that a family was not the conventional one of a Mom and one Dad. Such attacks were later continued with any combination which desired the status of a ‘family’ to be so denoted.

 

The gender wars and war on conventional definitions continued and we even saw women enter the military training at all levels until today women have been cleared to serve in any combat role even in actual combat condition, though this has not been tested to the best of our knowledge, not even in Europe where such equanimous ideas go to be tested. There was the court challenge against the classical definition of the family in a number of states establishing the right for other than heterosexual couples to adopt children. Eventually, we suspect, that multi-coupled relations will also seek equal rights in adoption as well as tax codes dealing with deductions for married couples where communal communities will be permitted treatment as what will likely be referred to as a ‘greater family’ or a ‘communal family’ and demand they receive treatment equal to a traditionally defined family. Eventually, through whatever means are required, the definition of what constitutes a family will be so weakened such that a person suffering from having multiple personalities will be able to be granted status as a family. Then, as with religion, the government will claim that they are the ultimate family and thus children will be raised by a licensed individual who will soon become a government employee much in the manner that teachers are now government employees. In an age gone-by, some name it the frontier age but really was anywhere a town was small enough and in an unpopulated area where there is no overseeing governance, when the citizens, particularly parents, desired a teacher who was knowledgeable in what was called the three ‘R’s (Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic, they were very adaptable) the wealthy peoples or person would hire a teacher and the one-room schoolhouse would be erected by the townsfolk and that was how early schooling was accomplished. Eventually the town would grow where grades by age groups, usually the young, middle and advanced groups, and multiple teachers were required, where in some fortunate places the wealthy people still provided the salary for the required teachers but eventually the entire community would jointly provide the teachers’ salaries with each parent paying their share according to the number of children they placed in school. This would eventually become some form of taxation collected by the governing body who also hired teachers and this will eventually become the department of child-rearing with the law eventually requiring all children to be raised from birth by the government.

 

Caring, educating and making every individual dependent on the state for everything from birth to death, cradle to grave care, thus makes everyone completely comfortable with doing exactly what the governing bodies demand. Just pray that by that time some overseeing the governing has been taken over by a self-repairing computer system and not by very fallible human politicians such as the wonderful and kind imbeciles who are elected or appointed in far too many societies for such to become all-powerful. Still, it is the nature of any organism, be it an individual organism, a collection of similar organisms, a collection of differing mutually beneficial organisms, a collection of balanced organisms, a collection of prey and hunter organisms, an organism composed of a collection of organ or any other imaginable system of organisms as such as today’s political class where they are dependent on others on which they prey (we are somewhat unsure which class they fall into to be honest) which exist in the many strata which we find defined in our modern society. The government grows by replacing existing and often very functional systems by meddling and regulating until they have subsumed the entire system and then they start to lower the expectations such that they are able to claim by the lowered standards how government run programs are superior. They will always point to the area where by their own defined criteria they prove to be superior. Often the criteria they point to first is inclusion as they will find groups which was at the margins or preferably outside the margins of the private run systems were capable of including and claim superiority due to the sheer numbers served. This has been evident most often with schooling where minorities of students are able to afford private school and the public education system serves all including those who would be unable to afford private school at the current cost. What they hide is that should they give parents a voucher which can only be used for attending private schools, that the very students they point to would easily be able to afford private school education. The truth is that there would be an entire market of schools which would educate children for less. The same would very likely be true in other government run institutions, but government has two basic advantages; first is they accomplish the assigned tasks with the minimal amount of effort from the people served and, even more importantly, they can make their providing of the assigned services required to be provided by government trained and licensed individuals thus making only government the sole provider by law/regulation.

