DogfightAtBankstown

blowing hot air

Michael Chertoff, the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, said he thought it was one of the "dumbest and most inappropriate things" he'd seen since he'd been in government. But the dumbness was displayed by an agency that reports to him.

I just think it's surreal the reality of a government and public service culture that thrives on spin: FEMA holding a fake press conference in the middle of an emergency.

Put aside the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the recent California bushfires for a moment, forget for a minute the joke that is FEMA - that's the U.S.'s Federal Emergency Management Agency (a seriously bad joke as its proven mismanagement has cost lives) - but what the hell does an emergency management agency hope to achieve with a press conference, much less a fake one, run by its public relations arm in the middle of an emergency?

Why was the public relations arm of the agency even involved?

Is that the time to exercise your "set of management, supervisory, and technical functions that foster an organization's ability to strategically listen to, appreciate, and respond to those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organization are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values*" especially if your organisation is tasked with "Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response & Recovery planning" and fires are threatening lives and property as you set up your studio cameras?

Isn't that when your operations staff are in full swing, and when you use the media to get valuable information out regarding threats, evacuations and the like?

Maybe FEMA should just be tasked for "Disaster".

*Robert L. Heath, Encyclopedia of Public Relations

alien chainsaw psycho bambi

That's right. 

Bambi makes Time's list of  top 25 horror movies.  Of all time. *gasp*  Just in time for Halloween. 

Skipped in at no.20 amongst the vampires and splatter porn of our yoof.

Amazing that the first movies parents took their tots to in the 30s and 40s were the early Disney features. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Dumbo all exploited childhood traumas. Parents disappear or die; stepmothers plot the murder of their charges; a boy skips school and turns into a donkey. Kids were so frightened by these films that they wet themselves in terror. Bambi, directed by David Hand, has a primal shock that still haunts oldsters who saw it 40, 50, 65 years ago.

Other oldsters are now wetting their pants laughing at Richard Corliss while Aussies of all ages wonder how this guy would survive down here, where the koalas are likely to piss on him. 

Man up you pussy cat.

nee naw

Is the blog of the pseudonymous Mike Myers, an Emergency Medical Dispatcher in London Ambulance’s control room, who recounts some of the more memorable calls.  Like, how many ambulance drivers does it take to change a light bulb?

Occasionally, we get wildly inappropriate calls which are not your usual brand of timewaster but people who do not know where to turn and are using 999 as a kind of general helpline. I often wonder what makes them request ‘ambulance’ instead of ‘police’ or ‘fire’ - I guess it’s just that they see police as scary law enforcers and don’t want an entire engine full of firemen turning up, so ambulance is the only option left.

One such call came in this week, at around 8pm. It was from a woman in her 80s who was a carer for her disabled, bedbound sister, who was even older. The little old lady was very upset because the lightbulb in her sister’s bedroom had broken. Apparently, her sister was scared of the dark, never switched the light out and suffered from panic attacks. The caller wanted to know if we could arrange someone to come round and change the lightbulb. She’d pay, if necessary, she just couldn’t find anyone to do it. She had no nearby relatives, no carers, her neighbours were all equally elderly and she didn’t know what to do because her sister was getting more and more distressed by the minute. The call taker, quite rightly, told the caller that she was sorry but that she couldn’t help because we only deal in ambulances and not lightbulb changing people. She recorded all the details, including the address, on a ticket, which duly popped up on our screen as an “enquiry only”.

Read the rest for some goodwill calling.

"Nee naw" is a child’s word for an ambulance, fire engine or police car - basically anything with a siren.  There are a number of nee naw bloggers in Britain.

The relatively new gwasdispatcher is another one in a British ambulance control room. He describes a dispatcher's holiday:

The trouble with living your life working for an emergency service, is that everywhere you go, you feel like your on a busman’s holiday, walking down the road with the kids, and not a care in world, when all of a sudden it’s rudely disrupted by NEE NAW NEE NAW NEE NAW, and you end up pitching up first on scene at the scene of an RTC on the M5, they were extremely lucky!

