By Daniel Greenfield – Frontpage Magazine –
I must renew my repeated appeals regarding to the painful situation of the entire Middle East, North Africa and other African countries, where Christians, together with other cultural or ethnic groups, and even members of the majority religion who have no desire to be caught up in hatred and folly, have been forced to witness the destruction of their places of worship, their cultural and religious heritage, their houses and property, and have faced the alternative either of fleeing or of paying for their adhesion to good and to peace by their own lives, or by enslavement.
These realities should serve as a grave summons to an examination of conscience on the part of those charged with the conduct of international affairs. Not only in cases of religious or cultural persecution, but in every situation of conflict, as in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan and the Great Lakes region, real human beings take precedence over partisan interests, however legitimate the latter may be.
Christians don’t even get a single solid sentence devoted to them, before they’re grouped in with other groups and “members of the majority religion” (Muslims) who are also suffering. Then the Middle East swiftly gets grouped with Ukraine and Africa… and a denunciation of “partisan interests.”
But the UN is all about “partisan interests.” The welfare of Christians is a partisan interest. It’s the role of the Pope to speak on their behalf at the UN, just as it is Netanyahu’s role to speak on behalf of Jews and the OIC’s role to speak on behalf of Muslims.
If the Pope won’t speak on behalf of persecuted Christians at the UN, who will?
But the Pope did find the time to endorse the Iran deal
“The recent agreement reached on the nuclear question in a sensitive region of Asia and the Middle East is proof of the potential of political good will and of law, exercised with sincerity, patience and constancy.”
The meat of the Pope’s address focused on expanding UN authority and the environment. It’s a shame that he couldn’t bring the same degree of passion he feels for the environment to the suffering of Christians.
Yet today’s world presents us with many false rights and – at the same time – broad sectors which are vulnerable, victims of power badly exercised: for example, the natural environment and the vast ranks of the excluded. These sectors are closely interconnected and made increasingly fragile by dominant political and economic relationships. That is why their rights must be forcefully affirmed, by working to protect the environment and by putting an end to exclusion.
First, it must be stated that a true “right of the environment” does exist, for two reasons. First, because we human beings are part of the environment. We live in communion with it, since the environment itself entails ethical limits which human activity must acknowledge and respect….
Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity.
Actually that’s backward. The world exists for the sake of man. Man does not exist for the sake of the environment. The right of the environment is a false right because objects don’t have rights. People do.
The contention that harming the environment harms people is muddled. Harming people, harms people. Much of what is considered environmental harm, helps people.
Pope Francis speaks about poverty, but aggressive crop yield cultivation and industrialization is what raises people out of poverty. The “Right of the Environment” would condemn millions to starvation. If environmentalists had their way, 9/10ths of the human race would die out.
What does the Pope, who opposes abortion and birth control, make of environmentalist eugenics programs that seek to limit human reproduction to protect “endangered species”?
The idea that the way to protect insects, fish and animals is by preventing human beings from having children is part of an approach known as Population, Health and Environment (PHE) which integrates population control into environmentalist initiatives.
PHE dates back to the 1980s and is practiced by mainstream organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund. The Smithsonian’s Woodrow Wilson Center, which is funded partly by the US government, aggressively champions PHE eugenics and USAID funds PHE programs and distributes PHE training manuals derived in part from Wilson Center materials.
USAID, which played a key role in the war on DDT, has openly embraced PHE. The arguments against DDT often focused not on saving lives, but on taking them. PHE prevents children from being born, but environmentalists don’t stop with the unborn. Malaria was an even more effective tool for reducing populations.
PHE deserves to be loudly and vocally condemned. It’s racist and it’s genocidal. It also shows where the environmental movement inevitably leads… to the mass killing of people.
Pope Francis offers a class warfare environmental analysis that treats abuse of the environment as abuse of people. That comes dangerously close to putting the landscape ahead of people. And civilization depends on remaking the environment to suit people. “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it” is the biblical command. The Pope agrees with the first part, but that requires the second part.
You can’t be fruitful and multiply, if you can’t till fields, build factories and command the resources of the entire planet.
Pope Francis condemns war in general.
“War is the negation of all rights and a dramatic assault on the environment. If we want true integral human development for all, we must work tirelessly to avoid war between nations and between peoples.”
But true human development sometimes comes from wars.
For development to occur, Communism and Nazism had to be defeated. If Boko Haram isn’t defeated in Nigeria, it will wipe out the Christians there. Likewise other Islamic groups will wipe out Christians in their regions if they aren’t stopped.
Sometimes war is the only way to protect rights.
Pope Francis had the opportunity to call for Christians to rise in defense of their persecuted co-religionists. Instead he talked about the environment. He spoke of the “right of the environment”, but rights are won by assertion. The environment asserts nothing and has no rights. People do. The UN is a forum that allows people to assert their rights through their representatives.
The Pope could have spoken as the representative of the persecuted Christians. Instead he chose to speak as the representative of the environment.
__________________________
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/260245/pope-un-speech-talks-global-warming-mentions-daniel-greenfield
