Blowing the lid off Hillary's Claim to have handled no Classified Material on her server.

Vincent J. Curtis

31 July 2015

It would be fruitful for FoxNews to look into how documents get classified in the U.S. government, and what briefings senior appointees from outside the regular bureaucracy receive concerning the generation of classified material.

For example, every cable originating from an overseas embassy ought initially to be classified as “secret” or “top secret”, depending upon the nature of the material.  Political appointees as Ambassadors surely receive briefings, if not downright training sessions, on the sensitive material their embassy generates.

In Canada, the originator of a government document is the initial authority for the classification of that document.   He or she can classify a document up to the highest level to which they are cleared.  Later, a document may be reviewed by those charged with maintaining government secrets, and that subsequent authority can lower, or increase, the security classification of the document, depending upon the sensitivity of the material.  The system in the United States cannot be too different from that.

As Secretary of State, Hillary ought to be generating classified documents constantly.  Her deliberations with her staff ought to be initially classified as secret, and any advice she tendered to the President ought to be considered as secret or top secret, initially.

In short, anything substantive pertaining to her job as Secretary of State ought to be initially classified as secret, or top secret by Hillary, herself!  She ought to have received a briefing upon her assumption of office on the protocols concerning the generation, handling and classification of sensitive material.

If FoxNews or similar news outlet can find a retired bureaucrat who can explain how sensitive material is classified in the U.S. government, they can blow the lid off Hillary’s statement that she handled no classified material on her personal server.  Her recommendation that her staff look into the advice of Sidney Blumenthal ought to have been classed as “secret.”

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Faith Communities and the Environmental Bandwagon

Vincent J. Curtis

31 July 2015

In the July 22, 2015 edition of my hometown newspaper, author and activist Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko wrote a piece headlined, "Faith Communities need to get on the environmental bandwagon."

Below is a response.

Last week, Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko described the efforts of those in the environmental movement to gain the active support of Christian Churches.  She spoke of showing Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” but what really got traction, in her view, was the recent encyclical of Pope Francis.

Ekoko was somewhat mystified by the reluctance of Christian faith communities to get deeply involved in the environmentalist movement.  She recognizes that Christian churches for centuries have been involved in seeking social justice, and could not understand why they were not similarly enthused by a call for “climate justice.”

Ekoko will likely continue to be disappointed in Christian faith communities.  Environmentalism bears the hallmarks of a religion itself, as a review of the terms Deep Ecology and Gaia will show.  The Christian community have notions of about worshiping God, and God is not “Mother Earth,” the goddess of the environmentalist movement.  Thus, the secular aspects of environmentalism may be of some interest to the secular part of Christians, but the deeper philosophical import of environmentalism will prove to be off-putting to a serious Christian.

Hence, you can get Christians to grow a victory garden, or put solar panels on the roof of their church.  These are things that are not obvious endorsements of the concept of a Mother Earth.

Climate justice is not at all like social justice to a Christian.  Social justice involves human beings, living creatures of God, who are endowed with rationality and capable of understanding God in a limited way.  Climate, in contrast, is not even a real thing with substance; it is a rational construction of the human mind.  Justice is not a concept that applies to it.  It may be possible to smudge the distinction between making nice to Mother Earth and acting for the interests of the human beings that live on earth, but the openness to the concept of climate justice to a concept of Mother Earth or Gaia cannot be hidden.

Christians, as a rule, take the idea of Truth quite seriously.  Thoughtful Christians would be astonished at Al Gore’s propaganda epic “An Inconvenient Truth.”  The Inconvenient Truth about “An Inconvenient Truth” is that the movie is full of distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsehoods, as a U.K. court ruled several years ago.  People are generally aware that there is something wrong with Al Gore’s movie, and Christians are uncomfortable with lying, even if it is for the sake of a cause thought to be good.

Hence, Ekoko will continue to be disappointed by faith communities.  They already have a religion.

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Reconciliation through Condescension and Corruption

Vincent J. Curtis

9 July 2015

In an article published in the Hamilton Spectator on July 8, 2015, columnist Carol Goar describes the actions being contemplated by Canadian universities to “Take the lead on national reconciliation.”

The column is subtitled, "Universities aim to 'decolonize' their courses and campuses."

In brief, what Carol Goar describes is more condescension towards Indians and intellectual corruption of the university courses as means towards ‘national’ reconciliation.

