The New Martyrs of Libya added to the Coptic Synaxarium 

 

His Holiness Pope Tawadros II announced the inclusion of the 21 Coptic New Martyrs of Libya in the Synaxarium of the Coptic Orthodox Church today. Every year, they will be commemorated on 8 Amshir in the Coptic calendar, which corresponds to 15 February in the Gregorian calendar, the same day as the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple.

Axios, Axios, Axios!

 

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

All OROGs will remember that there was one Black man in the group of Martyrs, and one will noticed that he is depicted in the middle of the group of the included in the Coptic Synaxarium.   That is correct in the truest sense, because that was his placement in the group that was senselessly murdered by the ISIS monsters solely because these men would not renounce their Christianity.

Worthy, Worthy, Worthy!

Amen.

_______________________________________________________

Obama: Devil or Angel? Christian or Muslim? Good or Bad? Atheist Marxist or Muslim? Pathological Liar or Golfer?

Barack Obama: 20 Quotes on Islam; 20 quotes on Christianity–So Which is He?

OBAMA on ISLAM:

1. “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam”

2. “The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim "call to prayer”,

3. “We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including in my own country.”

4. “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.”

5. “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.”

6. “Islam has always been part of America”

7. “we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities”

8. “These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

9. “America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

10. “I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam.”

11. “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.”

12. “So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed”

13. “In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education.”

14. “throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

15. “Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality”

16. “The Holy Koran tells us, ‘O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.'”

17. “I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.”

18. “We’ve seen those results in generations of Muslim immigrants – farmers and factory workers, helping to lay the railroads and build our cities, the Muslim innovators who helped build some of our highest skyscrapers and who helped unlock the secrets of our universe.”

19. “That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

20. “I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story.”
___________________________________________

Barack Obama on Christianity:

1. “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation”

2. “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”

3. “Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?”

4. “Even those who claim the Bible’s inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages – the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ’s divinity – are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.”

5. “The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Religious leadership need not accept such wisdom in counselling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics.”

6. From Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope: “I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters as hospital visitation or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex-nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.”

7.  Obama’s response when asked what his definition of sin is: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

8. “If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn’t have to keep coming to church, would they.”

9. “This is something that I’m sure I’d have serious debates with my fellow Christians about. I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell.”

10. “I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.”

11. “I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.”

12. “I’ve said this before, and I know this raises questions in the minds of some evangelicals. I do not believe that my mother, who never formally embraced Christianity as far as I know … I do not believe she went to hell.”

13. “Those opposed to abortion cannot simply invoke God’s will-they have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths.”

14. On his support for civil unions for gay couples: “If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount.”

15. “You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

16. “In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology”

17. “On Easter or Christmas Day, my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.”

18. “we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own”

19. “All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra – (applause) – as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer. (Applause.)”

20. “I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

SOURCE: Clash Daily.
_________________________________________________________________

     This material was forwarded by our forward outpost observer on the north edge of the Frontier of the Republic of Texas.  He and his are facing another bout with Global Warming to-night, with snow, freezing rain, and sleet in the forecast for as much as three different calendar days.  If only Bush had moved aggressively on the Kobe Agreements on Climate Change we would not have to be suffering like this....(?).   You all please light a candle for El Zorro and his people and his ranch.  As he pointed out during my last whining the other day in a family email, our old bones and blood just don't handle cold very well anymore.

     Please spread El Zorro's forwarded mail as far as you might wish, should it seem worthwhile.  I move to do so immediately after this posting.

El Gringo Viejo.

_____________________________________________

Fifty Shades of Red - "Patriotic" O'bama

       Much is made of Mayor Giuliani's "insensitivity" demonstrated by his referring to Barry Soetoro as "un-patriotic".  What seems strange is that such a reasonable and provable conclusion would seem to be so controversial.   Hizzoner was only following his normal, Italian, emotional, and reasonable notion that he likewise exhibited during his opposition to public funding for the portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung.  He seemed to take exception as well to the notion that placing a crucifix in a jar of urine was an art-form.

     No man would attend a church where the daily bread was baked up in raving, lunatic hatred of America as the only place in the world where any injustice had ever occurred to anybody, if in fact that man did not agree with the preacher who spewed such vomit.

      Ill-treatment of poor, downtrodden Mexicans?  Try the post-revolutionary administration of Mexico by the marxist cabal that flowed into the vacuum left by the deaths and/or departures of the ghoulish, deranged Marxist-Leninists Carranza and Obregon.   In their efforts to shut down the Catholic Church....exactly in the manner that an Austrian corporal would be shutting down the synagogues of Europe at almost the same time.....over 100,000 Mexican Catholics were murdered.  Another 150,000 died fighting, and finally stalemating, the much superior Mexican official military arrayed against them.

