Saint Nicholas is one of the faces of Christmas, the season that has been and still is attacked, reinvented or just blotted out for "modern audiences".
(Sidebar: TM.)
What people don't understand is that if the Mass of Christ can be re-written and then trod underfoot, so can anything else.
It was never special to begin with or just didn't exist:
Like the ice queen, communist regimes in China and the former Soviet Union have cancelled Christmas in the past. Communism is fundamentally atheist. "Communism begins from the outset with atheism,” Karl Marx once said, according to historian Dimitry Vladimirovich Pospielovsky.In the 1920s, Christmas celebrations were banned in the Soviet Union, and Ded Moroz, Russia's version of Santa Claus, was effectively exiled. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin did eventually bring Ded Moroz back as a way to gain some needed popular support, but he associated the figure with New Year celebrations instead of Christmas.The Chinese Communist Party, with its anti-Western sentiments, has portrayed Christmas as a "white, Western interloper," Mr. Bowler said. The Canadian Human Rights Commission's Oct. 23 report that included the statement against Christmas contains similar language. It says favour should not be given in Canadian society to "white, male, Christian," and other identities, as it excludes others.
A literal war on Christmas
First videos from the scene in Marawi City in the Philippines where a terrorist bomb attack against a Catholic mass in a university this morning killed 4 people and wounded 50.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 3, 2023
A 5 month battle was fought against ISIS in the city in 2017.
1100 were killed in that battle. pic.twitter.com/QxbU5FneEv
**
The attack was carried out in a university gymnasium in Marawi, a city in the south of the country besieged by Islamist militants for five months in 2017.
The Islamic State group, which wields influence in the country's south, said on Telegram its members had detonated the bomb.
Somewhat related:
Israel’s army has killed half of Hamas’ battalion commanders since the war in Gaza began — including one caught on eerie video roaming the terror group’s tunnel network before his death, Israel said Tuesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when speaking to reporters, reaffirmed his nation’s goal to eradicate Hamas — and claimed the terrorist group has already lost about a dozen leaders of its estimated 24 battalions fighting in Gaza, the Times of Israel reported.
“We are settling accounts with all those who kidnapped, participated, murdered, slaughtered, raped and burned the daughters of our people,” Netanyahu said. “We will not forget, and we will not forgive.”
Also - what a superlative idea!:
A Conservative member of Parliament is introducing a private member's bill that would designate December as "Christian Heritage Month."
Marilyn Gladu, the MP for the Ontario riding of Sarnia–Lambton, introduced Bill C-369, the Christian Heritage Month Act, to the House of Commons on Tuesday.
The bill lands as the Conservatives press a petition campaign against a Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) paper that described statutory holidays marking Christian religious dates as discriminatory.
"Canada is a country that celebrates all faiths," Gladu told the House. "It's only fair and right that we would have a Christian heritage month since there's [19.3] million Christians in Canada, according to the last census. And what better month to pick than December?"
Why isn't there more fraternity with our besieged brethren?:
The Vatican has been criticized by the Jewish world in recent weeks, for its handling of the conflict in Gaza triggered by the massacres committed by Hamas against the Israeli population on Oct. 7. A Nov. 17 open letter to the Pope, co-signed by some 400 Jewish rabbis and scholars, including leading figures in Jewish-Christian dialogue, suggested that the Holy See’s approach was too diplomatic and political.
The audience granted Nov. 22 by Pope Francis to both Israeli and Palestinian delegations to discuss the conflict in the Middle East prompted additional strong reaction from members of the Council of the Assembly of Rabbis in Italy, who accused the Church authorities of equating the aggressor and the aggressed. While the Pope has not responded formally to these statements, the secretary of state of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, rejected the accusations, stating on Nov. 23 that “the Holy See tries in every way to be fair, to take into account the suffering of everyone.” These words echoed those of the president of the Italian Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who told the Italian press the same day that “Oct. 7 was a tragedy, period.”
While he understands the Catholic hierarchy’s deep concern for the plight of the Palestinians — several thousand of whom were killed since the start of the Israeli counteroffensive in Gaza, where Christian communities also live — Rabbi David Meyer believes that its representatives should more explicitly express their fraternity toward the Jewish people, who are in a situation of existential threat.
Chinese Christians also don't merit an explicit mention, Rabbi.
Oh, is Russia now in the mix?:
Canada’s cyber spies say China and Russia are targeting elections around the world and this country will not be immune to those threats.
The Communication Security Establishment released a new report on cyber threats to elections on Wednesday. They found at least a quarter of national elections around the world were targeted by some manner of threat and that China and Russia were the countries most active.