I put the word 'national' in quotes because First Nations regard themselves as self-determining peoples who exist outside of Canada.  Indians may have Canadian citizenship, but their official position is that they are not Canadian.  If Indians are not Canadian, then reconciliation is not national.

The condescension arises in the form of “soft bigotry of low expectations.”  Indians are not expected to perform at the level of white Europeans, and so extra effort must be made to get them into university and to make them feel comfortable in the world of new ideas.  At least, if the descriptions made by Goar are true.  These actions are as follows:

-          Bring the rate of university graduation among indigenous people up to the national average.  Effectively, this means increasing the proportion of degreed indigenous from 9 % to 28 %.  Universities are going to work with elementary and secondary schools to create a supportive learning environment for aboriginal students, and provide bridge programs to span the gap between a high school graduate indigenous and a high school graduate from Canada.

-          Special programs on campus to help indigenous succeed.

-          “Decolonize” Canada’s universities.  That means blending western science with indigenous knowledge, and integrating aboriginal perspectives into Canadian scholarship and learning.

-          Urge other institutions to reset their relationship with indigenous Canadians. [Never mind that “indigenous Canadians” is a contradiction in terms, since an indigenous not Canadian.]

Plainly, indigenous are not expected to perform as well as white Europeans, or else these special programs would not be required.  Forget that reconciliation is demanded for having once tried to force a European education upon the Indians, and here these universities are offering the same poison but without the coercion.  It is not hard to foresee that if the goal is to achieve a given number, the quality of the degreed indigenous will become suspect.  That 9 % earned their degree, without special help.  Forcing the number up to 28 % will cause the quality of those degrees to decline, bringing them all under suspicion.

Intellectual corruption arises in the effort to blend western science with indigenous knowledge.  Perhaps that corruption has already taken place, since the conceiver of that proposal obviously is unaware of the unity of truth.  Science is an organized body of knowledge.  There is no “western” science, as such.  There is only science, since knowledge is of the true, and truth is a unity.  There is only one truth, and that truth is for all.  There is no western truth, no indigenous truth; no true for you but false for me.

Insofar as indigenous knowledge is actual knowledge, it is true.  There is no indigenous knowledge of mathematics, chemistry, or physics that is distinct, different, and requiring of “blending”.  If indigenous knowledge is actual knowledge, then it is likely found already in one of the sciences.

Plainly reconciliation is being attempted by well-intentioned but highly uninformed people.  It seems that Europeans instinctively condescend to others, and that condescension is fully on display here, by these universities.  Special things are done in order to make it possible, or at least appear, that Indigenous can do as well in school as those educated in Canada.  Perhaps this is seen as a form of politeness.

Universities are prepared to compromise on the principle of the unity of truth in order to effect this “reconciliation.”

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Obama in Agreement with Fundamental Principles Re: ISIS

Vincent J. Curtis

8 July 2015

President Barack Obama spoke on Monday on the achieving of 5,000 airstrikes against ISIS since last summer.  In the course of his remarks, he recognized the near impossibility of destroying an ideology by military means alone.  From military science we know that to defeat an ideology it may require a competitive idea, or it may require the passage of time, when the ideology simply passes out of fashion.

His exact remarks are as follows:

[ISIS] relies on fear, sometimes executing its own disillusioned fighters. Its unrestrained brutality often alienates those under its rule,

…our strategy recognizes that no amount of military force will end the terror that is ISIL unless it’s matched by a broader effort -- political and economic -- that addresses the underlying conditions that have allowed ISIL to gain traction

…in order for us to defeat terrorist groups like ISIL and al Qaeda it's going to also require us to discredit their ideology -- the twisted thinking that draws vulnerable people into their ranks

It’s going to be up to Muslim communities, including scholars and clerics, to keep rejecting warped interpretations of Islam, and to protect their sons and daughters from recruitment.

But what is it that makes ISIS, ISIS?  It is its strict interpretation of Islam, of Sharia law, and the opportunity for self-appointed guardians of Islam to impose Islamic punishments.  ISIS represents the fullest application of Sharia and Islam.  It is the most authentic Islam that presently exists on earth.  And what is found is that such application is intolerable, even among those raised in such a culture.

Where Obama is wrong is where he says that Muslim scholars and clerics keep rejecting warped interpretations of Islam.  Muslim scholars and clerics don’t reject ISIS’s interpretation of Islam because it is Islam.  The most authentic kind, in fact.  I have yet to hear of a consensus emerging among Islamic scholars that ISIS is engaged in heresy.  And one won’t because every ISIS action can be justified on the basis of some passage or other of Islam’s holy books, which testifies to its authenticity.