     Present-day, daily reports for genocidal depravity in Africa, by different ethnicities within the black-African cohort are standard fare.  Or slavery

Frank Marshall Davis

being practiced to this day by Arabic and black-African traders?  No problem. Pol Pot, anyone?  We shan't bore the readers with the other two or three hundred thousand recent cases of gross injustice in the world that is not caused, even remotely, by the existence of the Great American Experiment in the making the common man sovereign.

 

     The individual pictured stage-left, is a classic piece of the Red Brick Road that Barry Dunham Soetoro Obama stumbled over during his pot-smoking truancy from responsibility.   Sometimes referred to as Barry's communist god-father, Frank was just your normal perverted porno producer who liked to befriend very young white women and young boys.  He was something like a spiritual counsellor.

 

     He liked to recite his volumes of perverse poetry about underwear, etc. and was a well known member of the very active Kremlin- controlled communist presence in Hawai'i.  He made no bones about his membership in the party.

 

     At every turn, Barry's guides, tutors, advisors, and choir of docents were very far out commies and marxists (same thing), dedicated to the "fundamental transformation" of the only shining city left on the smouldering ruins of the mountainside that used to be Western and European Judeo-Christian Civilisation.

     Obama's biological father, his mother, his grandparents, and once again, the whole choir of the Greek tragedy that performed the acts that brought up Barry the Magnificent to become the greatest single legal, political, and cultural scholar in history gave us this Grand Gift for Eternity.

 

     And that grand gift is detestable, an insult to all patriots, and more than enough justification for Mayor Rudy to speak out, accurately, about the horrid pretender who presently occupies the White House.   Long will Barry give thanks to Lucifer, the object of Alinsky's dedication of his book "Rules for Radicals" that served as Barry's guidebook for "spreading the wealth" and punishing the traditionalists.

 

    We must speak clearly and not suggest that Barry is somehow a patriot, if only in a different way.   We must not "cut slack" and assume that there is some kind of hidden love-of-country that we are incapable of comprehending because we do not have Barry's superior moral and legal angle or prism of reflexion.  Barry is a fraud.  He is not especially intelligent or even above average in terms of his mental acumen.   He is a liar.  He is immoral and self-indulgent.  He is a poseur.  And, he is, oddly enough, a bully.   In a twist to the concept of Yin-Yan, we note the perfection in the relationship between Barry and (Sir Edmund) Hillary in that each is worse than the other.

 

Thanks for your continued interest.

El Gringo Viejo 

_______________________________________________________

Southern Tier of New York State counties & Fifteen incorporated cities seek to secede from New York and join Pennsylvania

_____________________________________________________________

    

Conklin, NY (WBNG Binghamton) The local economy is pushing one organization in Upstate New York to pose a question: Is it possible to secede to Pennsylvania?

The Upstate New York Towns Association is researching this very topic. The group says a few factors pushing its research are high property taxes, low sales tax revenue and the recent decision to ban hydraulic fracturing in New York.

             

"The Southern Tier is desolate," said Conklin Town Supervisor Jim Finch (R). "We have no jobs and no income. The richest resource we have is in the ground."

Finch said the ground in Conklin is rich with natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. However, that shale is unable to be tapped. He described this ban as a violation of his natural rights as a property owner.

There are 15 towns interested in the secession, according to the Towns Association. These towns are in Broome, Delaware, Tioga and Sullivan counties. The association declined to name the towns without their permission and also declined to comment on specifics at this time. As of now, research is ongoing. The group will be updating Action News with all of their findings in the coming weeks.

The association said it's comparing taxes and the cost of doing business in the two states. It says the facts show there is a huge difference between the two.

Also being considered are things like workers comp, surcharges, unemployment and health insurance. The association's understanding is that the secession would have to be approved by the New York State Legislature, the Pennsylvania State Legislature and the U. S. government.

"We're comparing the taxes in Pennsylvania compared to those in New York," said Finch. "There's a great, great difference. Right now, we are being deprived of work, jobs and incomes."

Action News spoke with two local business owners in Conklin about the proposal. John Gage, owner of Reliable Market, said he fully supports the idea.

"The tax structure in New York is just horrible to do business in," said Gage. "Whether it's fracking, or other reasons to secede, it sounds like a good idea to me."

However, other local owners are taking into account outside factors that could affect their stores. For example, state licensed shops would be at risk if the change were to occur.

"From my standpoint, owning a liquor store, if we were a part of Pennsylvania it would be hard," said Francis Larkin, owner of Spirits of Conklin.





Binghamton, New York is where the
"r" of Montrose is on this map.



