They don't care about the joke

Romans joke with ISIS Twitter feed: "you can have it."

Frankly, these people are idiots. And they're going to be surprised when the ISIS operatives already in their country don't give a damn about their sense of ironic humour. They don't get the joke, they're not in on the joke, they don't care about the joke.


When you watch this video, don't look at the men chanting. There's nothing to learn there. Look instead at the reactions of the non-Muslim passengers trying desperately to pretend that it isn't happening... if they just ignore it enough it will go away... that it doesn't apply to them... that if they keep their heads down and don't make eye contact whatever is going to happen will happen to someone else...dear God, please just let me get back to my bubble in one piece...

What are the savages chanting?

“May Allah make orphans out of their children. May Allah make it difficult on their women. Allah give victory to Islam everywhere. Allah give victory to our brethren in Palestine. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar… there is no god but Allah and the martyr is beloved by Allah.”

The problem I've been thinking about is nicely illustrated by this reaction of the spoiled Romans from the Breitbart piece to what they obviously see as silly threats from primitive savages from another planet. We just don't seem to believe that it could actually really happen. We've been trained to think that the world that spawned ISIS is radically separated from us. That it is, in fact, a different world - maybe one from a campy action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger - and they can't cross over into our real world.

We hear them chanting about how Allah will make widows and orphans and the soldiers of Allah will make those widows and orphans into slaves, we see them issuing threats against the "Crusaders" and wonder what universe they're living in. Crusaders? Seriously? Are these people living in the middle ages? We think we live in the real, modern world of science and iPhones and air conditioned offices, and simply can't picture ISIS rounding up women and nine year old girls from our neat suburban neighbourhoods in Berlin or London or Birmingham or Rome (well, maybe Rome a little more) and setting up sex slave markets in the parking lot of the local supermarket.

But that is exactly what has happened in the places they've already conquered. They have told us straight up that they're coming and intend to do here what they did there. The answer is, yes, they are still living in the Middle Ages. Stop and think about what that means for a moment. Think about what life was like for Christians in Muslim dominated lands all those centuries.

We have to start understanding that the bubble we think we live in is imaginary. The Swedes and Norwegians are slowly starting to realise this, far, far too late.

Go, right now, and look at Ann Barnhardt's post on what happens to the idiot liberal dhimmis preaching luv and tolerance for the estimated 2-3 million "Syrian refugees" suddenly and "inexplicably" flooding into Europe as I write this. Don't hold back from looking at the photos. I won't say they are for the strong of stomach. I will say that if you don't look at them, you will not be able to develop a strong enough stomach for the fight that is coming your way.



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Storm's comin'

So, this week, following my trip to Rome, I deactivated my work-related Facebook account. A while ago I separated my working contacts and groups - people and organisations that send me information that I pour into my work - from my contacts with personal friends, people I actually know and want to keep in touch with. I have been collecting stuff on the personal FB account that have nothing whatever to do with The News. Mostly stuff about gardening, science, botany, herbalism, archaeology and monasticism.

One day Facebook sent me some kind of weird thing where it showed you what you posted exactly seven years ago. It was a photo album of my first visit to Rome. For some reason, it made me kind of freak out. My reaction was not, perhaps, what FB intended. I put up the briefest possible note saying I was retiring the account, and I clicked it. It's off. The other one, the personal one that's full of stuff about herbal remedies and gardening tips, is still going.

I'm not entirely sure what is happening in my brain at the moment, but I just can't look at the other stuff. Day after day of scrolling up and down that newsfeed and I felt myself diminishing, eroding, almost fizzling away. Finally, I realised that I have to make a choice between activism and a new thing. I was at Mass on Wednesday morning in Norcia after my long weekend in Rome, and it came home to me with great clarity: choose.

As my buddy Steve says below, we certainly seem to be entering a time of persecution and diminishment. It's going to be a testing time, particularly, I think, in the next six to eight months. I'm not saying anything "prophetic," I'm just reading the signs of the times. Suddenly, the reason I came to Norcia is becoming more important than anything else.

