More on the pope, mohammedism, and reason.

Theology, philosophy, and history...read and learn, kiddies.

All emphasis below is mine.

Robert R. Reilly uncovers the real controversy between Islam and the West . . . and it has nothing to do with cartoons or 14th-century Byzantine emperors.

Crisis magazine: THE POPE AND THE PROPHET

Finally, a leader has spoken about the real, essential differences in the struggle between the West and Islam, as it emanates from a contest within Islam itself over the most important things. With startling—indeed alarming—clarity, Pope Benedict XVI told his audience in Regensburg, Germany, that not only is violence in spreading faith unreasonable and therefore against God, but that a conception of God without reason, or above reason, leads to that very violence. To ensure everyone knew what he was talking about, the pope quoted from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, who was besieged by Islamic forces attempting to conquer Constantinople. The emperor denounced the effort to “spread by the sword the faith he [Mohammed] preached.”

The pope has raised a very volatile question: Is, in fact, the God of Islam without reason, or above it? Is the Muslim God unreasonable? Is Islam, therefore, based upon a theological deformation? The pope’s allusion to the teachings of eleventh-century Islamic philosopher Ibn Hazn—“God is not bound even by his own word”—suggests that possibility. However, it is more than a possibility. It is a core teaching of one of the predominant strains of Islam, if not the predominant strain. Has this always been so? How did such a conception of God develop? Is it still possible to talk about this without threats of murder? Benedict is trying to start a conversation with Islam, and it is the only one really worth having.

The pope’s remarks require a good deal of explication in the context of Islamic philosophy and theology. They need to be understood within the broader perspective of a struggle that has taken place since Islam’s inception over the status of reason and revelation. Benedict has essentially taken sides in the most fundamental debate that has ever been held within the Islamic world, and that is why his words generated such vehemence.

According to the pope, making either reason or revelation autonomous leads to a distortion of what each is. Reason raises questions that it cannot answer, and revelation’s answers cannot be understood without reason. Divorcing reason from faith, or faith from reason, leads to catastrophe; they must be in partnership. Benedict speaks of dehellenization—meaning the loss of reason, the gift of the Greeks—as one of the West’s main problems. Less well-known is the dehellenization that has afflicted Islam—its denigration of and divorce from reason. This took place over an argument, already begun in the seventh and eighth centuries, about the status of reason in relation to God’s omnipotence, and decisively affected the character of the Islamic world. The struggle had its roots in a profound disagreement over who God is.

The side in this debate most easily recognizable to a Westerner was the Mu’tazilite school, composed of the Muslim rationalist philosophers who fought for the primacy of reason. The Mu’tazilites held that God is not only power; He is also reason. Man’s reason is a gift from God, who expects man to use it to come to know Him. The status of reason determines man’s relationship to revelation. God, being reason, would not expect man to accept anything contrary to it. Through reason, man is also able to understand God as manifested in His creation. God’s laws are the laws of nature, which are also manifested in the Sharia (the divine path). Therefore, the Mu’tazilites held that the statements in the Qur’an must be in accord with reason. This means that the Qur’an, a document revealed in history, is open to interpretation. If this sounds familiar, it should: It reflects the same powerful influence Greek philosophy had upon Islam as it had upon Christianity, and which carried within it the impetus to reconcile reason and revelation.

The Mu’tazilite advocacy of reason succeeded to the extent that the teaching of a created Qur’an was enshrined as a state doctrine, proclaimed in 827 under Caliph al-Ma’mn. The Mu’tazilites fought for the primacy of reason and actually required religious judges to swear an oath that the Qur’an had been created. Their opponents, who believed in the primacy of power and the uncreated Qur’an, were punished and imprisoned. However, after the reign of Harun al-Watiq, the tables were turned on the Mu’tazilites by Caliph Ja’afar al-Mutawakkil (847–861), who made holding the Mu’tazilite doctrine a crime punishable by death. This did not end the Mu’tazilite school of thought (some fled to the more hospitable Shia areas), nor did it prevent the flourishing of the Greek-influenced faylasufs (philosophers) who followed them, such as al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. However, the long process of dehellenization and its resulting ossification had begun.

The victorious view developed a theological basis for the primacy of power by claiming that the revelation of Mohammed emphasizes most particularly one attribute of God—His omnipotence. Although all monotheistic religions hold that, in order to be one, God must be omnipotent, this argument reduced God to His omnipotence by concentrating exclusively on His unlimited power, as against His reason. God’s “reasons” are unknowable by man. God is not shackled by reason; He rules as He pleases. He is pure will. There is no rational order invested in the universe upon which one can rely, only the second-to-second manifestation of God’s will.

God is so powerful that every instant is the equivalent of a miracle. Nothing intervenes or has an independent or even semi-autonomous existence. In philosophical language, this view holds that God is the primary cause of everything, and there are no secondary causes. Therefore, what may seem to be “natural laws,” such as the laws of physics, gravity, etc., are really nothing more than God’s customs, which He is at complete liberty to break or change at any moment. As Benedict points out, this is called “volunteerism.”

The consequences of this view are momentous. If creation exists simply as a succession of miraculous moments, it cannot be apprehended by reason. Other religions, including Christianity, recognize miracles. But they recognize them precisely as temporary and extraordinary suspensions of the natural law. In fact, that is what defines them as miracles. One admits to the possibility of a miracle only after discounting every possible explanation of its occurrence by natural causes. In this school of Islamic thought, there are no natural causes to discount. As a result, reality becomes incomprehensible. If unlimited will is the exclusive constituent of reality, there is really nothing left to reason about, and the uncreated Qur’an is not open to interpretation.

The early–tenth-century thinker Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari elaborated a metaphysics for the anti-rational view by using early Greek atomistic philosophy to assert that reality is composed of atoms. The configuration of these atoms at any given moment makes things what they are. In Islam in the World, British analyst Malise Ruthven explains: “The Asharis rationalised God’s omnipotence within an atomistic theory of creation, according to which the world was made up of the discrete points in space and time whose only connection was the will of God, which created them anew at every moment.”

For example, there is a collection of atoms that is a plant. Does the plant remain a plant because it has the nature of a plant, or because Allah wishes it to be a plant from this moment to the next? The Asharites said it is only a plant for the moment. For the plant to remain a plant depends on the will of Allah, and if you say it has to remain a plant because it has the nature of plant, this is shirk—blasphemy.

