DogfightAtBankstown

phew! looks like i just slipped in

Without a treasury of merits:

2. In an interview with "L'Osservatore Romano" on January 9, and in an unsigned note published by the same newspaper four days later, cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints, announced that toward the end of February there will be the public presentation of the instruction "Sanctorum Mater," on the opening of causes of beatification, an instruction that until now was known only to those directly involved in the process.

The document – dated May 17, 2007, the Italian text of which was published in "Acta Apostolicae Sedis" issue no. 6, June 1, 2007, pp. 465-510 – translates into precise norms the guidelines that Benedict XVI gave to the congregation for the causes of saints in a message on April 27, 2006.

Caution and accuracy: these are the criteria that the pope and the congregation want to see more closely observed.

In particular, the instruction demands that "the seriousness of the investigations" into the alleged miracles "be safeguarded, [...] the procedures for the examination of which have, over the last twenty years, produced problematic elements."

Greater guarantees have also been established concerning the "reputation of sanctity." Without this – without, that is, an exemplary Christian life already recognized as such by a great number of the faithful, no process of beatification will be opened anymore. In other words: the pride and entrepreneurship of a religious order toward their founder or confrere are not enough.

Other stringent norms concern the gathering of documents and testimonies. Questions will be posed to the witnesses in a simple and concise manner, so as "to solicit answers that exhibit knowledge of concrete facts and the sources of this knowledge." This is meant to avoid formulations that are "insidious, deceptive, suggesting the desired answers."

It remains the case that, in order for the cause to proceed "there must emerge absolutely no element that goes against faith or good morals," so due emphasis must be given to "any findings that contradict the reputation of sanctity."

The document recommends moreover that the bishops avoid "any action that might induce the faithful to believe wrongly" that the investigation underway must necessarily lead to beatification or canonization. Before the conclusion of the diocesan cause, it must on the contrary be assured and certified that the servant of God "not be the object of undue devotion."

It is easy to read in these norms a correction of the tendency toward an "inflationary" approach toward beatifications and canonizations that had crept in during the past few decades.

Before the interest rate went up.

real and maybe not real

Sweet enough to eat.

So cute you'll puke.

Update: And maybe not something I'd eat without puking.

britain continues to slide

Into full-scale idiocy.

Cop the headline even: two-mother family law under threat. 

Apart from the law having not even been passed, it's more like fathers who are under threat:

A powerful alliance of politicians and churchmen will attempt to ambush legislation that will enshrine in law for the first time the concept of a two-mother family.

They are determined to overturn a change in law proposed by the Government to give both women in a lesbian relationship the legal status of parents when one of them gives birth after fertility treatment. Experts say this marks a historic change in how a family is legally defined.

As if the killing of unborn children wasn't enough of an outrage:

Campaigners will also force the first major parliamentary vote on abortion in 20 years, when they try to overturn the law passed in 1990 that permits terminations on the grounds of disability at any time in the pregnancy up until the point of birth.

Get rid of fathers:

Since fertility legislation was regulated in 1990, doctors have been required to consider the welfare of the baby including the "need of that child for a father".

But in the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which will go before the House of Lords on Monday, the Government is seeking to delete the obligation to fathers.

Doctors will instead have to consider the "need for supportive parenting" with no mention of fathers.

And I thought such sexism was supposedly booted out in the 60s.

edwards out

Given all the bad blood between them, an Obama-Clinton ticket ain't gonna look cute and sweet.

And if Hillary only ever gets to be VP it's gonna be a helluva Pelosi-Clinton show.

Bring out the saucers and the milk. 

R-r-r-r-r-A-A-o-w.

who pays

For Gitmo lawyers?

Surprise.

this just in

Britney Spears has mental issues.

Shocked.

whoah

Amanda of Flop Eared Mule has a spiffy new site. 

And I mean spiffy.

Guy of Polemica has now gone eponymous.

dark horse race

Well I did think McCain may end up somewhere on the Republican ticket.  And the odds are looking better after Florida.

Rumours Rudy will quit the race before Super Tuesday confirm he is a one-act show.

Next.

eliminating the religious ghosts

From the murder of Hrant Dink.

atheocracy

One of the annoying features of being a netizen of the saintly persuasion is that one quickly tires of the swarms of evangelical atheists who have somehow found a new champion in Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, or even P.Z. Meyers and flock around blogs, newspaper commentary boxes and other websites which deal with anything related to faith.  While there is some evidence of a backlash against Dawkins et co. in Britain, he and his fellow "brights" still maintain some influence amongst some in the U.S. and perhaps to a lesser extent here and other parts of the Christian West.  Their's is a rather shallow critique of religion, most times boxing against some straw man caricature (usually of Christianity) and more often than not, ignoring one of the biggest elephants in the room:  atheism and violence.