I am also medically trained, and able to use RRV’s to attend emergencies, so when your off duty, your never really off duty, because things always tend to happen around you, this week I have been to the coast, during which I helped someone out who had ditched their car, I was first on scene at a rollover RTC on the M5, and also helped out someone having a panic attack!

But you know, I wouldnt have it any other way.

Other long time nee naw bloggers, like Diagnosis of the NHS ambulance sevice, have had enough.

Some British nee naw bloggers are so popular, their online diaries have been published as books. Like "PC David Copperfield", of The Policeman's Blog which carries the tag: "This blog will do more to put people off calling the police than anything, other than actually calling the police." 

I don't know. When I read, say, the story of Dai, I reckon they do a better job than public relations teams when it comes to self promotion.

booty

Robert Spencer continues his series Blogging the Qu'ran with a sura that lends its name to a genocide.

pollie wants a cracker

I read about it on CNN's site last night and it's around the globe this morning: the release of the book "Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-The-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford", based on talks Ford had starting in 1991 with Thomas DeFrank, Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News.  Ford spoke on the condition that his comments not be used until after his death, which occurred in December 2006.

Like this is news?  No, the news are all the naughty bits, helpfully summarised by The Moderate Voice: Ford thought Hilary wore the pants and Bill couldn't keep his zipped.

Well maybe that isn't news.  But that's about the entire New York Daily News 'exclusive' on the matter.

CNN did also note, however, that Ford thought Cheney was a liability, Giuliani  was a safer bet and Bill Clinton was nevertheless the best pure politician he'd ever been around: "He can sell three-day-old ice; he's that good".

I am almost inclined to feel sorry for the Americans having to endure such embarrassment over their politicians who, when it comes to impeachment, scandal or airport restrooms seem to be constantly skirting around thin ice. 

We, on the other hand, have the whole world waxing lyrical about ours. 

la vida en rosa

Argentina has joined Chile in electing its first woman president: Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, wife of the retiring president. 

Well, maybe not quite retiring.  More like tag team wrestling:

Despite approval ratings of more than 60 percent, Mr. Kirchner decided in July not to run for re-election, in what many analysts believe is a strategy to rotate the couple through the Pink House, the presidential palace here, for 12 years. Argentine election law allows a former president to run again after waiting four years on the sidelines.

Another dynasty in pink: just peachy.

so you think you can dance, too?

Susilo Bambang...
SBY...
Yudhoyono

Could all work as a name for dance band. Not sure about, um, crooning.

apocalypse now, please

Gary has beaten me to it - and he has the cartoon to go with it. 

I personally can't take this federal election seriously, certainly not with all the talk of Armageddon: financial tsunamis (Giant pork barrel bursts!), real tsunamis (Giant globe melts!), the end of the world as we know it (Union thugs invade from outer workspace!), cover-ups (I did not have digital relations with that worm: Howard). 

Lazarus Redux vs the anti-Christ.  Refereed by the avuncular Joe Hockey (Fear campaign is based on fact!)

It's a wonder the Australian Federal Election hasn't made it onto the Rapture Index.

denial is not just a river in egypt

It's a wholescale industry amongst some Muslims.

No doubt, Jim Davila will pick up on this latest bit of hogwash:

The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque.

"There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple," he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. "Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."

Oops, he's already been onto it:

For similar thoughts from Ikrema Sabri see here and here.   It seems that the recent discovery of both Iron Age IIB remains on the Temple Mount -- thanks to the irresponsible digging of the Waqf -- and the quarry where the Temple stones were excavated is bringing the Temple deniers out of the woodwork.

And an interesting little tidbit from a commenter at Dhimmi Watch, where Hugh gives his customary treatment to this bit of the Islamic world view, a commenter who ironically goes under the moniker dumbledoresarmy:

And let us note well that this Person of the Lie, this Ikrema Sabri, is one of those 138 Muslim 'scholars' (!!) who signed off on that incredibly arrogant and deceptive 'letter from the Muslims to the Christians' earlier this month. (I pointed out as much in my small contribution to the talkback to the Jerusalem Post article which recorded his Big Lie). Let us hope that the Pope, the Patriarchs, and other addressees of the letter, are also listening and connecting the dots.

