Happy 4th of July, America...Best of Luck, Egypt

The Egyptian military has responded to the clear desires of at least half the Egyptian people by ousting President Mohammed Morsi and his Moslem Brotherhood supporters in a swift series of actions that cut through Cairo political centers. Morsi is now under the control of the Republican Guard, arrest warrants have been issued for 300 Brotherhood leaders, the president of the constitutional court has been named interim president, a plan for rewriting the new and detested constitution is being formulated, and new presidential elections will be held when the constitution is ready. One would have thought that the United States would be happy to have been given a second chance to come down quickly on the side of the Egyptian people in their quest for self-government. But no. In a firmly worded statement, US President Barack Obama called on the Egyptian military to relinquish power to a democratically elected civilian government and to resist arresting ousted President Mohammed Morsi and his supporters. He also said the US will review whether Egypt is still eligible for $1.5 billion that Washington gives in economic and military aid annually. In what seemed like an after-thought or a bone tossed to the Egyptian people, Obama added "that, ultimately the future of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptian people." "It is up to the Egyptian people to ensure that Egypt's transition to democracy succeeds," Obama said. ~~~~~ Dear readers, here are some of my thoughts : *The Moslem Brotherhood are bad guys affiliated with Hamas and they are progressively strangling freedom in Egypt under the aegis of a very weak president who is simply an Islamist. *The president of the respected constitutional court is interim president and opposition leader and spokesman ElBaradei supports him and the military, as do tens of millions of Egyptians. *All else aside, Morsi was driving Egypt to bankruptcy and failed-state status because he is incompetent to lead. *The 2012 "election" was a farce...the courts threw out candidates until it was either a Mubarak cronie or Morsi and for this reason 50% of Egyptians boycotted the election and didn't vote. *The "constitution" is the document forced through by the Brotherhood to secure their hegemony and keep democratic government at bay. *Morsi and the Brotherhood have stonewalled all calls for dialogue or negotiation from any non-Brotherhood non-Islamist group. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." ___The American Declaration of Independrnce. 4 July 1776. ~~~~~ We are with you in your struggle for freedom and self-government, Egypt, and we wish you swift and sure success.

Gettysburg- the Battle that Saved the Union

Dear readers, it's the 3rd of July - the day before America's Independence Day, but the very day that undoubtedly saved the Union, that is, the United States as we know it today. From the 1st to the 3rd of July 1863, in a quiet little Pennsylvania town just north of the Mason-Dixon Line that traditionally divided North from South, the Battle of Gettysburg decided the outcome of the Civil War, the War of Secession, as it is known to most of the world. The battlefield that is spread out over hundreds of acres has become a beacon for Americans. More than a million visitors annually walk over its sites - where Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac fought over the questions that determined the political future of America. The questions were simple enough - could a State or States simply quit the Union and form a second nation on American soil without approval of Congress? Could some States enforce slavery laws while the majority of States rejected slavery as inimical to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? The cost of the answer at Gettysburg was 50,000 dead and injured in the rolling hills of southcentral Pennsylvania. Had General Robert E. Lee won at Gettysburg - although he had already told his Confederate commander-in-chief Jefferson Davis, president of the secessionist Confederacy, that the South could never deliver a final defeat to the North's superior numbers and supplies - the Confederacy could probably have worn down the already fading support in the North for continued war on "brothers" in the South. A deal would have been brokered, surely over Lincoln's objections, that would have returned America to the failed model of a loose confederation in which the federal glue that holds the United States together would have been lost. That is why President Lincoln stayed in the telegraph room in Washington for three days. He had to have a Northern victory and he had to know as soon as possible that it had been secured. That is why Robert E. Lee, one of the great field generals in history, chose to risk everything on the famous Pickett's Charge of 3 July 1863. He knew that if he lost at Gettysburg, all that was left was retreat and total surrender. Lincoln received his victory telegram. Lee retreated south and his army continued the war for almost two more years before he was forced to offer his unconditional surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865. Less than a week later, on 14 April 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated - in a real way the last casualty of the war he had tried so hard to avoid and had finally fought with fervor in the realization that winning was the only way to save the Union. ~~~~~ So, dear readers, if you want to see the key points in American history, go to Philadelphia and look at the Liberty Bell. Go to Boston and walk over Bunker Hill where it all started. But, then, go to Gettysburg, for there lies the hallowed ground. Without Gettysburg, America would have become a short-lived failed experiment. Because of Gettysburg, America survived and "government of the people, by the people and for the people" did not perish from the earth. That is what the 3rd of July is all about. ~~~~~ And just to bring Gettysburg down to a personal level - my great grandmother was born on 3 July 1863 and she would have been 150 years old today, the same as the Battle of Gettysburg. Her father was absent when she was born because he was a rather famous Quaker preacher who was at Gettysburg, ministering to soldiers going into battle and praying with the wounded and dying.

