Tag Archives: Politics

How not to make Christianity believable

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h/t: Hairy Eyeball

One of the leading characters in Tolstoy’s War and Peace – Pierre Besukhov – spends a considerable amount of energy playing with numbers in the Bible to prove that Napoleon was the antichrist.  As is often the case in a Tolstoy novel, his fictional character is pretty close to reality: what obsesses some – I hope it’s fringe, I really do – Christians is just that: identifying the antichrist.

Napoleon may have been disagreeable, but he wasn’t the antichrist; neither is Barack Obama, in spite of a popular youtube video declaring that he is. I disagree politically with Obama and I think the adulation he has attracted is foolish, but I don’t thinks he is about to usher in the Great Tribulation – well, other than the trillion dollar debt.

Nevertheless, there are some who take this sort of thing seriously. This article does an effective debunking job:

More than one Christian friend has suggested to me, in all seriousness, that President Obama is the Antichrist. I haven’t taken such suggestions too seriously, but recently a video has shown up on Youtube that seems to claim that Jesus identified Obama as the Antichrist. Some Christians have been startled by this (and the video is wildly popular) and believe that the evidence is compelling. The video is found here.

Why are Canadian troops dying in Afghanistan?

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Not for this, surely:

An Afghan bill permitting a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has become law.

The original bill caused international outrage earlier this year, forcing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to withdraw it.

But critics say the amended version of the law, brought into effect on July 27, remains highly repressive.

They accuse Mr Karzai of selling out Afghan women for the sake of conservative Shia support ahead of this week’s presidential election.

A coterie of buffoons

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Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan, among others, are Elders apparently and are out to save the world. Having solved the problem of discrimination against women – without mentioning Islam – they are about to focus their gaze on the Middle East; no doubt all strife and dissent with wither before the blinding light of their collective intelligence. In other words, look out Israel, you are in for another bashing.

“The Elders” are coming to the Middle East, ostensibly bringing wise diplomatic counsel, but actually are likely to deliver yet another ultimatum to Israel.

A brainchild of British billionaire and gadfly Richard Branson, “The Elders” are ostensibly a wise junta of “eminent global leaders” bringing “their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity.”

Naturally, Jimmy Carter is an Elder.  So too is retired South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former Irish President Mary Robinson, former Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, former Marxist Mozambican first lady (and later wife to Nelson Mandela) Graca Machel, and former Norwegian Premier Gro Bruntland, along with several other Third World luminaries and global justice advocates, all of whom are left of center.

These Elders generally advocate a flavorless globaloney approach to the world, usually guided by all the usual bromides echoing among the bureaucracies of the United Nations, the European Union, most NGO’s, Ivy League universities, and left-leaning philanthropies like Ford, Rockefeller, and Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation.  The Elders seem to draw their oxygen, stale though it is, from a self-enclosed phalanx of these mutually re-enforcing chattering societies. 

General Convention 2009: it isn’t all about sex, it’s also about politics

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Left wing politics, of course:

The 2 million member and fracturing Episcopal Church is currently convened in its governing General Convention in Anaheim, California, and seemingly poised, in between affirmations of same-sex unions and transgenderism, to condemn Israel as the focus of Middle Eastern strife.

There are no resolutions currently before this year’s Episcopal General Convention directly criticizing any government in the world, except two: Israel and the United States. Resolutions mention human rights abuses in the Philippines and strife in southern Sudan but decline to criticize governments there, though surely Sudan’s Islamist regime, dripping with blood of millions of victims, might merit some disapproval. There is no criticism of any Muslim or communist dictatorship around the world, though Cuba’s Marxist regime is portrayed by one resolution as the victim of U.S. sanctions. In contrast, about a half dozen statements for consideration before the General Convention are aimed at Israel.

Selective clerical compassion

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The World Council of Churches is worried about Gaza:

A directors’ delegation from APRODEV – the Association of World Council of Churches (WCC) related Development Organizations in Europe – who visited Gaza during the World Week for Peace in Palestine Israel, have urged Ministers of Foreign Affairs in the European Union (EU) to also go there and “witness for themselves the denigrating circumstances in which the people of Gaza live.”

The World Week for Peace in Palestine intones:

The week calls participants to seek justice for Palestinians so that both Israelis and Palestinians can finally live in peace. It is now more than 60 years since the partition of Palestine hardened into a permanent nightmare for Palestinians. It’s more than 40 years since the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza overwhelmed the peaceful vision of one land, two peoples.