Listen to this podcast from my old friend Steve Skojec. It more or less says what I think:

"I can’t do my job — trying to get the truth, which is often unpopular, in the hands of as many people as possible — without living in a constant state of promotion. But this works against the very virtues I believe we must extol."

~

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…



~

Who makes the Faith?

"Never criticise the pope" has never been a Catholic rule. Ever.

There has also never been a rule that says, "Only saints can criticise popes". Nor has there ever been any rule that says you can't criticise a pope on the internet or other public forums.

All that stuff is in fact made up. And pretty recently. Mostly since we started feeling, in the early 1980s, with more and more bishops going weird and wiggy on us, that the pope was the last bastion of sanity in a world gone pazzo. But the history of the Church is longer than the last 40 years.

To say that a pope is above any criticism simply because he's the pope is becoming one of the favourite mantras of the neocatholics and "conservatives" and it is not only "solemn nonsense" it is dangerous nonsense. To suggest that the pope is above criticism is to suggest that he makes the Faith. He doesn't. The pope is the servant of the Truth, not its maker. To say that a pope cannot be corrected by the faithful is really to suggest that the Faith, the Truth, is a subjective thing dependent upon the pope's personal approval. This would render it as fragile as political opinion (which, by the way, is precisely what the world/liberal Catholics want it to be.)

Here's a few snippets for consideration.

There's no "except the pope" caveat in the following:
Can. 212 §3 [The faithfull] have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence and position, to manifest to the sacred Pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church. They have the right also to make their views known to others of Christ's faithful, but in doing so they must always respect the integrity of faith and morals, show due reverence to the Pastors and take into account both the common good and the dignity of individuals.

~

John XXII (r. 1316-1334) in a series of Sunday sermons asserted that the blessed departed do not see God until after the General Judgment­. This would have undone the doctrine of the efficacy of prayers for the dead in Purgatory, among other consequences. The pope at the time was opposed, publicly, by theologians at the University Paris who said that while (by that time) the matter had never been defined as dogma, the Pope was in error, and they petitioned him to recant his opinion. Which he finally did. John XXII added at the time that he had never proposed the idea for the whole Church, and everyone had been free to disagree with him.

~

The Pope is infallible only when he: “speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church…” (First Vatican Ecumenical Council, Sess. 3, cap. 4).
The Pope has no power to define doctrines as he pleases, for as Vatican I also teaches: “the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.”

More to think about here.



~

Shooting starts at 4 am, Rome time

KIEV (Reuters) - Russia's Black Sea Fleet has told Ukrainian forces in Crimea to surrender by 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Tuesday or face a military assault, Interfax news agency quoted a source in the Ukrainian Defence Ministry as saying.

The ultimatum, Interfax said, was issued by Alexander Vitko, the fleet's commander.

The ministry did not immediately confirm the report and there was no immediate comment by the Black Sea Fleet, which has a base in Crimea, where Russian forces are in control.

"If they do not surrender before 5 a.m. tomorrow, a real assault will be started against units and divisions of the armed forces across Crimea," the agency quoted the ministry source as saying.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage,)

Umm... Holy Father? Now might be a good time for that consecration of Russia to Our Lady.



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Kakure Kirishitan

Here's an interesting bit of the history of the Church ...apropos of absolutely nothing whatever.

Japan's "Hidden Christians," or Kakure Kirishitan. In the 1540s, Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican missionaries came to Japan and set up shop, converting lots and lots of people, including members of the aristocracy. Then one day, there was a regime change (as they say these days) and suddenly, the Christians were considered enemies o the state. So, Christianity was banned and the left-over Christians were arrested and executed... but not nicely.

On February 5, 1597, twenty-six Christians – six European Franciscan missionaries, three Japanese Jesuits and seventeen Japanese laymen, including two young boys, were crucified. On September 10, 1632, 55 Christians were martyred in Nagasaki. In the end, the number of martyrs reached about 1000, with about 200,000 Christians surviving and retaining the Faith in secret.

The ones who survived became this thing, Kakure Kirishitan. There were no sacraments, no hierarchy and few priests until Christians were re-admitted to the country in the 19th century. The remaining believers had nothing but the Faith.