As We Have Long Known...John Paul II Is a Saint

Dear readers, I don't want to ignore the momentous events in Egypt, but today the entire world has received extraordinarily good news. Pope John Paul II has cleared the final hurdle before being made a saint, awaiting only the final approval from Pope Francis and a date for the ceremony that could come as soon as December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, to whom John Paul was profoundly devoted his entire life. The Vatican's news agency reported that a commission of cardinals and bishops met Tuesday to consider John Paul's case and approved it. A Vatican official confirmed that the decision had been taken some time back and that Tuesday's meeting was essentially a formality. The news confirmed reports in La Stampa newspaper that John Paul could be canonized together with Pope John XXIII, who called the Second Vatican Council but died in 1963 before it was finished. John Paul II has been on a "fast track" for possible sainthood ever since his 2005 death, when hundreds of thousands of people standing vigil in Saint Peter's Square spontaneously shouted "Sainthood now" when his death was announced on 2 April 2005. There remains some concern that the process has been too quick. Some of the Holy See's deep-seated problems - clerical sex abuse, dysfunctional governance and more recently the financial scandals at the Vatican bank - essentially date from shortcomings of his pontificate. Defenders of the fast-track process argue that people are canonized, not pontificates. But the Vatican in the past has sought to balance concerns about papal saints by giving two the honor at the same time. By canonizing John Paul II along with John XXIII, the Vatican could be seeking to assuage concerns about John Paul's fast-track sainthood case by tying it together with the 50-year wait John XXIII has had to endure. Many in Poland have been awaiting the final steps of John Paul's progress, which has been championed by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Polish pope's longtime private secretary. Reverend Robert Necek told Polish TVN24 television : "This is the next and the last step towards canonization. It will be presented to Pope Francis and the pope will take the appropriate decision." As Pope - the Vicar of Jesus Christ and successor of St. Peter - John Paul revolutionized the modern papacy. He took his mission out of the confines of the Vatican and around the world, pushing back the boundaries - proselytizing, reforming, opening new churches wherever he went in Latin America, the United States, the East and Africa. He wooed and won the media with his personal gifts and variety. He was the skiing pope, the poet pope, the best-selling CD pope, the designer robes pope, the intellectual pope. But he never descended into trivia celebrity. He was the pope who brought down Communism...who worked ceaselessly toward Christian reconciliation with the Jews...who raised his voice against the contemporary culture of death...who brought millions of young people to faith with his often-quoted words : " Do not be afraid." He never consulted pollsters, but marched to a stern, unyielding drummer. So John Paul II was sometimes the infuriating pope, the retrograde pope, the silencing pope, the pope who ignored the revolutionary changes in the status of women. His uncompromising limitations, as well as his extraordinary accomplishments, reflect the vanished world of Poland where Karol Wojtyla came of age in the time when Nazi Germany ravaged his beloved country before his own eyes. This brought him early wisdom, respect for all human life and sensitivity to the suffering of Jews under the Nazis. John Paul was one of the most traveled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. As part of his special emphasis on the need for holiness, he beatified 1,340 people and canonised 483, a combined total that exceeds that of his predecessors during the preceding five centuries. He named most of the present College of Cardinals, consecrated or co-consecrated a large number of the world's past and current bishops, and ordained many priests. A key goal of his papacy was to transform and reposition the Catholic Church. He wanted "to place his Church at the heart of a new religious alliance that would bring together Jews, Moslems and Christians - a great [religious] armada." John Paul II was proclaimed venerable by his successor Pope Benedict XVI, who beatified him on 1 May 2011. Some key elements of his strategy to "reposition the Catholic Church" were : (1) emphasising the importance of "starting afresh from Christ" : "No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person." (2) defending the dependence of man on God and His Law ("Without the Creator, the creature disappears") and the "dependence of freedom on the truth." He warned of man "giving himself over to an illusory search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself." (3) He described the mutually supporting relationship between faith and reason, and emphasised that theologians should focus on that relationship. (4) He talked about the dignity of women, although he asserted the Church's lack of authority to ordain women to the priesthood, claiming that without such authority ordination could find no support, and he dwelt on the importance of the family for the future of humanity, explicitly re-asserting Catholic moral teachings against euthanasia and abortion ("All human life, from the moments of conception and through all subsequent stages, is sacred") that have been in place for well over a thousand years and urged a more nuanced view of the forms of capital punishment while condemning it generally (calling euthanasia and capital punishment part of the "culture of death" that is pervasive in the modern world). ~~~~~ As Saint Thomas More became the Renaissance Man for All Seasons standing firm against the immoral excesses of Henry VIII, so John Paul II stood firm against the immoral excesses of the 20th-century secular world. He is truly Our Saint - whether we are religious or atheist. The man who suffered the modern world's most evil moments personally, but who kept constant and deep faith with the fundamental goodness of man, recognized that man must be connected to the universal truths of his existence and to the universal God Who represents them. We are all the children of John Paul II and every one of us can follow his precepts and call on him and his wisdom at any moment for help, understanding and guidance.