 

The last thing which is an evil by which government grows and makes the government the beginning and the end in all places government desires to control is the power of laws made by fiat and without review by elected officials. The Federal Government is the most guilty of this intrusion and dictation over the people without review by the people’s elected representatives. This mechanism is known as regulations. The House of Representatives and the Senate will all too often pass legislation which sets goals and not mechanisms and then assign the flushing out of the how to accomplish these goals to a cabinet or department within the government to figure out who, what, where, when and how these goals will be defined and met. They do this without any input beyond the vague and often amorphous set of goals even leaving the final definitions of the goals and then formulate regulations. http://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10871/Sunstein/ target=blank>Cass Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to be his Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Regulatory Affairs and assigned to review existing Federal Laws and find those laws which would allow for new and varied regulations to be fashioned in order to complete desired acts, actions, positions and requirements desired by President Obama and his team of Czars so that they could accomplish policy goals without involving Congress. Many of the regulations which Cass Sunstein wrote will lay waiting for complimenting laws and regulations to be passed or written and then they will also be applied. Very few if anyone other than the President and his former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs actually know all of what was found, written and sitting waiting for the appropriate time that these regulations will be required for government to accomplish another expansion of its powers. The regulatory route is what is most vital for government to grow and expand into new and various areas.

 

Sometimes one is required to look back centuries and research deeply into cultures and societies in order to see that which has changed. One area where this is particularly true is printing. There have been some radical advances in printing made because of computers but that is more in preparation as when printing mass numbers of items such as newspapers and books, the methods used have remained very constant since the invention of moveable type which was where each letter of the alphabet and each number from 0 to 9 along with spacers and punctuation were made on individual pieces as blocks and thus could be arranged in any order. With enough of each particular block one could print many pages of the same letters very quickly. Before that invention printing was done by a specialist carving out a master copy reversed often in wood and it would be used but had a limit on how long they lasted. Additionally, the letters carved into the master were permanently in place and could not be used in another page. A whole new master would need to be made. Before this method, things were even slower as the only people making books were a few crafts-people known as calligraphers and specialist Monks trained in calligraphy. Books in these times as well as anything else we would print today and requiring more than one copy were all made each copy by hand individually. The Monks trained in calligraphy would spend their entire lives on one book if many, many copies were required and those who had the finest styling and abilities would be permitted to make copies of the Bible. Making a Bible was the highest form of calligraphy. There are still some who are studied in this art who are hired to make such books and these books are rare, often one of a kind, and are extremely expensive, some priceless. There are still books and scrolls made today by hand. Torah scrolls are one such example and are written by trained Rabbis who often spend years making a special Torah scroll and months making normal Torahs. Just for the record, the government used to hire private companies to make their respective printed material such as pamphlets, maps, tourist informational material, records of Congressional actions and other necessary items. Today most of these are printed by the government with a vast number done at their Pueblo, Colorado printing facility. Of course all money is printed by the government at the mint. Thus far, schoolbooks are written and printed by private companies often following set guidelines set by, you guessed it, regulations. These regulations are changed at intervals as the government, the Department of Education, change their requirements or decide to emphasize different concepts. From some of the most recent textbooks we have read, it appears that much of what we were required to learn in school has changed drastically and not necessarily for the better. Concepts such as whole word recognition which replaced phonics and sounding out worlds, new math or newer new math, and history as well as civics texts have changed drastically. There is a reason so many college educated students know so little about history and government which may make for great fun on the Lettermen Show but is less funny when these same people vote. The lack of making informed choices was made, if one follows the news, obvious to many ‘informed experts’ by the two choices made as the candidates for President by the two major parties. We believe it could have been worse, but it might have been better. Our closing remark is a quote from Thomas Jefferson. It may be a reference to Jefferson’s comment to his nephew Peter Carr, “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” As noted in Jefferson to Peter Carr, Paris, August 10, 1787, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 12:15.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Obama Iran Ploy is Working and We’re the Fools

 

