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Higher Ways [Part Two]
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.
God’s way is to put away grudges and all bitterness – man’s is to hold them and seek revenge.
God’s way is not to take a matter [between brethren] to law – man’s is to do this.
God’s way is to lend, hoping nothing in return – man’s is not to lend without security and gain.
God’s way is to judge not – man’s is to judge.
God’s way is to do unto others as one would wish to be done unto – man’s is to take advantage of others regardless of the outcome.
God’s way is to rejoice and glory in persecution and trouble – man’s is to fight back, resent and take revenge.
God’s way is to be kind to enemies and feed them – man’s way is to repay them for their wrong-doing.
God’s way is to be friendly with the lowest and all other classes – man’s is to show respect of persons, preferring those who can return them personal gain.
God’s way is to forgive 490 times – man’s to forgive a few times, and only when necessary.
God’s way is not to boast or seek His own things – man’s way is to brag and seek things for self.
God’s way is to labour and give to others – man’s to labour for self only, and ignore others.
God’s ways, thoughts, purposes, and acts are, generally speaking, different from those of man. His plan of creation and redemption are different from what man’s would have been, as well as His way of government. – Dake A.R. Bible
TRULY, JUST AS THE HEAVENS ARE INFINITELY HIGHER THAN THE EARTH, SO GOD’S WAY AND THOUGHTS ARE ABOVE MAN’S.
If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink – He that believeth on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water [John 7:37-38].
Out of the believer will flow unlimited power to do the works of Christ – as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God – even to them that believe on His Name; which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Therefore, on the ground of His Word, with the accessible flow of unlimited power, as the sons of God, we must strive to habitually practice His ways, until it becomes second nature to us.
Hebrew 10:38
Now the just live by faith; but if any man draw back, My Soul shall have no pleasure in him.
Examples of Higher Ways [Dake]
Living and acting on faith regarding what is not seen, even what seems impossible to be true – while man lives by what he sees and understands.
God plans on eternity – man for time.
God the spiritual – man the material.
God consecrates Himself to the highest good of all – man to self-gratification.
God works in miraculous and mysterious ways – man in the ordinary.
God’s ways are supernatural – man’s natural.
God’s ways are unlimited – man’s limited.
God exalts through humility – man through self- exaltation.
God’s way up is down – man’s is to climb up without going down [humbling self] first.
God controls by love – man by force.
God gives justice without reward – man gives it for reward and personal gain.
God wins respect by goodness – man by wealth and power.
God redeems by death – man by money.
God’s program is carried on without outward show – man’s by show and splendor.
God’s way is to take no thought for the morrow – man’s way is made up of constant worry, planning and fretting.
God’s way is to give alms, pray and fast in secret; not to be seen of men – man’s is by public demonstration.
God’s way is to bring peace on earth by man’s personal surrender – man’s way is by force of arms and conquest.
God’s way of social life is to make feasts for the poor, lame, maimed and outcasts – man’s way is to make them for friends who are well provided for, the rich and influential.
Our finite minds are incapable of comprehending the true Omnipotence and Omniscience of God, and the following words recorded in the book of Job 11:7 – 8 reflect the awesomeness of God:-
Can you find out the deep things of God, or can you by searching find out the limit of the Almighty [explore His depths, ascend to His heights, extend to His breadths, and comprehend His infinite] perfection?
His wisdom is high as the heights of heaven! What can you do? It is deeper than Sheol [the place of the dead]! What can you know?
God’s Ways & Thoughts
Isaiah 55:9
For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts. As rain and snow water the earth, in making it fruitful, so God’s word will accomplish its purpose.
SIX ASPECTS – His ways and thoughts higher. [Dake]
IN PARDON:
Men never would have planned pardon for enemies, as God did for those who devote themselves to destroying their plans, works and purposes. Men seek revenge on all such and harbor malice and hatred, whereas God planned redemption an untold glories for His enemies. [John 3:16; Romans 5:8]
IN NUMBER OF OFFENCES:
Under favorable and special circumstances men forgive a few times, but they are prone not to forgive repeated offences. God forgives freely many times and as completely and lovingly the last time as the first. [Matt. 12:32; 18:21-22; Rev. 22:17]
IN NUMBER OF OFFENDERS:
Men may pardon one person or a few who injure them, but the greater the numbers the less they are inclined to forgive. God forgives all regardless of the number of offenders.
[John 3:16; 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9; Rev. 22:17]
IN KINDS OF OFFENCES:
Men usually limit themselves as to what kind of offences they will forgive; but God has no qualifications on this point, except the offence of rejecting the only means of help He can offer. [Matthew 12:31-32]
IN DEGREE OF OFFENCES:
Men will forgive if an offence is small enough not to be of any great injury to them; but God will forgive the greatest and most aggravated offences against Him. [Isaiah 53: John 3:16]
IN MODE OF PARDON:
Men may be willing to forgive if it does not cost them much, and they can see such is to their advantage; but God gave the most precious gift of heaven that He might have a basis of forgiveness for His enemies. God redeems on the basis of personal suffering and having substituted Himself to be punished instead of His enemies. He forgives by the very one whom men sought to destroy, the one made to endure the most horrible sufferings ever laid upon a human being. He blesses by faith in the blood atonement of the death of an innocent person. Man would have punished the guilty and satisfied justice; but God punished the innocent to justify the guilty. In fact the whole program of reconciliation of enemies to God is of such a high level that men could never have planned it.
