Tag Archives: Politics

Fred Hiltz, Jerusalem and Trump

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It goes without saying that Hiltz, along with other church dignitaries, is spluttering his indignation about the U.S. recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Most importantly, it’s because he hates Trump and all he stands for with a loathing as intense as his fawning love for Justin Trudeau, Canada’s pretty boy, a bleached version of Barack Obama. There is no hatred quite so caustic as that of a liberal Anglican clergyman encountering opposition laced with disagreement that’s less than good .

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, is calling for prayers for Jerusalem after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision December 6 to recognize the city as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Hiltz, as Anglican Primate floats, as usual, blissfully above the demands that facts and reality impose on mere mortals. Thus, he declares that Trump has acted unilaterally, in spite of the fact that the U.S. congress voted to recognise Jerusalem as capital 22 years ago. Trump has done what every other president for the last 22 years has been putting off. This is very unAnglican: Anglicans have endless conversations when something comes up that they dislike.

Hiltz is also condemning Trump’s “unilateral action,” saying it has set off violence in the Holy Land.

Significantly, none of the clergy gnashing their collective teeth over this are interested in whether it is the right thing to do or not. Rather, they are motivated by pious pragmatism: will the recognition incite the usual lunatic elements to violence? After all, the Middle East has hitherto been so peaceful.

In a statement released Friday, December 8, Hiltz said he was joining a number of voices expressing “serious concerns” about Trump’s declaration. He cited a letter jointly issued by 13 heads of Christian churches in Jerusalem, including Archbishop Suheil Dawani, primate of the Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, voicing disapproval and worry.

“We are certain that such steps will yield increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, moving us farther from the goal of unity and deeper toward destructive division,” the church leaders said in the letter, released shortly before Trump’s official announcement. “We ask from you Mr. President to help us all walk towards more love and a definitive peace, which cannot be reached without Jerusalem being for all.

“The Holy City can be shared and fully enjoyed once a political process helps liberate the hearts of all people, that live within it, from the conditions of conflict and destructiveness that they are experiencing.”

We have something to be thankful for in all this: politicians tend to ignore the opinions of effete clerics – just like everyone else:

But Trump, Hiltz said, chose “to ignore this wise and Godly counsel,” and went ahead with his declaration. “His unilateral action has unsettled the entire Middle East and plunged Jerusalem into chaos,” Hiltz continued.

Hiltz, it seems, has found a new word: “unilateral”. This is the third time he has used it. Incorrectly.

In an interview with the Anglican Journal Thursday, December 7, Hiltz said he felt Trump had acted in a characteristically “unilateral” and dangerous way in making his announcement.

What we really need are more conversations. How about a Middle East Indaba?

“There’s no sense of, you know, consultation, no sense of this having been a broader conversation. It’s Donald Trump being Donald Trump,” he said.

It gets worse: North Korea’s obsession with nuclear tipped ballistic missiles is Trump’s fault, too. Did I mention that Hiltz hates Trump?

“As with issues of concern on the Korean peninsula, his statements and his actions agitate, and they tend to stir things up in ways that, quite frankly, are not helpful,” Hiltz said. “It’s very worrisome in terms of how this could turn.”

The Anglican Church of Canada—like the government of Canada—Hiltz said, supports “a lasting peace process in which there is a state of Israel, but within which Palestinians also have a rightful place.”

Finally, we find out what is really bothering Hiltz – other than the fact that he is forced to live on the same planet as Trump. His free trip to Jerusalem might have to be cancelled.

Hiltz also said Trump’s announcement cast some doubt on whether he would still make a planned trip to Jerusalem this January to visit the Anglican primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East.

Predictable Anglican reaction to Trump’s Jerusalem announcement

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This is an early tweet from Canada’s establishment Anglican rag, The Journal, expressing “concerns” over Trump’s announcement today that the U.S. recognises Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and plans to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The article referenced in the tweet warns that the recognition will cause “Irreparable Damage”. Only time will tell, of course, but a few things we can predict with complete certainty.