Books advocating atheism have recently been enjoying a modest boomlet. Sales are solid, book readings are sold out, and their authors grace the highbrow talk shows and op-ed pages in prestigious newspapers and periodicals. But their arguments are shopworn, stale hand-me-downs and threadbare heirlooms inherited from an era that was fading away even before the French Revolution had made the connection between atheism and violence clear to any fair observer. Yet these books read as if they came from authors who had never heard of the Reign of Terror or Robespierre.

It is this blinkered ahistorical myopia that makes reading these books such a surreal experience. For like a “red thread” running through all their other arguments, each book has one central claim: Belief in God causes violence. The obvious corollary to this thesis is almost too absurdly risible to merit formulation, and some authors are just coy (or embarrassed) enough not to say it out loud; but others are bolder and shout it from the rooftops: If only atheism would take hold as the majority view throughout the globe, humans would lose their propensity for violence, lion would nestle beside the lamb, children would regain their long-lost happiness, swords would magically turn into plowshares, churches would empty and the resultant collapse in the market-price for incense would alone reverse global warming. Richard Dawkins, for example, opens his recent book The God Delusion with this hilariously naïve depiction of the Eschaton that awaits us if only we would cast off the security blanket of religion:

Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as “Christ-killers,” no Northern Ireland “troubles,” no “honor killings,” no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (“God wants you to give till it hurts”). Imagine no Talban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it.

The inevitable, even clichéd, response on the part of theists to this litany of woes is to ask: what about Hitler and Stalin? Yes, the question resorts to the hackneyed rhetorical ploy of et tu quoque (Latin for “So’s your old man”). But at least the question’s inevitability forces the atheist to show his hand. Thus Dawkins lamely avers that Hitler did believe in God (of sorts) and, hey, Stalin attended an Orthodox seminary in his youth! If that retort seems a tad desperate, England’s most pious unbeliever concludes with this wan distinction: “Stalin was an atheist and Hitler probably wasn’t, but even if he was, the bottom line of the Stalin/Hitler debating point is very simple. Individual atheists may do evil things but they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism.” So it’s not atheism that’s the problem, only atheists! At this point you can probably already hear someone offstage lip-synching G. K. Chesterton: it’s not that atheism has been tried and found wanting, you see, it’s just never been tried at all in its pure form, a point that would not likely have consoled the Carmelite nuns as they were being killed by Republican forces during Spain’s civil war in the 1930s.

Those who scream 'theocracy!' every time say, George W. Bush opens his mouth, or think all that is Christianity can be summed up by the Inquisition, the Crusades and the peculiar brand of "fundamentalist" Christianity which has arisen in some parts of the U.S. in the past 50 years, seem to have forgotten about the atheocracies in history.  Talk to a Russian Orthodox for a start.

And they have forgotten the lessons-even the prophecies-from the more sophisticated atheists who came before them of unbridled brutality that is atheism's natural end. Nietzsche especially:

Against these realities, all that the new atheists can offer is only the most jejune, wan, and bloodless humanism: not Nietzsche’s Zarathustra but John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Not once do these books look at the dilemma into which liberalism has fallen. In that regard, I am reminded of a little known fact from the Scopes “Monkey Trial.” Clarence Darrow was the progress-happy lawyer for the evolution-teaching defendant, and how much he has anticipated the new atheists! As Peter Berger dryly noted in his book A Rumor of Angels, Darrow was “an admirable man in many ways, but one dense enough sincerely to believe that a Darwinist view of man could serve as a basis for his opposition to capital punishment.” Such obtuseness is shared by most liberals today, who merrily fuse opposition to capital punishment, support for abortion and doctor-assisted suicide, condemnation of racism, and a vaguely appreciative acquaintance with evolutionary theory—without the least sense of the impossible dilemmas entailed in these contradictory positions.

Indeed, Alister McGrath - a fellow Oxford don and frequent critic of Dawkins - makes the same point in his brief history of atheism titled Twilight of Atheism.  He bookends the "golden years "of atheism with the French Revolution and the fall of the Berlin wall and notes too, the spectacular rise of Christianity in Africa, Asia and South America.  I'm not so sure that's permission for complacency.