Ongoing persecution included the attempt by the State to force everyone to formally adhere to the recognised state religion, Buddhism in this case.

Wiki:

The Buddhist ecclesiastical establishment was made responsible for verifying that a person was not a Christian through what became known as the "temple guarantee system" (terauke seido). By the 1630s, people were being required to produce a certificate of affiliation with a Buddhist temple as proof of religious orthodoxy, social acceptability and loyalty to the regime.

The Japanese government used Fumie to reveal practicing Catholics and sympathizers. Fumie were pictures of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Government officials made everybody trample on these pictures. People reluctant to step on the pictures were identified as Catholics and then sent to Nagasaki. The policy of the Japanese government (Edo) was to turn them from their faith. If the Catholics refused to change their religion, they were tortured. Many of them still refusing to abandon their faith were executed on Nagasaki's Mount Unzen.

Hidden Christians continued to practice their faith in secret: "As time went on, the figures of the saints and the Virgin Mary were transformed into figurines that looked like the traditional statues of the Buddha and bodhisattvas. The prayers were adapted to sound like Buddhist chant, yet retained many untranslated words from Latin, Portuguese and Spanish. The Bible and other parts of the liturgy were passed down orally, due to fears of printed works being confiscated by authorities. Because of the expulsion of the Catholic clergy in the 17th century, the Kakure Christian community relied on lay leaders to lead the services."



~

Ready?

The Military airport in Crimea has been taken over by Russian troops.

Click it!



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Ethics question revisited

So, the cruise liner is sinking with 2500 souls aboard. There are only enough lifeboats for half the people. When your boat has reached capacity and you are desperately rowing away from the ship, hundreds of people are still equally desperately trying to get in the boat. Are you justified in beating off people who are still trying to get in? Even if it means they will die if you leave them behind? Even if it means you have to kill them?

You have twenty years to answer.

Plus a bonus.
Metaphysics question:

You pour yourself a glass of orange juice. You think, it's a bit thick, so you pour in some water.

It should be noted here that Sweden alone in 2006 accepted almost as many asylum applications from Iraqis as all other European countries did combined. Native Swedes, who live in a country that was one of the most ethnically homogeneous nations in the world only 30 years ago, will be a minority in their own country within a few decades, if current trends continue. Sweden is self-destructing at a pace that is probably unprecedented in history, but for the extreme Left, even this isn't fast enough.

The wave of robberies the city of Malmö is experiencing is part of a "war against the Swedes." This is the explanation given by young robbers from immigrant backgrounds. "When we are in the city and robbing we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes." This argument was repeated several times. "Power for me means that the Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet. We rob every single day, as often as we want to, whenever we want to." Swedish authorities have done virtually nothing to stop this.

How much water do you have to pour in before it isn't orange juice any more?

In September, another Islamist website claiming to speak for Ansar Al-Sunna, the Iraqi terrorist group, said the group had established "a small isolated training camp in southern Sweden."

"We wish to inform the Ummah," said the website, referring to the global Islamic community, "that the Army of Ansar Al-Sunnah in Sweden are well-trained to defend our holy countries ... having established a Mujahideen training camp, located in Skane [the region in southern Sweden that includes Malmo] ... with the help from Allah."

The Russians are coming!

Mr. Warner tells us that we had better pack up the anti-Americanism sooner rather than later. It might look a little better if we have put it all away when we go across the Atlantic again begging them for help.

I have to admit that I have not given the Georgian thing much attention, but I do recall once, quite a little while ago now, meeting a friend for tea in Halifax. I had arrived a bit early and was reading the paper, on the front page of which was a full colour photo of Vladimir Putin, smiling his reptilian smile, whilst sharing a seat in the royal Landau with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

My friend arrived, and commented, "Never thought you'd see the day huh?"

Indeed not. And I believe I speculated that the day would soon end...in tears.

Godless

By the way, that glorious rendition on recorders of Bach's Contrapunctus 9 of the Art of the Fugue was given by the Moment Musical Recorder Quartet of Chung Yan Christian University in Taiwan.

