Muslim insurgents behead 14-year-old Christian boy

A website in Assyria is confirming that a 14-year-old Christian boy who was working a 12-hour shift maintaining an electric generator has been murdered by Muslim insurgents.

The youth was identified as Ayad Tariq, who lived in Baqouba, Iraq, and was at work on Oct. 21 when a group of "disguised Muslim insurgents" went into the power plant shortly after his shift began at 6 a.m.

The website reported the insurgents asked him for his identification and, according to other witnesses who hid and stayed alive to report on the attack, questioned his identification card's reference to him as a "Christian."

The insurgents then called him a "dirty Christian sinner," grabbed his limbs and held them while beheading him, the witnesses reported.

They were shouting, "Allahu akbar! Allahu Akbar!" during the murder, witnesses said.

An organization called AssyrianChristians.com said they are the indigenous people of Iraq, with a population that has been in the Middle East from the time of Christ.

However, they have faced a number of purges by the region's rulers over time, including the present attacks by powerful Islamic factions across Iran, Iraq and neighboring nations, officials said.

Only two generations back, Assyrian Christians made up 20 percent of the population of the Middle East, but during the Assyrian Genocide of 1915, an estimated three million Christians were slaughtered there, the organization said.

Current estimates are that there are about 2.5 million Assyrian Christians in Iraq.

Kenneth Scott LaTourette wrote in "A History of Christianity" that the Assyrian Christians became the first nation to accept Christianity, and one of the largest missionary-sending peoples in Christian history.

"The Assyrian Christians are one of the last remaining Christian communities in the Middle East," said Rev. Ken Joseph Jr., of the Assyrian Christians organization.

Tens of thousands of Assyrian Christians have fled their traditional homelands in recent months, officials confirmed.

Is the New Yorker mainstream enough?

Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh slams Bush at McGill address
By Martin Lukacs
The McGill Daily

“The bad news,” investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told a Montreal audience last Wednesday, “is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America.” The good news? “When we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day.”

Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government for nearly 40 years. Since his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, which is widely believed to have helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War, he has broken news about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia, covert C.I.A. attempts to overthrow Chilean president Salvador Allende, and, more recently, the first details about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

During his hour-and-a-half lecture – part of the launch of an interdisciplinary media and communications studies program called Media@McGill – Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about.

He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer.

“Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.”

“Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.”

“About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said. If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.

“In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation,” he said. “It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”

Hersh came out hard against President Bush for his involvement in the Middle East.

“In Washington, you can’t expect any rationality. I don’t know if he’s in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn’t do it, or because it’s the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program,” he said. Hersh hinted that the responsibility for the invasion of Iraq lies with eight or nine members of the administration who have a “neo-conservative agenda” and dictate the U.S.’s post-September 11 foreign policy.

“You have a collapsed Congress, you have a collapsed press. The military is going to do what the President wants,” Hersh said. “How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?” Throughout his talk Hersh remained pessimistic, predicting that the U.S. will initiate an attack against Iran, and that the situation in Iraq will deteriorate further.

“There’s no reason to see a change in policy about Iraq. [Bush] thinks that, in twenty years, he’s going to be recognized for the leader he was – the analogy he uses is Churchill,” Hersh said. “If you read the public statements of the leadership, they’re so confident and so calm…. It’s pretty scary.”

{Here the MSM merely supports the people who behead, blow up, kidnap, torture and execute their victims by demonizing our guys. Again, one does not have to say "Beheading, it's great!". When one provides sound bites for Al Jazeera to quote as propaganda, they are supporting those doing the beheading. Speeches, articles and broadcasts have consequences. Your MSM love this guy.}

If you have another way he means "sword" that's consistent with the SotM I'm all ears.

2 Tim 3:16 All scripture is given for inspiration, for doctrine... So, if one believes that both the Sermon on the Mount means what it says, and Luke 22:38 ("So they said, "Lord, look, here are two swords." And He said to them, "It is enough.") means whaat it says, too; then the answer is they are both right. Ours is to discover how they are both right. Indeed, Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount first, then later on, at the Last Supper, He gave the apostles His final instructions before He went to His betrayal by Judas. His instructions?

Luke 22:35-38

And He said to them, "When I sent you without money bag, knapsack, and sandals, did you lack anything?" So they said, "Nothing." Then He said to them, "But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. For I say to you that this which is written must still be accomplished in Me: 'And He was numbered with the transgressors.' For the things concerning Me have an end." So they said, "Lord, look, here are two swords." And He said to them, "It is enough."

Seems pretty plain to me. "Boys, earlier you didn't need to carry money or even shoes. Now, things are different. Take money with you. Get a sword. In fact, if you don't have a sword, sell your garment and buy one." If that isn't a call to self-defence, there isn't much more that would suffice as one.

So is this inconsistent with the Sermon on the Mount? Scholars have debated this, as for me, I go with Luke 22 means what Luke 22 says.

I ask this literally, not rhetorically: are you saying that the Luke passage abrogates the Sermon on the Mount? All those teachings (the related ones, in any event) were in effect for the very, very short period between the time the speech was given and the night Jesus was betrayed?

A fine question. I am not saying that the Luke passage negates the Sermon on the Mount. Neither does the Sermon on the Mount negate the Luke passage. Jesus spoke to the masses, and gave them the SoM. He spoke to the apostles and told them to carry a piece. So is this contradictory? I don't feel so; rather, it is complementary.

Pr 26:4-5: Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.

The ideas here in Proverbs are complimentary, you need to use a bit of wisdom, a bit of prayer, and apply the appropriate one. Sermon on the Mount and Luke? Complimentary, not contradictory. Use some commons sense, give it a bit of prayer. God tell you to carry some heat going down a dark alley? Do it. He tell you to carry nothing other than a pocket New Testament? Do it.

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