Almost daily we can read any number of articles from all parts of the Western nations and even at times in Asian and Middle Eastern news services proclaiming how President Obama is such a rube and a fool allowing himself to be led by the nose down the primrose path to oblivion. Many of these articles also point out what fools his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been for not insisting that President Obama wake up and smell the nuclear weapons. Now where I may agree heartily that Secretary of State John Kerry is one of the grandest fools to ever walk out onto the world’s stage for all to assess, I am a little more reluctant to claim the same of Hillary Clinton though I will agree that she is an opportunist and knew that crossing President Obama would have been political suicide if she was going to ever gain his support in her quest for the White House. Her foolishness was believing he would ever stoop to assisting anybody where it serves him not. So, now on to President Obama who is without a doubt the grand architect and even has Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani (from here on to be referred to as the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ after the cat from Alice in Wonderland that after its gone its oddly wicked smile remained to charm the unsuspecting {see picture below}) both believe they are playing the American President for the fool. It serves President Obama to have his detractors believing and calling him an idiot who is unable to see the forest for the trees as this forces the Democrats and leftists who support President Obama and tout him as the most brilliant man to ever grace the Oval Office to line up and defend him and placing the majority of the left wing media, and especially the New York Times to support his craftiness in that he is drafting an agreement with numerous little technical details which will deviously prevent the Iranians from reaching a breakout point on nuclear weapons for the rest of eternity. So, who is right and why?

 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani smiling for report on how he and Iran charmed the world reminding all of the evil laugh as the Cheshire Cat faded away leaving only his wicked smile and it just fit calling him the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’

 

 

A quick aside we had to include about Iranian President Rouhani and the quotes we caught right before press time and just felt had to be distributed to our friends and readers. The Iranian President Rouhani the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ was quoted by Nasim news agency stating, “Even if the nuclear talks fail, our diplomacy showed the world that we are logical. We never left the negotiation table and always provided the best answer.” Further, the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ stated, “Twenty-two months of negotiation means we have managed to charm the world, and it’s an art.” Well Mr. Smiling Cheshire Man, we have some news for you, we have not been charmed and know you for the jovial, familial, back stabbing, confidence grabbing, lying, betrayer of trust, sinister evil Smiling Cheshire Man that you are.

 

Believe it or not both sides are right and for the wrong reasons. Those calling President Obama the fool are wrong though they are correct that only a President of the United States who was a fool would allow these negotiations to have dragged on and be giving away the store as each deadline approaches before extending the talks one more time. The Democrats are close to right when they claim that President Obama is a smart man but are wrong that he is designing an agreement which will trick the Iranians preventing them from developing nuclear weapons as quickly as they are able. What most people are overlooking, likely because to even think it is considered treasonous even if it becomes known as true is that President Obama has been aiming the entire time to give Iran the cover, the funds and the freedom from inspections and the ability to do as they please precisely because his aim is for Iran to join the nations of the nuclear club and at the same time facilitate the Russian bear, a.k.a. President Putin, to flex his bare chest and retake control over whatever he feels bold enough to take and to provide China the wherewithal of claim all of the South China Sea as their private bathtub and the control over all the islands and atolls they can reclaim and/or build in the remaining time he is in office. Still, the crown in President Obama’s crown will be the hegemonic rise of Iran with their taking control of the southern Shia provinces of Iraq, defeat ISIS and impress their rule on all of Syria and possibly Lebanon as well placing them on the northern border of Israel and closer to Hamas to supply them through military convoys through the Israeli blockade, a confrontation he would condemn in the most serious terms while sliding them a private note congratulating them on their bold strategies. If I were Saudi Arabia I would be very wary of any Shiite uprisings in the northeast territories, especially the oil field lands and I cannot give serious enough warnings to King Abdullah II ibn al-Hussein of Jordan as his lands would stand between the Ayatollahs and their desired conquest of the Arab Palestinian lands in Judea and Samaria giving them fronts against Israel on three sides and nearly encircling the Jewish State. Where Iran would tout being on Israel’s borders as their greatest achievement and opportunity, they would eventually rue the day they strove to accomplish that feat in order to attack Israel directly.