If the Godless Chinese communists decide in the next couple of years to invade Taiwan and we needed to come up with a reason to honour our (and by "our" I mean Western Civilization's) responsibilities, I'd say just play that recording again.

or this one:



or maybe this one:

Point of no return

If it's still early morning where you are, this ought to help wake you up.

The Great Steyn [blessings upon him]:

"...of the G8 nations, three - Russia, Japan, Germany - are already in net population decline, and Italy's about to join them. Maybe that's because 17 European nations are already at or below what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility (1.3 children per couple) - a point from which no society in human history has ever recovered. Maybe that's because in its most recent analysis the U.N. Population Division reported:

The indigenous populations of most countries in the rich world will either stagnate or decline…. The 2006 population revision predicts the steady depopulation of vast areas of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as a result of high levels of emigration and birth rates running persistently below replacement levels. Bulgaria’s population will fall by 35 per cent by 2050; Ukraine’s will plummet by 33 per cent, Russia’s by one quarter, whilst Britain’s population will rise from 60 million to approaching 69 million by 2050—almost entirely because of immigration. The expected global upheaval is without parallel in human history.

I'm feeling a bit bloody-minded, so let's revisit the numbers, shall we?

Britain - 1.66

Canada - 1.61

Russia - 1.39

"Belgium" - 1.64

Portugal - 1.48

Spain - 1.29

Ireland - 1.86

A quick lesson on rhetoric

The term "begging the question" is now so often misapplied as to have almost lost its meaning. Despite what semi-literate journalists and politicians seem to believe, it does not mean the same thing as "raise the question".

It means, to assume what you are charged to prove.

As in a court case in which the prosecution must prove that a man beats his wife.

When the prosecutor questions the man, saying, "How long has it been since you stopped beating your wife", he is "begging the question. He has started not with the question at hand, whether the man actually does what he is accused of, but with the assumption of guilt.

Get it?

OK, now a real life example.

Today, Bishop Patrick O'Donohue and colleagues, were called to be questioned by a Parliamentary committee on Schools in response to his issuance last year of a document requiring Catholic schools in the diocese of Lancaster to actually be Catholic, in more than name.

Barry Sheerman, MP for Huddersfield, who claims to be some kind of Christian, is the chairman of the committee began the procedings with the following:

Prefacing his questions with a disclaimer “I suppose you could call me
a Christian”, Sheerman started by assuring that the questions that followed should
not be seen as “hostility” to religious belief but “just a desire to know”.

“Doesn’t that worry you...that your schools are very good at excluding poor and less
fortunate children."

A textbook case.

You n' me both pal,

"For some considerable time I have believed that a severe persecution of the Church is imminent, and that it will begin in Britain."

However, it will spread quickly throughout Europe - the re-election
of the extremely anti-Catholic Zapatero government in Spain is but one sign of
this. I am not quite as insane as I may sound; in recent weeks I have spoken or
corresponded with priests in the UK who believe exactly the same.


I recently spoke with a leading Catholic journalist who told me that he believed
it was only a matter of time before priests and bishops are jailed for preaching
the Catholic Faith. Legislation, introduced by the Labour government in recent
years (and happily promoted by recent Catholic convert, the Rt. Hon Anthony Blair)
has already resulted in a number of unpleasant incidents.

Now, a Catholic Bishop, the Rt. Reverend Patrick O'Donoghue, has been 'summoned'
to appear before a Parliamentary Committee this Wednesday to answer for the terrible
crime of stating that the Catholic Faith should be taught in Catholic schools. The
Chairman of the Committee has spoken of "fundamentalism" and its dangers. This from
a government that has made it a crime to mention anything about the evils of Islam -
one cannot even refer to Islamic terrorists.

This is precisely why it is so important who is appointed as the new Cardinal
Archbishop of Westminster. We will need the equivalent of a Blessed Clement Von
Galen, the "Lion" Bishop who stood up to Hitler. As previously posted, it is believed
that Pope Benedict regards this appointment as one of the three most important of
his pontificate. The new Cardinal may have to close all the Catholic schools - or he
may follow the example of all but one of the episcopate during the time of that
verminous apostate and odorous wretch, Henry VIII, and give way.