The liberal Anglican establishment – just about all Western Anglican clergy in other words – will roundly condemn the move because: Trump did it and they all hate him; it goes against received leftist dogma, the last remaining heresy in Western Anglicanism and, most important of all, it acknowledges the existence of an objective fact – the land of Israel has been home to the Jews for 3000 years – something entirely alien to liberal Anglicans who prefer endless reality-evading conversations.

A strange week

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Scientists from the Austrian Academy of Sciences have grown miniature human brains from skin cells. The diminutive organs are providing a unique insight into how those equipped with pea sized brains –  Anglican Church of Canada bishops and atheists, for example – still manage to think.

One of the qualifications for being a Canadian politician seems to be to have smoked marijuana. A new study suggests that smoking marijuana as an adolescent may cause permanent brain damage; this explains the state of Canadian politics. Luckily a pea sized replacement may soon be available.

President Obama is considering bombing Syria for using gas against Syrian “rebels”, thereby hastening the takeover of Syria by rabid Islamists bent upon the destruction of the West. This is the same gas that, according to Andrew White the Vicar of Baghdad, was hastily moved from Iraq to Syria in 2003. So Obama is planning on attacking Syria for using WMDs that he believes don’t exist. Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld, an Iraq war hawk, is denouncing Obama for contemplating military action in Syria. Sometimes I long for the days when people were more predictable.

The Oxford English Dictionary has added a definition of “twerking” to its online (not print) version. It means to “dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance”; for those who, unlike me, wish to perfect the “dance”, there is an instructional video here. As I am sure everyone knows by now, the gyration – which is not unlike a manoeuvre my dog performs when his rectum is itching – has been rendered mainstream by Miley Cyrus, née Hannah Montana, the last hope of Western culture and someone my daughter-in-law really doesn’t want her daughter copying. Not to worry: by the time my granddaughter is a teenager there will be something worse to emulate.

While we are on the subject of dictionaries, my built-in Firefox dictionary has “Osama” in its database but not “Obama”. At least we know who is sinking into obscurity faster.

The Church and politics

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I’m firmly convinced that when Jesus said “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” he was, among other things, formulating a recipe for how the church and state should relate to each other: they should stay out each other’s business. That is not to say that those in government cannot be guided by Christian principles or that churchgoers should not hold political opinions; it is to say that as institutions, although ultimately they report to the same boss, they should conduct their affairs separately.

But when the church tosses out the transcendent to replace it with the temporal, it ceases to be a religion and all it has left with which to busy itself is politics: such is the condition of the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Unhappily for the church, even an establishment as spiritually obtuse as the Canadian government has noticed that mainline denominations are more interested in utopia now than heaven later; why should they not pay taxes like everyone else? At least, then, they would be completely unencumbered by otherworldly pietistic pretentions and could fulminate on the misdeeds of Israel to their heart’s content, unfettered by any vestigial impulse to being non-partisan.

Some bishops have caught wind of this and are recoiling in horror: remember, bishops delight in redistributing other people’s money, not the church’s money. Bishop Dennis Drainville thinks making the church pay tax is an “attack on the churches” by “Harperites”; you would think he would welcome a conservative government’s foray into wealth equity.

So what is the solution? If the church wants to play politics, let it pay taxes; it could raise plenty of money by selling all its  properties lying idle.

No happy ending for Jack Layton

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From here:

TORONTO – What Jos Chiu remembers most is the sign. A long, red, illuminated sign with big white letters: MASSAGE. The sign was for years vertically attached to number 787 Dundas St. W.

It was a massage parlour, but no ordinary massage parlour.

It was the kind suspected by police as one of the many in the city where women were offering the “extra service” of masturbation — a place known on the street as a rub-and-tug.  It’s the same massage parlour where in January 1996 Toronto Police say they walked in on NDP Leader Jack Layton — then a Metro councillor — with his pants down — literally.  In a statement Friday night, Layton said he was there for a massage and that he was told by police he had done nothing wrong.

“It was a big vertical sign on the side of the building,” said Chiu, who has owned and operated a custom T-shirt shop across the street for over 20 years.

The question is, should anyone who is daft enough to go into a massage parlour that advertises its services on a long, red, illuminated sign and naïve enough to expect his protestations of innocence to be believed, be put in charge of running a country?