Larkin said he isn't sure if he would be able to even own his shop anymore, considering Pennsylvania privatizes all liquor sales.

Sen. Thomas Libous (R) recently sent out a flyer in the mail, asking his constituents what they think about the secession. He sent Action News the following statement:

"After the one-two punch to our community from the recent casino and gas drilling decisions, my office received many emails, phone calls and messages from constituents calling for a Southern Tier secession from New York State. While getting my constituents' opinion on spending the $5 billion surplus was our top priority, I thought a question on secession should also be included in the survey."





 Centre-most Montrose and it Court House

 





Civil War Monument - Susquehanna County
Courthouse, Pennsylvania
Commemorates 96th Pennsylvania Volunteer
Infantry Regiment, the outfit in which two of
El Gringo Viejo's Uncles died during
the Summer of 1863, in combat.

 

     The  above article was transmitted over southcentral New York FOX - 2 WBGN - Television News,  Binghamton, New York.  This community, along with a row of the southern-most counties adjacent to Pennsylvania are in a bit of an uproar due to the fact that they see their Pennsylvania neighbours  getting a better shake at life, just across the invisible border.

     We thought the article was interesting because Binghamton is adjacent to Susquehanna County in Pennsylvania whose county seat is  Montrose, the place of my grandfather's birth and my great-grandfather's death.   There are all kinds of Newtons, Bolles, Birchards, and Hastings people born and buried in that neck of the woods.

     The area in and around Montrose and the hilly stretches that extend into the Catskills and Adirondacks to the northeast and then southward all the way to Alabama are somewhat homogenous in terms of peoples.   Many of these people were the "first to go West" and many were involved on both sides during the Revolutionary War.

     Montrose is also not far from where Frederich Johanne Limbaugh came into the New World from eastern Germany back in the 1730s.   That, however is a whole 'nother story.

Secession seems to be all the rage....almost communicable.

El Gringo Viejo

___________________________________________________________



Back up in Texas - Visited San Miguel de Allende - Cold Everywhere

____________________________________

  

     We made it back up yesterday, without event as usual.   It was interesting to see that, in spite of the useless warnings by the State Department, there continues to be a renewed increase in the gradual return of folks going into Mexico for general tourism reasons.  San Miguel de Allende, for instance, is all but "standing room only" in terms of the number of Gringos visiting and taking up semi-permanent and permanent residence.   The latter category is now numbered to slightly more than 15,000 American and Canadian and Texian residents.  Transitory visitors at any given time are numbered roughly the same, with a per-year total being fixed at or around 600,000 such persons of foreign extractions.

 


El Gringo Viejo makes his way in downtown
San Miguel de Allende.

    One of our reasons for having gone down to San Miguel de Allende was to help advise and assist our neighbour, the owner of the Hacienda de La Vega which is found adjacent to our Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre.
   They are decorating an apartment, as well as establishing a boutique hotel specialising in providing a theatre for wedding events, receptions, and accommodation for bride, groom, and families in a 9 - room middling deluxe setting.
      It is  a monster undertaking for three girls who are among the "poor-rich", investing several million  pesos into a facility located on the edge of downtown-most San Miguel de Allende.

     We were impressed into service, due to the fact that we have a nice little pick-up that could transport a fairly large neo-antique table and a couple of flat screen televisions of moderately large dimension.  The trip was longish, although shortened by a new, more direct toll-road and other highway improvements done in recent month and years.   Cruising at around 60 miles-per-hour wound up being about five hours worth of driving, with very brief rest stops.

 

     We had to join the main national central highway briefly, just south of San Luis Potosi, for about thirty-five miles.  The amount of heavy, commercial traffic is astounding,  to be brief.  It leaves no doubt about whether or not Mexico is a two-trillion-plus economy.  That even includes the recent jiggles in exchange rates, which oddly have given a fresh shot of "energy drink" to the old traditional tourism industry.

 

Very common downtown street scene of San
Miguel de Allende.  Flagstone streets, very
narrow, considerate parking, passive cops,
clean, ancient, with restaurants, bars,
shops, academies, repair places, fashions,
at every turn.   Clean.

    It was truly striking to see the "little old ladies with blue hair" still there, perhaps even in greater number.   The clientele is truly polyglot, poly-regional, and poly-national.   It is a deferential place, with the ancient civilities still being practiced in spite of the revered colonial community's growth of 100 per cent in the past decade.   The population now numbers 180,000.   But, in spite of all of that, there are still no traffic lights in the "Old Town", which is about seventy per cent of the geographical space.




Centre of San Miguel, with
the Parroquia de San
Miguel in the
 background.