The impact of the corrupt French Catholic church in fuelling the French Revolution and the way in which Protestant culture also provided space for atheism to rise are perhaps, the bigger lessons for Christians.

(via Amy Welborn)
Edited.

huzzah

Not just the Wall Street Journal but also Atlantic Monthly has now dropped its subscriber registration. 

ben meyers

Posts some Notes on the Theology of Boredom:

In Milan Kundera’s short novel, Identity (1998), the character Jean-Marc describes a visit to his dying grandfather. He hears a peculiar sound coming from the dying man’s mouth, “one sound, an ‘ahhhh’ that broke off only when he had to take a breath.” This “ahhhh” is not the sound of pain or of attempted communication; as Jean-Marc listens, he realises that the sound signifies an essential truth about human beings: “this [sound] is existence as such confronting time as such; and that confrontation … is named boredom” (p. 74). A bleak picture of our being-in-time, to be sure! One is reminded here of Heidegger’s massive analysis of boredom, where the strange indifference of “profound boredom” was identified as “the totality of that which is.”

So what might a theologian have to say about boredom? On the whole, theologians have harboured dark thoughts about boredom, and have tended to classify it either as somehow sinful or at least as a consequence of sin. In Either/Or, Kierkegaard famously remarked that “boredom is the root of all evil” (his argument is delightful: “The gods were bored, so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created” – and so on). Jacques Ellul’s work, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective (1969), identifies boredom – so “gloomy, dull, and joyless” – as one of the defining perversions of modern social life (p. 121). Ellul’s view here is close to that of Karl Barth, who similarly described “the signature of modern man” as neither serenity nor rebellion, but simply an “utter weariness and boredom.” In Barth’s view, “man is bored with himself,” and as a result “everything has become a burden to him” (Church Dogmatics III/2, p. 117).

Read on, if you can be bothered, if only to tell Ben he should expand this to a full essay.

if your whole mantra is change

You may not want an endorsement from Ted Kennedy.

But I always thought it was a woman's right to change her mind.

Such is betrayal.

Next.

hudoodwinked

The case of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, the young Afghan journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy against Islam, is a classic “clash of civilisations” issue pitting the principle of free speech against that of respect for religion. I’ve been trying to find out more details to understand where this case stands and how it should be reported.

Tom Heneghan at FaithWorld delves into what details are known to date, what he knows of the reaction across the Western and Muslim world and wonders where the Afghan blasphemy case goes now

As I commented there, this is Abdhul Rahman all over again, once again highlighting the absolute folly of not writing separation of mosque and state into the Afghan constitution; the differences between secular, Christian, Muslim even Hindu etc conceptions of relgious freedom; the inherent problem with Islam and the inability of Muslims to confront those problems head on. Because to do so would challenge the very foundations of Islam and usually incur a few death threats on those Muslims themselves (which is why I always say, the biggest threat to Muslims is other Muslims).

First rule of order I think should be religious freedom which recognizes not just an individual's freedom to convert, but freedom to apostasize.

Update: What chance of Muslims critically evaluating their faith even in the most liberal of Muslim countries?

i seemed to have missed

Sorry day.

Sorry.

(via Slatts)

righto

Like why should anyone care.

Rocker Lenny Kravitz has given up sex - and has been celibate for three years as a result.

The Are You Gonna Go My Way star has been linked with some of Hollywood's most beautiful women, including Nicole Kidman, Madonna, and Penelope Cruz, in the past, but now abstains from getting physical until marriage.

"(It's) just a promise I made until I get married. Where I'm at in life, the women have got to come with something else, not just the body, but the mind and spirit. It usually trips them out, but that's the way it's going to be. I'm looking at the big picture."

This just in: Lenny Kravitz is still the centre of the universe.

because i can't pass up

The opportunity for yet another rip-snorter from the Church of the Zeitgeist: that's the Episcopal Church of the U.S. of A.

Given its leadership is heavily slanted towards the loony political left, and has progressively turned the church into a front for political and social activism, it was about time they got to this.

Religious freedom: you can check out any time you like, but you just can never leave.

Hmm, where have I heard that before?

imam e-date from hell

It's wacky, hilarious, but also potentially fatal.

[I note too, the reference to mu'tah, also known as sigheh. My first of several posts on sigheh was back in 2005 and in terms of hit rates, remains one of the most popular on this blog.  But I'm guessing for all the wrong reasons.]

south carolina

Like we didn't expect that.

Yes Hillary, that Presidential seat doesn't quite look so callipygian.