Command Me
Isaiah 45:11
Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons and concerning the work of My Hands command ye Me.
Two Commands to Israel:
Ask Me to show you things to come concerning My sons;
Command Me concerning the work of My hands.
This literally means that men have the authority to pray in such faith that they can direct the Almighty to do for them those things which they want and need.
God would rather do things for His people than to withhold from them.
To command God is an expression of highest relationship, friendship, and co-operation to the same end in life.
It is a rare privilege to command Him, and if exercised properly in fervent respectful petition, there is nothing that will be impossible to the believer.
Seven Examples of commanding God:
Moses commanded frogs to die. [Exodus 8:3]
He commanded flies to be removed. [Exodus 8:31]
He caused God to repent. [Exodus 32:12-14]
Joshua commanded the sun. [[Joshua 10:12]
Elijah commanded fire from heaven. [1 Kings 18:36-38; 2 Kings 1:10-12]
Jesus Christ commanded the winds and waves to obey, and water to turn to wine etc. [Luke 4: 35; John 2]
Apostles and others commanded men to be free from infirmity. [Acts 3: 6: 5: 16; 9:34; 9:40; 13:11; 14:10; 19:11-12]
(Source: Dake King James Bible: Page 475 Column 1 & 4.)
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By Barry Rubin
Many people seem to think that the Israel-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli conflict or the “peace process” is the world’s most important issue. So who’s going to determine whether it gets resolved or not? No, not President Barak Obama; no, not Israel’s prime minister; no, not Palestinian Authority (PA) “president” Mahmoud Abbas or Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
That choice is in the hands of Fatah, which controls the PA and rules the West Bank. Only if and when Fatah decides that it wants a two-state solution and a real end of the conflict based on compromise will that be possible. So the fact that Fatah has issued a new charter seems to be a matter of great importance.
Yet up until now nobody has noticed that such a charter emerged from the August 2009 Fatah General Congress. The document was translated by the U.S. government and has just been leaked by Secrecy News. You are now reading the first analysis of this charter.
Secrecy News remarks: “The document is not particularly conciliatory in tone or content. It is a call to revolution, confrontation with the enemy, and the liberation of Palestine, ‘free and Arab.’” But then the newsletter continues:
“But what is perhaps most significant is what is not in the document. The original Fatah charter (or constitution) from the 1960s embraced `the world-wide struggle against Zionism,’ denied Jewish historical or religious ties to the land, and called for the `eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.’ None of that language is carried over into the new charter, which manages not to mention Israel, Zionism, or Jews at all.”
Now here’s an important lesson for you. When a radical group is portrayed as moderate based on some position it supposedly has taken or some statement made there has to be a catch somewhere. Here’s the tip-off in this case, a single sentence in the new charter:
“This internal charter has been adopted within the framework of adherence to the provisions of the Basic Charter.”
In other words, every detail of the original charter still holds; nothing is repealed, no error admitted, no explicit change of course accepted.
Of course, Fatah has changed a lot from the 1960s. It is less focused on violence (though that doesn’t mean it has renounced terrorism necessarily), less explicitly militant in its demands, more willing to deal in a cooperative manner with Israel. Neither genuine moderation nor remaining intransigence should be exaggerated. On practical day-to-day matters, Israel can work with Fatah and needs to ensure that Hamas doesn’t overthrow it. At present Fatah leaders understand well that a return to large-scale violence is against their interests. But make a comprehensive peace agreement? Not going to happen.
And yet offered an opportunity to become a parliamentary political party, a movement clearly dedicated to peaceful politicking and a diplomatic solution, despite massive Western financial subsidies and frequent expressions of support for a Palestinian state from President Barack Obama, Fatah has chosen to remain a revolutionary organization. Indeed, there is no word more used in this charter than “revolutionary.”
“Let us train ourselves to be patient and to face ordeals, bear calamities, sacrifice our souls, blood, time and effort,” says the charter. “All these are the weapons of revolutionaries.
“You must know that determination, patience, secrecy, confidentiality, adherence to the principles and goals of the revolution, keep us from stumbling and shorten the path to liberation.
“Go forward to revolution. Long live Palestine, free and Arab!”
At the same time, though, Fatah remains non-ideological. It sees itself as a broad nationalist movement, just as when Yasir Arafat founded it more than fifty years ago. Indeed, despite the challenge from Hamas, the word “Muslim” or “Islamic” is mentioned nowhere in the charter.
In structure, though, Fatah is still a revolutionary organization. Membership is secret; decisionmaking is supposedly based on the Marxist concept of “democratic centralism;” the Maoist phrase “criticism and self-criticism” is recommended; and the organizational structure is based on cells.
Yet while Fatah sounds like some Communist party or tightly disciplined revolutionary underground, the reality is quite different. Arafat set forth an institutional culture that has always been somewhat anarchical. Cadre are undisciplined and the command structure is anything but organized. When Hamas staged a coup in the Gaza Strip, Fatah simply collapsed and didn’t even put up much of a fight. Local bosses prevail; cadre do pretty much whatever they want; indiscipline and corruption is rife.