I do not think things are anything like as bad over here - it is more of a "white"
persecution compared to what I fear will soon be a "red" persecution in
Britain.

Demographic Ice Age

The global warming catastrophists are right of course, we are in for a massive planetary die off, but not of polar bears or seals.

Demographic Winter

Nearly every country in the world is depopulating.

"It's happening in rich countries; it's happening in poor countries. It's happening in Catholic countries, Islamic countries... Never before in history have we had economic prosperity accompanied by depopulation."

For those of us who were raised on the teachings of Thomas Malthus, or Charles Darwin...these trends are very hard to absorb."

The trouble is, the math doesn't lie. It does not bow to our political or philosophical preferences.

Of course, this is something we've been writing about for some time. I noted an interesting schizophrenia at the UN. In one UN department, the screeching is all about overpopulation and the desperate need for reduction of the world's populations (that they usually mean the world's population of brown people is something rarely mentioned.) At the other end of the hall, another office is busy churning out apocalyptic warnings of the disastrous slide of human fertility rates.

I have also observed, that while the former theory is motivated largely by a particularly nasty ideology and is based on some very, shall we say, fluid statistics, the latter, is fairly easily identifiable, even without a degree in demographics.

Just by looking countries up in the CIA World Fact Book, in fact. A routine part of my job.

Keeping in mind that the fertility rate required to maintain a population at its current level is 2.1 children per woman, the patterns are instantly discernable:

Albania: 2.03

Algeria: 1.86

Argentina: 2.13

Bahrain: 2.57

Bangladesh: 3.09

Belarus: 1.22

Belize: 3.52

Bhutan: 4.67

Botswana: 2.73

Brazil: 1.88

Canada: 1.61

Chad: 5.56

Chile: 1.97

China: 1.75

Czech Republic: 1.22

Denmark: 1.74

Djibouti: 5.23

Ecuador: 2.63

El Salvador: 3.08

Estonia: 1.41

OK, we're getting the picture. These were just randomly picked from an alphabetical list. But even at the first glance some patterns are clear. Nearly all of them, (and if we were to continue down the list it would be the same) are either hovering near or are well below the replacement level of 2.1.

All the economically and socially advanced countries, those not suffering war, disease or food shortages are the worst off. All of these are far below 2.1. That means that they are sliding backwards, with aging and shrinking populations. They are also the ones that are producing and consuming the most goods and are driving the economies not only of the developed world, but of the underdeveloped world as well. They are the engine that runs the whole machine.

The very few countries that significantly exceed the 2.1 red line are also the least able to extend any economic benefits. Bangladesh, Belize, Bhutan, Chad, Djibouti and El Salvador are countries that most closely fit the well-advertised stereotypes of desperately poor countries, plagued with social and political instability, extreme poverty, disease and cultural decline. They are not, in other words, in a position to come to the economic rescue of the declining populations of the West, to take over the running of the Machine.

So, what are we looking at? And when?

You tell me.

I don't know about you

but I never really relaxed when everyone said the Cold War was over. Maybe I was just born pessimistic, but the thought did occur to me even then when I wasn't really paying much attention, "Well, if there's no Soviet Union in charge of the bombs, who's running the joint?"

Kind of nasty to be proved right in this case:

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

Lies, damned lies and...

This just in from that fun-lovin' bunch at the National Secular Society:

"Catholic Church shown to be economical with the statistical truth"
(and isn't that a great headline? Worked on me!)

Anthony Spencer, who runs Pastoral Research, said the Church’s own figures were little more than guesswork, based on rough estimates of mass attendance.

Mr Spencer said: “Mass immigration is masking a huge alienation among the Catholic community. There is a huge unexplained loss of people to be found when you look at those who were baptised as babies, but who are not getting married or holding funerals and subsequent baptisms in Church.”

Mr Spencer said that his statistics showed that 530,000 Catholics had ceased even minimal involvement with the Church since 1997, whereas official Church statistics put it at 72,000.

