DogfightAtBankstown

valentine

THE CRUDDIEST MOMENT OF THE CRAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE ON EARTH happened as I found myself watching five televisions simultaneously, each containing a different political pundit opining on the same subject. When I looked down toward my computer screen to see what the bloggers were saying about it, I noticed that a button on my shirt had come undone.

There I was, literally contemplating my own navel. But I didn't even crack a smile because, in the relentless drone of insipid opinion, irony no longer held any meaning.

I knew then that this whole thing had been a very poor idea, one from which I would not return undamaged. Because the clock on the wall said I still had 14 hours to go.

Poor? 

Try dim.

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

dith pran

Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said.

Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago.

school shuting

About Islamists and their useful idiots that they simply cannot spell.

Oh the huminity.

what's not to love

The Carpetblogger takes issue with the Holy Post-Soviet Travel Grail (with photo essay): Azerbaijan is not just a great holiday destination, it has the best ex-pat scene.

A statue of Heydar - the former KGB chief touted as "the father of Azerbaijan" by his son, the current President - in the former hub of Azeri chemical production, Sumgayit. The biggest tourist attraction in Sumgayit: A "baby's cemetary" that honors the thousands who died in infancy at the peak of Soviet-era pollution. Photo: Alexander Zaitchik

Sort of.

Balakhani. Photo: Alexander Zaitschik

these clowns aren't just stupid

Their wives know they're stupid:

THE YOUNG man rings his wife to ask her to pack a bag for him. He wants trackies, singlets, jocks and socks. She wants to know why he needs all those clothes for just two days in the mountains.

They talk: Her: "What are you going to do there exactly?"

Him: "Uh, go do a bit of, you know, terrorist training."

Her voice rises: "What are you going to do there?"

"Terrorist training."

"Don’t be stupid. What are you going to do there?"

"Nah, we gonna go camping."

"Camping for what, but?"

"Camping. The brothers all together, you know. Kick back, read a bit of Koran."

But they treat their wives as if they were even more stupid than them: trackies, singlets, jocks and socks for a couple of days kicking back, reading the Koran.

sunday reading

A tale of a tail.

earth hour

I think misvan at Street Anatomy has found the perfect image for next year's power of darkness campaign:

SWITCH ME OFF.

anatomy of a balloon animal

Pneumatic anatomica by Jason Freeny, at Street Anatomy.

(via David Thompson)

teaching gnosticism

Watching Blade Runner.

(via PaleoJudaica)

2020

That would be my cringe factor.

The full list of participants here.

The usual bloggers have rounded up the usual suspects, here, here, and hmm I thought Larva had a post on this because that's how I got the Matilda link, but it seems to be gone now.

The SA participants aren't exactly cause for SA pride.

I see our Catholic archbishop and the Rann government's favourite crimefighting monsignor made it to the Families and Social Inclusion forum.  I need to warn readers that Catholicism in South Australia leans - or rather flops jellylike - to the political and theological left to a dangerous degree - Al Gore is dished out during RE in local Catholic schools, local Catholic hospitals don't mean Catholic medical ethics, you know the drill - although I can't tell you much about these two gentlemen as individuals.  And I also need to warn you that families, especially those with young children, are not synonymous with South Australia.

The only SA participant in the Economics forum is John Ellice Flint of Santos, probably because Santos will soon be SA's only employer.  The rest of South Australia is either out to pasture or out of ideas.

In Rural Industries and Communities we have Donald Ian Blesing (I know that name from somewhere, but too lazy to google him up) and Ben Scott Haslett, the Riverland grower of cherry picking fame.  'Food' after all is one of our few industries.

The SA girls are really out in force for Governance.  And what girls are they.  Janet Giles, the perpetually activating unionist of long term SA Unions and Education Union of Australia fame, and Olivia Guarna of the Young Workers Legal Service.  I don't know why one would need unions much less young worker legal services in a state which can't generate either jobs or children, but they, along with other loonimaries like Elizabeth Ho of Education, UniSA are going to tell you about governance, dammit.

And the SA girls along with a few boys are really set to shine in the Indigenous forum.  I'm not even going to go through that list. Let's just guess, that having failed to marry or raise a family themselves, they are looking for someone to nanny.   

You are welcome to prove me wrong of course.

i guess this means

Geert is safe.

Update: check that.

woman in clown pants

Aims to save the God. From himself.

What makes this so hilarious is the earnestness of it all.

The sober truth however, is that Gretta Vospe has no balls to be a minister of Christ, nor does she have the integrity to resign and start her own new age cult.  The poor possum either doesn't think her 'values based spirituality' (yes you read that right) will sell or else thinks the UCC stands for the church for the fraudulent to raid the faithfuls' coffers.