Next.

why anyone

With any sense of justice would mourn the likes of Suharto or  Habash is beyond me.

Woolcott on Suharto.

way to go timbo

Just make sure they photograph you with the right leg missing (or was it the left?) when Reuters arrives.

In the meantime, everyone else will have fun crashing your server.

sunday apocalypse

More at BibliOdyssey

an update

On the fall out from Arun Ghandi's blog post at the Washington Post's On Faith.  Bye bye Ghandi:

The grandson of Indian spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi resigned yesterday as president of the board of a conflict resolution institute after writing an online essay on a Washington Post blog calling Jews and Israel "the biggest players" in a global culture of violence.

In his resignation letter to the board of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, founder Arun Gandhi wrote that his Jan. 7 essay "was couched in language that was hurtful and contrary to the principles of nonviolence. My intention was to generate a healthy discussion on the proliferation of violence. Clearly I did not achieve my goal. Instead, unintentionally, my words have resulted in pain, anger, confusion and embarrassment."

The institute is housed at the University of Rochester and has a university-paid director. Gandhi submitted his resignation to the board Thursday and it was accepted yesterday.

Prize idiot that one.

liberal malaysia

Where religious courts trump civil courts every time.  Even if you're not a Muslim.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — An ethnic Chinese man received a Muslim burial after a court ruled against the wishes of most of his family members, who maintained Friday he never converted to Islam.

An Islamic Shariah High Court in the central Negeri Sembilan state ruled Thursday that Gan Eng Gor, 74, also identified in court documents as Amir Gan Abdullah, was a Muslim and should be buried according to Islamic rites. The burial took place late Thursday.

The dispute was the latest in an increasing number of interfaith conflicts that have raised tensions in multiethnic Malaysia, where minority non-Muslims feel their religious rights are under threat.

All you need is some Muslim to say you're Muslim and that's that.

good grief

Is there any two-bit trollope and B-grade actress who hasn't been romantically linked with Heath Ledger?

feds dish out $5 mill

Other men's wives not happy.

fetch me a basin

Someone wants to wash their hands:

Israel wants to cut its links with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after militants blasted open the territory's border with Egypt in defiance of an Israeli blockade, Israel's deputy defence minister said.

Israel, which occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967, pulled troops and settlers out in 2005 but still controls its northern and eastern borders, airspace and coastal waters, and has imposed a blockade it says is meant to counter militant rocket fire.

Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai said Israel wanted to wash its hands of Gaza altogether by handing over the supply of electricity, water and medicine to others. An Israeli security official said Egypt should take over responsibility.

"We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it. So we want to disconnect from it," Vilnai said.

I've seen this idea bandied around the place in recent days - returning Gaza to an Egyptian protectorate.  Except this is what Egypt had to do to keep the Palestinians out (no nativity sets and cries of "apartheid" for this wall) :

They have plenty of their own trouble makers without adding more to the mix.

But this is not going to stop Hamas from exploiting the situation. 

A Hamas official warned yesterday that the next breakout from the Gaza Strip could be into Israel, with 500,000 Palestinians attempting to march towards the towns and villages from which they or their parents fled or were expelled 60 years ago.

"This is not an imaginary scenario and many Palestinians would be prepared to sacrifice their lives," said Ahmed Youssef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

Yes Israel's 60th birthday celebrations are coming up in a month or so.  Islamists never miss a photo op or some symbolic gesture, particularly on some symbolic date while media is around.  We even have the obligatory photo of man carrying child trying to get into Egypt to accompany this report.  I'm putting money on child not being sick - just another useful photo prop.  It's a Reuters picture after all.

And of course, the Egyptians have said thanks but no thanks.  They don't want responsibility for Gaza either.

Update: The Lizards at LGF are in a tiz because even the Washington Post noticed the game being played.

 

low life

Sometimes I think I believe too much in my fellow Australians. 

Heartened to hear of how people pulled together to fight the floodwaters across Queensland I was hoping that for once, we would not hear of looters.

Sadly, it has now almost become an expectation after any major disaster: if there's flood, storm, fire...expect the low life to emerge.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Update: Ooo yeah. You better keep them away from the locals. 

fools paradise

Yes it wasn't quite a year ago.

Source

Still, the absurdity continues. 

feral bean counters

“If you just want equipment you’re not ready,” Mr. Egami said in an interview. But, he added, James Freeman, the owner of the cafe, is different: “He’s invested time. He’s invested interest. He is ready.”