[Aside: Naturally, the NSS is way behind. This revelation of the Church's duplicity is, of course, a straw man...or could be a red herring... anyway, the idea that the Catholic Church's governing class knows that we're in big trouble statistically and is trying to hide it, is absurd. Anyone who goes to Mass anywhere in this country will see for themselves. And, of course, it's being reported in the news all the time. The phrase "decline in Mass attendance" is so common in the news that you can use it effectively for a Google News keyword search. But hey, its the NSS, another organization well known for its objectivity and intellectual honesty.]

Now, putting aside the NSS' obsessive hatred of the Catholic Church, (nothin' we aren't used to by now!) these are some interesting and useful statistics, I think. But what the NSS fails to note is that those of us Catholics who still bother are mostly those who actually believe the doctrines and dogmas of the Catholic religion. What has happened in recent decades for reasons we won't bother with here, is that most of the people who are, or were, actually sitting in pews and who are drifting away, are those who don't.

As I've pointed out elsewhere. For the most part, those who are left are the ones for whom it would be unthinkable, unimaginable to "drift" out of the practice of the Faith. Those whose daily existence and entire universal outlook are formed by a religious understanding that can be replaced by nothing else and who appreciate the seriousness of the obligations that understanding imposes. This sort does not “drift away” from the practice of their faith.

As we know Papa R. has said somewhere that we will be looking at a much smaller and much more faithful Catholic Church in the coming years. There will be no more idle pew-sitters, or cultural Catholics or people who go because their mothers go. People who go to Mass, will be the sort willing to risk what others have risked for the same thing in the past. The sort who will hide priests in their homes, if necessary, and give sturdy defences of the Faith while standing before the gallows.

All indications, including those in Mr. Spencer’s report show that this is coming to pass.

Personally, with all respect to the NSS (meaning none) I’d call it an improvement.

I would be loath to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet I have such courage in avouching the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in his gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

HRC's

The Canadian Human Rights Commissions were established in 1978 to address so-called human right violations against Canadians who would otherwise not be able to address their grievances in a court of law. They are, essentially, extra-judicial courts that are not obliged to follow legal procedures or govern their decisions according to any written laws. They are, in short, a law unto themselves.

The Tribunals are empowered to suspend the laws protecting citizens, ignore due process and the rules of evidence. They are adjudicated by non-elected lay people with no legal experience, chosen according to an unaccountable process in which insiders recommend their friends from various activist organisations on the extreme left.

A person denounced to the HRC must pay for the legal costs of his defence whereas the person making the complaint has his expenses paid by the state. If the "defendant" is found guilty, he must pay the costs of the entire process. The Tribunal may impose fines and "re-education" and if the defendant wants to appeal, again, he must shoulder the costs himself.

It is time to put a stop to it. (Before other countries get the same ideas.)

Click here:

Jackbooting Us



Sunday Spectator,
Ottawa Citizen
December 9, 2007

Suing for silence
The right to free expression of opinion and belief -- though constrained in its extremes during wartime -- is not something that can be negotiated in a free country. For it is the most fundamental right -- the queen bee in the hive, as it were. Every other freedom depends on this freedom. Take it away, and we no longer have a free country.

A misunderstanding about this is at the root of much conflict between East and West. When cartoonists were invited by a Danish provincial newspaper to present their graphic notions of the Prophet Mohammad, there were riots right across the Muslim world. Danish, or what were believed to be Danish, targets were struck. (The right to riot, with the attendant rights to assault, vandalism, pillage, arson and so forth, are not among our fundamental rights.) Boycotts were placed on Danish products, and diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Muslim countries pressured both the Danish government and the European Union of which it is a member, to punish the cartoonists. They demanded new legislation across Europe that would criminalize any future blasphemy against Islam.

The Danes, and the few allies who would stand with them in the heat, found themselves hopelessly explaining that in Denmark the government does not tell journalists what to write, or cartoonists what to draw. It is not in the power of a government to do that -- the courts are there to prevent a government from trying -- and the system can't be changed without overthrowing everything. You might not like what is expressed -- and you have the freedom to express your revulsion, even ignorantly -- but you have, and ought to have, no power to silence the people with whom you disagree.

This is an idea quite incomprehensible in Saudi Arabia, and nearly incomprehensible in Egypt. Their representatives were sincerely outraged by the failure of the Danish government to “take decisive action.” In their own countries, decisive action would have been taken.