And so it is sort of a joke to read in Article 95 that members are enjoined to be, “Undertaking their tasks enthusiastically and sparing no effort in achieving the movement’s objectives and principles; exerting strenuous efforts to enhance interaction with the masses and winning their respect and confidence.”
What is intriguing, however, is that there is a detailed discussion of transgressions of Fatah rules and punishments for doing so. Clearly, if members do anything the leaders don’t like they are going to face severe penalties. Thus it is significant that no Fatah member has been ever disciplined for committing acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians or for making the most extremist statements. Indeed, it isn’t even clear that Fatah has the determination or ability to punish members for collaborating with Hamas against their own leaders.
But the most fascinating aspect of all is the definition of the movement’s structure. Overwhelming power is in the hands of a 23-member Central Committee, including control of Fatah’s military forces. As I have shown previously, the Central Committee elected at the same Congress which formulated this new charter is quite radical. There are few members ready for real peace with Israel. When it comes to making any big decision, Abbas and Fayyad are mere figureheads.
Beneath the Central Committee is an 80-member Revolutionary Committee and, as the next level, a 350-member General Council. The Central Committee chooses a fairly large portion o both groups. Indeed it also selects the Fatah members of the Palestine National Council (the PLO’s legislature); PLO Executive Committee, which rules the PLO; Palestinian Legislative Council (the PA’s legislature); and the PA itself.
What this means is that Abbas and Fayyad do not control the PA, nor can they make peace or even conduct serious give-and-take negotiations. The Central Committee is really in control and the Central Committee is overwhelmingly hardline–at least 16–roughly three-quarters–of the 23 are that way. They still hope to take over Israel and thus reject agreeing to resettle Palestinian refugees in a state of Palestine. Equally, they aren’t ready to declare that a two-state solution is the end of the conflict.
Most of the hardliners are supporters of Abbas. But the main reason they back him is their conviction that Abbas is weak both in character and in political base. They want him to be leader because they know he doesn’t threaten their power. Like the famous exchange between Senator Lloyd Bentsen and Vice-President Dan Quayle they can say: “I knew Yasir Arafat. I worked with Yasir Arafat. And Chairman Abbas, you are no Yasir Arafat.”
He will not, he cannot, do anything they don’t like. And one of the things Abbas has done to appease them has been to make Muhammad Ghaneim, perhaps the most hardline among all the committee members, his designaed successor.
These 23 committee members are in control of the fate of the Palestinians (except for Hamas’s considerable say in that matter) and the peace process. Due to their radicalism, there will be no peace or Palestinian state for many years. To find out more about who they are and why this is so, go here and here and especially here.
Why don’t more people study the details of Palestinian politics? For the same reason that they don’t want to look closely at how sausages are made. It’s too unpleasant. After doing so, one could never go on naively believing that peace is within reach.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
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Note: Even if you aren’t interested in Turkey you should read this article as a case study of how Islamism works and how too many people in the West are taken in by it.
By Barry Rubin
Scary stuff is happening in Turkey. The stealth Islamist regime is increasingly threatening critics and creating phony plots against itself to justify taking more power into its hands. The process is a slow-motion one but the direction is away from moderation and democracy.
Foreign admirers of the AKP regime like to say it is a moderate Islamic government which proves that Islamism is compatible with democracy. It is possible that a few years in the future—when it is too late—observers will look back on its example to prove the opposite.
But here’s an obscure angle on what’s happening that tells a mountain-load about contemporary politics. Stick with me as we expose a covert operation that ties up the far left with the drive toward an Islamist dictatorship. Briefly, here are the themes:
–A nominally left-wing newspaper is an Islamist front fed disinformation by the regime in order to discredit the regime’s rivals, both the army and the left of center political parties.
–This front is praised by leftists in the West as a heroic venture when it is funded by Islamists and does their bidding.
–The Turkish regime is moving increasingly toward demonizing its secular enemies to the point where they can be repressed and Turkish democracy is, at best, limited and the country is moved toward being at least a partial Islamist state with authoritarian rule by a single party. While there will continue to be elections, the AKP is using extra-parliamentary means to ensure that it always will win.
And this is a pattern we’ll see repeated elsewhere. In fact, we’re already seeing it, in the West as well.
Slick neo-Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is quoted in Today’s Zaman, which with its Turkish-language partner Zaman is owned by the Islamist Gulen movement and supports the regime, warning of a new alleged coup plot, supposedly called the “Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan,” to overthrow the government. The army is accused of planning a terrorist campaign of placing bombs in mosques to blow up innocent worshippers.
Creating such phony plots is one of the AKP regime’s main techniques for discrediting opposition and putting critics on trial. Previous alleged plots have included ones called Blonde Girl, Moonlight, Sea-sparkle, and Glove. But the main so-called army-opposition conspiracy is called Ergenekon. Those who have waded through thousands of pages of indictments and the disparate group of those arrested point out a rather important fact: there are no specific acts that took place and no real evidence against anyone.