I'm voting for the latter.

fitna

Wilder's short film has been posted on LiveLeak and can be viewed at various sites including Andrew Bolt's blog. Here it is too:

There are some very graphic images but there is nothing in there that you would have not seen or heard before.  You can find far worse with five minutes of googling.  Bolt calls it provocative. I call it hard reality.

The film opens with Sura 8:60.

For commentary I suggest Robert Spencer's Blogging the Qur'an -although that is still a work in progress and not complete.

On this verse, start with the beginning of the Sura:

Sura 8, Al-Anfal — “Booty,” or “The Spoils of War” — dates from the second year of the Medinan period, the second part of Muhammad’s prophetic career. It was revealed not long after the Battle of Badr, the first great victory of the Muslims over their chief rivals of the time, the pagan Quraysh tribe. The title of this sura is better known than most, since Saddam Hussein used Al-Anfal as the name for his genocidal 1988 campaigns against the Kurds, in which between 50,000 and 100,000 people were murdered.

At Badr, the Quraysh came out to meet Muhammad’s three hundred men with a force nearly a thousand strong. Muhammad had provoked the battle by sending his men out to raid a Quraysh caravan, telling them: “This is the caravan of Quraysh carrying their property, so march forth to intercept it, Allah might make it as war spoils for you.” As the battle loomed, according to Muhammad’s earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, the Islamic prophet strode among his troops and issued a momentous promise — one that has given heart to Muslim warriors throughout the ages: “By God in whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, no man will be slain this day fighting against them with steadfast courage advancing not retreating but God will cause him to enter Paradise.” One of the Muslim warriors, ‘Umayr bin al-Humam, exclaimed: “Fine, Fine! Is there nothing between me and my entering Paradise save to be killed by these men?” He flung away some dates that he had been eating, rushed into the thick of the battle, and fought until he was killed.

The Quraysh were routed. Some Muslim traditions say that Muhammad himself participated in the fighting; others that it was more likely that he exhorted his followers from the sidelines. In any event, it was an occasion for him to avenge years of frustration, resentment, and hatred toward his people who had rejected him. One of his followers later recalled a curse Muhammad had pronounced on the leaders of the Quraysh: “The Prophet said, ‘O Allah! Destroy the chiefs of Quraish, O Allah! Destroy Abu Jahl bin Hisham, ‘Utba bin Rabi’a, Shaiba bin Rabi’a, ‘Uqba bin Abi Mu’ait, ‘Umaiya bin Khalaf (or Ubai bin Kalaf).’” All these men were captured or killed during the battle of Badr. Ibn Ishaq says that one Quraysh leader named in this curse, ‘Uqba, pleaded for his life: “But who will look after my children, O Muhammad?” In the confrontation, ‘Uqba had thrown camel dung, blood, and intestines on the Prophet of Islam, to the great merriment of the Quraysh chieftans, while Muhammad prostrated himself in prayer. Muhammad had pronounced a curse on them, and now it was being fulfilled. Who would care for ‘Uqba’s children? “Hell,” Muhammad declared, and ordered ‘Uqba killed.

The victory at Badr was the turning point for the Muslims. It became the stuff of legend, a cornerstone of the new religion. And Allah rewarded those to whom he had granted victory.

Sura 8:60

Sura 4:56

Sura 17:4

Sura 47:4

Sura 4:89

Sura 8:39

It pays, whenever you hear a Muslim talk of "peace", "innocence", "justice", "freedom" or even "self-defense" and cite the Qur'an to back up their statements, to ask them what they mean by such terms.  This is because such terms often carry a completely different meaning in Islamic thought to what we commonly understand in countries such as ours.

For example some may cite Surah 2.190 to argue that jihad can only be waged in self-defense. Well really?

Verses 190-193 are among the Qur’an’s most important words about jihad warfare. V. 190, “begin not hostilities,” is often invoked today to show that jihad can only be defensive. Asad says that “this and the following verses lay down unequivocally that only self-defence (in the widest sense of the word) makes war permissible for Muslims.” However, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn says that this verse was abrogated by 9:1, which voids every treaty between the Muslims and nonbelievers. On the other hand, Ibn Kathir rejects the idea that the verse was abrogated.