When the whirpool messes with your mind, it sounds like you're ready for the nuthouse.  Chicken. Egg. And all that.

reading right wing u.s. blogs

Is bad news for Presidential wannabes: it gives one an over-inflated sense of self-importance.

Next.

fizzle

The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched the Lambeth Conference and what a damn fizzer.  Here is the Anglican Communion in Crisis ^TM or is it in full scale crack up, and the Archbishop is doing his best to pretend that if he closes his eyes and er, everyone just keeps listening, the Messiah will come or something. 

Says The Ugley Vicar:

The fact is that perhaps one bishop in five has therefore not even indicated they are coming. The fact also is that these ‘painful controversies’ have not ‘clouded the life of the Communion’ like some inconvenience obscuring an otherwise-healthy picture. They have brought the Communion as we knew it in 1998 to an end. Only the most drastic surgery will save it from complete collapse some time before 2018, when the next Lambeth Conference would be scheduled.

What has happened, I ask, to the indications of seriousness in the Advent Letter? In Dr Williams’s mind, they may still be there. Indeed, since the actual programme of the Conference has not yet been published, we do not know precisely what is planned.

But the tone of bonhomie bodes ill. Even if Dr Williams wants to use the Conference, as he should, to address the crisis, it makes one wonder if the minders and managers of the ‘instruments of Communion’ are controlling the agenda so that nothing effective will be done.

Equipping Bishops for Mission — the title of the Conference — is hardly the need of the moment. With bishops inhibiting or consecrating other bishops faster than some of us can follow, we don’t even know who the Communion’s bishops are, let alone what their mission is, apart from messing it up for one another.

Or as BabyBlue put it bluntly in one comment:

The expressions of the reporters in the room were as interesting as anything that was actually said at the press conference (love how the British call that a “launch").  Frankly, they looked puzzled.  Like here’s one of the biggest stories of the decade so far - the division of the Anglican Communion - and the Archbishop of Canterbury wants to hold a “Be In” at Lambeth.  It is rather dumbfounding, you have to admit.  Where are the breakout sessions entitled:

Lawsuits & You: Six easy steps to survive the big bills
Endowments & You: How to raise quick cash & shut off the lights.
MDGs & You: How to divert attention from the Elephant in the Room.
Elephants & You: How to go on “listening tours” to divert attention from the Elephant in the Room.
Retirement & You: How to get a cheap timeshare in six seconds flat.

Man, not even a stoush.

Or even something worthy of derision.

Just a mumbled wimper.

Update: Oooo stoush stoush in Zimbabwe (actually it's a bit more complex than even this story suggests; they forgot the politics.)

mubarak is a tool

A pure and simple tool of Hamas.

And so is most of the world it seems.  Melanie Phillips lays it straight:

Once again, the shrewd strategists of Hamas have played a blinder in the past few days, managing to wrong-foot the governments of both Israel and Egypt and manipulate the ever-obliging western media. First, Hamas bombards southern Israel with rockets and shells -- 220 in four days, the latest volley in the 4000-plus such rocket attacks since Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005. Then, when Israel closes Gaza'™s supply route from Israel in a desperate attempt to stop this relentless onslaught, Hamas shuts off Gaza's electricity, claims that Israel is thus killing its old and sick and organises a candle-lit demonstration whose poignant images of winsome young faces illuminated in deep shadow are broadcast round the world, packing the emotional punch of an electronic Rembrandt. The resulting outcry by a so-called civilised world community that has resolutely refused even to report the rocket barrages (does anyone imagine that if any of those countries had been hit by 4000 rockets in two and a half years they would not have simply flattened the attackers making war upon them?) forces Israel to beat a hasty retreat and re-open the supply route.

Israel: nil, Hamas: one.

Indeed, Hamas even invited the media to watch them cut off the electricity supply.  They looted hospital fuel supplies for the use of their leaders and they ordered Gaza bakeries to close even though they had enough fuel to remain open.  And when Palestinian militants are killed they are just "Palestinians" to the media, not the murderous, barborous thugs that they are.