One of the accused, for example, is Turkan Saylan, a secular leader in the grassroots opposition to the regime who has organized several mass demonstrations. The pro-AK media has accused her of being an Armenian-lover, supporter of the terrorist PKK Kurdish group, and a Christian missionary. But the missionary charge was only made in the Turkish-language Islamist media so it would not become known abroad so that the regime can still pretend to be tolerant and non-Islamist.
The real defenders of Turkish democracy are slandered as those who want to destroy it, while the destroyers are portrayed as the defenders.
Here’s Today’s Zaman teaming up with the prime minister to make false statements labeling the peaceful parliamentary opposition as a group of terrorist coup-makers:
“Erdoğan said he was unable to understand why some parties act as advocates of illegal groups. He was referring to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), whose leader Deniz Baykal declared that he was an advocate of Ergenekon. Ergenekon is a clandestine crime network that has alleged links within the state and is suspected of plotting to topple the government…[charged with being] a terrorist organization.”
Baykalm leader of the left-of-center opposition party, is hardly an advocate of Ergenekon, terrorism, or overthrowing the regime in a violent coup.
And what is the source of the latest accusation? A mysterious leftist newspaper called Taraf. If you were to read the media column of the world’s leading leftist English-language newspaper, the Guardian, you’d think Taraf is a heroic champion of free speech. It calls Taraf “Turkey’s most courageous newspaper” and regards Ergenekon as a completely true story.
While pointing out there seems to be a mystery about how this newspaper is financed it explains that the editor does so out of his own pocket. In fact the editor is a journalist who owns a small bookstore which does not explain how he comes up with $6.6 million a year.
So where does the money come from? Apparently, though this requires further investigation, from a group of pro-Islamist, Gulen-connected businessmen of whom the most prominent is Ahmer Calik—in other words to the same people who back the regime and run Today’s Zaman. Calik gets big favors from the government, for example a major pipeline project.
Despite supposedly being a leftist newspaper, Taraf never criticizes Islamism or the government. When the regime’s police beat up leftist demonstrators on May Day the story went unreported in Taraf.
The newspaper’s sensationalism is pretty extreme. For example, last year it ran a story accusing NTV television network, a pro-secular station, of sending out electronic signals to crash the helicopter of an Islamist/ultra-nationalist extremist politician to crash. This is an accusation of murder. When NTV released its full phone records showing the accusation was false, Taraf and other pro-regime newspapers ignored the fact that their story was wrong and moved on to new accusations.
Intimidating newspapers and television stations—as well as buying them up–is one of the regime’s main tactics. For example, the main media empire supporting the opposition was hauled into court and given a fine of several billion (that is not a typo) dollars on trumped-up charges. The message is: shut up or we’ll put you out of business.
The real threat to Turkey’s remaining a free and democratic state is not the made-up Ergenekon nonsense but Erdogan, Gulen, Today’s Zaman, and Taraf, with help from varous foreign dupes.
So there you have it. An Islamist regime pretending to be moderately conservative, a “leftist” newspaper set up to smear the opposition, false charges of terrorism against rival politicians, the use of the courts to jail or intimidate democratic critics, and the cheers of the Western left for all of these techniques.
Coming soon [if not already there already] to a country near you.
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By Barry Rubin
Significantly, President Barack Obama’s discussion of foreign policy came only at the end of his State of the Union message. Obviously, domestic matters and especially the economy come first. Yet international affairs are not only vital but often have been the issues on which administrations are judged, no matter how unlikely that seemed at the time.
It is apparently considered impolite to point out that Obama has no previous experience and little knowledge of international affairs. And yet that fact affects the fate of the globe every day. The really interesting question is whether the State of the Union message showed any growth in his ability after one year in office.
Sadly, the answer is “no.”
Here are the themes he expressed.
First, he implies that it is all George W. Bush’s fault, having left him with two wars. Yet there is a strange point here that no one has noticed. These wars, except for Obama’s long hesitation about making a decision on Afghanistan, have caused him little trouble or criticism in relative terms. On a list of administration failures during its first year, a long list of other items prevail which cannot be blamed on Bush: embarrassing gaffes, messing up on Iran and the “peace process,” subverting allies in Central Europe, apologizing and undermining U.S. credibility with dictators, mishandling the Islamist terrorist prisoners, and so on.
Second, he insists that he’s been doing a great job on security. Indeed, Obama suggests—in terms that would have brought a withering criticism of previous presidents—that no one should criticize him.
There is one sentence in this discussion that embodies much of what is wrong with Obama’s concept of international affairs. On the surface it is banal but it is really of the greatest importance: “So let’s put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough.”
This is part of Obama’s confusion between personal or social life and international politics that is so common to the amateur in foreign policy. During recess, boys act macho, ranking each other in a pecking order, challenging each other to fight or back down.
Obama genuinely views the way that international politics works as equally silly, meaningless, unnecessary. He wants to cut through all that and show that everyone is in the same boat, he has no macho feelings about power, and he’s ready to apologize and be part of the gang without leading the gang. It is a way to say: Why can’t everyone just get along and be friends. I’ll dispense with all these petty quarrels and start by renouncing all my own power.