For me, personally, the continual repetition of blatantly false statements by Muslim representatives (beginning with their blind assertion of Islam's foefic rewrites of the Torah - 'Abraham offered Ishmael, not Isaac!' - and Gospels - 'Jesus was not crucified!'), is at least as horrifying as the beheadings and bombings. It enacts in the realm of the mind, what their deeds do to the body.

(Yes Naseem makes his customary appearance in the comment thread as well, bless his little wannabe-Eurabian heart)

Let's see now: yep, there is Ikrema Sabri, Agent 99.  Bingo.

I'm not sure if one should now google up the rest of the signatories for their pearls of truth and light, or call in James Cameron for a bit of archeoporn.

If the porn is up to the usual standards there won't even be a question of it being called "James Cameron and his Temple of Doom" or "James Cameron and the Last Crusade". 

More like "James Cameron finds the Caliphate of the Empty Skull". 

dumble-doh

The never-ending story.

Tick tock, turn your clock...forward

Not that hard to remember is it?

But somehow, you and I need to be reminded of this...

Kylie wants to be a mum.

Danni wants to be a mum.

Nicole wants to be a mum, wants to be a mum, wants to be a mum...

Amy wanted to be a mum, yep, still game.

Gwen wants to be a mum, again.

Eva's not allowed.

Ad nauseam, ad infinitum.  Like it's news or something.

national health

Well, if you are talking Britain, it's more like national death.

If the bugs won't kill you, the nurses will.

(Straight from The Devil's Kitchen)

i've always wondered

How one could possibly eulogize people like this.

when the loons...er...moons collide

Here we go:

While it appears from more than one point of view that the War in Iraq and the War on Terror are situations from which we may never be able to extricate ourselves, from the mountains of Pakistan comes a very simple solution: convert to Islam.

Before we reject this out of hand, lets seriously consider it for a moment:  Osama Bin Laden promised the wars would be over if Americans convert to Islam. 

This may sound like a lot to ask from the most religious country in the industrialized world.  But of all the Christians in America today who profess to be religious, how many of us are seriously devout? 

[...]

All in all, converting to Islam would be a small price to pay for an end to the killing and maiming of our sons and daughters, not to mention the billions of dollars we could put to better use than fighting this perpetual war.

So let’s do away with our religious pretences, adopt Islam as our new faith, add a few extra holidays to our calendar, and get down to the real business at hand: pumping oil.

What is funny is that even if it was meant to be funny, it's not. 

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in very large groups.

another aussie death

In terror central.

Sergeant Matthew Locke.

Our prayers for his family and for all those who served with him.

managing reincarnation

A little more, about China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs Order No. 5., from Slavoj Žižek:

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Chinese government is not antireligious. Its stated worry is social “harmony” — the political dimension of religion. In order to curb the excess of social disintegration caused by the capitalist explosion, officials now celebrate religions that sustain social stability, from Buddhism to Confucianism — the very ideologies that were the target of the Cultural Revolution. Last year, Ye Xiaowen, China’s top religious official, told Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, that “religion is one of the important forces from which China draws strength,” and he singled out Buddhism for its “unique role in promoting a harmonious society.”

What bothers Chinese authorities are sects like Falun Gong that insist on independence from state control. In the same vein, the problem with Tibetan Buddhism resides in an obvious fact that many Western enthusiasts conveniently forget: the traditional political structure of Tibet is theocracy, with the Dalai Lama at the center. He unites religious and secular power — so when we are talking about the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, we are taking about choosing a head of state. It is strange to hear self-described democracy advocates who denounce Chinese persecution of followers of the Dalai Lama — a non-democratically elected leader if there ever was one.