Yet even while Israel is being excoriated for ‘laying brutal siege’ to Gaza and inflicting ‘collective punishment’ upon the Palestinians in their ‘open prison’, the said Palestinians suddenly breach a hole in the wall with Egypt and pour through. What’s this – a ‘Berlin wall’ that the Telegraph and others have suddenly discovered Egypt operates to keep the Palestinians in Gaza and out of Egypt? Just like Israel has done? Isn’t Egypt’s wall therefore also an ‘apartheid wall' -- or is it only the Jews who do apartheid? And what’s this – a supply route into Gaza controlled by Egypt, not Israel? So how can this have been Israel’s ‘brutal siege’? Hasn’t Egypt equally been laying ‘brutal siege’ to the Gazans, also enforcing upon them ‘collective punishment’ and also forcing them to live in an ‘open prison’? Or is it only the Jews who can ever be guilty of such heinous acts? Clearly this is so for Tim Butcher of the Telegraph, for whom breaching the Egyptian wall ended

Israel's swingeing blockade

And what'€™s this? Khaled Abu Toameh reports in the Jerusalem Post:

At least 90 Gazans, most of them women, were wounded by Egyptian border guards using tear gas, clubs, water cannons and live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators, who were protesting against the continued closure of the border crossing

That'™s protesting against the closure of Egypt's border crossing. If Israel had wounded 90 Palestinians using tear gas, clubs, water cannons and live ammunition, there would have been hysterical claims of a massacre and genocide. Yet when the Egyptians do it, the British media scarcely even report it.

The astounding distortion of the media's coverage of the Middle East means that most people are unaware of the extreme lengths to which Egypt routinely goes to keep the Palestinians out. That is in large measure because Egypt'™s President Mubarak is fighting to prevent the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is an important terrorist branch) from taking over his country. Gaza is thus a nightmare for him. Fighting to contain the Brotherhood within, he now has them on his doorstep in Hamastan. Unable or unwilling to act against them himself, he relies on Israel to do it for him in killing Hamas terrorists, and has been happy to co-operate with Israel in building a barrier against them.

But now Hamas has breached that barrier. According to a scoop in today’s Times, far from the naïve stories that the wall was breached by opportunist gangs of ‘masked men’ this was an operation carefully planned and executed by Hamas. As the Times reports, Hamas had been secretly cutting the border with Egypt for months.

Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours. But a Hamas border guard interviewed by The Times at the border today admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches...

The guard, Lieutenant Abu Usama of the Palestinian National Security, said of the cutting operation: 'I've seen this happening over the last few months. It happened in the daytime but was covered up so that nobody would see.' ™ Asked whether he had reported it to the government, he replied: '˜It was the government that was doing this. Who would I report it to?'™

Priceless. Egypt: nil; Hamas: two.

If Hamas were ever to come to power in the West Bank – which would almost certainly happen if Israel were to withdraw –  and in Egypt, Islamism would be well on the way to sweeping through the entire region, and the rest of the world would be in even more danger than it is now. The gullible stupidity of the western intelligentsia, in sanitising Hamas and mindlessly reproducing its propaganda lies as facts, is thus helping deliver further victory to the very people who are pledged to destroy the free world. But blinded by their prejudice against the Jewish state, this is the last thing the useful idiots of the west will ever see.

And now Mubarak has said he authorized his border guards to allow Palestinians to cross for basic necessities (suddenly everyone in Gaza is short of cigarettes and furniture it seems - oh and TVs given there is no electricity) provided they don't bring in weapons.  But what a nice way to funnel in more weapons and other militants trained in countries such as Syria, into Gaza.

Frankly if anyone decided to lop missiles into my back yard and I had any say in how to respond, they wouldn't be screaming humanitarian crisis.

Update: Hot Air notes that Pallywood is re-open for business. And points to this priceless photo.  Even Time magazine has realised that some people are so bigoted against the Israelis, there is no need to photoshop this "humanitarian crisis" by cropping the daylight streaming through the curtained windows.

Brian at Snapped Shot has more.  And do follow the links in both posts.

Update 2: Please no not ask me about the painted red beard on the photo in front of one of the "parliamentarians".  It's not as if production values at Pallywood are very high.  But the studious attention to bits of paper is priceless too, but.

morons

A WOULD-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say.

It was the second such incident in two days, with another man killing himself and three others on Tuesday when his bomb-filled waistcoat exploded as he was putting it on in the southern town of Lashkar Gah.

Tempts one to actually pray for more accidents like these.

money can never heal

Nor can time:

It is one of the darkest chapters of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. More than 110 children in Eskimo villages claim they were molested between 1959 and 1986, raped or assaulted by 12 priests and three church volunteers. Families and victims believe that another 22 people were sexually abused by clergy members but have since killed themselves. The Jesuit Oregon Province, which includes Alaska, has agreed to pay $50 million in damages. It is believed to be the largest settlement ever against a religious order.

A monstrosity.

the ongoing story

Of Ezra Levant. 