This is sort of like the wimpy nerd coming up to a motorcycle gang and explaining his philosophy to them. Ok, that’s a very exaggerated image but it gets the point across. At first, Obama’s listeners are puzzled. Why would the leader of the world’s greatest superpower talk like this? Perhaps it is a trick.
But then the reactions among foreign leaders and countries to Obama’s policy can be divided into three groups:
Foes are not won over. On the contrary, the world’s dictators and radical ideologies which are America’s enenies conclude that some strange compulsion has paralyzed America so why not take advantage of it?
Dependents are frightened. If this man refuses to be strong or act tough who will protect me? I must give my lunch money to the bullies or somehow ingratiate myself with them or just defend myself as best I can.
Lazy friends are pleased. We love this man because either he won’t demand that we do anything or if he does we can ignore him without consequences. But even some of them are starting to become concerned, like Britain, France, and Germany who want more action regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
What Obama calls “schoolyard taunts” are what diplomatists for centuries have called power politics, leverage, containment, credibility, and so on.
Regarding security against terrorism, Obama speaks of “substantial investments,” “disrupted plots,” and filling “unacceptable gaps.” Never being able to resist some schoolyard taunts at Bush, he adds that he has captured more al-Qaida fighters than his predecessor. No problem, he says, everything is under control and don’t worry about it.
Yet people still are worried—and with good reason. After all, Obama was also saying everything was fine before the “underpants” bomber came along. His bomb didn’t destroy the aircraft but it did blow up confidence in Obama’s counterterrorist strategy. There is no mention of his treating terrorism as a criminal problem, nor of his very narrow focus on al-Qaida as the only terrorist group of concern, nor of his plan to try captured terrorists at courts in the United States, nor of how terrorists he has released have returned to the battle. If he ignores all the concerns people have, no wonder he can say there is no problem.
Obama continues, “We have prohibited torture and strengthened partnerships from the Pacific to South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula.” Has Obama strengthened partnerships? Well, if he means alliances that is truly doubtful. Leaving aside the question of his personal popularity in polls I cannot think of a single country whose material relations are stronger. Nominally, of course, Western Europe greatly prefers Obama to Bush. But has this led to any actual results in practical terms? Again, no.
He claims success in Afghanistan, preparing the army there so he can bring the troops home starting in July 2011. Curiously, there’s no mention of his own smaller version of a surge. U.S. combat troops in Iraq will all be out in August of this year. These are good steps and probably will be very popular at home.
Yet there is also that flash of utopian naiveté, a refusal to face up to the cost of doing so which bodes ill for the future: “We will reward good governance, reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans – men and women alike. “ Yeah, sure. And as with the misleading claim about his successes against al-Qaida, there is that fascinating Obama inability to resist the temptation to tell easily exposed lies, claiming that other countries have increased their commitments in Afghanistan when in fact they refused his request to do so.
One of the most remarkable elements is something not in the speech. The word “Israel” is not even mentioned. There is no commitment to its security expressed and nothing about the peace process. This is revealing in two ways.
First, Obama has admitted that he made a mistake on the issue, the only foreign policy mistake he has ever mentioned. His response now is to ignore the issue altogether, not in his government’s daily activities but in terms of his main commitments. Remember that type of response for it might come to characterize other issues. For example, suppose Obama fails—as he clearly will—to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Will he then turn away from that problem as well, banishing it from his agenda?
Second, everyone knows that Obama’s commitment to Israel has been widely questioned. A good politician would go out of his way to say something to show—truly or falsely—how much he does care about it. That isn’t how Obama works. He is not the kind of president to whom other countries can turn to for a feeling of security and support. And that sense of worry is applying now to many other countries in Latin America, Central Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and elsewhere who know that they cannot rely on the president of the United States to protect them against their enemies.
If Obama were to be honest–and effective–he would admit that Israel did almost completely what he asked while the Palestinian Authority (PA) defied him. Israel froze all the construction on the West Bank (it has never defined east Jerusalem in that way) and expressed willingness to go to talks with the PA. The PA has refused to negotiate for five months after Obama asked it to do so. Yet for Obama to pressure the PA to go to the table–the normal route in such situations–is unthinkable for him. So he has no way out of his failure. And Israel’s “reward” for its major concession? Not even to be acknowledged in Obama’s main annual speech for the first time, I presume, in decades.
In contrast, what Obama is fond of, and spends more time—practically twice as much–on then any other foreign policy issue at all, is his vision of world nuclear disarmament. Even his treatment of the Iran issue comes in this context. Obama—and this is another weakness of his—gets lost when he thinks of something he feels is terribly clever. In this case, believing he can best deter Iran and North Korea by saying the United States should also give up its nuclear weapons.
Does anyone in the world take this seriously?
To hear him say it, America’s enemies are trembling:
“These diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of these weapons. That is why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions – sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That is why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: they, too, will face growing consequences.”
In a sense, all he had to offer was a schoolyard taunt: You’ll be sorry! After so many previous such statements, this comes across as a very empty threat indeed. A different kind of president would have used the State of the Union speech–the timing of it would have been perfect–as a platform to announce that America was switching gears from failed engagement to tough sanctions. The members in both parties would have roared approval. He would have a mandate and the message would have been clearly heard in Tehran. But such an approach would never have occurred to Obama.