The catastrophic result of this view is the denial of the relationship between cause and effect. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), perhaps the single most influential Muslim thinker after Mohammed, vehemently rejected Greek thought: “The source of their infidelity was their hearing terrible names such as Socrates and Hippocrates, Plato and Aristotle.” Al-Ghazali insisted that God is not bound by any order, and that there is, therefore, no “natural” sequence of cause and effect, as in fire burning cotton or, more colorfully, as in “the purging of the bowels and the using of a purgative.” Things do not act according to their own natures but only according to God’s will at the moment. There are only juxtapositions of discrete events that make it appear that the fire is burning the cotton, but God could just as well do otherwise. (This doctrine is known as occasionalism.) In other words, there is no continuous narrative of cause and effect tying these moments together in a comprehensible way. In attacking the Mu’tazilites, the Asharites, in the words of Mohammed Khair, wished “to free God’s saving power from the shackles of causality.”

Equally as damaging to the status of reason, al-Ghazali wrote in Moderation in Belief that reason is so infected by man’s self-interest that it cannot know moral principles; they can only be known through revelation. Since reason is not a source of moral truth, concludes al-Ghazali, “No obligations flow from reason but from the Sharia [the divinely ordained path].” With this, he despatches Aristotle’s Ethics and all other moral philosophy.

To outsiders, this capricious dimension of Islam was clear as long ago as the Middle Ages when the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135–1204) spoke of his experiences in Cairo to illustrate the way some Muslims think. Every morning the caliph rides through Cairo, and every morning he takes the same route. However, said Maimonides, tomorrow he could take a different route. Why? Because he is the caliph and he can do as he wills. Every morning the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. It has happened for years; it happened today. But tomorrow it might rise in the south and set in the north. That depends on the will of Allah, and there is no saying that it will not. As the Qur’an states, “Dost thou not know that God has the power to will anything?” (2:106). Maimonides concluded that “the thing which exists with certain constant and permanent forms, dimensions, and properties [in nature] only follows the direction of habit . . . . On this foundation their whole fabric is constructed.”

This conception of God directed man’s relationship to the Almighty in a specific way. A God who has no reasons cannot be known by reason. This view can and did lead to a rich vein of mysticism, most especially in the Sufism of al-Ghazali, but it also presents a problem. How should one behave toward an unreasoning God? Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), a medieval Muslim thinker who profoundly influenced the founder of Wahhabism and who has been resuscitated by the Islamists today, answered: Man’s task is not to know God. God is unknowable; do not even try to know God. Man’s job is not to love God. Man cannot love what he does not know. Man’s job is to obey. Submit. Reason plays no role, and free will is denigrated. In his attack on philosophy titled Kuzari, Judah ha-Levi, a Jewish follower of al-Ghazali, reached the logical conclusion as to how man ought to approach the revelations of such a deity: “I consider him to have attained the highest degree of perfection who is convinced of religious truths without having scrutinized them and reasoned over them.” (One wonders how one becomes “convinced” of something without having thought about it.) There could hardly be a more radical rejection of what Benedict calls “the reasonableness of faith.”

Compare this relationship to the standard definition of a Christian vocation, which is expressed in this logical order: to know, to love, and to serve God. First, knowledge of God is required. How can one love what one does not know? Of course, it is assumed that a finite creature such as man can only comprehend a small part of an infinite God, but he can know enough to inspire love. God is knowable. If one knows God, then one loves Him because God is goodness. In turn, the impulse of that love is to serve. One is naturally drawn to serve what one loves. The expression of this vocation is internally coherent and logically ordered. It is based upon a certain view of who God is and how man is capable of freely responding to Him through the use of his reason and free will.

To understand the ultimate significance of the Asharite and al-Ghazali’s teaching of an unreasoning God, it may be helpful to contrast it to the Christian teaching that was similarly tempted to such extremes, but resisted them. Why, for instance, did this exclusive preoccupation with God’s omnipotence not afflict Christianity, which is also monotheistic? Christianity holds that God is omnipotent and the primary cause of all things, as well. In fact, as Benedict pointed out in Regensburg, there were strong tendencies within Christianity to move in the very same direction, including in the teaching of Duns Scotus. The anti-rational view was violently manifested in the millenarian movements of the Middle Ages, and within the movement that was known as fideism—faith alone, sola scriptura. In its most radical form, this school held that the Scriptures are enough. Forget reason, Greek philosophy, and Thomas Aquinas. However, the anti-rationalist view in its more extreme forms has never predominated in Christianity, and it was considered broadly heretical.

As Benedict makes clear, the reason Christianity was insulated from an obsession with God’s omnipotence was the revelation of Christ as Logos in the Gospel of St. John. If Christ is Logos—if God introduces Himself as ratio—then God is not only all-powerful, He is reason. While the Mu’tazilites claimed something similar, they had no scriptural authority to confirm their position, while their opponents had many to oppose it.

In addition, Christian revelation claims that everything was created through Christ as Logos. Since it was through Logos that all things were created, creation carries the imprint of its creator as reason. Nature bespeaks an intelligibility that derives from a transcendent source. Benedict recently reiterated this view when he referred to the “world as a product of creative reason.” The laws of nature are not a challenge to God’s authority but an expression of it. Reason and Christian revelation are compatible.

Ultimately, this theological view developed into the realist metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, which then became the foundation for modern science, as Rev. Stanley Jaki, a Hungarian theologian and physicist, has explained in his voluminous writings on the origins of modern science. He has laid out the reasons modern science was stillborn in the Muslim world after what seemed to be its real start (see his extraordinary monograph, Jesus, Islam, Science). No one offers a more profound understanding of the consequences of the view of God as pure will than Father Jaki has.

The metaphysical support for natural law not only laid the foundations for modern science, but also provided the basis for the gradual development of constitutional government. The primacy of power in Islamic thought undermined a similar prospect. If one does not allow for the existence of secondary causes, one cannot develop natural law. If one cannot develop natural law, one cannot conceive of a constitutional political order in which man—through his reason—creates laws to govern himself and behave freely. Because democracies base their political order on reason and free will, and leave in play questions that Islamists believe have been definitively settled by revelation, Islamists regard democracies as their natural and fatal enemies.