Some MSM attention on a situation that is almost too ludricous to believe of 21st century Canada.

Shirlene McGovern, the Human Rights Officer who interviewed Ezra, has also complained about the publicity she is getting.  Perhaps that's because Iowahawk got a hold of her interview notes. 

Filed in triplicate.

P.S. I should add that the only piece I have found in the Aussie press is an op-ed from Janet Albrechtsen last week (with the obligatory bit of self-congratulations) which doesn't really bode well given how many people think she's a twat.

P.P.S. Oh, and in case you forgot, it seems fraud is also a human right in Canada.

loving your neighbour

In Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christiainity, Islam, Marcello Pera, former professor of the philosophy of science, secularist, agnostic and the current President of the Italian Senate argues that the thinking currently prevailing in the West regarding the universal features of the West is that none of them has universal value.  According to proponents of this idea, the universality of Western institutions is an illusion, because they are only one particularity among many, with a dignity equal to that of others, without any intrinsic value superior to that of others. Consequently, to recommend these institutions as universal would be a gesture of intellectual arrogance or an attempt at cultural hegemony, imposed by arms, politics, economics, or propaganda. Moreover, seeking to export these same institutions to cultures or traditions different form our own would be an act of imperialism.  See Samuel Huntington’s thesis on the “clash of civilisations.”

A great symptom of this mixture of timidity, prudence, convenience, reluctance and fear which has permeated the West, says Pera, is the self censorship and self repression that goes under the name of “political correctness”. You can compare and evaluate anything within the confines of Western culture – sure argue the merits of a chardonnay over a cab sav -  but don’t ever compare between aspects of Western culture and counterparts in other cultures such as hospitality, social customs, individual behaviour, clothing etc. Do not organise them into a scale of preferences (I mean just ignore the fact that we don’t find boat loads of Aussies making a dash forAfghanistan or Americans heading for Cuba) because if you do, out pop the fascists of self-censorship, prohibitions and linguistic restraints. You can’t say anything is better or preferable, only different.

Pera continues:

To me this form of linguistic re-education is unacceptable. I reject it on moral grounds, which are the ultimate* reason for refuting an intellectual position.

[ . . . ]

The world is filled concern but also with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy on the part of people who see no evil and speak no evil to avoid becoming involved; who see no evil and and speak no evil to avoid appearing rude; who proclaim half-truths and imply the rest, to avoid assuming responsibility. These are the paralyzing consequences of the "political" correctness (as well as intellectual, cultural, and linguistic correctness) that I reject.

[. . .]

After years of virtual or remote anthropology exercises conducted by philosophers and scientists to prove that cultures cannot be arranged in hierarchical order, the case of Islam is finally real, at hand, and ever present.

In 1992, a French expert on Islam, Oliver Roy, wrote that "Political Islam cannot resist the test of power. . . . Islamism has been transformed into a neo-fundamentalism that only cares about re-establishing Islamic law, the sharia, without inventing new political forms." As proof, he pointed to a long list of shortcomings and failures. Islam has not produced its own political model, economic system, autonomous public institutions, division between family and the state, equal rights for women, or community of states founded on anything except religion. In other words, he considered Islam a failure. Rather than open itself up to new prospects, "The Islamic parenthesis has closed a door, the door of the revolution and the Islamic state."

I wonder whether the thesis of Oliver Roy, and of so many Westerners who are thinking along the same lines, is true or false. If it is true, can one then say that the Western model is better than the Islamic one?

The response to the first question depends solely on empirical research and analysis. The response to the second question does not, mainly because it patently expresses an evaluation ("better"). At this point, it would be useful to make a preliminary distinction: the difference between making a judgment and making a decision; in other words, the difference between affirming a thesis--in this case a value thesis of the type "A is better than B"--and taking a stand, in this case a political stand of the type "follow A," "fight against B." The two questions are related, although not in a logical, deductive manner. To argue that the model of Western democratic institutions and rights is better than the Islamic model does not imply taking any particular course of action. One could say that the West is better than Islam and still tolerate Islam, respect Islam, dialogue with Islam, ignore Islam, or even obstruct Islam, clash with Islam, among the many possible stances. According to the old proverb, it's one thing to say, another to do. To rephrase this proposition in logical terms, there are no formal implications between "is" and "ought" (ab esse ad oportere non valet consequentia, as one says in Latin).