We, in the West, do not legislate for the Dar al-Islam (the Muslim realm). On the contrary, we endure the fallout from countries in which, because the right to free speech is not secure, opposition to authority must be expressed through violence.

I make this hard point because it is necessary to understand. “Freedom of expression” did not develop in the West from purely idealistic motives. Nor is it necessarily a pretty thing. Like so much in civil society, we put up with it because the alternative is worse, and we'd rather cope with free speech, than with the free intimidation that results from its suppression.

And I make this point in light of the case that has been brought against Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine, before Human Rights Commissions for Canada, British Columbia, and Ontario, by the Canadian Islamic Congress, led by Mohamed Elmasry. The first two commissions have already agreed to hear the case, and thus rule on whether Mark Steyn had the right to express the opinions and beliefs in his bestselling book, America Alone, and specifically in the excerpt entitled, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” which ran in Maclean's last year. According to the complaint, by expressing his opinions and beliefs, Mark Steyn “subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and Islamophobia.”

That not all Muslims agree, has been made clear by members of the Muslim Canadian Congress, who have entered the fray in defence of Steyn and Maclean's. But that is a tactical side issue.

For more than twenty years, in this column and elsewhere, I have been writing against the human rights commissions, which have quasi-legal powers that should be offensive to the citizens of any free country. They are kangaroo courts, in which the defendant's right to due process is withdrawn. They reach judgements on the basis of no fixed law. Moreover, “the process is the punishment” in these star chambers -- for simply by agreeing to hear a case, they tie up the defendant in bureaucracy and paperwork, and bleed him for the cost of lawyers, while the person who brings the complaint, however frivolous, stands to lose nothing.

My hope is that this case against Mark Steyn and Maclean's will be fruitful. It will be, if it inspires enough people -- especially journalists, of all political persuasions -- to express outrage at what has been done; and inspires Canada's free citizens into the necessary political action to put an end to the human rights commissions themselves. The worst possible result, is if the case fails to produce this response.


David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen

Grinch Chronicles

Remind me to tell y'all later why I think Christmas ought to be banned.

No, I mean really really banned. I don't just mean the glittery tinsely Christmas stuff, but the actual religious holiday.

Banned outright. No more carols. No more Christmas TV specials. No services in churches.

And definitely no bell-ringing.

Especially in Britain.

A Question for Your Ethics Class

A luxury cruise liner is sinking in freezing cold North Atlantic waters in April.

There are about 2500 people on board. The nearest ship that could attempt a rescue is 150 nautical miles away and will take at least 3 hours to get there. A person can survive in the water about 6 minutes.

There are, say, a dozen lifeboats on board designed to carry, at maximum capacity - that's with the boat down to the gunwales - 75 bodies.

That means that at least 1600 people are going to die.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing for the people in one of the filled-to-capacity boats to beat off the frantic survivors with an oar, even killing them in the process, to keep the boat from foundering?

Please answer within five business years.


* ~ * ~ *

Britain's Population Could Soar to 90 Million

(given current levels of immigration.)

How the Government has Declared War on White English People

“England is perhaps the only great country whose intellec­tuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In Left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution.”
George Orwell

HOW THE GOVERNMENT HAS DECLARED WAR ON WHITE ENGLISH PEOPLE


England is in the middle of a profoundly disturbing social experiment. For the first time in a mature democracy, a Government is waging a campaign of aggressive discrimination against its indigenous population.   

In the name of cultural diversity, Labour attacks anything that smacks of Englishness. The mainstream public are treated with contempt, their rights ignored, their history trashed. In their own land, the English are being turned into second-class citizens.

This trend was highlighted this week by the case of Abigail Howarth, a bright teenager who applied for a training position with the Environment Agency in East Anglia but was turned down because she was too white and English. The post, which carries a £13,000 grant, was open only to ethnic minorities, including the Scots, Welsh and Irish.

Such social engineering was justified by the Agency on the grounds that minorities were under-represented in its workforce, the parrot cry used by bureaucrats throughout the public sector to justify bias against the English.
 

