A Conservative government would create a new, special “Office of Religious Freedom,” the party announced in its electoral platform on Friday.
The office would be housed at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and its role would be:
To monitor religious freedom around the world;
To promote religious freedom as a key objective of Canadian foreign policy;
And to advance policies and programs that support religious freedom.
Under the heading, “Defending Religious Freedom,” the Conservatives said they recognize that “respect for religious pluralism is inextricably linked to democratic development.” And that the federal government could and should do more to respond to the plight of those “who suffer merely because of their faith.”
[…]The Conservative platform also includes a pledge to create a national Holocaust memorial in the Ottawa area and to support the establishment of a memorial to the victims of communism.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper participated in a round table discussion on security with Coptic Christian leaders.
A deadly suicide bombing in Egypt on New Year’s Day claimed the lives of some 21 worshippers.
And nearly 100 people were wounded in the attack as they left a midnight mass at an Alexandria church.
Harper condemned the attacks, saying the international community must stay vigilant against such violence against Coptic Christians.
Harper met with several priests at the Church Of the Virgin Mary and St. Athanasius in Mississauga Thursday.
He says he wants Coptic Christians in Canada to know the country stands behind their right to safely practice their faith.
So, not only is Harper introducing policies that will strengthen families and marriages so that there will be fewer abortions and healthier children, but he is also dedicated to defending the religious liberty of minorities abroad.
Israeli officials are sweeping through West Bank settlements in a manhunt for the killers of a Jewish couple and three of their children found stabbed in their home early yesterday.
The five family members were knifed in their beds as they slept in their house in the West Bank town of Itamar.
The victims were Udi Fogel, 36, his wife, Ruth, 35, and three of their six children: Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and 3-month-old Hadas, local papers reported yesterday.
The grisly slayings occurred sometime during the Jewish Sabbath late Friday night, military officials said. It’s unknown if the murders, deemed a “terror attack” by the Israeli military, was carried out by a lone assailant or several killers.
[…]In Gaza, a Hamas official applauded the attack, and local residents celebrated the killing of the settlers.
Gaza residents from the southern city of Rafah hit the streets Saturday to celebrate the terror attack in the West Bank settlement of Itamar where five family members were murdered in their sleep, including three children.
Residents handed out candy and sweets, one resident saying the joy “is a natural response to the harm settlers inflict on the Palestinian residents in the West Bank.”
If you want to see the actual photos, you can see them here. WARNING! THIS IS INCREDIBLY GRAPHIC MATERIAL.
The only way to deal with evil on this level is by escalating. Peace through strength. Speak to them in a language they understand, and they will stop.
In its first year, the Obama administration cut funding for democracy and governance programming in Egypt by more than half, from $50 million in 2008 to $20 million in 2009 (Congress later appropriated another $5 million). The level of funding for civil society programs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was cut disproportionately, from $32 million to only $7 million. Though funding levels for 2010 are not yet available, they are expected to show an increase to $14 million, says Stephen McInerny, the director of advocacy at the Project on Middle East Democracy. He notes that the Bush administration slashed economic aid to Egypt in the 2009 budget but kept the funding for democracy and governance programs constant, while Obama cut funding to those programs in an effort to make the cuts more proportional and under pressure from the American embassy in Cairo.
The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.
[…]The statement was an acknowledgment that any popularly accepted new government will probably include groups that are not considered friendly to U.S. interests, and was a signal that the White House is prepared for that probability after 30 years of reliable relations with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Hamas’s overt intervention in Egypt is an alarming development, although a predictable one. It is worth pointing out that Hamas is not merely colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. That, of course, will not be what you hear from our foreign-policy experts, such as Obama adviser Bruce Riedel, who are busily sculpting their narrative about how the Brotherhood — the font on modern jihadist terror — has renounced violence and is really nothing for us to be very concerned about. But the stubborn fact is that Hamas is the most prominent of the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branches, whose operations long predated Hamas and brought Hamas (a/k/a, the Islamic Resistance Movement) into being.
So that’s what’s happening in Egypt… Hamas is moving in to take control, just like Hezbollah controls Lebanon (now). But why now? Why didn’t this happen when George W. Bush was President?
Well, Barack Obama is no George W. Bush.
Let’s review:
Obama insulted our British allies
Obama insulted our Afghan allies
Obama backed Iran’s suppression of pro-democracy protestors
Obama did nothing when Russian tanks rolled through Georgia
Obama did nothing when Hezbollah took over Lebanon
Obama backed the socialist Zeyala in Honduras
Obama met with Chavez, Ortega and Morales and kept silent while they insulted the United States
Obama did nothing while Turkey became increasingly Islamicized
Obama cut funding to democracy and governance programs in Egypt
The circle is now complete. This week Barack Obama truly became what many people believe he was all along, the long lost second term of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
[…]First he criticized the weakened leader of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. Next Obama threatened to emasculate Mubarak’s standing with the Egyptian military by reducing US financial aid if Mubarak didn’t allow the protests and revolution in the streets to continue.
Obama followed up by tacitly signaling that he supports the violent Islamic protests which are backed by the Shariah-compliant extremists of the Moslem Brotherhood, which is the only real opposition party in Egypt to the thirty-year dictator Mubarak. After that, like Carter, Obama showed constant indecision and weakness, which is having the result of undermining our allies and empowering the forces of insanity and evil on the ground in Egypt and other destabilized countries in the region like Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan.
Just like Carter, Obama got us to this point by undermining our only ally in the area, Israel, and empowering all of her regional enemies for the first two years of his presidency. That undermining has led us directly to these out of control events.
At this moment, of the four nations that border Israel, two of them, Syria and Lebanon, are client states of Iran waging constant war and the other two which both have brokered peace are facing internal turmoil, Jordan is facing Islamic protests in her streets and the relatively stable tourist destination Egypt, is exploding in revolution.
The way Obama is handling the Egyptian crisis there can only be one outcome. The Moslem brotherhood will seize total control of the nation and turn the Arab world’s most populace country into a totalitarian Islamic theocracy just like Iran. Egypt’s fall will be a strategic disaster for the US because Egypt borders Israel and controls the vital Suez Canal which connects the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The Suez is one of the most vital water-ways in the entire world because it is the shipping lane that allows Middle East oil to get to the consumer countries in Europe.
If Egypt falls to this kind of governance total war will quickly come to the Middle East with catastrophic strategic and economic consequences for the whole world.
Strength doesn’t cause wars – weakness causes wars. When you are strong, aggressors know that aggression will cause them plenty. Obama, and his constant apologizing and appeasing and siding with terrorists and dictators, is what REALLY causes wars.
WINTERY KNIGHT 