 

Meanwhile, President Obama sits back in the White House, or out on the golf links, reveling in his brilliant handling of the United States media, his fooling the right into believing he was merely incompetent and not treasonous thus avoiding possible impeachment. Imagine how fast the House would bring up charges of impeachment and the Senate find the President guilty if it ever became known that he was actually planning the neutering of the United States’ ability to project power beyond her shores, leave the nuclear weapons stores in such disrepair as to possibly render over half the American nuclear arsenal beyond retrievable repair through not funding inspections and cancelling critical maintenance, rendering the United States military to a state of lacking in readiness rivalling their state right before World War II. And President Obama has further worked on souring relations with the most vital of allies starting with his disrespect shown the British Queen, Prime Minister and the entire British Isles with his thoughtless and insulting gifts when they first met, the disrespect of actually touching the Queen when they first met as Michelle Obama did and on top of all this having called on the British Embassy for them to come and remove the bust of Winston Churchill during his first few days in office. Then moving on to the barrages of insults thrown at Israel and her Prime Minister being refused press meetings as was the norm and having him enter through a back door of the White House and leaving him to, as stated to Netanyahu’s face, go have dinner with his family and for the Israelis to reconsider their position and send for him should they decide to be more reasonable and even arranging to meet Israeli President Peres in the Blair House rather than in the White House as is customary between heads of state. Additionally, his disregard of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family as well as his treasonous interference in Egyptian politics in a bald-faced attempt to place the Muslim Brotherhood as rulers in Egypt and retain them there even against the will of the Egyptian people. What else does he need to do, go to Paris and ask President Hollande if he has any clean white flags he can borrow as he forgot his handkerchief?

 

President Obama still has to tread his near treasonous path at the very least until the fall of next year though he will probably be permitted great amounts of latitude as the Republicans appear almost fearful of protesting President Obama’s actions too vehemently afraid they may be accused of being racist while the Democrats, at least those completely in the tank for the President, seem all too eager to use that label on anybody who dares to challenge the greatness and brilliance they appear to hold Obama as possessing. Meanwhile, President Obama can simply continue and carry on in much the same manner as he has to this point with possibly a few extra rounds of golf thrown in thus aiding in the belief that he is unconcerned with the pressures and responsibilities of the office. Of course the Presidency has appeared to have drawn an extra decade or more off of his life judging by the greying of his hair and other certain differences in his appearance and mannerisms (though I have often suspected that since Richard Nixon Presidents have dyed their hair greyer rather than to cover the grey). Most Presidents, as with President Obama, tend to become more deliberate and slow down in the meter of their speech and become more soft spoken as the office has likely taxed them and struck them with some very unexpected and, as they were unappreciated, sleepless nights and shocking revelations and forced the meeting of threats beyond those we are ever aware of and perhaps that is for the better. A sure sign that there has been collusion between the American Administration and the Iranians will be if come next fall the two parties are still negotiating a mutually agreeable parting gift that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry can cheerily grant the Iranians virtually everything they could possibly have dreamed to have had included. Negotiations being handed off to the next President is near completely impossible as the Iranians would not tempt the following administration being anywhere near as accommodating as has the Obama administration. It would be doubtful that President Obama would want to have the negotiations continuing during the lead-up to the elections as it would play into the hands of a Republican campaigning on foreign policy disasters such as the Iran negotiations and having it hurt the Democrat candidate. The one thing that has been so troubling about the Iranian nuclear program negotiations was who in the State Department thought having pretty much the same team members from the failure that were the North Koran nuclear negotiations that resulted in North Korea testing their first nuclear weapon within a year of completing negotiations now negotiating for the United States with Iran unless the desired end is identical to those results. Would it beyond probability that should President Obama sign an agreement with the Iranians mere days, or even weeks, before the end of his term in office and after the elections have determined the next President might actually lead to an investigation into possible irregularities and even collaboration between President Obama, certain high members of his administration and high officials in the State Department be investigated as a credible investigation could be useful in setting the record straight and alleviating suspicions which would be sure to arise.