So, as usual, the mantra is that Israel has created a nightmare for Palestinians.

The Canadian paradigm of left-wing Anglican political agitprop, Fred Hiltz oozes with compassion here:

We were deeply distressed to learn from the Near East Council of Churches in Gaza, that this church-run healthcare centre, which served approximately 10,000 families and has been co-funded by Canadians and the Canadian International Development Agency, was destroyed on January 10th by missiles fired from the Israeli Defence Force.

So, of course, we expect the WCC, Fred Hiltz and other Anglican apparatchiks to be equally voluble in their support for the Iranian people, who are being killed, tortured and imprisoned by their government.

Anyone hear anything anywhere?

Bad financial advice from the Pope

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Making silly statements about politics and finance is not the exclusive domain of Anglicans: the Pope, presumably feeling left out, is about to play the politically correct financial morologist himself:

In Charity in Truth, which should be released next week, he is expected to point out the failings of capitalism and lament the world’s roiling markets, exploited workers and the harsh disparity between rich and the poor.

Indeed, commenting earlier this year on the global economic collapse, Pope Benedict said the Church must “denounce the fundamental errors that have now been revealed in the collapse of the major American banks. Human greed is a form of idolatry that is against the true God, and is a falsification of the image of God with another god, Mammon.”

The problem with this is that capitalism, for all its faults, is the only system that has ever managed to produce wealth for the benefit of both the rich and the poor. If the Pope wants to be “on the side of the poor and the disadvantaged” it might be a good idea to be less critical of capitalism which does a moderately good job of holding the consequences of greed in check, and more critical of socialism, which does not.

Surely the real problem is, [f]or the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils – (1Tim 6:10) – and the love of money – human greed – afflicts the wealthy and poor alike. If the Pope were really interested in helping the poor, he would be working to encourage democracy, freedom and capitalism in countries ruled by corrupt tyrannies, and for individuals – wealthy or poor – get to the root of the problem by emphasising the truth of the gospel.

Iran bans prayers for murdered woman

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From the Telegraph:

Iran’s regime has issued a ban on memorials for a young woman whose death has become the focal point of protests against the clerical regime.

Neda Agha Soltan, 27, was dubbed the Angel of Freedom after a video which appeared to show her being shot by a government sniper was posted on the internet.

Graphic scenes show Neda – her name means “the call” – walking with her father among demonstrators, then separately when she was shot as well as attempts to save her life.

The Iranian authorities have now sent out a circular to mosques banning collective prayers for the woman.

A sniper killing an innocent young woman is bad enough, but what kind of systematically evil regime would ban prayers or a memorial for the victim. The one in Iran, it seems; this could backfire on the “authorities”.

Letterman needs a new writer

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David Letterman’s jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter commit the cardinal sin of comedy: they are not funny.

Here is the clip:

Sarah Palin understandably reacted negatively to being called a slutty flight attendant and having her daughter – either the 14 or 18 year old – used in an attempted joke.

I admit I like Palin and dislike Letterman; but I think political figures are fair game for comedy since humour is a God given gift for deflating the pretensions of the mighty – although I’m not sure he intended their daughters to be included.

In that spirit,  what really would be funny is the reaction that Letterman – who is, after all, more apparatchik than comedian – would get if he compared Michelle Obama to a slutty flight attendant and made sexual jokes about her daughters.

Obama exerts his charm in Egypt

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In Thursday’s speech in Cairo, Obama declared:

I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world — one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.

He gently chided Hamas:

“Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel’s right to exist,” Obama said.

but didn’t bother to mention this:

Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza have approved a new bill “to implement Koranic punishments,” including hand amputation, crucifixion, corporal punishment and execution. Drinking, owning or producing wine is punished by 40 lashes, while drinking in public adds three months’ imprisonment. Several laws are directed against Hamas’s Palestinian rivals, including a law intended to inhibit non-Hamas negotiators by sentencing to death anyone who was “appointed to negotiate with a foreign government on a Palestinian issue and negotiated against Palestinians’ interest.”

For the New Beginning, as long as there’s no waterboarding, Obama can overlook the occasional execution, amputation and crucifixion.

He also forgot to mention that at home he has ushered in Gay Pride Month;  perhaps, since the US is apparently one of the largest Muslim countries in the world, it will be followed by a month of Sharia stoning.

Surely, charm or no charm, his inconsistencies are going to cause the unravelling of Obama at some point.