The bottom line follows, kiddies. Learn it, love it, live it:

The curious thing is that it does not matter whether one’s view of reality as pure will has its origin in a deformed theology or a totally secular ideology, such as Hegel’s or Hobbes’s: The political consequences are the same. As Rev. James V. Schall has shown, the notion of pure will as the basis of reality results in tyrannical rule. Disordered will, unfettered by right reason, is the political problem.

Radical Muslims translate their version of God’s omnipotence into a politics of unlimited power. As God’s instruments, they are channels for this power. Once the primacy of force is posited, terrorism becomes the next logical step to power, as it did in the 20th-century secular ideologies of power: Nazism and Marxism–Leninism. This is what led Osama bin Laden to embrace the astonishing statement of his spiritual godfather, Abdullah Azzam, which bin Laden quoted in the November 2001 video, released after 9/11: “Terrorism is an obligation in Allah’s religion.” This can only be true—that violence in spreading faith is an obligation—if, as Benedict said in Regensburg, God is without reason.

The problem today is that the side of reason in Islam lost. The ultimate consequences of the rejection of reason and the loss of causality are playing themselves out across the Muslim world. As Fouad Ajami recently observed, “Wherever I go in the Islamic world, it’s the same problem: cause and effect; cause and effect.”

It is not that the side of reason is not still there—there are some extraordinarily intelligent Muslim scholars who would like to see a neo-Mu’tazilite movement within Islam, a restoration of the primacy of reason so that they can re-open the doors to interpretation and develop some kind of natural-law foundation for humane, political, constitutional rule. According to Iranian thinker Abdolkarim Soroush, “Some of the understandings that exist in our society today of the Imams . . . or even of the concept of God are not particularly compatible with an accountable state and do not allow society to grow and develop in the modern-day sense.” Reformist Tunisian-born thinker Latif Lakhdar calls for a revival of “Mu’tazila and philosophical thought that subjected the holy writings on which the religion is based to interpretation by the human mind.” There are Muslims who will say these things, but many of them, like Soroush and Lakhdar, are in the West for their own protection.

Is there a constituency within the Muslim world that can elaborate a theology that allows for the restoration of reason, a rehellenization of Islam with Allah as ratio? It is idle to pretend that it would take less than a sea change for this to happen. If it does not, it is hard to envisage upon what basis the dialogue with Islam could take place. There are many Muslims (in Turkey and in the developing democracies of Indonesia and Malaysia, to say nothing of the democratic life followed by the huge Muslim population in India) who want to enter the modern world—with its modern science and modern political institutions—and also keep their faith. Unfortunately, the ideas gaining traction today are not theirs. That is the crisis, which is now spilling over into the West. In order to meet it, Benedict is telling us we have urgent reason to regain our own faith and to raise these all-important questions with them.

Robert R. Reilly was a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and served as his liaison to the Catholic Church.

Insults, Shakespeare style.

From the Shakespeare's Insults calendar:

Truly thou art damned, like an ill-
roasted egg, all on one side.
(As You Like It 3.2.35.36)

Touchstone the Fool to Corin, a shepherd; Touchstone believes Corin is damned because he has never been in court.


The common curse of mankind,
folly and ignorance, be thine in
great revenue.
(The History of Troilus and Cressida 2.3.25-27)

Thersites, a slave, to Patroclus, a Greek warrior.

Fyodor lays some Latin on you.

From the Latin for the Illiterati calendar:

malis avibus - "with unfavorable birds" (under bad auspices)

See my post Mumbo jumbo, American style.

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today is the Feast of St. John Bosco, son of Venerable Margaret Bosco. John's father died when the boywas 2 years old, and as soon as he was old enough to do odd jobs, he did so for extra money for his family. Bosco would go to circuses, fairs and carnivals, practice the tricks he saw magicians perform, and then present one-boy shows. After his performance, while he still had an audience of boys, he would repeat the homily he had heard earlier in church.

He worked as a tailor, baker, shoemaker, and carpenter while attending college and the seminary. Ordained in 1841, he was also a teacher. He worked with youth, finding places where they could meet, play and pray, teaching catechism to orphans and apprentices, and was also a Chaplain in a hospice for girls. John Bosco wrote short treatises aimed at explaining the faith to children, and then taught children how to print them.

He was a friend of Saint Joseph Cafasso, whose biography he wrote, and confessor to Blessed Joseph Allamano. He founded the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) in 1859, an order of priests who work with and educate boys, under the protection of Our Lady, Help of Chistians, and Saint Francis de Sales. Founded the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians in 1872, and Union of Cooperator Salesians in 1875.

Pray for us, all you angels and saints.

Today's reading for the Feast of St. John Bosco is Philippians 4:4-9.
Today's Responsorial Psalm is Psalms 103:1-2, 3-4, 8-9, 13-14, 17-18.
Today's Gospel reading is Matthew 18:1-5.


Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTN
National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)
The Catholic Calendar Page for Today
ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome


Just in case you are wondering what exactly Catholics believe, here is

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful; O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.


St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, pray for us.


Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me; Body of Christ, save me; Blood of Christ, inebriate me; Water from Christ's side, wash me; Passion of Christ, strengthen me; O good Jesus, hear me; Within Thy wounds hide me; Suffer me not to be separated from Thee; From the malicious enemy defend me; In the hour of my death call me; And bid me come unto Thee; That I may praise Thee with Thy saints and with Thy angels Forever and ever. Amen.


Prayer to St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire

Dear St. Anthony, you became a Franciscan with the hope of shedding your blood for Christ. In God's plan for you, your thirst for martyrdom was never to be satisfied. St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire, pray that I may become less afraid to stand up and be counted as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


Prayer To Saint Michael The Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.


Prayer to End Abortion

Lord God, I thank You today for the gift of my life, and for the lives of all my brothers and sisters. I know there is nothing that destroys more life than abortion, yet I rejoice that you have conquered death by the resurrection of Your Son. I am ready to do my part to end abortion. Today I commit myself never to be silent, never to be passive, and never to be forgetful of the unborn. I commit myself to be active in the pro-life movement, and never stop defending life until all my brothers and sisters are protected and our nation once again becomes a nation with liberty and justice, not just for some, but for all. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.