I wouldn't be so positive about Žižek's spin on Chinese government attitudes to religion - why should it, for example, chose Catholic bishops or imprison Protestant Christian leaders who pose no threat to the government or law and order?

But he's got the measure of those Western enthusiasts for the Dalai Lama down pat.

pee in your pants, sunshines

Source

(Dedicated to all those who fear a vast (religious-)right-wing conspiracy.)

yet another

Smack down review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion - this time from Nicholas Lash, former longtime Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University. An excerpt with my emphasis:

"Of course", says Dawkins at one point, "irritated theologians will protest that we don't take the book of Genesis literally any more. But that is my whole point! We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as allegories".17 Notice that "any more". Dawkins takes it for granted that Christians have traditionally been fundamentalists, but that as the plausibility of fundamentalist readings of the text has been eroded by the march of reason, "irritated theologians" protest that they no longer take biblical texts literally. Paradoxically, he has the story almost completely upside down. Patristic and medieval theology worked with a rich, at times almost uncontrollable diversity of "senses of scripture". Passages of Scripture gave up their sense only by being read in many different ways. Fundamentalism – in the sense of the privileging of the meaning which a passage, taken out of any context, appears a priori, on the surface, to possess – is, as the Old Testament scholar James Barr demonstrated thirty years ago, a byproduct of modern rationalism: of the privileging of timeless and direct description, of mathematics over metaphor, prose over poetry.

What I earlier described as Richard Dawkins' "fundamentalism in reverse" comes through clearly in his curious insistence that the only way to take a biblical text seriously is to "believe it" literally. To take it allegorically (for example) is to "write it off". Somewhere at the back of all this is the myth (the roots of which lie back in ancient Greece) that truth can only be expressed through prosaically direct description, and that all other literary forms are forms of fiction, incapable of expressing truth.
Two more points, still with that passage about "irritated theologians" in mind. In the first place, what are we to make of this curious suggestion that there are only two things to do with texts: you either "write them off" or you "believe" them? This seems a strange way of describing how one works out the ways in which texts, ancient or modern, religious or secular, are best read.

In the second place, it is, I suspect, his preoccupation with contemporary American fundamentalism (treated, throughout the book, as more or less paradigmatic of "religion" across the board) which leads him to suppose that decisions not to construe particular passages of Scripture "literally" are arbitrary decisions. As a result, the question: "By what criteria do you decide which passages are symbolic, which literal?"19 is taken rhetorically, as if the absence of appropriate criteria were self-evident. He does not notice that a good deal of any first-year student of the Bible's time is spent learning how to distinguish between different "literary forms".

I note too from Richard Dawkins' own website, that our deluded RD continues his efforts to promote The God Delusion, including sending copies to all MPs and making flyers (religious tracts?) titled 'Imagine no religion' available. Heh. Like all other aging hippies, he still can't get over the fact that John Lennon is dead.

Still, in addition to being a scientistic fundamentalist, it seems Richard Dawkins is just the Dan Brown of pontificating (as opposed to practicing) scientists.  Peddling on the general ignorance of the nature of religion or even theology amongst those in the West (and in particular, Christianity), he is laughing all the way to the bank.

I mean, it takes a bit of cash to keep up the house of cards castle.

turkey

Has always been a key sticking point on all things Iraq.

And it continues to be.

But this may hurt Turkey more than Iraq.

I wonder, if this escalates, if NATO and even future EU membership will also be at stake. 

another british council

Demonstrates to the world the depths of their stupidity and that of the SOR:

They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 30 vulnerable children.

But Vincent and Pauline Matherick will this week have their latest foster son taken away because they have refused to sign new sexual equality regulations.

Vincent and Pauline Matherick: Face being struck off despite fostering 28 times

To do so, they claim, would force them to promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith.

The 11-year-old boy, who has been in their care for two years, will be placed in a council hostel this week and the Mathericks will no longer be given children to look after.

