conflict
Catholic priest ambushed, stabbed multiple times in ‘frenzied’ attack
Fr. Paul Murphy, Irish Army Chaplain (credit: Catholic Arena / X)
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
There are now concerns that the teenager became radicalized online and that he had a specific grievance and plan to target Defence Forces members.
A Catholic priest, who serves as a chaplain in the Irish Army, was ambushed and stabbed “multiple times” in a “frenzied attack” on Thursday night in Galway, Ireland – which saw Irish soldiers open fire in response. Initial reports said a “teenage male youth” had been detained, who reportedly “uttered statements about Irish military involvement in the Middle East.”
Virgin Media News issued the following report on the violent assault today:
WATCH: Man Injured in Stabbing at Renmore Army Barracks, Teen Arrested
For more, watch VM News now at https://t.co/JdZsXkTyaO#Galway #Renmore #stabbing pic.twitter.com/uJbr0zJ9M4— Virgin Media News (@VirginMediaNews) August 16, 2024
Father Paul Murphy, a 52 year old Chaplain with the Irish Army, was stabbed outside Renmore Barracks, Galway in the West of Ireland at around 10:45 p.m. last night as he arrived for duty in his car.
Fr. Paul Murphy, Irish Army Chaplain (credit: Catholic Arena / X)
Fr. Murphy was seriously injured, but survived the attack – sending a message from Galway’s University Hospital as he awaits surgery.
He thanked people in a Facebook post on Friday for their “prayers, love and concern.”
I’m doing okay: just awaiting surgery. All will be well.
According to the Irish Mirror, police are investigating whether the incident was terror related.
The Special Detective Unit of An Garda Síochána [Irish police] is involved in this investigation. One line of enquiry is to establish if this attack had a terrorism motivation.
Irish Mirror journalist Paul Healy reported details of the attack:
It is understood Fr. Murphy was sitting in his car waiting for the barracks gates to open when the attacker approached him.
Sources say the chaplain lowered his window and the attacker immediately stabbed him multiple times.
Healy goes on to recount how Fr. Murphy tried to escape, stating:
The gates of the barracks then opened and Fr. Murphy is understood to have driven forward in an effort to get away from the stabber.
The attacker however clung onto the vehicle and continued to try and attack Fr. Murphy.
Irish soldiers then “fired a number of warning shots,” Healy said, adding that a search of the suspect’s home saw evidence which may explain the motive.
Sources say Gardaí [police] have since searched the suspect’s address in the Galway area and a number of items of interest, including radicalized ‘literature’ were recovered.
There are now concerns that the teenager became radicalized online and that he had a specific grievance and plan to target Defence Forces members.
Healy further reports that “online social media posts” made by the suspect are now being reviewed.
The suspect, described as “Irish” and said to be 16-years-old, “remains in detention and is being questioned in a Gardaí station in the North Western region,” according to the Irish Examiner.
Their report says how “sentries overpowered the youth and detained him” until police arrived, noting that, “Fr. Murphy was provided with first aid at the scene before being taken to hospital where he received further treatment.”
A soldier who had served with Fr. Murphy on a tour of duty in Lebanon responded with shock and words of admiration for the Padre.
Brendan Cruise said on X:
I was fortunate enough to have served in Lebanon with Fr Paul Murphy who was the battalion padre. He was absolutely brilliant on the tour, he had time for everyone & a smile for all. Wishing him a full recovery.
Simon Harris, the Taoiseach [Irish Prime Minister] said his “thoughts are with the victim” and thanked the Defence Forces and Gardaí for their action and response in a post on X.
I have been briefed on the shocking incident outside Renmore Barracks last night & my thoughts are with the member of the defence forces in hospital. I want to thank defence forces personnel & Gardai for their action and response.
— Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) August 16, 2024
Irish users of the social media platform responded angrily, with many holding Harris and the government responsible.
One user replied to Harris saying, “You’ve brought terror back to this Island, after we fought 800 years to live in peace.”
Others noted the Godlessness of the modern Irish state, remarking the deliberate omission of the fact that the victim is a Catholic priest and that no prayers were being offered by the leader of the Catholic nation.
“Very telling you won’t say a Catholic priest was attacked and you offer no prayers for him.”
The sentiment in the replies to the Irish Prime Minister were perhaps summarized best in this meme:
Attacks on Catholics and their places of worship have been on the rise in Ireland. A spate of anti-Catholic crime in County Donegal over the summer saw many churches burgled, with damage and attempted arson occuring. One church in Lifford had been targeted three times in six weeks.