Prayer For Vocations

Send forth your Spirit, Lord, into the hearts of your faithful people, that we may be conscious of our vocation to holiness and sevice to others. Grant that many of us may dedicate ourselves to You through the priesthood and the religious life.We pray especially for the needs of our own parish and diocese. Grant that we may always have sufficient good and holy priests, and dedicated Sisters to serve our commumities.We pray, too, for religious orders; that generous men may join them to become zealous missionaries in preaching the Gospel in word and action, especially to the poor and abandoned.We make this prayer through Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Redeemer. Amen.


Prayer Before The Crucifix

Behold, O kind and gentle Jesus, I kneel before Thee and pray that Thou would impress upon my heart the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, with true repentance for my sins and a firm purpose of amendment. At the same time, with sorrow I meditate on Thy five precious wounds, having in mind the words which David spoke in prophecy: "They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones."


Divine Praises

Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
Blessed be His most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be His most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints.
May the Heart of Jesus in the most Blessed Sacrament
Be praised, adored and loved
With grateful affection at every moment
In all the tabernacles of the world
Even to the end of time. Amen.

24's Body Count Update.

Jack's brother begins to reveal his true identity as the Grand Poobah of The Men With Phones In Their Ears and Jack's dad seems to have been duped as well.

Chloe, My Chloe was practically MIA for the second week in a row. They better have a butt shot of her walking out of a shower to make up for it. And soon.

I'm not squeamish: History's Nicest and Tidiest Nuke whacked 12,000 (conservative official estimate) LA suburbanites and there aren't even any traffic jams!


From Right Wing Nuthouse:

BODY COUNT

The Grim Reaper took a brief respite from his vacation, just to keep his hand in, I’m sure. Two CTU agents taken out by Graem’s thugs.

TOTAL:
Jack: 3
Show: 351

Senator Token Update.

Bill Sammon, one of the few real journalists left, tries to explain ol' Big Ears to those not under the Magical Mulatto's spell.

Washington Examiner: ‘Trapped between two worlds’
Sen. Barack Obama, the only major black candidate in the 2008 presidential race, has spent much of his life anguishing over his mixed-race heritage and self-described “racial obsessions.”

Descended from a white American mother and black Kenyan father, the Illinois Democrat once wrote: “He was black as pitch, my mother white as milk.”

In his first memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” Obama observed that when people discover his mixed-race heritage, they make assumptions about “the mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds.”

Indeed, Obama acknowledges feeling tormented for much of his life by “the constant, crippling fear that I didn't belong somehow, that unless I dodged and hid and pretended to be something I wasn't, I would forever remain an outsider, with the rest of the world, black and white, always standing in judgment.”

Obama's views on race are certain to be an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign, according to Princeton University professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, who specializes in African-American politics.

“There’s no question that race and all the permutations that it’s going to take for Obama are going to be central issues,” she predicted.

Although Obama was raised by his mother, he identified more closely with the race of his father, who left the family when Obama was 2.

“I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites,” he wrote.

Yet, even through high school, he continued to vacillate between the twin strands of his racial identity.

“I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds,” he wrote in “Dreams.” “One of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time.”

Although Obama spent various portions of his youth living with his white maternal grandfather and Indonesian stepfather, he vowed that he would “never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”

Obama wrote that in high school, he and a black friend would sometimes speak disparagingly “about white folks this or white folks that, and I would suddenly remember my mother's smile, and the words that I spoke would seem awkward and false.”
As a result, he concluded that “certain whites could be excluded from the general category of our distrust.”

Donna Brazile, who managed former Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000, said Obama's feelings of distrust toward most whites and doubts about himself are fairly typical for black Americans.

“He was a young man trying to discover, trying to accept, trying to come to grips with his background,” she explained. “In the process, he had to really make some statements that are hurtful, maybe. But I think they're more insightful than anything.”

During college, Obama disapproved of what he called other “half-breeds” who gravitated toward whites instead of blacks. And yet after college, he once fell in love with a white woman, only to push her away when he concluded he would have to assimilate into her world, not the other way around. He later married a black woman.

Such candid racial revelations abound in “Dreams,” which was first published in 1995, when Obama was 34 and not yet in politics. By the time he ran for his Senate seat in 2004, he observed of that first memoir: “Certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically.”

Thus, in his second memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” which was published last year, Obama adopted a more conciliatory, even upbeat tone when discussing race. Noting his multiracial family, he wrote in the new book: “I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.”

This appears to contradict certain passages in his first memoir, including a description of black student life at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

“There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs,” he wrote. “It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.”

He added: “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”

Obama said he and other blacks were careful not to second-guess their own racial identity in front of whites.

“To admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred,” he wrote.

After his sophomore year, Obama transferred to Columbia University. Later, looking back on his years in New York City, he recalled: “I had grown accustomed, everywhere, to suspicions between the races.”

His pessimism about race relations seemed to pervade his worldview.

“The emotion between the races could never be pure,” he laments in “Dreams.” “Even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.”

After graduating from college, Obama eventually went to Chicago to interview for a job as a community organizer. His racial attitudes came into play as he sized up the man who would become his boss.

“There was something about him that made me wary,” Obama wrote. “A little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.”

Harris-Lacewell said such expressions of distrust toward whites will not hurt Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries, which are dominated by liberal voters.

“To win the Democratic nomination, he's got to get a part of the progressive, anti-war, white folks,” she said. “And those white folks tend to be suspicious of any black person who wouldn’t be suspicious of white people.”

Such liberals would have little basis for suspicion after reading some of Obama’s conclusions about the white race, which he once described as “that ghostly figure that haunted black dreams.”

“That hate hadn't gone away,” he wrote, blaming “white people — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.”

Obama’s racial suspicions were not always limited to whites. For example, after making his first visit to Kenya, he wrote of being disappointed to learn that his paternal grandfather had been a servant to rich whites.

He wrote in “Dreams” that the revelation caused “ugly words to flash across my mind. Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger.”
Such blunt and provocative observations about race are largely absent from Obama’s second memoir.

“I have witnessed a profound shift in race relations in my lifetime,” he wrote in “Audacity.” “I insist that things have gotten better.”

An adolescent confrontation

Barack Obama recalls punching out the “first boy” who “called me a coon” in seventh grade.

“I gave him a bloody nose,” Obama wrote in his first memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”

“Why’dya do that?” the boy said through “tears of surprise,” according to Obama.