     Still religiously practiced is the alternating  "A - B, A - B" process of merging into traffic at the peripheral rotundas,and melding at every downtown intersection. This deference even includes dealing with pedestrians, except at upraised "topes" especially placed for pedestrians who are attempting to cross the streets.   Even on some of the boulevard-type streets with multiple lanes on the periphery of the city, all traffic will voluntarily slow to a stop while pedestrians scurry (in a considerate manner) across the street....usually in a convenient gaggle....leaving the automotive community to go about its business again.   Almost no honking.   Very little urgency.  Most of the offenders are people with Mexico City license plates, and even they learn the etiquette after a few days.

     ________________________

     The building of the boutique hotel by our friends and their friends is supposed to be done by the end of this month.   Professional personnel, such as head chef, administrator, chief maintenance officer, and the like have been employed, and work-crews (famous for ability and relatively quick work) are crossing the 90% line in terms of completion.
     Furnishings and appointments are coming in and terminal electrical works were well on the way to completion.   We shall post pictures after the opening, while deferring at this time.  It would be a bit deceiving to show pictures of rooms with the normal disorder of final construction, and also it is best to allow our friends to post first in the appropriate San Miguel, Guanajuato, Mexico City, and  other venues' publications.

     One picture, however, that is somewhat representative of the nature of Guanajuato is an exterior painting on the outside property wall of the new hotel.   According to our neighbour, this picture just suddenly appeared from one day to the next.   It was doubly remarkable because it was done in a style that is mastered by our new daughter-in-law, who is a highly accomplished graphic-design expert and artist.




General Ignacio Allende
 y Unzaga

     There is very little, almost no, graffiti in San Miguel de Allende.  The town's colonial name was San Miguel de los Altos (St. Michael of the Heights), which is interesting because the town of importance of our daughter-in-law is Alto, Texas.   The Mexican town is a "bit" higher, running along at and around one-mile above sea level elevation.   The name of the city was changed after the establishment of Mexican independence from Spain to celebrate one of the four main "Insurgentes" of the Mexican resistance to continued colonial status to Spain.
     Ignacio Allende, an ethnic Spaniard, Mexican-born military officer was both an original conspirator and the second highest ranking commanding officer of the initial hostilities in 1810 - 1811.  He was captured, tried, and executed by firing squad in Ciudad Chihuahua, decapitated, and his head sent back to the city of Guanajuato where it was displayed for several months for public view and warning.   The head of  Allende's superior officer, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla kept him company during this period.

    __________________________________________

     The one problem we had while being gone during this period was the cold.  Whether at the Quinta or in San Miguel de Allende, we encountered all kinds of Climate Change with temperatures of 60 degrees or lower for 97 per cent of the time.  And by "or lower" we mean substantially lower with many nights in the 30's and daytime highs rarely hitting 50 degrees.  Cold, cold, cold, cold.
     It was substantially unpleasant, although it was as pleasant as something could be considering how unpleasant it was.  Our cats helped a bit, and BeBe, the Labrador that Alvaro brought home  several months ago, demanded being allowed inside which meant that 20 per cent of my time was spent in washing, cleaning, mopping, and de-odorising the front section of the parlour.   Another 10 per cent of the time was spent in hauling firewood into the house, burning it, and cleaning out the fireplace every 24 hours.   Of course, one of those cleanings resulted in the destruction of my second best 5-gallon (20 - litre) white plastic bucket.   Somebody shovelled a live coal into the mix of ashes, and it burned a large hole in the bottom.   Collateral damage, fog of the war on climate, friendly-fire casualty....at least the cats were not barbequed.

     We shall have more later.   Thanks for the continued interest.  We are trying to figure out how to begin a climate restoration employment project for the members of ISIS who have grown tired of murdering children, women, and Christians, and apparently anyone else who they feel needs murdering.    If they only had jobs, then....what difference, at that point, would it make?   Midnight Basketball and Globalwarmingcoolingclimatechange.  
Sheeshhhhh!!!
El Gringo Viejo

___________________________________

Heading South

_______________________________________

     We shall be heading down to the Quinta to-morrow.  In all probability, we shall also be taking a bit of a trip over to San Miquel de Allende in a week or so to help our neighbour, the owners of the Hacienda de La Vega, begin the process of opening their new boutique hotel in that noble city.

     It is a six-room, colonial-style, with lots of stone work and points of finery that as of yet we have not seen in person.   For some reason or another the family seems to think that it will not be "real" until I have pronounced it such.  It is quite an undertaking and has been in process for about one year to this point.   Building anything in San Miguel de Allende is a bit of a wonderland due to the conditions concerning building standards and historical melding requirements.

     We should be back around the middle of the month.

El Gringo Viejo

______________________________________