The Military Joins Protesters to Take Egypt Back from the Moslem Brotherhood

The powerful Egyptian military warned on Monday it will intervene if Mohammed Morsi, the Islamist president supported by th Moslem Brotherhood, doesn't "meet the people's demands," giving him and his opponents two days to reach an agreement in what it called a last chance. Hundreds of thousands of protesters massed for a second day calling on Morsi to step down. Military helicopters, some waving Egyptian flags, flew over Cairo's Tahrir Square where many protesters broke into cheers with the army's announcement on state television. The army's statement encouraged the crowds moving into city squares around the country. In Cairo, the protests were peaceful, but deadly violence broke out in several parts of the country, often when marchers came under gunfire, apparently from Islamists, with at least 17 dead and more than 700 injured. The military said it would not take part in party politics or rule," but said it has a responsibility to act because Egypt's national security is facing a "grave danger," adding that the people's demands have to be met. The military is giving all sides 48 hours "as a last chance to shoulder the burden of the historic moment." So far, President Morsi has vowed he will remain in his position, but the opposition and crowds in the street - who numbered in the millions nationwide on Sunday - have made clear they will accept nothing less than his departure and a transition to early presidential elections. Military intervention risks creating a backlash from Morsi's Islamist supporters, who include hard-line former militants. Morsi met Monday with Egypt's military chief General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Prime Minister Hesham Kandil, according to the president's Facebook page, without giving further details. Troops on Monday manned checkpoints on roads leading to a pro-Morsi rally of Islamists near his palace. They checked cars for weapons, after repeated reports that some Islamists were arming themselves. Morsi's backers have been infuriated by what they call an opposition move to forcibly overthrow Egypt's first president chosen in a democratic election. Some see the campaign as aimed at defeating the "Islamist project.". The pro-Morsi demonstration near the Ittihadiya palace was large, although it was eclipsed by the opposition rallies. Its participants blew whistles and waved banners with Morsi's picture. Monday's military statement was its second ultimatum. Earlier, el-Sissi gave the two sides a week to reach an agreement. That ultimatum expired on Sunday, with Morsi repeating his longstanding offer for dialogue, which the opposition rejected. Tamarod, the group organizing the opposition protests, issued its own ultimatum earlier on Monday, giving Morsi until Tuesday at 5 p.m. (1300 GMT) to step down or face an escalating campaign with larger marches and "complete civil disobedience." Since Sunday evening the Cairo Moslem Brotherhood headquarters has been under attack by protesters pelting it with stones. Brotherhood members barricaded inside opened fire on them in clashes that went on for hours and left eight dead. In the early hours Monday, protesters breached the walls of the six-story luxury villa and stormed inside. Footage on local TV networks showed smashed windows, blackened walls and smoke billowing out of the fortified villa in the Muqattam district in eastern Cairo. A fire was still raging on one floor hours after the building was stormed. One protester tore down the Muslim Brotherhood sign from the building's front wall, while another hoisted Egypt's red, black and white flag out an upper-story window and waved it in the air in triumph. Morsi's critics view the Brotherhood headquarters as the seat of real power in Egypt, claiming that the Islamist group's spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie and his powerful deputy, Khairat el-Shater, actually call the shots behind Morsi. Morsi and Brotherhood officials have denied this and say they have tried to give opponents a greater voice, only to be spurned. The military has for some time been giving subtle hints that it was not pleased with the policies pursued by Morsi and his Brotherhood. Morsi was clearly scolding el-Sissi when he said in a televised address last Wednesday that the armed forces should focus on improving its capabilities to protect the security and safety of the nation. ~~~~~ Dear readers, while Morsi has said he will not quit, later on Monday, the military essentially gave him an ultimatim, telling him to cooperate and share power or be removed. Events are moving fast in Egypt. News is coming at a rapidfire pace and changes often in detail. But, what seems clear is that the Egyptian military is taking back its power and promising new presidential elections. What is equally clear is that the military and the Egyptian people have had enough of the experiment with Moslem Brotherhood Islamist government. Egypt is critical to the order of the Middle East's Arab world. We should all be wishing the military and Egyptian citizens well and pray for their successful transition to real self-government.