The devastated couple, who have three grown up children of their own, became foster parents in 2001 and have since cared for 28 children at their home in Chard, Somerset.

Earlier this year, Somerset County Council's social services department asked them to sign a contract to implement Labour's new Sexual Orientation Regulations, part of the Equality Act 2006, which make discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal.

Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages.

They could also be required to take teenagers to gay association meetings.

When the Mathericks objected, they were told they would be taken off the register of foster parents.

The Mathericks have decided to resign rather than face the humiliation of being expelled.

So a kid gets taken away from a family home where he has lived happily for two years and gets placed in some scummy council hostel, to satisfy some politically correct fascist's interpretation of the SOR. Why the hec should an 11 year old HAVE to have a discussion about same-sex relationships or be taken to a gay association meeting just because he can't live with his natural parents is beyond me. 

It's not like 99.9% of the world's population is not heterosexual or anything.

Never mind a law being used against a vulnerable child's best interests: to have a stable and secure home under the care of responsible adults.

These British council goons will abrogate natural parents' rights next.  No doubt by enforcing same sex relationships so that no-one could possibly be a natural parent.

Dickheads.

gosh

I never even realized it was such a compelling mystery.

Sleep easy now: the mind-boggling explanation has been revealed.

Now we can all fret about what happens to the hole when the cheese is gone.

postmodern politics

Why else do you get insane headlines like this:

I didn't kill Nine's worm: Howard

On a site called "Live News"

On a page with a URL like this: http://livenews.com.au/Articles/2007/10/22/Costello_rips_into_Labors_tax_policy

Like the worm matters.

Update: It's on!

crazy diamond

John Ilhan and his parents epitomized the best of the "new Australians" - as they were called then - of the late 50s/early 60s.

Sadly, the founder of Crazy John's has died, far too young, at 42.

Condolences to his family.

yes it's true

I watched the worm debate Australian Idol tonight.   And there was someone carrying on about ladies throwing knickers on to the stage.

But I don't think they were talking about this.

gay rights activists clutch at fantasy

Revel in anti-authority (except when you dare question their own).

And so, this is supposedly news.

In the real world of course, birds of a feather do flock together.

Like vultures really.

spaghetti wars

P.Z. Meyers, Christopher Hitchens and the gospel according to South Park: the drama of atheist humanism continues...

about

That Muslim letter to the Pope and other Christian leaders.  Announced with great fanfare across the globe.  And spurring little Christian reaction.

Mona Charles notes:

Fine words. Professor John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University (and the foremost American apologist for Muslim extremism), presented the letter to the American audience as "an historic event."

So what do we have here? The statement is chock-full of Biblical and Koranic injunctions to love one's neighbor and to pursue righteousness. And yes, it would be a lovely world if people could simply apply those dictates to their daily lives and abjure hatred, violence and sin. Arguably, millions do. But all of that skirts the elephant in the room. You can read through this entire letter and never learn that there are Muslims all over the world currently interpreting their faith as a license to slaughter innocent human beings (very much including fellow Muslims). Moreover, the overall thrust of the document suggests that misunderstanding between Muslims and Christians (rather than problematic interpretations of Islam) is what threatens world peace.

Which means:

If the Muslim clerics are sincere in wishing for peace and understanding, they should issue a document that denounces Islamists; that rejects their violent interpretation of jihad; that affirms the human dignity of non-Muslims; and that condemns Osama bin Laden, Aymin al-Zawahiri and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by name. That would be historic. This letter is worse than a bromide, it's a dodge.

Amen.

sunday straight

The inane complaint that “religion causes conflict and wars” is not produced by the wars themselves. The wars of the twentieth century were not produced by religion. They are the fault of radically secularist and totalitarian ideologies. This theory – if it can be called that – is produced by anti-religious rhetoric, and is shared by both those who oppose the occupation of Iraq and those who support it (e.g., Christopher Hitchens).