What constitutes a defensive conflict? A clue to that comes in v. 193: “And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.” Ibn Ishaq explains that this means that Muslims must fight against unbelievers “until God alone is worshipped.” Says Bulandshahri: “The worst of sins are Infidelity (Kufr) and Polytheism (shirk) which constitute rebellion against Allah, The Creator. To eradicate these, Muslims are required to wage war until there exists none of it in the world, and the only religion is that of Allah.” This conflict would be essentially defensive, against the aggressions of unbelief: if Muslims must fight until unbelief does not exist, the mere presence of unbelief constitutes sufficient aggression to allow for the beginning of hostilities. This is one of the foundations for the supremacist notion that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers until those unbelievers are either converted to Islam or subjugated under the rule of Islamic law, as 9:29 states explicitly. As the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, puts it: “I have been commanded to fight against people, till they testify to the fact that there is no god but Allah, and believe in me (that) I am the messenger (from the Lord) and in all that I have brought. And when they do it, their blood and riches are guaranteed protection on my behalf except where it is justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.” Thus one may reasonably assume that if one does not accept him as a prophet, one’s blood and riches are not safe from those who read these words as the words of a messenger from the one true God.

But the truth is, this violent Islam is like a global cancer that has infected all countries, both non-Muslim and Muslim.  Such violence and hate is inherent in Islam - in its history and thought - and can only be solved by Muslims, who themselves have often been its victims.

But how can Muslims counter that? Too many are quick to defend Islam without facing up to the truths of their history and tradition.  Those who do speak up are usually threatened in some way, usually with death.  Ijtihad - a minority position - has made no indents at all. Others are just not willing to pay the price that even non-Muslims are paying on their behalf to free them from this cancer.  Even apostasy is forbidden.

However, one can't just throw up one's hands with a fatalistic in'shallah shrug nor with characteristic buddha-like resignation.  Like a cancer, violent Islam has to be confronted forcefully.  It may require pain and suffering. There is no guarantee of easy victory. 

But to ignore it means certain death.

Update: More at Catallaxy.  In unsurprising news, LiveLeak has pulled the video because of serious threats to staff (thereby proving the thesis of Fitna).  YouTube posting here (also at LGF). But as I said, nothing in Fitna cannot be found on the internet - not just footage of 911, Madrid, London, the treatment of murdered U.S. personnel in Iraq - but also far worse examples of anti-semitic, anit-infidel, anti-American and anti-Western rants by imams and the like, posted by jihadis and their supporters themselves.

Update 2: Also at Google video and at various other sites.

Update 3: Somewhat unrelated but it does mention "Geert Wilders, the dyed blond with ugly roots": Mollie at GetReligion points to a rather odd article titled "Christian rage and Muslim moderation" by Christopher Dickey at Newsweek. I have no idea who Dickey is, although google tells me he's also an "award-winning author", which in Australia, usually means the entire first print run of your book was remaindered.  I think "useful idiot" is the term you are looking for there Mollie.

Update 4: The Currency Lad: Four Stars for Fitna, but not Five.

Update 5: And yes, the Ummah has no sense of irony; some are still blogging to prove it.

Update 6: Dhimmi alert, or is it dimwit alert.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Geert Wilders' film Fitna equated Islam with acts of terror and violence and was "highly offensive".

"It is an obvious attempt to generate discord between faith communities," Mr Smith said.

"Like leaders in the Muslim world and in Europe, I strongly reject the ideas contained in the film and deplore its release.

"In Australia we believe in the right to freedom of expression but we don't believe in abusing that right to incite racial hatred."

Racial hatred? What sort of race is Islam Mr Smith?

Update 7: The Guardian's Ali Eteraz gets a makeover.

just reverting for a little while

To do some tweaking.

the atheist delusion

Atheism's golden years, some would argue, were bookmarked by the fall of the Bastille and the fall of the Berlin Wall.  In between, the joys of atheism and atheocracies were mighty to behold. 

And yet here we are, with a new breed of secular fundamentalists perpetuating old myths and new fables:

The notion that religion is a primitive version of science was popularised in the late 19th century in JG Frazer's survey of the myths of primitive peoples, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. For Frazer, religion and magical thinking were closely linked. Rooted in fear and ignorance, they were vestiges of human infancy that would disappear with the advance of knowledge. Dennett's atheism is not much more than a revamped version of Frazer's positivism. The positivists believed that with the development of transport and communication - in their day, canals and the telegraph - irrational thinking would wither way, along with the religions of the past. Despite the history of the past century, Dennett believes much the same. In an interview that appears on the website of the Edge Foundation (edge.org) under the title "The Evaporation of the Powerful Mystique of Religion", he predicts that "in about 25 years almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the awe that it does today". He is confident that this will come about, he tells us, mainly because of "the worldwide spread of information technology (not just the internet, but cell phones and portable radios and television)". The philosopher has evidently not reflected on the ubiquity of mobile phones among the Taliban, or the emergence of a virtual al-Qaida on the web.