And that’s why America’s enemies aren’t trembling but laughing and sneering.
This is the speech of a man who is arrogantly convinced of his own brilliance and who basically believes that no one has a right to criticize him. He thinks that he can ignore or rewrite the rules of international affairs. It reveals both a temperament and a set of ideas totally unsuited for dealing with the world as it is.
What I find most fascinating of all about Obama is that despite all the externals—his early personal history and skin color most obviously—used by himself and others to boast that he understands other peoples, Obama is altogether incapable of grasping that others in the world think and act differently from himself.
That’s partly due to his ideology but also to his mistaken belief—ignoring the fact that he is a Hawaii-raised, Harvard-educated member of a very insulated elite whose life has been largely one of uninterrupted rewards mostly showered onto him as gifts–that they are just like he is.
May he, and we all, be very lucky in the next few years.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
- Some of the descriptions in this article are graphic and may be difficult to read
Abortion rights activists have long preferred to hold themselves at some remove from the practice they promote; rather than naming it, they speak of “choice” and “reproductive freedom.” But those who perform abortions have no such luxury. Instead, advances in ultrasound imaging and abortion procedures have forced providers ever closer to the nub of their work. Especially in abortions performed far enough along in gestation that the fetus is recognizably a tiny baby, this intimacy exacts an emotional toll, stirring sentiments for which doctors, nurses, and aides are sometimes unprepared. Most apparently have managed to reconcile their belief in the right to abortion with their revulsion at dying and dead fetuses, but a noteworthy number have found the conflict unbearable and have defected to the pro-life cause.
In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, second-trimester abortions were usually performed by saline injection. The doctor simply replaced the amniotic fluid in the patient’s uterus with a saline solution and induced labor, leaving it to nurses to dispose of the expelled fetus. That changed in the late 1970s, when “dilation and evacuation” (D&E) emerged as a safer method. Today D&E is the most common second-trimester procedure. It has been performed millions of times in the United States.
But although D&E is better for the patient, it brings emotional distress for the abortionist, who, after inserting laminaria that cause the cervix to dilate, must dismember and remove the fetus with forceps. One early study, by abortionists Warren Hern and Billie Corrigan, found that although all of their staff members “approved of second trimester abortion in principle,” there “were few positive comments about D&E itself.” Reactions included “shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear, and sadness.” A more ambitious study published the following year, in the September 1979 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, confirmed Hern and Corrigan’s findings. It found “strong emotional reactions during or following the procedures and occasional disquieting dreams.”
Another study, published in the October 1989 issue of Social Science and Medicine noted that abortion providers were pained by encounters with the fetus regardless of how committed they were to abortion rights. It seems that no amount of ideological conviction can inoculate providers against negative emotional reactions to abortion.
Such studies are few. In general, abortion providers have censored their own emotional trauma out of concern to protect abortion rights. In 2008, however, abortionist Lisa Harris endeavored to begin “breaking the silence” in the pages of the journal Reproductive Health Matters. When she herself was 18 weeks pregnant, Dr. Harris performed a D&E abortion on an 18-week-old fetus. Harris felt her own child kick precisely at the moment that she ripped a fetal leg off with her forceps:
Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.
Harris concluded her piece by lamenting that the pro-choice movement has left providers to suffer in silence because it has “not owned up to the reality of the fetus, or the reality of fetal parts.” Indeed, it often insists that images used by the pro-life movement are faked.
(Pro-choice advocates also falsely insist that second-trimester abortions are confined almost exclusively to tragic “hard” cases such as fetal malformation. Yet a review of the literature in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that most abortions performed after the first trimester are sought for the same reasons as first-trimester abortions, they’re just delayed. This reality only intensifies the guilt pangs of abortion providers.)
Hern and Harris chose to stay in the abortion business; one of the first doctors to change his allegiance was Paul Jarrett, who quit after only 23 abortions. His turning point came in 1974, when he performed an abortion on a fetus at 14 weeks’ gestation: “As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart,” he would recall. “And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.”
In 1990 Judith Fetrow, an aide at a Planned Parenthood clinic, found that disposing of fetal bodies as medical waste was more than she could bear. Soon after she left her position, Fetrow described her experiences: “No one at Planned Parenthood wanted this job. I had to look at the tiny hands and feet. There were times when I wanted to cry.” Finally persuaded to quit by a pro-life protester outside her clinic, Fetrow is now involved in the American Life League.
Kathy Sparks is another convert formerly responsible for disposing of fetal remains, this time at an Illinois abortion clinic. Her account of the experience that led her to exit the abortion industry (taken from the Pro-Life Action League website in 2004) reads in part:
The baby’s bones were far too developed to rip them up with the doctor’s curette, so he had to pull the baby out with forceps. He brought out three or four major pieces. I took the baby to the clean up room, I set him down and I began weeping uncontrollably. I cried and cried. This little face was perfectly formed.
A recovery nurse rebuked Sparks for her unprofessional behavior. She quit the next day. Sparks is now the director of a crisis pregnancy center with more than 20 pro-life volunteers.