There is a valid critique here which should be raised in the context of war. The Middle East is ablaze with turmoil mostly because of the corrupt dismantling of the Ottoman Empire – the region was redesigned with little respect for native custom, but mostly with regard for the economic advantage of a few interests. That there are conflicts, wars and “clashes” there can be no doubt. But it should be very clear that the popular idea that the strife is due to religion is vile propaganda.

The problem in the Middle East is not due to a clash of civilizations or to a conflict between religions. It is due mainly to a conflict between two political ideologies: a radical secularism that denies natural law, and a just as radical jihadism that cynically denies its own koranic humanism. Both ideologies have gone to war and have resorted to genocide for oil, and will continue to do so.

I mention this because the issue of Middle East turmoil distorts the whole issue of “Muslim/Christian relations.” It is a suspiciously useful platitude to say that the conflict is rooted in the relationship of the two religions: those who utilize this platitude are doing so to mask the real culprit. It is also useful to say that the conflict is between the West and resurgent Islam. Once again, while everyone is blaming truly religious folk on both sides, and true conservatives in the West and in the Islamic world, the real culprits are waging old fashioned war for old fashioned resources.

Imagine what it would be like if the subject of “Muslim/Christian relations” could be explored without the violent mass of opinions that have aggregated upon the Middle East. It is likely that the subject would become less difficult. The Orthodox Church would affirm love and forgiveness to Muslims in other nations and in our neighborhoods. It would affirm their civil rights in a pluralistic society. It would affirm the traditions of natural law which it shares with the Islamic world. It would affirm the rich cultural traditions of beauty, goodness and truth that are liberally strewn throughout Muslim society. Without a doubt, it would certainly affirm the indubitable fact that every Muslim is made in the image of God.

However, the Orthodox Church would also affirm that the predestination for every Muslim (as it is for all humankind) is theosis, particularly in the image of Jesus Christ. In that regard, the Orthodox Church not only does not affirm, but it crucially denies that Allah is the same is the Trinitarian God. It denies that Mohammad is any prophet at all, but instead is a heretic at best. It denies that Islam is a religion of peace, but is instead a religion of surrender to a god whose nature is not love. It denies that if there is any prayer in the Muslim world, it is prayer that is accepted by Jesus Christ, in spite of the fact that it is conditioned by a false prophet.

Talk of this sort usually invokes howls of protest, and accusations of villification and even "demonization" from the more positive-thinking crew. But this sequence of denials regarding Islam is not at all a vilification or demonization. Demonization is appropriate only for demons, and they have surely been at work – often quite outside the expected precincts of religious conflict. Vilification occurs most frequently when my enemy has something that I want, and consequently I render my enemy less than human to make it easier to murder him and take his goods.

I am doing neither thing. I call a Muslim a heretic, but I love him as I ought to love all my fellow man. I am quite willing to converse with him, even convivially, about the rich banquet of natural law and especially Rumi, Omar Khayyam and even Orhan Pamuk (you have to give points to a Turk who publicly refers to a certain genocide).

The Muslim has, however, nothing to say to me theologically, as “theology” is particularly understood in the Orthodox Church.

While I am pleased that Mohammed was willing to categorize Christians along with the Jews as “People of the Book,” I am not at all inclined to return the favor. Both Jews and Christians posit a God Whose nature is love. The same should not be said of Islam. Christians and Jews want peace, and the peace they want is “shalom” – which connotes wholeness, freedom and servanthood. The peace of Islam is significantly conflated with “surrender” (the real meaning of “Islam”). Muslim “peace” is politically expressed as an imposed totalitarianism called sharia, established by the sword, which can now be previewed in Nigeria, other African and Indonesian regions, and in the wahhabist doctrines of al-Qaeda.

Father Jonathan on Can Orthodox and Muslims get along?

it's a bit unusual

For the French press to delve too deeply into their politicians' private lives. Not so, the foreign press when it comes to President Sarkozy's divorce. 

But it seems a little of that has rubbed off at home, and rubbed Sarkozy up the wrong way abroad:

Sarkozy, in Lisbon for a two-day meeting of European Union leaders, was not in the mood to talk about his personal life on Friday. Asked by a reporter from Le Monde about his state of mind, he launched into a tirade.