The Protestant Church of Ireland has also been targeted, with historic and “irreplaceable” mummies damaged following a break-in and attempted arson in St Michan’s Church, Dublin in June.
The vandalism, according to Dublin Live, is believed to have ruined the mummified remains of five Catholics “including an 800-year-old artifact known as ‘The Crusader.’” A Romanian national was found guilty of the damage.
Yet the attacks have also been linked to hate speech – not online – but made by Irish politicians themselves.
In April, reporting on arson attacks on two County Meath churches, Catholic Arena alleged:
Hate speech by politicians against Catholics has been a major factor in the recent rise in crime against Catholic.
The attempts to burn down these two churches came shortly after an Irish Member of Parliament (TD) was “mocked for her Catholic faith” by her fellow members during a speech given in the Parliament itself, known as the Dáil.
Gript reported on March 23 how Deputy Carol Nolan’s warning that mass migration policies of the Irish government had created chaos in the country.
“We have an immigration system and an immigrant homeless situation that are nothing short of spiralling social sabotage,” Nolan said.
“This Government has no answers for one simple reason, it is because it does not ask the right questions and it does not listen.”
Nolan was reportedly “sniggered at” at by members she referred to as “communists,” who she says derided her and other members for their Christian faith – whilst refusing to acknowledge the chaos their open borders policies were causing.
“I could hear the comments and the muttering – some TDs were definitely mocking our Catholic faith”
Nolan claimed the anti-Catholic rhetoric emerged over Ireland’s referendum on abortion, when she says was targeted for being pro-life. She explained:
Unfortunately, I had this trouble before the abortion referendum, and when I called for a ‘No’ vote [to legalising abortion]…so it’s not the first time I have borne the brunt of that type of sentiment.
Nolan said:
I would get a lot of it, and I got a lot of it because it was evident I was pro-life and because of my beliefs.
She remained defiant in the face of this “bullying,” saying Parliament refused to reflect a majority of Irish people whose lives and livelihoods in tourism have been blighted by uncontrolled mass migration.
“In advance of Holy Week, we will take no lectures from the hard left and the looney left who will not face the people.”
The comments in the Irish Parliament came weeks after a priest’s house was set ablaze “intentionally” in Kildare, destroying outbuildings at St Brigid’s Cathedral.
Somebody set fire to a priests house in Ireland 2 days ago.
Why wasn't the priest invited onto TV to discuss like the Muslim cleric was? pic.twitter.com/p4XP3QITyq
— MichaeloKeeffe (@Mick_O_Keeffe) February 21, 2024
The attacks on the Catholic faith and on Christianity in Ireland have now seemingly escalated to the attempted murder of a priest.
conflict
Sec Def Austin Unveils $400 Million Arms Package For Ukraine — But One Thing Is Missing
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jake Smith
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Ukraine but isn’t bringing the good news Kyiv wants to hear, as the country continues to struggle to hold the front line amid Russian advances.
Austin has been intimately involved over the last two years in overseeing U.S. military aid to Ukraine, of which there has been approximately $70 billion. The Defense Secretary touched down in Ukraine on Sunday in a show of continued support and announced a new $400 million arms package, but won’t be giving Kyiv what it really wants — the ability to use U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory, according to multiple reports.
The request to use the missiles for such a purpose has been something Ukraine has asked for for months; as Ukraine can’t produce such weapons, it is looking to the U.S. and Europe for help.
Austin arrived in Ukraine without signaling that the request would be filled, and that’s likely to leave Kyiv unsatisfied. The administration has been hesitant to allow Ukraine to use U.S. or European-provided missiles to conduct long-range attacks against Russia, in part because it could escalate the war and drag the U.S. further into the conflict.
“We think it is wrong that there are such steps,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in early September, according to The Washington Post. “We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”
I’m back in Ukraine for the fourth time as Secretary of Defense, demonstrating that the United States, alongside the international community, continues to stand by Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/0gCwAqqEpK
— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) October 21, 2024
The idea has been frequently discussed between U.S. and Ukrainian officials but nothing has come to fruition. Austin has also previously said that he doesn’t think it would significantly improve Ukraine’s odds of victory, noting in an early September press conference that “there’s no one capability that will in and of itself be decisive in this campaign.”