 

There are many other suspicious events and seeming collusions to foil the regular systems and critical checks and balances through the two terms of the Obama Presidency which have given witness either to a level of competence by the administration or a level of collusion which would be extremely troubling should it be proven true. The original passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Obamacare, which was not supported by a single Republican vote but still required party discipline beyond normal enforcement yet this is exactly what was achieved. Then the two separate reviews by the Supreme Court, both of which many had predicted would cripple the entirety of the program as should either case have struck down vital and necessary implementations and interpretations would have mortally wounded the legislation and potentially caused a crisis which could have caused the complete rollback of all of the many tentacles of Obamacare throughout the healthcare industry and forced a reset back to the systems which existed previous to the passing of Obamacare. There have been reports of irregularities with elections which have exceeded previous levels in scope and severity which could be relegated to better tracking abilities using computers and predictive software as well as possible party politics. The record increases in people receiving food stamps, welfare, disability payments and other government relief payments which have come under scrutiny but still there has not been irrefutable evidence of collusion by the White House beyond pressing changes in policy attitudes, a change which within the prerogatives of any Administration and are not outside of party politics. Still, it would seem that we have been bombarded with a seemingly unending and ever building torrent of such reports and suspicions which may also be another result of the widening distance between the two extremes in the political arena where candidates who just a decade or so past would have easily been considered mainstream in each party are now looking at their party which seemingly have slid ever further to the extremes making agreement and cooperation nearly impossible or at least highly improbable. Perhaps President Obama’s terms in office may be the harbinger of a new normal where whichever party is out of control of the White House will be critically hyper-scrutinizing every single word, policy, spokespersons, advisors or any other iota of data all seeking any crack in the armor to launch a partisan attack in an attempt to wound and weaken the President and thus impair their ability to get their agenda accomplished. In all honesty, if this results in near paralysis in domestic policies and forces future Congress sessions to each be even less productive each term, then this just could be to the benefit of the American people as there are already more laws and regulations than any law abiding person could ever comply with and not be in contradiction of the law almost hourly if not at least daily. At some point the people need to honestly ask when does a society become too litigious, when does a government be found to be passing laws to justify their positions and salaries? By the time such discussions reach the general public it is way past time to turn things around and there will never be an end in sight through the existing systems, so once it becomes an issue the issue has already passed by and the evidence will soon permeate that society. Such a question can never be discussed too early and yesterday will always have been preferable to tomorrow to breach such a discussion.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

World Comments About Israeli Victims of Terror in Burgas

Following the heinous terrorist suicide bombing attack in Burgas, Bulgaria, comments of condolences and support were issued throughout the rest of Wednesday and into Thursday, as one must choose the words carefully and not rush out such statements which required time leaving some remarks to come the following day. Commenting on the attack itself, the President of Bulgaria, Rosen Plevneliev, told local media that the authorities in Bulgaria held a meeting last month with representatives of the Israeli Mossad but that they did not warn the Bulgarians against a possible attack. He was further quoted while visiting the scene of the bombing commenting that his country had taken every precaution to protect the lives of the victims of the attack. He added that there are good relations between Bulgaria and Israel, and that his country would have acted seriously had it been warned of a possible attack. So, are we to understand that before any Israelis go on vacation outside of Israel, especially if they are traveling as a group on a planned tour, that the Mossad needs to perform a full security sweep and be given sufficient time to research for any possibilities of a terror attack and without such warning being issued by the Israeli Mossad, no country can be expected to take any steps to prevent terrorist attacks upon Israelis visiting their country? This is preposterous and a simple case of laying the blame on the victims and skirting any responsibility. It is also a rather disgusting response.

 

The sympathies expressed for the victims of this horrid slaughtering of innocents by the purveyors of terrorism were, while commendable, missing one important reference, the mention that this was an act of terrorism. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a condemnation through his spokesperson and despite his claim of condemning the attack “in the strongest possible terms,” he omitted any reference to it being an act of terrorism, referring only to the deadly “bombing” of Israelis. This stands in stark contrast to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon statement two weeks ago on the bombing of the Christian Churches in Kenya where he rightly spoke of “terrorist” attacks … saying the perpetrators “must be held to account.”