"My state of mind is very simple: I was elected by the French people to solve their problems, not comment on my private life, and I would have thought a major newspaper like Le Monde would have a greater interest in Europe than in my private life," he said.

"Perhaps I should be flattered. If you think that the French people elected me for anything other than to work, work and work more — for the rest, the French ask for no comment from me. It interests them much less than you, and they are right. And perhaps they have a greater sense of propriety and more discretion, sir."

bling bling

It's a Ninja thing.

Photo Daniel A. Anderson / Orange County Register

A real dog.  From a real dog show. In the capital of über-fake: Las Vegas.

Via Mr. E who describes it as "kind of like Crufts on acid."

struggling

Pakistan is still reeling from a suicide bombing in Karachi which left over 130 people dead. The target: former prime-minister Benazir Bhutto.  The culprits no doubt are now facing a deep inner spiritual struggle.

In Thailand, the latest bomb wounds seven.  It's that deep, inner, spiritual struggle which makes southern Thailand "restive." 

In Iraq, a string of bombings kill more Iraqis. Mostly police. You can't struggle against a bomb-laden truck.

In Afghanistan, they leave their struggles on the side of the road.  But police still died.

In the Philippines,at least eight have been killed in a blast at a Manila Mall. Latest updates indicate that it too, was a bomb.  What bet that was a deep, inner, spiritual struggle over not using the credit card.

a theologian writes

On Kevin Rudd's political cowardice.

(via Faith and Theology where said theologian writes a theologian's view of Blair's law)

continuing...

With the tit for tat election we've been having we have to have.

You got nurses?  I got nurses.

You got tax cuts? Have I got tax cuts.

You got unrepresentative swill?  Hey, I had that last election.

super dooper fantastic

Tax cuts.

Like we didn't know it was election year.

So are they L.A.W. Law, core, or non-core?

even more fantastic

A blogging conference that wasn't blogged.

fantastic

The neighbour's adult son has moved back home.

With the drum kit.

parents

The posters were already up when I left church this morning, and so it was no surprise when dad told me the election had been called, when I dropped in on the Aged P.s on the way home. 

And he also told me that Kim Beazley Senior had died - news which I had missed. A rotten year for Kim Beazley Junior.

Tributes tonight for Beazley Snr. in the press - and although all speak of his integrity and the respect he commanded, there are the predictable emphases and jibes.

The Age focuses on his work in education and Aboriginal Affairs, and  almost berates Beazley's personal integrity with a backhanded compliment:

Throughout much of his parliamentary career, Beazley was regarded as the "conscience of the ALP". Certainly he earned the respect of both colleagues and opponents as a man of high integrity. Yet for some time in the 1950s, after Beazley reached a profound turning point in his career in 1953, serious doubts were raised in some ALP quarters of his ability to survive in politics. This arose from his connection with Moral Re-Armament and his declaration that he had made a decision "to concern myself daily with the challenge of how to live out God's will and to turn the searchlight of absolute honesty on to my motives". Hardly usual language for a politician.

The ramifications were soon felt, with one political columnist writing: "No one with even a slight working knowledge of politics could fail to delight in the confusion that could result from even one of our politicians resolving to be absolutely honest."

Many Labor adherents were in fact quite disturbed. The late Alan Reid, doyen of political correspondents at the time, reported that Beazley was facing political destruction and added: "Powerful office-hungry individuals fear that his idealism and his current determination to pursue truth, whatever the price, could cost the Labor Party the next election. The story they are assiduously and effectively peddling is, 'Beazley has lost his balance'. So the word has gone out, 'Destroy him'." But they did not destroy him.

Beazley went on to become one of Parliament's longest serving members, having served 32 years in the House of Representatives when he retired in 1977.

Sounds positively feral.

The West Australian:

But Beazley was out of touch with many of the "modern" issues beguiling Labor.