Ukraine is also pressing the administration for NATO membership, but Austin had no new updates to give on that request either, according to reports. The Biden-Harris administration has said that Ukraine’s fate is eventually to join NATO but hasn’t provided a timeline for when.
However, the U.S. is providing Ukraine with $400 million worth of weapons systems, Austin announced on Monday, including munitions, armored vehicles and tanks, according to reports. The aid will certainly meet some of the needs of Ukraine’s military but is not as large as some of the prior multi-billion dollar packages.
“The United States understands the stakes here, Mr. President,” Austin told Ukrainian Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday, Reuters reported.
President Joe Biden’s options to help Ukraine are starting to run out as he prepares to leave office in January. Even with U.S. and European-provided military aid, it has done little more than help Ukraine maintain a defensive position against Russia, which has shown no signs of stopping its invasion campaign.
Russia launched sweeping missile and drone strikes against targets in Eastern Ukraine over the weekend ahead of Austin’s visit, according to Reuters. Ukrainian forces staged a successful incursion into regions in Western Russia at the end of the summer but Russian forces have started to retake some of the territory in recent weeks, The New York Times reported.
The odds that Biden can secure substantially more funding from Congress to aid Ukraine are slim; it was already difficult for the president to secure the last $60 billion aid package in April, as the sentiment among some lawmakers is that the administration doesn’t seem to have a plan to end the war and move Ukraine toward victory.
It will be either presidential candidates Donald Trump or Kamala Harris who will have to pick up where Biden left off. Harris would likely mirror Biden’s approach to the war and continue strong U.S. support for Ukraine’s military campaign, but some critics fear that she lacks the needed foreign policy wisdom to properly maneuver the conflict.
Trump has vowed to end the war before January if he’s elected in November, touting his ability to negotiate with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also signaled he may end military aid to Ukraine in favor of seeking a peaceful settlement between Kyiv and Moscow.
Austin on Monday dismissed ideas that U.S. support for Ukraine would end if Trump were elected in November.
“I’ve seen bipartisan support for Ukraine over the last 2-1/2 years, and I fully expect that we’ll continue to see the bipartisan support from Congress,” Austin said, according to Reuters.
conflict
Middle East War Shows No Signs Of Stopping One Year After Oct. 7 — And No Clear Path To Exit
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jake Smith
The chaos of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel is still being felt one year later as the broader region grapples with a conflict that has shown no signs of stopping.
Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attacks caught Israel by surprise and resulted in the murder of approximately 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds of others, including American citizens. Israel retaliated and launched a war against Hamas in Gaza, which a year later has not ended but instead spilled into the broader Middle East and drawn in other bad actors such as Hezbollah and Iran.
“We’re still stuck in Oct. 7, 2023, in one unending day of terror, of fear, of anger, of despair,” Yuval Baron, an Israeli citizen whose father-in-law is still being held by Hamas in Gaza, told Reuters.
Israeli forces have largely occupied Gaza and killed thousands of Hamas operatives, largely crippling the terrorist group’s capabilities, although it has come at great humanitarian cost to the enclave, according to Reuters. The conflict has displaced millions of Palestinians and wreaked havoc across Gaza, leaving many areas uninhabitable, Bloomberg reported.
The effort to build Gaza after the fighting ends — whenever that may be — will likely be an incredibly costly venture that could take years and require joint cooperation between several Arab states, according to Bloomberg. Millions of tons of debris will have to be cleared from the enclave while buildings are repaired or replaced.
“We thought it would be two months [of fighting] — at most,” Mohammed Shakib Hassan, a Palestinian civil servant who fled his home after Israeli forces entered Gaza last year, told The New York Times. “Twelve months have passed in front of our eyes.”
Israel, with the help of the U.S., has on several occasions made offers for a ceasefire in Gaza conditioned on the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas and the surrender of the terrorist group, but these proposals have been rejectedmultiple times. Yayha Sinwar, the leader of Hamas who has been hiding underground in Gaza, reportedly believes that he is not going to survive the war and has zero intention of reaching a ceasefire deal with Israel at this point in the conflict, according to U.S. intelligence assessments reviewed by The New York Times.
The Biden-Harris administration has spent months brokering negotiations between Israel and Hamas and working with regional mediators to try to reach a deal, but these efforts have largely been fruitless. Though President Biden has on several occasions predicted that a ceasefire could be reached in short order, his own officials now privately believe it will be near impossible to get a deal done between now and January, the end of Biden’s term.