It was not the first time young Obama would be subjected to racial slurs. He recalled an assistant basketball coach in high school referring to a group of black men as “niggers.”

“I told him — with a fury that surprised even me — to shut up,” Obama wrote.

“There are black people, and there are niggers,” the coach explained, according to Obama. “Those guys were niggers.”

Obama answered with contempt.

“'There are white folks and then there are ignorant motherf---ers like you,’ I had finally told the coach before walking off the court,” he wrote.

Can a past of Islam change the path to president? Read Part 1 of this three-part series on Sen. Barack Obama.

Kevin Bacon gets it.

KBCI: Kevin Bacon uses 'six degrees' notoriety for charity
Kevin Bacon says he used to think the "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" game was a joke that would die out, but since it hasn't, he is using the notoriety for charity.

"I thought it was definitely going to go the way of eight-track cassettes and pet rocks. But it's a concept that has sort of hung around in the Zeitgeist," Bacon told George Stephanopolous on ABC's "This Week" in a show that aired Sunday.

Bacon said he was "kind of horrified at the idea" that he could be connected to any actor in the universe in six steps, but then he started asking people what could be done with the notion.

Bacon and the nonprofit Network for Good started a Web site, Sixdegrees.org. The site includes a feature to search more than 1 million charities.

Visitors also can see which charities celebrities are supporting financially. And there's a link to an eBay site where people can bid on "celebrity swag" from the Sundance Film Festival.

"A lot of people are really, really strongly connected to what celebrities are doing," Bacon said. "So why not have a place where you could also find out what charities they care about, what causes are important to them, and be able to donate right there?"

Didn't we win a war so we wouldn't have to put up with this clown?

ANI: Prince Charles is actually a 'hologrammatic visitor from Cyberspace'!
Prince Charles hit back at critics who accused him of 'green hypocrisy' for flying to America with a 20-strong entourage to collect an environmental award by joking that he was actually a 'hologrammatic visitor from Cyberspace'. Charles's retort, as he was named a Global Environmental Citizen by Harvard Medical School in New York, came after criticism by green groups for ...

Ur-Kansas owes us one.

Besides, he couldn't be any worse than the two Goobers.

AP: Mike Huckabee launches presidential bid
Conservative Republican Mike Huckabee, seeking to repeat the success of another former governor from Hope, Ark., said Sunday he is taking the first step in what he acknowledged is an underdog bid for the White House in 2008.

Father Robert Drinan S.J., Requiescat in pace.

Father Drinan was a leftist fool of monumental proportions. I hope he was a better priest than he was a congressthing. Either way, he now knows The Truth.

May God have mercy on his soul.

The Rev. Robert Drinan, a Jesuit who, over the objections of his superiors, became the first Roman Catholic priest to serve as a voting member of Congress, died yesterday.

The Rev. Drinan, 86, had suffered from pneumonia and congestive heart failure during the previous 10 days, according to a statement by Georgetown University.

"His death was peaceful, and he was surrounded by his family," said the Rev. John Langan, rector of the Georgetown University Jesuit Community where the Rev. Drinan lived.

An internationally known human rights advocate, the Rev. Drinan represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House for 10 years during the turbulent 1970s, and he stepped down only after a worldwide directive from Pope John Paul II barring priests from holding public office.

He was elected in 1970, after he beat longtime Democratic Rep. Philip J. Philbin in a primary, and again in the November election, when Philbin was a write-in candidate. The only other priest to serve in Congress was a non-voting delegate from Michigan in 1823.

Although a poll at the time showed that 30 percent of the voters in his district thought it was improper for a priest to run for office, the Rev. Drinan considered politics a natural extension of his work in public affairs and human rights.

His run for office came a year after he returned from a trip to Vietnam, where he said he discovered that the number of political prisoners being held in South Vietnam was rapidly increasing, contrary to State Department reports. (Thanks to the Lexington Herald-Leader for this obituary.)

Introducing the Rasputin of American waterfowl.

Boston Herald: Duck that survived being shot, refrigerated has another close call under Florida vet's knife
Tallahassee, FL - Perky is one tough bird.

The ring-neck duck survived being shot and spending two days in a hunter’s refrigerator - and now she’s had a close brush with death on a veterinarian’s operating table.

The one-pound female duck stopped breathing Saturday during surgery to repair gunshot damage to one wing, said Noni Beck of the Goose Creek Wildlife Sanctuary.

Veterinarian David Hale revived the bird after several tense moments by performing CPR.

”I started crying, ’She’s alive!”’ Beck said.

Perky entered the headlines last week after a hunter’s wife opened her refrigerator door and the should’ve-been-dead duck lifted its head and looked at her. The bird had been in the fridge for two days since being shot and presumed killed Jan. 15.

Perky is recovering with a pin installed in the fractured wing, and probably will not have more surgery because of her sensitivity to anesthesia, Hale said.

Allow me to intoduce myself. My name is Al Davis, Football Genius.

I used to hate the Raiders because they were good. Now they are nothing but a sad joke.

The Sporting News: Al Davis is embarrassment-proof
The Raiders' choice as head coach is the co-coordinator of USC's offense, Lane Kiffin. This after his co-coordinating partner, Steve Sarkisian, had been the No. 1 candidate discussed for several days. This is like recruiting Abbott for a month, getting turned down, and immediately choosing Costello. "Hey, you know who would be perfect for this job? Starsky ... that's who ... love that guy. What, he doesn't want it? I meant Hutch … that's who'd be perfect … gimme Hutch."

Al Davis is officially embarrassment-proof. Maybe he always has been, but now it's official; nothing can embarrass the man. There's been plenty that should have done the job over the last six months. First, there's the play of his team. The offense's ineffectiveness was matched only by its apathy. Then you had the hiring and demotion of a bed & breakfast proprietor as O Coordinator. I think we can assume Tom Walsh will be back to serving frittatas in Swan Valley soon.

Davis had to be embarrassed by his photo on the cover of Sporting News magazine last week, didn't he? All you needed was the slab to complete a still shot from Six Feet Under. The man looked like he had absolutely no blood pressure.

And now we have this coaching search, resulting in the choice of Vanilli, after Milli said no. It makes the mind reel, at least my mind anyway, with the possibilities. Here are some possible things that could happen to Al Davis soon, things that probably wouldn't embarrass him either.