The growth of knowledge is a fact only postmodern relativists deny. Science is the best tool we have for forming reliable beliefs about the world, but it does not differ from religion by revealing a bare truth that religions veil in dreams. Both science and religion are systems of symbols that serve human needs - in the case of science, for prediction and control. Religions have served many purposes, but at bottom they answer to a need for meaning that is met by myth rather than explanation. A great deal of modern thought consists of secular myths - hollowed-out religious narratives translated into pseudo-science. Dennett's notion that new communications technologies will fundamentally alter the way human beings think is just such a myth.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins attempts to explain the appeal of religion in terms of the theory of memes, vaguely defined conceptual units that compete with one another in a parody of natural selection. He recognises that, because humans have a universal tendency to religious belief, it must have had some evolutionary advantage, but today, he argues, it is perpetuated mainly through bad education. From a Darwinian standpoint, the crucial role Dawkins gives to education is puzzling. Human biology has not changed greatly over recorded history, and if religion is hardwired in the species, it is difficult to see how a different kind of education could alter this. Yet Dawkins seems convinced that if it were not inculcated in schools and families, religion would die out. This is a view that has more in common with a certain type of fundamentalist theology than with Darwinian theory, and I cannot help being reminded of the evangelical Christian who assured me that children reared in a chaste environment would grow up without illicit sexual impulses.

Dawkins's "memetic theory of religion" is a classic example of the nonsense that is spawned when Darwinian thinking is applied outside its proper sphere. Along with Dennett, who also holds to a version of the theory, Dawkins maintains that religious ideas survive because they would be able to survive in any "meme pool", or else because they are part of a "memeplex" that includes similar memes, such as the idea that, if you die as a martyr, you will enjoy 72 virgins. Unfortunately, the theory of memes is science only in the sense that Intelligent Design is science. Strictly speaking, it is not even a theory. Talk of memes is just the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors.

Dawkins compares religion to a virus: religious ideas are memes that infect vulnerable minds, especially those of children. Biological metaphors may have their uses - the minds of evangelical atheists seem particularly prone to infection by religious memes, for example. At the same time, analogies of this kind are fraught with peril. Dawkins makes much of the oppression perpetrated by religion, which is real enough. He gives less attention to the fact that some of the worst atrocities of modern times were committed by regimes that claimed scientific sanction for their crimes. Nazi "scientific racism" and Soviet "dialectical materialism" reduced the unfathomable complexity of human lives to the deadly simplicity of a scientific formula. In each case, the science was bogus, but it was accepted as genuine at the time, and not only in the regimes in question. Science is as liable to be used for inhumane purposes as any other human institution. Indeed, given the enormous authority science enjoys, the risk of it being used in this way is greater.

Contemporary opponents of religion display a marked lack of interest in the historical record of atheist regimes. In The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, the American writer Sam Harris argues that religion has been the chief source of violence and oppression in history. He recognises that secular despots such as Stalin and Mao inflicted terror on a grand scale, but maintains the oppression they practised had nothing to do with their ideology of "scientific atheism" - what was wrong with their regimes was that they were tyrannies. But might there not be a connection between the attempt to eradicate religion and the loss of freedom? It is unlikely that Mao, who launched his assault on the people and culture of Tibet with the slogan "Religion is poison", would have agreed that his atheist world-view had no bearing on his policies. It is true he was worshipped as a semi-divine figure - as Stalin was in the Soviet Union. But in developing these cults, communist Russia and China were not backsliding from atheism. They were demonstrating what happens when atheism becomes a political project. The invariable result is an ersatz religion that can only be maintained by tyrannical means.

Something like this occurred in Nazi Germany. Dawkins dismisses any suggestion that the crimes of the Nazis could be linked with atheism. "What matters," he declares in The God Delusion, "is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does." This is simple-minded reasoning. Always a tremendous booster of science, Hitler was much impressed by vulgarised Darwinism and by theories of eugenics that had developed from Enlightenment philosophies of materialism. He used Christian antisemitic demonology in his persecution of Jews, and the churches collaborated with him to a horrifying degree. But it was the Nazi belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without parallel in history. Hitler's world-view was that of many semi-literate people in interwar Europe, a hotchpotch of counterfeit science and animus towards religion. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was a type of atheism, or that it helped make Nazi crimes possible.

And offering a man-made religion in their own self-deluded image:

Nowadays most atheists are avowed liberals. What they want - so they will tell you - is not an atheist regime, but a secular state in which religion has no role. They clearly believe that, in a state of this kind, religion will tend to decline.