As a practical matter, ISIS is proving the utter impracticality of Sharia law.  It is absurd to propose that God made man in order to make him miserable, and Sharia law – supposedly God-made - is making men miserable.  But if Sharia is false, then all Islam is false.

The atrocities committed by ISIS and the suffering of the Muslims who live under ISIS rule demonstrate that Sharia law is false.  God did not create Sharia law.  Sharia law does not follow from God’s words, despite the claims of Islamic scholars.  Islamic scholars are silent in the face of the atrocities of ISIS, which means that they understand that the Sharia law applied by ISIS and the punishments imposed by ISIS for the violation of Sharia law are all authentic Islam.  And the application of Sharia by ISIS proves to the world that Sharia is false.  And that therefore Islam is false.

How can Muslims who are suffering under ISIS and are discovering the falsity of Sharia and, consequently, of Islam repudiate ISIS?  What is that competitive idea that can defeat the ideology of ISIS?  What can make that ideology pass out of fashion?

That competitive idea, the one that repudiates ISIS’s ideology, that result which can make that ideology pass out of fashion is Christianity and the widespread adoption of Christianity by the people under ISIS rule.  If there was widespread conversion to Christianity of the people under ISIS rule, the caliphate so precious to ISIS would cease to be dar al Islam.  It would cease to be Islamic territory, and become Christian territory. Such an event would not only repudiate ISIS and its ideology, but it would cause Islam itself to begin to pass out of intellectual fashion.  And there is no reason why a Muslim would want to hang on to Islam since ISIS has now proved that Islam is false.

President Barack Obama is on the right track when he says that military force alone will not defeat the ideology of ISIS.  That ideology is authentic Islam.  ISIS is doing a good job on its own to discredit Islam.  Where Obama errs is in his belief that Islamic scholars and clerics will reject the “warped interpretations of Islam”, because those interpretations are not warped; they are authentic Islam.  For political reasons, and perhaps personal ones too, Obama cannot make a full-throated call for the Muslims under ISIS rule to reject Islam and become Christian.

Nevertheless, widespread conversion is what needs to happen.

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Repudiate ISIS: Become Christian

Vincent J. Curtis

6 July 2015

The Associated Press released a large report on the horrors ongoing in the territory controlled by ISIS.  The several thousand word report was carried in the Hamilton Spectator on 4 July 2015.  The report was based upon interviews of upwards of 20 people who escaped from ISIS.

The full rigor of Sharia law is being imposed by ISIS, and each ISIS fighter seems to have been given enforcement power.  Persons who worked for the old regime, such as police and soldiers, are supposed to carry “repentance” cards.  Persons who were engaged in trades such as tailoring must carry them also.  The speaking of forbidden languages is punished, as is listening to music rather than ISIS-controlled radio.

The punishment of those who violate Sharia law is portrayed as capricious and arbitrary, and includes killing, for an offense such as a lack of piety.

A reign of terror exists in ISIS controlled territory.  It is based upon a decentralized enforcement of Sharia law.

That the people have not risen up in rebellion is a demonstration of the ability of an armed and organized few to keep subdued a disorganized and disarmed many.  Apparently, the thought that ‘you can always take one with you’ has not taken hold in the captured territory.

The imposition of this, the most draconian of Sharia law, has even Muslims feeling fearful and oppressed.  Society cannot long continue under this degree of oppression, if the facts contained in the AP report are representative.

Since society is physically helpless against the armed oppression of ISIS, what can be done by the people subject to ISIS to undermine its rule and to throw off its yoke?

The answer is to repudiate what ISIS most believes in, namely Islam.  Since ISIS most desires the most severe of Islamic piety from the people they rule, what could be a greater repudiation of what ISIS stands for that the wide-spread conversion of the Muslims they rule to Christianity?  The Caliphate so precious to al-Baghdadi and his cohort of Muslim extremists would turn to dust if all they ruled were Christians.

The Muslims living under ISIS ought to realize by now, and if not now, soon, that Sharia rule is not humanly sustainable.  What kind of God requires an inhuman level of piety and obedience and unhappiness and oppression?  Drinking Sharia law to the dregs ought to make people realize that no God could have created such an inhuman system, and God must love what He created, else why would he create it?

