For A Monday

Your post-Canada Day reading.


No one kills the golden goose, not even the Russians:

Russia and Western powers locked horns over a peace plan for Syria on Saturday as UN mediator Kofi Annan warned the conflict could spread across the Middle East and beyond.

Foreign ministers and international diplomats were meeting in Geneva with governments still in dispute over whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, condemned in the West but still backed by Russia, could have any role in a political transition.

“The Russians have set out a series of objections with the current draft. The Russians are stonewalling quite a bit,” a Western diplomat told Reuters as the talks paused for lunch.

 Please give if you can.



Leave it to the Germans to take the reins of things. They're paying Europe's bills. This is no different:

Pope Benedict on Monday appointed German bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller to head the Vatican office in charge of Church doctrine, one of the central bodies responsible for enforcing Church discipline at a time of exceptional upheaval.

Islam's role in slavery:

Although Islam and black nationalism share a flame-belching, sword-swinging hatred for Western Civ, it’s an odd pairing when you consider history. American blacks who dump Christianity and shack up with Islam seem to think they’re flipping the bird at the creed that enslaved their ancestors, but they’re only swapping it for a religion that has enslaved their ancestors for far longer. ...


For starters, it predated the transatlantic slave trade by at least 800 years and has outlived it for 150 years and counting. Whereas the bloodthirsty hallucinating pedophile sandworm Muhammad (c. 570-632) owned both male and female black slaves, European explorers didn’t even begin dipping their beaks into the African human-cattle trade in large numbers until the 1500s.

Roughly three centuries later, Europeans and their American descendants took it upon themselves to put the kibosh on slavery. In contrast with Christendom, there was never a concerted Arabic abolition movement, and slavery was only formally outlawed in the Islamic world due to intense outside pressure. But slavery still openly thrives in places such as Mauritania and, on the downlow, throughout much of Africa and the Middle East.

If you count human bodies equally, the Arab slave trade likely shackled at least as many Africans as the transatlantic trade and possibly twice as many. Although early documentation is scarce due in part to a deafening lack of written languages below the Sahara, historical estimates range from a low of eight million to a high of 25 million. In contrast, the general consensus is that around 11 million Africans were transported to the New World—yet only a mere 5% of those wound up in what is now the USA, although the USA gets 100% of the guilt-tripping. ...

It’s false in the sense that Arabic/sub-Saharan tribal animosity has underpinned Islamic predations in Africa from the start. The Arabic word Abd is often used to mean either “slave” or “black.” Medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun wrote, “The Negro nations are as a rule submissive to slavery, because they have attributes that are quite similar to dumb animals.”

A must-read.



Some people leave themselves open to mockery:

I don’t mind gay groups keeping a vast database of anonymously-reported homophobic thought-crimes if they feel that’s a productive use of their time. But it is preposterous that this sprawling directory of  cobwebbed flamer cracks and swishy-gait titters will be publicly funded by taxpayers under the Québec Government’s “action plan for the fight against homophobia,” which apparently also includes redesignating Jean-Marc Fournier, the minister of justice and attorney general, as “Minister of Justice, Attorney General, and Minister for the Fight Against Homophobia.”

What is the real crime here- a database of "thought crimes", the thin skins of professional activist groups or that there is an entire ministry devoted to this? Discuss.



Damn right:

But the reality is that, on almost any given occasion, the teaching of the Church is common sense and the right thing to do and the real reason you don’t want to do it is not that you are a bold saint standing up to a corrupt tradition of men, but because you want to do something you shouldn’t or you want to chicken out on doing something you should. That’s the reality behind almost every bold posture from a dissenter, whether progressive or reactionary.

Thank you.


The Church's detractors don't understand that the Church is a Divine Institution founded by Christ, nor do they understand that morality is not fluid or relative. It's not brave or revolutionary to defy what is morally right.



A guaranteed Shark Week entry:

The first great white shark of the Cape Cod summer season has been photographed just 50 yards from the coast off Chatham.

The 16-foot shark, estimated to weigh more than 2,000 pounds, was seen hunting seals near the shore by the Cape Cod Shark Hunters.

This idea is incredibly brilliant:

When confronting rioting Islamic fundamentalists, pork is perfect.

The beauty of pork-based riot control is its incredible flexibility. For all-purpose crowd dispersal, shotgun shells could be loaded up with bacon bits. Such “pigshot” could quickly break up rowdy demonstrators without harming a flea, let alone damaging the environment. Tanks could be modified into mobile Chinese field kitchens, complete with a traditional large exterior ventilating circular fan. When the enemy is within range and the wind conditions are right, pork strips would be cooked in giant woks. With the scent of freshly cooked pork everywhere, demonstrators will be traumatized. Many of those pork-smelling fanatics will be barred from their own homes, cafes, and other public places. What Sharia-compliant Muslim wife would sleep with a man reeking of filthy swine? Some will have to burn their clothing and take multiple baths—hardly a welcome option in societies averse to daily bathing.

"S-s-s-say hello to my l-l-l-little friend, folks!"

(With thanks to one and all)