Where have we heard that before? 

Not quite reality-based. More like faith-based:

The problem with the secular narrative is not that it assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society. Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be adopted as an instrument of policy by the world’s pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century. Wealth has increased, but it has been repeatedly destroyed in wars and revolutions. People live longer and kill one another in larger numbers. Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.

Note: The churches did not collaborate with Hitler "to a horrifying degree". The Nazis had no love of Christians nor they them; once the Jews were exterminated, their plan was to eradicate Christians.

tweaking

So, instead of redesigning this blog from scratch, I just used a typepad template and tweaked it with some sloppy CSS. 

A few quick trials - a three column design looked too busy, but the two column version seems too wide.  And I am not sure if it is my eyes, my screen or just that this still doesn't look too readable.  Not that it should worry many as I think most of you read this blog through a feed reader.  And yeah yeah if the content stinks no-one will read it (but I am thankful for the few of you who do).

Anyway, leave me suggestions before I go ahead and clean up the CSS and tweak the last few bits that need tweaking.  Reduce the font size and make the line-spacing tighter? Lose the serif fonts?  Narrower post column? Put the links list - desparately needing an update -back on the left?

Whaddya reckon?

easter sunday

Something strange is happening ... there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: "My Lord be with you all." Christ answered him: "And with your spirit." He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying,   "Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light."

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendents I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, become your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I recieved in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the   marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in   paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise.  I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne  formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal  chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.
                    -- Holy Saturday Homily of Epiphanius of Salamis (4th Century)

Christ is risen.

the resurrection of sin

No one is guilty any more, they are all victims. Modern psychology has reached the paradoxical conclusion that society can be collectively guilty (as with the recent stolen generations apology), even though it is comprised of individuals who are all innocent.

Indeed.

good friday

From the Icon Gallery of St. Clemence Church,  Ohrid,
Macedonia. Second half 13th century.

I call Him King, because I see Him crucified: it belongs to the King to die for His subjects -- John Chrysostom

Crucified Love of the Father, Crucifying Love of the Son, Love of the Holy Spirit triumphant by the wood of the Cross -- Philatet of Moscow

No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again --Jesus (John 10: 18)

he's not english, he's got a chin

Well that's what the lady of this house says.  Chins seem to be a bit of a thing for the ladies:

BRAD PITT and George Clooney have their charms but when it comes to choosing a chin, American men prefer an Aussie style.

Californian cosmetic surgeon Robert Yoho said the trend in Hollywood was for a strong jawline, like those of Australian stars such as Hugh Jackman, Pat Rafter, Mel Gibson, Errol Flynn and, of course, the iconic Chesty Bond.

Dr Yoho - in Australia for the annual cosmetic medicine conference on the Gold Coast - said a strong jawline equated with confidence and character.

"Australians have the most manly facial structure I've seen and that's what Americans want," he said. "It makes you look like a movie star."

The lady of this house also reckons Eric Bana has had a chin implant.  Either that, or they don't really like shooting him in full profile, even if he is no Rene Russo.

root causes

Did you know that George Bush used to attend the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas? That he was friends with the Reverend Fred Phelps for 20 years? That Fred Phelps performed the wedding ceremony for George and Laura? That Bush used to refer to Phelps as his spiritual advisor and mentor? That Phelps baptized the Bush daughters? That Phelps served in a leadership role on Bush' first campaign for President?

Imagine that!

That needs some serious scrutiny, Wright?

Wright?

No, forget the root causes.  Bury them.

But since they've been resurrected, here's the AP style guide as to how to defend them.

Just persist with the pervasive head tilt, even if you can't stop accentuating the stutter:

Indeed, Uncle Jeremiah may have just done the world a big favour.

Next.

(HT Valkyrie, LGF, HotAir)

the return of the bow tie

Not for the faint-hearted.

Speaking of faint-hearted fashion, is it just me, or is the Rudd-meister not only supporting a paunch  but also distinctively longer sideburns these days? 

Now there's a braveheart: channelling Elvis.

despatches from lebanon

Jack Lacton at Kerplunk is posting a series of "Despatches from Lebanon" by a mate. A taster from the first Despatch:

My spare time has been used walking around Beirut taking interesting photos of buildings that were attempted to be demolished by small arms fire. Quite a feat when you look at how many rounds it takes to chip away at concrete. Some of the more industrious demolishers used rocket propelled grenades to hack off larger hunks. A much more efficient method of destruction. Most of these buildings are owned by developers waiting for the right time to develop and reconstruct their investment.