If Sharia is false, then the whole Islamic system is false.  And the falsity of Sharia is made manifest with every beating and murder and outrage committed by ISIS.

What is left for Muslims who live under ISIS to do but to convert to Christianity?  Every beating, every murder, every outrage committed by ISIS cries out for conversion to Christianity!

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Strip the Law Society of Its Cartel Power

Vincent J. Curtis

3 July 2015

The Canadian Press today reported that the Law Society of Upper Canada will decline to recognize prospective graduates from a yet-to-be-built law school in British Columbia.  This refusal was upheld in court.  The causes of this refusal call into question the validity of the law society’s cartel power for the practice of law in Ontario.

The purpose of creating the law society in Ontario may have been to start a private drinking club, but the justification for its cartel power was to protect the public from the unscrupulous and the unprofessional and to otherwise protect the reputation of the practicing lawyer in Ontario.  The justification of cartel power did not include being used for anti-Christian repression.

The prospective new law school dares to be different: it dares to require its law students to abide by Christian norms.  One would think that requiring of its students to abstain from gossip, obscene language, prejudice, harassment, lying, cheating, stealing, pornography, and drunkenness would be the sort of character-building effort that any law society would encourage for members in training.  The practice of law requires knowledge, skill, and character, after all.

But the school also proposes to exclude “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”  There is much to be commended about requiring such an abstinence in a prospective lawyer, as among other things it recalls that law used to be practiced by Christian monks.  The costs of law school being what they are, the martial exception would only be enjoyed by a few.

The Law Society of Upper Canada has, apparently, a low opinion of the ability of LBGTQ persons to restrain their sexual impulses, and it seeks to indulge the favor of such persons.  The Law Society held that “LGBTQ persons may attend, but they must….in essence disavow not only their beliefs but,…, their very identity.”  With this opinion, the Law Society holds that LGTBQ persons cannot be believing Christians.  It also holds that the denial of sexual intimacy is a denial of LGBTQ identity, even as the same denial to a heterosexual is not a denial of their identity.   LGTBQ behavior is not to be restrained, even though heterosexual intimacy can be restrained.

The best legal minds in Ontario must have been engaged in better paying work when this matter was discussed at the Law Society, and upheld in court.  However, that such an opinion could be the basis for denying beforehand the quality and merit of the graduating students from the law school is not only prejudice at its worst, it calls into question the justification for granting the law society cartel power in deciding who can practice law in Ontario.  Such power is supposed to protect the public, but in this case it is being used as an agency of repression of Christianity.

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Sibya: A New Word of the Day

Vincent J. Curtis

3 July 2015

“Sibya” is an Arabic word that refers to a female slave captured at war.  The reason this word has become current in English is that ISIS is granting Sibya to winners of a Koran memorization contest it is holding during Ramadan.

According to Christian Today and the Middle East Media Research Institute, the contest is meant to show that ISIS members of the ones who most closely follow “true” Islam, that the ISIS is a legitimate state, that ISIS fighters study the Koran, and that the group is not moved by the denouncement of the international community.

“By showcasing its slavery, ISIS is boasting that it practices Islam in its most literal interpretation, doesn’t capitulate to public opinion and rejects modern interpretations,” said Ryan Mauro, a national security analysis for Clarion Project [quotes taken from the Christian Today article]  “It is also showing it has a functional Islamic educational system and it therefore a real caliphate.”

Some of these girls and women were Yazidis who were capture in Iraq; others were Christians.

The value of the prize varies with the age of the girl or woman.  In November, 2014, women between the ages of 40 and 50 sold for $40, girls between 10 and 20 years sold for $129, and children under ten were auctioned for higher prices, according to the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.  In 2014, the Group reported that 300 Yazidi girls and women captured in Iraq were forced to convert to Islam and sold To ISIS jihadists in Syria for $1000.

These facts have been known for weeks and months but, so far, no major Islamic group in the western world, or any Islamic government, has condemned the practice of Sibya by ISIS.  The practice of giving away a Sibya as a reward for Islamic piety during Ramadan has also failed to attract condemnation for heresy by any major Islamic organization or state.  This failure to condemn is noteworthy because it means that these major Islamic organizations and states understand and agree with ISIS that the practice of Sibya is indeed legitimate under the rules of Islam.

Consequently, the practice of Sibya is legitimate Islam and is restrained only by the conscience of the individual potential buyer, and the laws of the state in which the Muslim lives.

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