At a state conference in 1970, with an agenda that included legalising abortion, allowing gay couples to adopt children and abolishing censorship, he let rip with his most famous denunciation:

"When I joined the Labor Party, it contained the cream of the working class. But as I look about me now all I see are the dregs of the middle class. And what I want to know is when you middle class perverts are going to stop using the Labor Party as a spiritual spitoon."

Out of touch? For some in Labor, perhaps, but that quote is on the money. And history has proved him right: it's been the Labor Party's obsession with peripheral issues - that of the looney left - that has kept it in the wilderness for so long.  It's only by being dragged back towards the centre, first by Beazley Jnr, and then by Rudd, that Labor's fortunes have been revived. That, and a very tired and duplicitous government.

I am too young to remember Beazley Senior although the Aged P.s do. They never, ever discuss politics except to pass on snippets of news now and then, and I have absolutely no clue how they vote, nor they me. It is unstated rule in my family that you hold those cards close to your chest. So I was surprised when they went on today about politics - or rather politicians, both state and federal.  Discussing their flaws and tactics, comparing them across time, saving some of their best jibes for the pitiful group that inhabits North Terrace. And then mum dropped this clanger: "I'm almost inclined to cast a blank ballot this time.  There are no honest politicians left."

I must take after my mum.

Update: Zoe's mum says

sunday saint

Sainte Barbe

Saint Mark, Saint Barbara and Saint Luke
Stefan Lochner, 1445-1450

Another visual feast and the legend of Sainte Barbe from the ever interesting La Boîte à Images

get your spite and spit together

It may be on.

Love the way The Australian puts in a 404 place holder item for 10.00am under Breaking News with the headline "Howard on his way to see GG" on its web front page.

Would love it if it had to be changed: Howard trips as alights from car, breaks toe, hospitalised for three days.  Election call on hold.

I kind of wish the election could be sooner; I'm past caring. I've had enough already.

ok

So I'm watching the final ten minutes of the England-France rugby match, switching on just as an English player ploughed into a touch judge.

Oops a French player is down now.

I will confess at church later this morning.

Update: England 14-9. 

gloria

A nice post on The Great Doxology which appears in Eastern Orthodox Matins and Great Compline liturgies daily throughout the world. An abbreviated form, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, referred to simply as the Gloria, is also found in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and other traditions. 

We sing it too, in my church (although I confess to having a soft spot for Byzantine chant) so it's always fun to know more of its history and provenance. There is also something glorious each time you sing it: you are joining with saints of the past and saints across the globe and across traditions to offer praises to the One who truly unites us.

It pains me therefore,when some ministers of the gospel don't get it.  But if you want a contrast here it is.  In one of the most stunning displays of arrogance and ignorance I have ever read on a blog by a so-called priest, "Basics of Welcoming Liturgy", the not-so-Reverend Jarrett Kerbel - writes:

9. Cut extraneous crap! Here are some suggestions - THE GLORIA (ack, ick,) this is praise? no, this is impenetrable dogma set to shitty music

The rest of his basics are nothing short of, blasphemous, or else simply ridiculous:

Also, while I am at it, can we please stop praying for the ’virgin’ Mary? The Greek means ’young woman,’ and she wasn’t a virgin. Virgins don’t have babies.

Says Christopher:

The boy can write a damn fine epitaph, I'll give him that.  That's going on the Episcopal Church's tombstone.

You guessed it. It's an ECUSA minister. And, well, the not-so-Reverend does bill himself as a "Protestant Dinosaur." Trouble is, how many people will dinosaurs like him stomp on, extinguishing their faith, before the ECUSA finally becomes extinct?

reincarnating Milton's satan

As Al Pacino.

jerry springer goes to moscow

And it's about as stage managed as a WWWF match.  Except both WWWF and Jerry Springer are still on air.

Hat tip: the seriously twisted colleagues of Ruth Gledhill

i'd like to think this is a joke

But nothing surprises me anymore.

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots.

David