Beirut is quite an attractive city, in some ways it could be any European city set on the water at the foothills of a mountain range. Given the strong French influence it has some advantages, especially the food. But also the French leave a distinct disadvantage - their engineering. The French are definitely outside their skill sets when not in the kitchen or the winery. The roads and buildings are distinctly French. Great aesthetically but crap when it comes to functionality. The road system leaves a lot to be desired but this is only exacerbated by the skill of the Lebanese drivers. They drive like starlings or large schools of fish weaving in all directions rather than going straight. Watching traffic is a spectator sport that was once reserved for those with blood lust. Needless to say that the road toll is significant.

The other blight here is that everyone smokes, including newborns. The only advantage of this is that they do not have to invest in aged care. Mr Marlboro and Mr Kent will ensure that the life expectancy of the locals does not cause an aged care issue. Apparently aged care is not a current issue probably as a result of most of the locals having an aversion to oxygen and preferring to get their air intake filtered through a haze of smoke.

Last week there was cause for celebration when a provincial member of parliament gave some speech. The local tribesmen get very enthusiastic when their representative has something to say in public. The occasion was supported by fireworks of the traditional kind with the aid of machine guns and other small arms fire. This doesn't normally cause concern but the local paper reported on the event and included comments from the police that the locals should refrain from using celebratory grenades at these celebrations. Probably a reasonable request. I don't think that the small arms fire really causes anyone to take notice so perhaps the use of the occasional celebratory grenade will help the celebrations along.

this one

Is for recent visitor, imbored.  Hmm there is plenty more.

ooo there's sarah smiles again

Sarah "I-heart-Hezbollah" Smiles, who just knows that a Red Cross ambulance was hit by an IDF missile.  So there.  After drinking her way through university in Lebanon - financed by freelance propaganda - she became the Age's reporter on Foreign Affairs, Defence and National Security.  Meaning the media ambassador for Dar al'Islam.

Here she is, junketeering in Wales as a guest of the Welsh Assembly, writing about her favourite topic:

Mr Kidwai said that while first-generation immigrants had an "inferiority complex" and tried to emulate the British, their children were adopting Islam as a means of carving out an identity in a culture that he believes does not accept them.

"People who are born here, who spend all their life here, see no matter what they do they can never be assimilated," he said.

"They decide then: OK then, I can integrate but I can have my values, my religion."

Kamal Al-Idrisy, who works at the Al-Manar centre, the oldest prayer room in Cardiff dating back to 1860, believes September 11 also piqued interest among Muslims about their faith and inspired others to defend it. "Many people, even those already practicing Islam are trying to better understand their religion" he said.

Cardiff is home to the oldest Muslim community in Britain, the descendants of Somali and Yemeni seamen who settled with their families in the docks over 100 years ago. The community has expanded in recent decades with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who came as migrant workers to northern England in the 1970s.

There are now over 30 mosques in Wales. At the Cardiff Muslim Primary School in Wales, housed in an old Church of Wales school formerly known as Saint Monica's, enrolments are increasing. "Last year we had roughly 50 children and now there's 95 and a waiting list", said school principal Clare Fox-Rashad, who converted to Islam 12 years ago and is married to a Libyan.

She said the state school system offends many Welsh Muslims because it teaches that all religions are "right".

"We know what we believe is right," Ms Fox-Rashad said. "They push Christmas a lot and Easter and these types of things and it's not something that we can get involved in". Children are taught the Koran and Arabic instead of Welsh.

Sounds like they can't cope with Christianity, rather than pluralism.

The school does not follow the national curriculum and is not subject to rigorous inspections by local government, Ms Fox-Rashad said.

But of course, Arabic and avoiding the national curriculim should help set them up for a productive life in Wales.  No wait, here comes the cognitive dissonance:

Social conservative and journalist Melanie Phillips, the author of the provocative book Londonistan, has argued that British authorities turned a blind eye as London became a hub for Islamic extremists in the 1980s and 1990s. Welsh officials take pride in the fact that radicalisation is not yet a problem in Wales. They say this is because they have experienced "oppression" at hands of the English and are more embracing of ethnic and religious diversity.

"Oppression"! Code word employed: engage grievance theatre.

However, there have been a number of racial attacks against Welsh Muslims in recent years.

Mohammed Ashghar, a Muslim MP with the Welsh National Party Plaid Cymru who wears britches and is known in his party as "Oscar", said barriers still needed to be broken down.

"There is still distance, people are not fully integrated, they are not fully merged yet, definitely there is a barrier," he said. Mr Ashghar said that immigrant communities had tried hard to adopt Welsh culture and now the Welsh need to embrace the immigrants.