Handling fetal remains can be especially difficult in late-term clinics. Until George Tiller was assassinated by a pro-life radical last summer, his clinic in Wichita specialized in third-trimester abortions. To handle the large volume of biological waste Tiller had a crematorium on the premises. One day when hauling a heavy container of fetal waste, Tiller asked his secretary, Luhra Tivis, to assist him. She found the experience devastating. The “most horrible thing,” Tivis later recounted, was that she “could smell those babies burning.” Tivis, a former NOW activist, soon left her secretarial position at the clinic to volunteer for Operation Rescue, a radical pro-life organization.
Other converts were driven into the pro-life movement by advances in ultrasound technology. The most recent example is Abby Johnson, the former director of Dallas-area Planned Parenthood. After watching, via ultrasound, an embryo “crumple” as it was suctioned out of its mother’s womb, Johnson reported a “conversion in my heart.” Likewise, Joan Appleton was the head nurse at a large abortion facility in Falls Church, Virginia, and a NOW activist. Appleton performed thousands of abortions with aplomb until a single ultrasound-assisted abortion rattled her. As Appleton remembers, “I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. After the procedure I was shaking, literally.”
The most famous abortion provider to be converted by ultrasound technology, decades ago, is Bernard Nathanson, cofounder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the original NARAL. In the early 1970s, Nathanson was the largest abortion provider in the Western world. By his own reckoning he performed more than 60,000 abortions, including one on his own child. Nathanson’s exit from the industry was slow and tortured. In Aborting America (1979), he expressed anxiety over the possibility that he was complicit in a great evil. He was especially troubled by ultrasound images. When he finally left his profession for pro-life activism, he produced The Silent Scream (1984), a documentary of an ultrasound abortion that showed the fetus scrambling vainly to escape dismemberment.
This handful of stories is representative of many more. In fact, with the exception of communism, we can think of few other movements from which so many activists have defected to the opposition. Nonetheless, the vast majority of clinic workers remain committed to the pro-choice cause. Perhaps some of those who stay behind are haunted by their work. Most, however, find a way to cope with the dissonance.
Pro-choice advocates like to point out that abortion has existed in all times and places. Yet that observation tends to obscure the radicalism of the present abortion regime in the United States. Until very recently, no one in the history of the world has had the routine job of killing well-developed fetuses quite so up close and personal. It is an experiment that was bound to stir pro-life sentiments even in the hearts of those staunchly devoted to abortion rights. Ultrasound and D&E bring workers closer to the beings they destroy. Hern and Corrigan concluded their study by noting that D&E leaves “no possibility of denying an act of destruction.” As they wrote, “It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment run through the forceps like an electric current.”
Some Christians say their prayers have been answered after the House of Lords on Monday defeated changes to a law that would have required church groups to hire homosexuals or others whose manner of life is inconsistent with their teaching.
Peers voted 216 to 178 in favor of Lady O’Cathain’s amendment to retain an exemption for religious groups to equality employment laws.
Reacting to the result, Lady O’Cathain said Tuesday: “I know that very many Christians were praying that justice would prevail as the House of Lords voted on this important issue. Many also wrote wise, sensitive letters to peers, seeking to persuade them of our case.
“We give thanks to God for the outcome, and we continue to pray for our Government, as Scripture exhorts us to do, that God would bless their counsels.”
The Christian Institute’s Mike Judge commented, “The prayers of thousands of Christians and letter writing to peers was key to protecting our freedom.”
“Surely churches should be free to employ people whose conduct is consistent with church teaching. Surely that’s not asking too much,” Judge added. “It’s called freedom of association, and it’s a key liberty in any democratic society. The fact that the Government couldn’t see this will concern many Christians.”
The government attempted to restrict the exemption for religious organizations solely to ministers and other positions that wholly or mainly “exist to promote or represent the religion or to explain the doctrines of the religion.”
Christians argued that if the Equality Bill was passed without Lady O’Cathain’s amendment, which leaves the current law unchanged, it would impose considerable restrictions on who religious organizations could employ and put them in the difficult position of having to appoint someone who did not conform to their ethos and beliefs.
Last week, bishops in the Church of England argued that the bill would leave religious organizations “more vulnerable to legal challenge.”
Dr. Don Horrocks, head of public affairs for the Evangelical Alliance, said the government’s amendments to change the current law “would have left churches and organizations unsure whether they could prefer practicing Christians for the majority of their roles.”
“Now, they can continue to appoint people who are committed to the ethos of the organizations they are supposed to represent,” Horrocks said. “It’s a victory for common sense. I hope the government will accept this and not prolong the issue by asking the House of Commons to challenge the Lords’ vote.”
Andrea Minichiello Williams, director of Christian Concern For Our Nation, also praised Monday’s vote. “This is a great day for religious liberty in the United Kingdom. We are thankful that the law has not been changed and the freedom of churches to control their own affairs has not been restricted any further.
“The results show what can happen when Christians pray and take action. Let us be encouraged that even in an increasingly secular society, the voice of the Church can still be heard.”
Harriet Harman, whose name is attached to the Equality Bill, may decide to force the bill through the House of Commons or revert to an EU directive prohibiting discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.
Opponents of “hate crimes” legislation, who have frequently pointed to Canada as an example of how such laws are used to increasingly suppress moral objections to homosexuality, now have more fuel for their fire in the form of the “Quebec Policy Against Homophobia.”