Perhaps, as his wife says, “Sixteen years ago my husband went for a massage at a massage clinic that is registered with the city of Toronto. He exercises regularly; he was and remains in great shape and he needed a massage.” Or perhaps Olivia Chow’s desire for vicarious power is sufficient to temper her outrage at her husband’s desire to graze in other pastures – publicly, at least.

Lefties, eat your hearts out

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According to the Huffington Post, out of the top 30 cable news programs, the first eleven places are occupied by Fox News. And number 10 is a repeat of number one, The O’Reilly Factor, at a different time.

 

  1. The O’Reilly Factor
  2. Special Report With Bret Baier
  3. Hannity
  4. Glenn Beck
  5. Fox Report With Shepard Smith
  6. On The Record With Greta Van Susteren
  7. Your World With Neil Cavuto
  8. America’s Newsroom
  9. Studio B
  10. The O’Reilly Factor (11:00 p.m. repeat)
  11. America Live
  12. The Rachel Maddow Show
  13. Happening Now
  14. The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell
  15. Fox & Friends
  16. Anderson Cooper 360 (10:00 p.m.)
  17. The Ed Show
  18. Piers Morgan Tonight
  19. Hardball With Chris Matthews
  20. The Situation Room
  21. Parker Spitzer
  22. Nancy Grace
  23. Anderson Cooper 360 (11:00 p.m.)
  24. John King USA
  25. CNN Newsroom
  26. The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell (11:00 p.m. repeat)
  27. Morning Joe
  28. The Daily Rundown
  29. MSNBC Live
  30. Andrea Mitchell Reports

 

Chinese pianist calls Americans “jackals” in a song performed at a White House dinner

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It’s all part of the new political civility.

From here:

A Chinese pianist struck a sour note at a White House state dinner with a rendition of a well-known anti-American anthem.

With the Chinese and U.S. presidents among the dozens of dignitaries watching, Lang Lang belted out ‘My Motherland’, the theme tune to the Chinese-made Korean War film ‘Battle on Shangangling Mountain’.

The song has been a propaganda tool in China for decades and includes a disparaging reference to Americans as ‘jackals’ who will be shot with hunting rifles.

You can hardly blame the Chinese for treating the American government like half-witted wimps considering the same government gave a benign nod to the building of a victory mosque on the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

Here it is:

Some animals are more equal than others

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As is often the case with socialism in practice, taking care of the poor ends up turning into taking care of poor me.

From here:

[I]f the attitude of NDP power couple Jack Layton and Olivia Chow is any indication, many MPs still haven’t learned the most important lesson of last spring’s expense controversy: You are not entitled to this money, no questions asked, just because you are an MP.

Last year, Chow claimed $530,000 in expenses, Layton claimed $629,000. Both are above average and a little surprising given that both represent Toronto ridings. Last time I looked, T.O. was not that far from Ottawa. One might be forgiven for thinking it would cost less to ferry Toronto MPs back home as opposed to say, Yellowknife MPs or ones from Labrador. But maybe the short distance prompts them to take more trips back to their constituencies, racking up more expenses.

Chow’s sensitive, caring-for-the-average-working-stiff response when asked about her above-average expenses? “It’s within the law,” she told the Toronto Star curtly.

[T]he Layton-Chows act more like the Duke and Duchess of Downtown Toronto. They live more lavishly than the average Conservative or Liberal, then insist we peasants have no right to know more because they are acting “within the law.”

Canada’s new Governor General is Anglican

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The Journal reports:

Canada’s next governor general, David Johnston, is a respected academic and lawyer. He is also Anglican.

Currently the president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo, Johnston will succeed Governor General Michaelle Jean when her term ends on Oct. 1.

According to the Globe and Mail:

Mr. Johnston combines a mind that has traversed securities law, Quebec separatism and emerging high technologies with the formidable diplomatic skills of someone who has served as president of two universities. And he possesses what is universally described as a personality that combines unaffected warmth with boyish enthusiasm.

He will be guided, as well, by his Anglican faith.

Everything seemed fine up until that last sentence.