The dominant culture in the West, however, thinks the opposite, and reveals its prejudices through a major flaw in reasoning. It thinks that "ought" descends from "is." According to this way of thinking, if a person maintains that the West is better than Islam--or, to be more specific, that democracy is better than theocracy, a liberal constitution better than sharia, a parliamentary decision better than a sura, a civil society better than an umma, a sentence by an independent tribunal better than a fatwa, citizenship better than dhimma, and so forth--then he or she ought to clash with Islam. This is an error of logic that compounds the error of believing that our institutions have no right or basis to be proclaimed as universal.

The consequence of these two errors is that today the West is paralyzed twice over. It is paralyzed because it does not believe that there are good reasons to say that it is better than Islam. And it is paralyzed because it believes that, if it such reasons do exist, then the West would have to fight Islam.

I personally reject these positions. I deny that there are no valid reasons for comparing and judging institutions, principles, and values. I deny that such a comparison cannot conclude that Western institutions are better than their Islamic counterparts. And I deny that a comparison will necessarily give rise to a conflict. I do not deny, however, that if an offer to dialogue is responded to with a conflict, then the conflict should not be accepted. For me, the opposite holds true. I affirm the principles of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and respect that are characteristics of the West today. However, if someone refuses to reciprocate these principles and declares hostility or a jihad, I believe we must acknowledge that this person is our adversary. In short, I reject the self-censorship of the West.

 

*To whoever might take issue with my use of the word "ultimate," I would point out that we reject Nazism, fascism, communism, racism, anti-Semitism, and fanaticism not because they conflict with some logical theorem, or because they are empirically or scientifically false, but because they offend our consciences, contradict our deep intuitions about human rights, and violate our fundamental values. We reject them, in other words, for practical rather than theological reasons.

So of course relativists who hold such views - that one should not judge or evaluate - get into a bit of a tiz when they read news like this:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan court on Tuesday sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam, an official said.

The three-judge panel sentenced Sayad Parwez Kambaksh to death for distributing a paper that humiliated Islam, said Fazel Wahab, the chief judge in the northern province of Balkh, where the trial took place. Wahab did not preside over the trial.

Kambaksh's family and the head of a journalists group denounced the verdict and said Kambaksh was not represented by a lawyer at trial. Members of a clerics council had been pushing for Kambaksh to be punished.

The case now goes to the first of two appeals courts, Wahab said. Kambaksh, who has been jailed since October, will remain in custody during appeal.

Wahab said he did not immediately have the details of the paper that Kambaksh circulated, other than that it was against Islam. Kambaksh discussed the paper with his teacher and classmates at Balkh University and several students complained to the government, Wahab said.

Kambaksh's brother, Yacoubi Brahimi, described Tuesday's proceeding as a "secret trial," saying the family did not know it had been scheduled. Some have accused Kambaksh of writing the paper in question, but Brahimi said that his brother printed it off the Internet.

"He told them he didn't write this article," said Brahimi. "It was written by an Iranian."

Wahab said that Kambaksh told the court that he could defend himself and did not need a lawyer. But Kambaksh's brother said his brother should have had an attorney.

Wahab said that only President Hamid Karzai can forgive Kambaksh because he had confessed to violating the tenets of Islam.

Rhimullah Samandar, the head of the Kabul-based National Journalists Union of Afghanistan, said Kambaksh had been sentenced to death under Article 130 of the Afghan constitution. That article says that if no law exists regarding an issue than a court's decision should be in accord with Hanafi jurisprudence.

Hanafi is an orthodox school of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence followed in southern and central Asia.

And for those who do understand that some values are universal, the question also remains: should the Afghani courts, be allowed to get away with this?

former us ambassador to the U.N.

One John Bolton, agrees with EUReferendum.

I will add, that Condoleeza Rice, has been one of the wimpiest and most ineffective Secretaries of State that the U.S. has had for a long, long time. 

Given Bolton's assessment of the events leading up to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 which ended the last Hezbollah-Israel war, her flakey advice may have also cost the Israelis and the Lebanese a golden opportunity to strike a mortal blow to Hezbollah, the cancer that has been eating Lebanon up from the inside.

Condy Rice duped by Green Helmet.

because

One simply cannot deride the ECUSA enough. 

They're out there, doing it for themselves.

exit 28

Probably from a drug overdose.

Way to go Heath.

Your daughter will just love you for that.

Update: One would think the world's most important person just died (or else it's a super slow news week) given the media saturation.  However, while it is tragic to read of one so young dying, I get the feeling there is plenty of spin to head off what seems to be an accidental or a deliberate overdose, most likely the latter.

in widely unexpected news

Fred Thompson drops his bundle.

Next.