Davis accidentally uses the Raiders' No. 1 overall draft pick, intended for LSU QB JaMarcus Russell, on middle-aged actor Kurt Russell. Davis later blames this on having recently seen a re-run of Escape From New York in his hotel room.

In the 2007 season opener Randy Moss lies down on the job … literally … lying down on the field during the first possession. Based on his recent impact on the offense, the broadcasters and fans don't notice until the third play.

Fans in Oakland revolt and storm the Raiders' offices. They capture Davis and drag him through the streets by his ankles.
A new candid picture of Al makes another Sporting News cover … this one featuring him on his personal silver & black toilet, wearing only the top half of a sundress.

Nope … I bet those wouldn't do the trick. You have to admire the man in some ways, soldiering on in a game that has passed him by like a train does a tricycle.

Let's all embrace the Lane Kiffin era together.

The Catholic crackup continues apace.

What's the matter, Father? Has that Roman collar gotten too tight for you?

Lexington Herald-Leader: Catholic priest urges end to mandatory celibacy
ADVOCATES IT AS AN OPTION AS NUMBER ENTERING PRIESTHOOD CONTINUES TO FALL

University Heights, Ohio - The former seminary president who sparked a national debate on the effect of gays entering the Roman Catholic priesthood is now tackling another sensitive issue, adding his voice to those advocating an end to mandatory celibacy.

"Celibacy used to go with priesthood as fish went with Fridays," said the Rev. Donald Cozzens. "Over the past 40 to 50 years, I would argue that more and more Catholics are questioning the need to link celibacy with priesthood."

In Freeing Celibacy, Cozzens suggests there might be a way through the problem by allowing celibacy as an option but dropping it as a requirement.

Although he is taking on an institution that measures change over centuries, Cozzens -- a celibate priest himself -- thinks the time is right for a rethinking of celibacy.

He points to the brief stir Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes created last year by saying the Vatican should reconsider its ban on allowing priests to marry, and the crusade to change the policy by excommunicated -- and married -- former Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo of Zambia.

Hey, Hummes, Cozzens, and Milingo! Go start your own church and stop vexing the Faithful!

"There are a number of factors that are coming together that really beg for this question to be discussed or urge us to review mandatory celibacy," said Cozzens, interviewed in his office at John Carroll University in this Cleveland suburb.

There were 42,000 active priests nationwide in 2005, a 29 percent decline from 1965, according to Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

The church discounts celibacy's responsibility for the shortage, saying the increasingly materialistic culture plays a far bigger role.

Pope John Paul II was adamant that the church would not change its celibacy requirement. As recently as November, a Vatican summit led by Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed mandatory celibacy for priests as a non-negotiable job requirement for showing devotion to God and the people they serve.

Cozzens has been down this road before, having written four other books on issues and problems of the priesthood. In his 2000 book, The Changing Face of the Priesthood, later translated into six languages, he used interviews and studies to contend that the Roman Catholic Church had a disproportionately high percentage of gay priests, nearly half of all seminarians and priests.

His previous writings made a valuable contribution to the debate over homosexuality by raising the issue at a time when many priests and bishops were pretending it didn't exist, said the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the conservative journal First Things, who upholds the Catholic teaching that same-sex attraction is disordered.

"It was that climate of, 'Let's pretend that we don't know about it,' that Cozzens blew the whistle on in a constructive way," Neuhaus said.

Senator Brain Damage proves he has never read the US Constitution.

AP: Specter: Bush not sole 'decision-maker'
A Senate Republican on Tuesday directly challenged President Bush's declaration that "I am the decision-maker" on issues of war.

U.S. Constitution: Article II

Section 2.

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Ta-da!

Yet another reason to buy a Mac, kiddies.

AFP: Bill Gates leads charge to hype Windows Vista launch
Bill Gates led a theatrical promotion of Windows Vista in New York City as Microsoft kicked off a global campaign to hype the home version of its new operating system.

King Goober I - Jew hater.

WorldNetDaily: Jimmy Carter: Too many Jews on Holocaust council
Former president also rejected Christian historian because name sounded 'too Jewish'

Maybe he thought some Nazis were needed on the council so it would have some "balance"...

Former President Jimmy Carter once complained there were "too many Jews" on the government's Holocaust Memorial Council, Monroe Freedman, the council's former executive director, told WND in an exclusive interview.

Freedman, who served on the council during Carter's term as president, also revealed a noted Holocaust scholar who was a Presbyterian Christian was rejected from the council's board by Carter's office because the scholar's name "sounded too Jewish."

Brilliant! We would have been better off with Billy Carter in the White House.

Freedman, now a professor of law at Hofstra University, was picked by the council's chairman, author Elie Weisel, to serve as executive director in 1980. The council, created by the Carter White House, went on to establish the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Freedman says he was tasked with creating a board for the council and with making recommendations to the White House on how best to memorialize the Holocaust.

He told WND he sent a memo to Carter's office containing recommendations for council board members.

He said his memo was returned with a note on the upper right hand corner that stated, "Too many Jews."

The note, Freedman said, was written in Carter's handwriting and was initialed by Carter...

An insult, Shakespeare style.

From the Shakespeare's Insults calendar:

Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him.
How he jets* under his advanced plumes!
(Twelfth Night 2.5.28-29)

*struts

Fabian, of a fellow servant, Malvolio; he and his friends are spying on Malvolio as they play a trick on him.

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today is the Feast of St. Martina, a virgin martyr of Rome. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.


Today's reading is Hebrews 12:1-4.
Today's Responsorial Psalm is Psalms 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32.
Today's Gospel reading is Mark 5:21-43.


Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTN
National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)
The Catholic Calendar Page for Today
ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome


Just in case you are wondering what exactly Catholics believe, here is

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful; O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.


St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, pray for us.


Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me; Body of Christ, save me; Blood of Christ, inebriate me; Water from Christ's side, wash me; Passion of Christ, strengthen me; O good Jesus, hear me; Within Thy wounds hide me; Suffer me not to be separated from Thee; From the malicious enemy defend me; In the hour of my death call me; And bid me come unto Thee; That I may praise Thee with Thy saints and with Thy angels Forever and ever. Amen.


Prayer to St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire

Dear St. Anthony, you became a Franciscan with the hope of shedding your blood for Christ. In God's plan for you, your thirst for martyrdom was never to be satisfied. St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire, pray that I may become less afraid to stand up and be counted as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


Prayer To Saint Michael The Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.