The policy, released last month by Quebec’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General Kathleen Weil, assigns the government the task of eliminating all forms of “homophobia” and “heterosexism” – including the belief that homosexuality is immoral – from society as a whole.
The text and specifics of the policy are steeped in vague bureaucratic language about “coordination” and “synergy,” but the goal is spelled out clearly: to enlist the government to normalize homosexuality in society and to quell common criticisms levied against “sexual minorities,” a term the policy uses to inclusively describe “lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and transgenders.”
“An inclusive society such as ours must take the necessary steps to combat homophobic attitudes and behavior patterns and move towards full acceptance of sexual diversity,” states the Premier of Quebec Jean Charest in a letter that serves as the policy’s introduction. “The policy sets out the government’s goal of removing all the obstacles to full recognition of the social equality of the sexual minorities, at all levels of society.”
The policy further defines the heterosexism that must be stomped out as “affirmation of heterosexuality as a social norm or the highest form of sexual orientation.”
Furthermore, the policy laments, “It is still possible to hear people say that homosexuality is an illness, morally wrong or a form of deviant behavior, and that people choose their sexual orientation. These beliefs, often instilled in the past, tend to marginalize sexual minority groups and prevent full recognition of their social equality.”
Such “prejudice,” the policy affirms, must be combated.
And while the word “church” is never explicitly mentioned in the policy, it does declare it important to publicize the most “insidious” forms of homophobia with a plan to “target the various locations in which homophobic attitudes and behavior patterns, as well as heterosexist stereotypes, are found.”
The policy also warns, “It will be necessary to deal with the heterosexist values on which some institutional practices are founded.”
Weil introduced her ministry’s new direction by stating, “The policy released this morning shows, once again, that Quebec society is a leader in the field of sexual minority rights.”
Indeed, Quebec was the first jurisdiction in North America to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation with an amendment to its charter of human rights and freedoms in 1977. In 1995, the province amended its criminal code to include sexual orientation as an aggravating factor in “hate crimes,” a law expanded in 2004 to include not only crimes but “hate propaganda.” Same-sex marriage was legalized in Quebec in 2005.
The progression from “hate crime” legislation to outlawing “hate propaganda” to now enlisting the government’s power in socially normalizing homosexuality is the very process decried by many Americans, as the U.S. also begins passing the first of such laws.
Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, for example, told WND the practical application of such laws already has been seen in several other countries, including the United Kingdom, where the Christian Institute highlighted reports of a senior citizen being accused of “hate crimes” for writing a letter objecting to a pro-homosexual festival:
“This is the way it gets implemented in all the other countries,” Cass said. “Christians are singled out for prosecution, with threats, imprisonment and fines simply for refusing to stop doing what Christ commands: proclaiming the truth.”
“These cases are a good precursor of where this goes,” he warned.
Weil, however, argues that until society comes to accept “sexual minorities,” they will continue to be subjected to harassment, intimidation and insult – regardless of anti-discrimination laws.
“To be fully effective, the legal equality of sexual minorities must be supported by social equality,” Weil writes in her introduction to the policy. “The Quebec government intends, by adopting this policy against homophobia, to play a leading role in achieving this objective.”
To that end, the policy consists of four “guidelines” for the Quebec government, which, in the words of the policy, direct the government to:
Recognize the realities faced by sexual minority members
Promote respect for the rights of sexual minority members
Promote wellbeing for sexual minorities
Ensure a concerted approach by government authorities and institutions
The specific action points of the policy are loosely defined, but include funding additional studies, efforts to help “sexual minorities” find social services, rooting out institutional practices that discriminate against or intimidate “sexual minorities,” adapting public services to the specific needs of the “sexual minorities” and the creation of additional bureaucracies to “monitor” progress.
A brief line in the policy, which declares that schools can play “a key role” in retraining the populace on “sexual minority” rights, however, has elicited some reaction.
Georges Buscemi, president of Campaign Quebec-Vie, a Quebec pro-life group, told LifeSiteNews.com it is “obvious” that the policy would impose homosexuality training on children.
“They’ve done it with the ethics and religious culture course,” he said, “so I’m not at all surprised that they’d be willing to fully integrate it into that course, with extra stuff tacked on.”
LifeSiteNews reports that the Ethics and Religious Culture program is a province-mandated curriculum for all Quebec students spanning grades 1 to 11 that already presents homosexuality as a normal lifestyle.
Buscemi is also alarmed by the policy’s requirements that institutions and social services be conformed to fit the needs of “sexual minorities.”
“I could see this being the beginning of the end of religious freedom in the sense that if a church, for example, is offering a service, for example marriage, and is not tailoring the service to the needs of a homosexual, then it could be sanctioned for not doing that,” he explained.
“They’re going to try for the longest possible to just use social pressure and increasingly isolate the recalcitrant entities and institutions,” Buscemi predicted. “They’re quite clear; they’re quite unapologetic. It’s going to be a concerted effort, including all the ministries. … This is going to be a full-court press. It’s going to lead to ostracizing different churches that have doctrinal oppositions to homosexual behavior.”
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