Thinking about things

I bet you'd all thought I'd found the door to Narnia.

Nope, but I'm still looking.

Last night was the first night in the cottage, and the first in my new Victorian bed. (The matress is new; the bed is old.)

I've discovered some things.

* A flask (in N.America, a "thermos") makes a much better tea pot than a tea pot.

* Milk from a glass pint bottle tastes better than milk from a carton or plastic bottle.

* Central heating is overrated. Our mothers were right when we were kids and wanted to turn the heat up. Put a sweater on.

* That in all the years since leaving England when the smell of tar or pitch would bring back the memory of Manchester, what I was remembering was the smell of coal fires.

* That there are different kinds of crows and the differences are not difficult to learn. The rule is that if you see two together, they're rooks. There are a lot of rooks in rural England.

* That tawny owls have two different calls at night. The female makes a kind of loud sustained squeek. This is answered by the male who gives a deep, low-pitched "Whhooo hoo" that is much more difficult to hear unless you are standing quite close.

* That oak trees are very messy trees and drop large parts of themselves on the ground all the time. Dead oak branches, although rather heavy to carry home, make excellent firewood.

* That rosehips have no pectin in them and if you want to make them in to jam or jelly, you have to add crab apples, or all you will get is rosehip syrup.

* That rosehip syrup is no bad thing.

* That there has been so much manufacturing in the last 250 years, that there is virtually no need to buy new things. If everyone in this country were to give to a needy neigbour or a church charity all the bits and pieces of furniture, household goods and clothes and other permanent things they are not using, every man woman and child in this country would be amply provided for.

The above suggestion would ruin the economy.

Which, in turn, and after a period of adjustment that would doubtless involve violence, social and political upheaval and all sorts of unpleasantness, would result in the end in people being much happier.

(I intend, as much as it is possible, to live as though this had already happened. Except for the internet, which I think would be one of the first things to go in the event of the previously mentioned upheavals.)

* That a solution to the problem of rubbish disposal, which is a subject much in the minds of Britons apparently, who are forced by a multitude of laws to support an absurdly and increasingly arcane system of "recycling" (enforced by fines), is to re-instate "home economics" as a major part of the school curriculum and teach young women the lost arts of cooking and household management. They would be able to cook real food that did not come out of a box or take-away place. They would be able to make and mend their own clothes, which would release them from slavery to fashions.

It would also result in them having more useful occupation than shopping, "texting", binge drinking and buying pre-packaged foods. They would be rendered suitable for marriage and be immune to much of the advertising enticements that hold so many of them in the thrall of "body-image" insecurity. It would also release them from the mental slavery of "modern mores" and feminism.

It would also make men happier.

This would also ruin the economy. (See note above re: "economy-ruining a good thing in the long run.")

* That spending an hour every evening staring blankly into the fire is a much more useful and beneficial occupation than spending the same amount of time staring blankly into the television. In the former occupation it is possible to have Thoughts. With the latter, it is possible only to be exhausted and rendered irritable and anxious.

* That Stephen Fry is much more likely to become a real Catholic than is Tony Blair.

* That London is much better appreciated from a distance...in picture books, say.

* That deep in the heart of many British people is a great longing for the Way Things Were but have been trained at the same time to be superficialy disdainful of the way of life they remember their parents living (no telly. no central heating. no microwaves. no free sex. no free abortion!).

* That we have come to the down slope in the manufacture-and-consume economy. We make too much stuff. We buy too much stuff. We throw away too much stuff. And the stuff we make, buy and throw away isn't worth the effort. I was taken yesterday to a place that sells "architectural antiques": antique furniture, fittings, fireplaces, apothecary bottles, flat irons, sinks, door knobs, saddles, doors, gothic marble altar pieces, copper kettles, valves, telephones, sofas, and on and on...every bit of it was more durable, more beautiful, more useful and lasting and just plain better than anything that has been made in the last fifty years. When a society starts looking at the stuff it is making (and throwing away three weeks later) and being forced to admit that not only were the things their grandfathers made better, but that they no longer knew how to make them, things are on the down slide.

* That there is no way for a woman to look good wearing jeans.