“They’re probably not going to get one before the election, or before January either. But that’s not on them, per se. It speaks to the difficulty of how far apart [Israel and Hamas] are,” former State Department official Gabriel Noronha told the Daily Caller News Foundation in September.
There have been various roadblocks to getting a deal done. Specifically, Israel wants to leave troops along the Gaza-Egyptian border, arguing that it would stonewall Hamas from trafficking in weapons, but Hamas has rejected this term.
Though the prospects of a deal are unlikely at this point, Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has largely come to a close as the terrorist group’s capabilities have been vastly diminished.
“Hamas is a shadow of its former self. Israel is going to continue to try to eradicate them, but it’s sort of a guerilla campaign. Hamas is being starved and smoked out. I suspect that you’re going to see Hamas go underground somewhat — more figuratively than literally at this point,” Noronha told the DCNF last month.
Instead, Israel has shifted much of its forces and focus away from Gaza and toward Lebanon, which houses the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Hezbollah is Iran’s largest terrorist group in the Middle East and has engaged in cross-fire skirmishes with Israel since last October out of support for Hamas, displacing thousands of civilians near the Israel-Lebanon border, according to NPR.
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah have reached a boiling point in recent weeks, as Israel has launched sweeping airstrikes against the terrorist group in southern Lebanon and killed the group’s leader in an airstrike in late September, according to The Washington Post. Israeli forces have begun ground raids against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, in what could be the prelude to a much larger ground invasion.
The Biden-Harris Administration, along with other allies, also put forward on Sep. 26 a separate ceasefire proposal for Israel and Hezbollah, although it was seemingly ignored by both parties.
“It’s clear that Israel is determined to rid Lebanon of Hezbollah,” senior fellow at the Strauss Center and former Pentagon official Simone Ledeen told the DCNF. “They need Hezbollah to lay down their arms and surrender… the Israelis [are] really focused on getting to that objective.”
The multi-front Middle East conflict extends also to Iran, which — though it has helped orchestrate and fund the various terror attacks against Israel — made an unprecedented move in April and launched a sweeping missile strike against Israel from directly within Iran’s borders, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iran launched a similar attack against Israel last week in the form of roughly 180 missiles, most of which were intercepted by U.S. and Israeli forces.
Israel is expected to respond with an attack directly against Iran, although the timing and nature of the move is publicly unknown. The Biden-Harris administration is helping coordinate the attack with Israel, though it wants Israel to avoidgoing after the country’s nuclear facilities.
“The launch of over 180 ballistic missiles by Tehran requires a decisive reaction to prevent future attacks,” Israeli intelligence agent Avi Melamed said in a statement on Monday. “Currently, it seems that Israel is finalizing its operational plans while the U.S. prepares munitions to defensively counter any potential Iranian counterstrike.”
The conflict extends even further into Iraq, Syria and Yemen, all hotspots for other various Iranian-backed terrorist groups that have attacked U.S. and Israeli forces in the region since last October, according to Axios. Israeli forces have launched a series in those regions, too, in recent months.
Until the current Middle East conflict comes to an end, the possibility of regional peace may be too far out of reach, even as that remains a goal for other key Arab states and Western nations. Iran’s “axis of resistance” has taken severe blows since last October, according to Axios.
But Israeli forces are stretched across multiple fronts in a conflict with no clear end game, and the Israeli people seem to be growing more and more weary of the conflict; 23% of Israelis considered leaving the country in the last year, according to a recent poll cited by Axios.
“This war won’t end because nobody is willing to blink,” Thomas Nides, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the Times. “In the meantime, everyone is losing — hostages and their families, innocent Palestinians, Israelis displaced from northern Israel, Lebanese civilians. And it’s truly tragic.”
-
Bruce Dowbiggin1 day ago
Why Canada’s Elites Are Captives To The Kamala Narrative
-
C2C Journal14 hours ago
Mischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, Part I
-
Business17 hours ago
Premiers fight to lower gas taxes as Trudeau hikes pump costs
-
Agriculture24 hours ago
Sweeping ‘pandemic prevention’ bill would give Trudeau government ability to regulate meat production
-
Alberta2 days ago
Alberta Bill of Rights Amendment, Bill 24 – Stronger protections for personal rights
-
Economy1 day ago
Gas prices plummet in BC thanks to TMX pipeline expansion
-
Economy1 day ago
One Solution to Canada’s Housing Crisis: Move. Toronto loses nearly half million people to more affordable locations
-
Business1 day ago
Trudeau government spends millions producing podcasts