"We do enjoy a Christmas, our children enjoy Christmas, but I'm yet to see the indigenous community celebrating Eid, which is not happening," he said.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, must be distressed.

Update: The Currency Lad posts some notes on the secularist jihad in Britain. To be fair to Rowan Williams, this militant secularism also formed the backdrop of his infamous speech on 'Islam and the Law' - noting as he did the dangers of the secular monopoly and peppering his speech with references to Jewish Bet Din courts and Catholic adoption agencies.  One could say he had the right problem but the wrong solution (not to mention a 6000 word speech with sentences about 140 words long do really go down a treat, never mind that BBC interview). 

Militant secularism is also preoccupying much of western Europe.  Even Sarkhozy in France has made mutterings and moves to give religion more room in the public space, advocating for a "positive secularity" - which kind of has been rocking the French sensibility of laïcité (and conjoured up resistance with references to William's speech). But of course, how that can be done with out giving headway to militant Islam or Islamism, remains a problem for him too.

Funnily enough, it takes a secular Jew to point to the best peaceful solution: roll on the re-Christianization of Europe.  And I'm thinking it won't come from the Europeans themselves, but from the Africans, South Americans and Asians.

ritual of repentance

Media-style:

We are riveted, but why? Nearly every post-scandal news conference is like every other. There's a script to these things, as we all know, and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer followed it to the letter yesterday in seeming to acknowledge his involvement with a prostitute and apologizing for it.

He and his wife got up onstage, they stood close, he took responsibility, he took no questions. We've seen all this before, but across America, people watched for the panic, the angst, the teary eyes and, most of all, for that moment of clarity when Silda Wall Spitzer might rear back and slug her husband in the jaw.

That, of course, didn't happen. It never does. The post-scandal news conference, by its formulaic nature, attempts to project order and control in the messiest of public moments. If you hit all the right lines, you can at least contain the damage.

We test the crisis-management script.

First, we watch the news conference. There's Spitzer, with his wife by his side. He says, "I want to briefly address a private matter." Then he expresses remorse (albeit vaguely) and promises to "dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family."

Then, we call Mark Geragos, the high-profile criminal defense attorney, who -- as it happens -- has not actually seen the news conference. He proceeds to describe the news conference that he has not seen.

"You've got to have the dutiful wife and you have to have the 'it's a private matter,' " Geragos says. "And remorse for the past and plans for the future."

Whoa.

"If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all," Geragos says.

Libby Copeland on the ritual of repentance: the script-following scandal, or was that the scandalous script?

Elliot Mess has resigned (wife by side) and the gal gets her 15 minutes and Hustler magazine deals, move along, nothing to see here, a victimless crime, and certainly  no sin.

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. -- 2 Corinthians 7:10

Give me the scandal of the cross any time.

eternal light

Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop in Iraq who was kidnapped last month, has been found dead.  It's not clear if he died as a result of his precarious health or if he was killed.  Rahho was seized on 29 February after gunmen attacked his car in eastern Mosul, 240 miles north of Baghdad, killing his driver and two guards.

These were the sorts of demands made by the kidnappers - they had been getting progressively more outlandish with each contact - but they were demands which  suggested to some negotiators that he had been killed or had died soon after his kidnapping.

“This morning they called us to tell us that they had buried him. Some of our   young people followed the indications that the kidnappers had given to reach the site," the agency quoted Warduni as saying.

"They dug there and found the bishop lifeless. We still don't know if he died   of causes linked to his precarious health or if he was killed. The   kidnappers only told us that he was dead," he said.

Update: More from Asia News. "A heavy Cross for our Church, ahead of Easter." Whether they killed him or whether they let him die: the kidnappers have blood on their hands.  Update 2: Reuters. Fr Rahho may have been dead a week. Iraq's prime minister has blamed al-Qaeda. Update 3: Reports are pouring into the mainstream press now. BBC with a brief report on the plight of Iraq's Christians. Time even manages the same in its report (but with the usual barb at Bush).  Pope Benedict offers what most of us think: "...the most resolute condemnation of an act of inhuman violence that offends the dignity of the human being." Update 4: The NYT actually files a decent report with the assistance of NYT reporters - Iraqis - in Iraq and another in Rome - which give one a sense of the man.

Officials of the Chaldean Church in Iraq said they had received a call telling them where the body was buried. The cause of death was not clear. An official of the morgue in Mosul said the archbishop, who was 65 and had health problems, including high blood pressure and diabetes, might have died of natural causes.