Prayer to End Abortion

Lord God, I thank You today for the gift of my life, and for the lives of all my brothers and sisters. I know there is nothing that destroys more life than abortion, yet I rejoice that you have conquered death by the resurrection of Your Son. I am ready to do my part to end abortion. Today I commit myself never to be silent, never to be passive, and never to be forgetful of the unborn. I commit myself to be active in the pro-life movement, and never stop defending life until all my brothers and sisters are protected and our nation once again becomes a nation with liberty and justice, not just for some, but for all. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.


Prayer For Vocations

Send forth your Spirit, Lord, into the hearts of your faithful people, that we may be conscious of our vocation to holiness and sevice to others. Grant that many of us may dedicate ourselves to You through the priesthood and the religious life.We pray especially for the needs of our own parish and diocese. Grant that we may always have sufficient good and holy priests, and dedicated Sisters to serve our commumities.We pray, too, for religious orders; that generous men may join them to become zealous missionaries in preaching the Gospel in word and action, especially to the poor and abandoned.We make this prayer through Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Redeemer. Amen.


Prayer Before The Crucifix

Behold, O kind and gentle Jesus, I kneel before Thee and pray that Thou would impress upon my heart the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, with true repentance for my sins and a firm purpose of amendment. At the same time, with sorrow I meditate on Thy five precious wounds, having in mind the words which David spoke in prophecy: "They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones."


Divine Praises

Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
Blessed be His most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be His most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints.
May the Heart of Jesus in the most Blessed Sacrament
Be praised, adored and loved
With grateful affection at every moment
In all the tabernacles of the world
Even to the end of time. Amen.

DAY 159: PLUTO HELD HOSTAGE

February 4, 2007 is International Save Pluto Day!

Not that Pluto.

Nope. Guess again.


That's the one.

Isn't that nice of them?

Roto-Reuters: Russia considers investigating uranium theft

Or...Life imitates"24". Again.

Moscow - Russia is considering an inquiry into possible theft of highly enriched uranium from its nuclear sites, a spokesman for the Prosecutor-General said on Monday, as another uranium smuggling report surfaced from Georgia.

Georgia announced last week that in February 2006 a Russian citizen was arrested and jailed for trying to sell 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of highly enriched uranium-235 to Islamist extremists. Russia called the announcement a provocative act.

Documents from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) seen by Reuters suggested the uranium may have come from the Russian city of Novosibirsk in Siberia.

"The Russian Prosecutor-General has asked for copies of documents (from Georgia) to start checks, and to consider launching a criminal case on the illegal purchase and holding of radioactive substances," the spokesman said.

Highly enriched uranium in big enough quantities can be used to make a nuclear bomb.

A senior Georgian government official told Reuters on Monday a similar nuclear smuggling case occurred in 2003.

Shota Utiashvili, head of the Interior ministry's information and analytical section, said border guards then caught an Armenian man trying to smuggle 170 grams of highly enriched uranium-235 across the Armenia-Georgia border.

"According to our information the uranium was bought from Russia," he said.

Utiashvili said the man was handed over to the Armenian police but he was unaware what had happened to him after that.

Armenian officials were not available for comment.

The case has revived worries about the safety and security of hazardous material left over after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Experts had said tightened security had reduced the chances of uranium being traded on the black market to virtually nil.

Marvin, call your office.

Space.com: Study finds surface of Mars devoid of life

Bonus Headlinks.

Stories that have absolutely nothing in common...or do they?

From Drudge:

AIR AMERICA finally finds a buyer...

Kerry tells Davos: USA is an 'international pariah'...
Video...

Hobbit-sized human who lived 18,000 years ago was 'separate species'...

Sickest Story of the Day.

Drudge: 12-year-old boy undergoes sex change...

What did he expect, a Requiem Mass?

AP (via Drudge): Miami plans big party when Castro dies...

A dearth of Emilia Attias photos haunts the land.

From the pages of The King Abdullah Gazette:

Take that, Photobucket Nazis!

Sure, they have the right to lay down, spread their legs and take it from the goat rapists and their left-fascist Western allies like $2 whores...BUT THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM!

Behold the cartoons that terrify non-moderate mohammedans and Western pansies alike:

I do not know how long it will take the moral cowards from Photobucket to find these and take them down as they did the last time, but I can change the file names and put them up again just as quickly.

BARBARO IS NO MORE!

From WGAL:

Owners: Barbaro Has Been Euthanized

Kennett Square, PA - Co-owner Roy Jackson said Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro has been euthanized.

Surgery was performed Saturday to insert two steel pins in a bone. It was one of three that were shattered eight months ago in the Preakness. The effort was made to eliminate all weight bearing on the right rear foot.

The risky procedure transferred more weight to the leg while the foot rested on the ground bearing no weight.

The leg was on the mend until the abscess began causing discomfort last week. Until then, the major concern was Barbaro's left rear leg, which developed laminitis in July, and 80 percent of the hoof was removed.

In Israel, every day is like an episode of '24'...

CNN: Israel bakery bomber kills three
Eliat, Israel - A Palestinian suicide bomber attacked a bakery in this southern Israeli resort town on Monday, killing himself and three people, police said. It was the first suicide bombing in Israel in nine months.

...see, the Israelis are the innocent bystanders who get blown up trying to buy bagels. They also have their share of Jack Bauer-like heroes.

The goat rapists are just goat rapists.

If it's good enough for Stalin and Hitler...

Roto-Reuters: Congo's Lubanga charged with recruiting child soldiers
The Hague - The International Criminal Court ruled on Monday there was enough evidence against a Congolese militia leader to launch the new court's first trial.

The decision to confirm charges and pave the way for a trial against Thomas Lubanga, accused of recruiting child soldiers, is a major landmark for the ICC, set up as the first permanent global war crimes court in 2002 and now backed by 104 nations.

"Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is criminally responsible ... for war crimes consisting of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of 15 years and causing them to participate actively in hostilities," Judge Claude Jorda told the court.

BTW, exactly how does one go about recruiting child soldiers? Promise them 72 lollipops?

Fyodor's Headlinks.

Stories that have absolutely nothing in common...or do they?

