Friday, September 06, 2013

Friday Post

Winding down the first week of September...


There are fifty-four days before Halloween and one hundred and nine days before Christmas, in case one was asking.


To recap:

Bashar al Assad, president of Syria and Alawite, has led the autocratic yet relatively secular and stable state (in that it is not a raging theocracy like Iran) since his father's death in 2000. He has enjoyed a mutually agreeable relationship with Russia (which sits permanently on the UN security council and stands in the way of the US and its allegedly tough stance against Syria) and has incurred the ire of the US for, among other things, aiding and abetting Shia fundamentalists and Hezbollah. Swept up in what was euphemistically called the "Arab Spring", Syrians protested against the dictator and were put down. The Canadian government has been giving millions of dollars in aid to the Syrians since 2012. The rebels poised to overthrow Assad (who are killing Christians and whom Obama praised as "representative") are linked to al Qaeda. Assad now stands accused of releasing chemical weapons on his own people.

That chemical weapons have been used in Syria is not a new development (as to who? Take a guess). The Israelis, the French and the British have known about Syria's chemical weapons and have been tracking them for some time. Only a couple of months ago, the Obama administration was not certain if chemical weapons had been used at all. Why so sure now? Has Obama's "red line" become redder? Have the weapons from Benghazi finally arrived and been made available to the rebels? Did North Korea just come in to play? What Obama is totally uncertain about is why Iran, which Syria supports, does not support him.

Question: is Obama the narcissist so filled with malice that he would destabilise the Middle East and let Israel be swallowed up in war or is he a moron so over his head that Putin is tempted to melt his icy heart and feel sorry for him?


Moving on...


The Pope makes a phone call and a life is saved:

Anna Romano, 35, couldn’t believe her ears when she picked up the phone a few days ago. On the other end of the telephone was Pope Francis himself, who called to offer to baptize her baby after she refused to have an abortion.

“I was just so surprised that he had telephoned me. He said that he had read my letter and he wanted to speak to me personally about it and reassure me that someone was worried about me,” Anna, hailing from Arezzo near Florence, told the Daily Mail.

Feeling humiliated, betrayed, and that she had no one else to turn to, Anna wrote to Pope Francis a few months ago about her crisis situation. She revealed that she was pregnant with the child of an already married man who had demanded she abort.

In her letter, Anna told the Pope that she would not have an abortion and that she had told the married man to “get out of my life.”

Awesome.

Related: vote for your favourite papal portrait.


Over at the Fur: Samantha Power is a moron, Mark Steyn is the master of bluntness and let's just agree that Saint Mary's University is riddled with thoughtless imbeciles up to and including the "sensitivity experts".


And now for your Friday freakout: at the cow wash.


(With thanks to one and all)

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