“We assess it very likely that Russia and China will continue to be responsible for most of the attributed cyber threat activity targeting foreign elections in the next two years and will focus on targeting countries of strategic significance to them,” the report reads.
Is that what the Tories can ask?
Oh, wait!:
The Official Opposition is criticizing the judge running the public inquiry into foreign interference for not granting the Conservative Party full standing in the first phase of this probe, a decision that means they cannot ask questions of witnesses or gain access to any secret evidence gathered.The first part of the foreign interference inquiry will examine foreign interference by states such as China in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The second phase will examine what reforms are necessary to fight foreign interference.The Conservatives say it was their party that was targeted by the Chinese government, including foreign affairs critic Michael Chong. In May, former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole revealed that Canada’s spy agency has told him he was also the target of a misinformation and voter-suppression operation by the Chinese Communist Party - demonstrating what he called an “orchestrated campaign of foreign interference” leading up to and during the 2021 federal election.Sebastian Skamski, director of media relations for the Opposition Leader’s Office, said this decision by Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue, a judge of the Quebec Court of Appeals, undercuts the credibility of the inquiry that will get under way in January.The Conservatives say it’s unfair that the governing Liberals effectively have gained full standing in the first phase of the inquiry because the government has been granted this right while they have only been given intervenor status in the hearings. Intervenors cannot ask questions of witnesses but can make submissions to the inquiry. They can also only gain access to evidence that is presented publicly to the probe.
It's called rigging the game.
Everyone else is holding Canada back!:
Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault’s department misrepresented inspection claims under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, records show. Of 2,139 “inspections” on migrant labour it reported last year fewer than a tenth were actual random, in-person checks in the workplace: “We are building awareness.”
Cabinet has no plan to solve the housing crisis, the CEO of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said yesterday. “There is not a plan,” Bowers testified at the Senate national finance committee: “I just need an answer; is there a plan yet?”
Senators have voted to condemn one of their own, following a colourful rant covertly recorded during the Freedom Convoy protest last year
The Senate ethics watchdog found this spring that Conservative Sen. Michael MacDonald violated the code of conduct.
The Nova Scotia senator was caught on video in February 2022 castigating downtown Ottawa residents who complained about the protests, saying locals were overpaid and underworked.
The perpetually pants-wetting need mummy to fix things and make them better.
What did they call the convoy attendants again?
Disappointment spread through Canada’s agricultural community Tuesday after the Senate narrowly voted in favour of amending a contentious farm heating bill, a move proponents fear would send the bill into parliamentary purgatory.And Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre vows round-the-clock amendments and debates for the rest of this year’s session unless the Trudeau Liberals reverse course on the move.
“But, regrettably, the passage of this amendment means that the bill will be delayed and will most likely never see the light of day, as it is now required to return to the House of Commons for further debate.”Either through poor legislative planning or bad luck for the Trudeau Liberals, C-234 appeared before senators for third reading just as the government made waves in late October by carving-out an exemption in their federal carbon tax for home heating oil, a move widely seen as an attempt to shore-up cratering party support in Atlantic Canada, one of the country’s highest users of the residential heating fuel.If passed, C-234 would legislate another carve-out in the Liberals’ keystone policy, something Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault vowed wouldn’t happen again.Supporters of the bill blamed Liberal-aligned senators for trying to delay the bill, either by frivolously tabling amendments already voted down in the upper chamber, or through accusations of bullying and intimidation by some senators.
What the Liberals are doing amounts to the destruction of farms and the limiting of food for Canadians.
How very North Korean of Justin.
What a single-payer system will do:
He went on, “She didn’t only have to battle against her health problems, she had to battle against a system that makes it almost impossible to win. Yet, it was her weakest point, her health problems, that distinguished Indi as a true warrior.” Dean described the number of health problems and infections Indi survived before adding, “The strength she had for an eight-month-old child was incredible. And this is one of the reasons I would have done anything for Indi to have the chance to live which was denied her.” He concluded, “Her legacy, however, has only just begun. I wanted to make sure Indi would be remembered forever and she will live on in our hearts and through our voices.”
The Catholic bishop of Nottingham, Patrick McKinney, officiated at Indi’s funeral at Nottingham Cathedral on Friday. There was an Italian delegation at Indi’s funeral, and the Italian government reportedly offered to pay for the baby’s funeral.
After a High Court judge decided against the wishes of Indi’s parents that ending the baby’s treatment was in her “best interests,” the parents were unable to get any different decision from the Court of Appeal or the European Court of Human Rights. Her parents reportedly “are angry, heartbroken and ashamed. The NHS and the Courts not only took away her chance to live a longer life, but they also took away Indi’s dignity to pass away in the family home where she belonged.” It is tragic how parental rights and a respect for every human life are being erased in the West.
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