 

Next up is the President of the United States, Barack Obama, who was quoted by Reuters as saying, “The United States will stand with our allies, and provide whatever assistance is necessary to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators of this attack.” They further quoted his observation that the attack was “completely outrageous.” President Obama was later quoted commenting while speaking at a gathering of activists in Florida where he said that the attack was “barbaric” and added, “I want everybody here to know under my administration, we haven’t just preserved the unbreakable bond with Israel, we have strengthened it.” The term that is once again obvious due to its omission is any reference to terror, terrorists or terrorism. President Obama later telephoned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and expressed his condolences for the deaths of Israelis.

 

And then there is the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, the Lady Catherine Ashton. She was quoted to have said,    “I was appalled to hear of this afternoon’s apparent terrorist attack on Israeli tourists arriving in Bulgaria. I am deeply shocked by the scenes at Burgas airport, where what should have been the beginning of a happy holiday ended in murder. I send my condolences to the families of all those killed. Many more have been injured. We wish them a speedy recovery. The EU utterly condemns all acts of terrorism, wherever they take place. The terrorists who planned and carried out this attack must be brought to justice.” To her credit she did finally manage to refer to terror definitively in her final sentence after original reference to this calamity as, “apparent terrorist attack” earlier in her statement. The earlier qualified reference which allowed for some doubt as to whether this was terrorism takes a good deal away from the later reference to terrorists and exposes the Lady Ashton’s well established disdain for Israel and Israelis.

 

The worst and by far most offensive reaction to the terrorist bombing of the Israeli group’s tour bus is attributed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. Ms. Pillay has been known to be one of the first to express her opinion on a wide range of incidents including her 2010 rush to condemn Israel over the Mavi Marmara Flotilla confrontation where she omitted no term of condemnation in her berating the needless slaughter of innocent protesters. But on this day where a terrorist suicide bomber murdered seven people and injured thirty more, three in serious condition, Ms. Pillay had no comment. This was an actual attack upon honestly innocent vacationers which included children, teenagers and young couples among those murdered or injured, unlike the terrorists who were engaged in martyrdom operations planned to capture and/or murder Israeli IDF security personnel engaged in enforcement of a legal, United Nations and universally recognized maritime blockade when they suffered their fate. Ms. Pillay has added yet one more disgraceful action, or lack of action, by her silence in the face of this act of blatant terrorism which she has given her own personal affirmation through her shameful silence.

 

Lastly we have the comments from the United Nations Security Council who apparently had not received the memo not to mention terror, terrorists or terrorism or any reference to suicide bombing when referring to the attack on the Israelis in Bulgaria. To their credit, the Security Council of the United Nations statement read, “Terrorism in all its forms and manifestations is one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. All acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, no matter the motives for them, where, when and by whom they are carried out. The perpetrators and organizers, as well as those who finance such reprehensible acts of terrorism must be brought to justice.”

 

One final note on a related but separate issue, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department have gathered a conference of nations to discuss the many facets of terrorism and the methods which can be utilized to fight both the commission and the financing of terror in order to prevent further acts and their consequences. This gathering has been titled as the Global Counter-terrorism Forum’s High-Level Conference on Victims of Terrorism and began on July 9 in Madrid. The gathering had an interesting collection of countries who, according to much of the publicity for the “Global Counter-terrorism Forum”, were victims suffering from terror and terrorism and all associated difficulties. The member states came from two distinct groups and the entire conference was co-chaired by the United States and Turkey. The first group were the eleven member nations of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation), Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. The other members are, usually referred to as the remaining members as they do not neatly fit into any group other than not members from the OIC; Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. The European Union also has a seat and the United Nations is “a close partner of and participant in the Global Counter-terrorism Forum and its activities.”  There is one country that is most conspicuous by its absence from this little get-together, Israel. Fortunately rumors have surfaced naming the country which spearheaded the exclusion of Israel, Turkey. Turkey made the exclusion of Israel a condition for their participation and the State Department graciously and eagerly agreed that Israel had no place in such an important and vital conference and would likely not contribute much in the way of substance. We have our suspicions that at least another dozen of those attending countries either heartily agreed or felt no loss at the exclusion if Israel from the Global Counter-terrorism Forum.

 

Beyond the Cusp