Church officials said Thursday, however, that Archbishop Rahho was shot in the leg when he was abducted on Feb. 29. Gunmen sprayed his car with bullets, killed two bodyguards and shoved the archbishop into the trunk of a car, the church officials said. In the darkness, he managed to pull out his cellphone and call the church, telling officials not to pay a ransom for his release, they said.

“He believed that this money would not be paid for good works and would be used for killing and more evil actions,” the officials said.

[...]

In the last few years, Mosul has been a difficult place for Christians. The archbishop’s kidnapping followed a series of attacks in January on Christian churches. Last June, a priest and three companions were shot and killed in the archbishop’s church. In January 2005, Archbishop George Yasilious, of another church in Mosul, was kidnapped and later released. In October 2006, an Orthodox priest, Boulos Iskander, was beheaded after he was kidnapped and attempts to ransom him failed.

The number of Chaldeans in Iraq has dropped by at least a million since the end of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, though the Chaldeans are still the largest Christian group in the country. Priests have estimated that fewer than 500,000 remain in Iraq.

The Chaldean Church is an Eastern Rite church affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church but retaining its own customs and rites.

Mr. Talabani sent condolences to the pope and to Cardinal Delly, saying he learned of the archbishop’s death “with a heart filled with sadness.”

He added, “The noble Iraqi Christians will keep working with their brothers from all the sects to end sectarianism and to build brotherhood and peace.”

Yonadam Kanna, a Christian member of Iraq’s Parliament, said that Archbishop Rahho had called for unity in Iraq and had stood up against sectarian violence. “This man was a victim of his opinions,” Mr. Kanna said.

Michał Heller

Ruth Gledhill on this year's Templeton Prize winner: Reverend Professor Michał Heller, a cosmologist and a philosopher, connected with the Faculty of Philosophy of the Pontifical Academy of Theology.   From the Templeton bio:

Heller, 72, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow, toiled for years beneath the stifling strictures of the Soviet era. He has become a compelling figure in the realms of physics and cosmology, theology, and philosophy with his cogent and provocative concepts on issues that all of these disciplines pursue, albeit from often vastly different perspectives. With an academic and religious background that enables him to comfortably and credibly move within each of these domains, Heller’s extensive writings have evoked new and important consideration of some of humankind's most profound concepts.

Heller's examination of fundamental questions such as "Does the universe need to have a cause?" engages a wide range of sources who might otherwise find little in common. By drawing together mathematicians, philosophers, cosmologists and theologians who pursue these topics, he also allows each to share insights that may edify the other without any violence to their respective methodologies.

In a statement prepared for the news conference, Heller described his position as follows:

Various processes in the universe can be displayed as a succession of states in such a way that the preceding state is a cause of the succeeding one… (and) there is always a dynamical law prescribing how one state should generate another state. But dynamical laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, and if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the Great Blueprint of God's thinking the universe, the question on ultimate causality…: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes.

Despite the active anti-intellectualism of the Communist regime that controlled Poland for the majority of his life, Heller established himself as an international figure among cosmologists and physicists through his prolific writings – he has more than 30 books and nearly 400 papers to his credit – on such topics as the unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics, multiverse theories and their limitations, geometric methods in relativistic physics such as noncommutative geometry, and the philosophy and history of science.

Simultaneously, as a Catholic priest, Heller surmounted the anti-religious dictates of Polish authorities, opening new vistas for the faithful by positioning the traditional Christian way of viewing the universe within a broader cosmological context and by initiating what can be justly termed the "theology of science."

In his nomination of Heller for the Prize, Professor Karol Musiol, Rector of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and a professor in the Institute of Physics there, noted that Heller's combination of scientific investigation and theological inquiry rises above the trap of easy concordism. "His unique position as a creatively working scientist and reflective man of religion has brought to science a sense of transcendent mystery," he wrote, "and to religion a view of the universe through the broadly open eyes of science…. It is evident that for him the mathematical nature of the world and its comprehensibility by humans constitute the circumstantial evidence of the existence of God."

The legacy of JPII lives on.

Heller was not only "fostered" by Karol Wojtyla when the latter was Bishop of Crakow, he was a frequent guest of Wojtyla after he became Pope.

Apart from Heller's own statement, reproduced on Ruth's blog, one of her linked articles - an introduction to Heller's life and thought  by Stanisław Wszołek - is also worth a read.  He's going to present some challenges to the media reporting the news, but I look forward to more Western and English-speaking scholars perhaps unfamiliar with his work, interacting with his views.

As for one of the past Templeton winners who is better known locally, he's still out there, searching for what one Web Elf called "Lurking Space Yogourt".

david mamet

Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal:

I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.

But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.

The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.