Roto-Reuters: Straighter teeth may not improve self-esteem

Roto-Reuters: Borat creator named one of U.K.'s most powerful men

I get mail and am secure enough in my heterosexuality to share it with you, kiddies...

...I am not sure James gets it, kiddies, (if not, only the distance between Rock-Chalk-Jayhawk land and my secluded dacha cum villa will save me from the wrath possibly engendered by the above title) but I am sure he is headed in the right direction.

Behold as Your Humble Servant is smothered with steaming piles of praise...

Well, I have to admit this is one of the most interesting blogs that ever seen! I'm not quite sure what to make of it. You are apparently from Pittsburgh (I don't know if you still live in that area, given your area as flyover). You are apparently a Catholic, and, apparently, fairly well involved daily in the faith. And you like beautiful women. That's one heck of a combination. As my dad used to say "You're a real piece of work".

- James O. from Olathe, Kansas

My only objection is his liberal use of the word "apparently". Perhaps I have not been militant enough lately...

Anyway, thanks for visiting and, as always, Keep The Faith, Baby.

The Michael and Cathryn Borden Memorial Book of the Day.*

Speaking of the Mahdi, here is the story of one man who actually pulled it off...for a while...

Dervish: The Rise and Fall of an African Empire (Wordsworth Military Library) by Philip Warner

From War-Art.com:

Dervish is the story of the rise and fall of an African Empire. It began in the Sudan in the 1880's with a localised 'Holy War' fought against 'decadent' Turkish/Egyptian overlords. It was led by Mohammed Ahmed Ibn Al-Sayid Abdullah - the Mahdi - and was soon to engulf a million square miles of arid territory. It forced the hand of a reluctant British Liberal Government, which was then approaching the zenith of its imperial power, and led to the disaster of the infamous Hicks expedition and the death of General Gordon at Khartoum.

Using first hand accounts and diaries of participants, the author brilliantly describes the growth of the Mahdist movement and the extraordinary devotion and discipline of the Dervish troops. set against them, with stoic endurance, were the British, Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers. The resulting fierce engagements inspired amazing feats of courage and daring on both sides. The Dervish Empire survived the death of the Mahdi by 13 years, ending at the Battle of Omdurman and Kitchener's reconquest of Sudan.

* Huh? Look here.

Meanwhile, back in the fever swamp of Leninist-Leninism...

Biggest American circle-jerk in 35 (oops! 34, according to IED Jane!) years features the particularly unattractive and smelly
Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters, energized by fresh congressional skepticism about the war in Iraq, were demanding a withdrawal of U.S. troops in a demonstration Saturday featuring a handful of celebrities such as Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon. (Thanks to Fox News for the heads up.)

From Drudge:
THE MARCH...
PROTESTERS SPRAY PAINT CAPITOL...
UPDATE: NINE ARRESTED...
SPITTING MATCH WITH DISABLED VET...
JANE FONDA: NOW
Video...
White House: 'It's nice to see Jane Fonda in front of a camera again'...

From Laura Ingraham:

THE LAURA INGRAHAM SHOW INFILTRATES PEACE RALLY:
Check out the photos they took on scene here.
We even got a video of Joe dancing with the hippies. Watch the streaming video.
Download the video.

Good News Buried by the AmericaLast Media Story of the Day.

JOY! At least 300 more goat rapists are now enjoying their promised reward of at least 21,600 virgins!

Roto-Reuters: Hundreds dead in Najaf battle
U.S. and Iraqi forces killed some 300 gunmen from an apocalyptic Muslim cult in a day-long battle involving U.S. tanks and aircraft near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, Iraqi police, army and political sources said.

None dare call it...a victory.

Roto-Reuters: Iraqi cult leader killed in Najaf battle
The leader of an Iraqi cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers, Iraq's national security minister said on Monday.

Speaking of the Mahdi...

Fyodor lays some Latin on you.

From the Latin for the Illiterati calendar:

neglecta virescunt - neglected things flourish

homo dissolutus - a libertine

From The Desk Of Fyodor Garibaldi...

To: The Others
RE: It

Every once in a while, Your Humble Servant feels compelled to disabuse some visitors of the misconceptions and prejudices festering in their heads.

1) This is a place for me to put my stuff.

2) I do not want fans. I would like to have readers.

3) All of you good little kiddies who get it may disregard the balance of this memo and proceed to the next post. As for the rest of you...

4) Congratulations. You found someone (on the Internet, of all places!) with whom you disagree. How novel. How clever of you.

My guess is you haven't been paying attention since puberty set in.

5) No matter how much you wish things were different, nothing here is about you. Nothing here is for you. This is my little idiot corner of Bloggerdom - of me, by me, and for me.

That being said, I do hope you find it interesting, edifying, and occasionally amusing. If not, go away. I will not lose any sleep over it and neither should you.

6) Your opinion of my opinions interests me not at all. Opinions are like...toes: Everybody has nearly a dozen of them and some people's are webbed.

7) Your opinion of my methods, madness, tactics, stratagems, peccadillos, idiosyncrasies, foibles, intellectual bona fides, vocabulary, morality, immorality, politics, character, cheesesteaks, and cheesesteaks, taste in women, religious beliefs, et cetera, interests me even less.

8) The bottom line? I do not care what you think. (Yes, you. That's right, even you. Yep, you guessed it, even you.)

The fact that you seem to care about what I think amuses me for about three seconds every time you remind me of it.

9) Here is a little magic trick for you. Simply ignore me and I won't vex you any longer. I wish I could do that to you, but I must regularly purge my mailbox of your clutter or else I might miss some of those wonderful unsolicited money-making opportunities.

10) You do not understand because you do not want to understand. You do not get it because you think you know.

By the grace of Almighty God, your ignorance is not invincible. But it is willful.

11) I will regularly re-post this memo for even the most obstinate and slow-witted of the beasts may be taught by repetition.

I get mail from doctors unfamiliar with my idiom...

A Doctor Hughes, commenting on my post PA's moral and intellectual superiors have a blind squirrel with a broken pocket watch moment, betrays a regrettable yet understandable ignorance of the way I operate...


cmhmd said

Hi, I'm the Dr. Hughes referred to in the article above. I'm a Catholic. What is your problem with the article/law?


My attitude toward the law in question can be deduced from the title of the post. I employed two old saws in said title to make manifest my incredulity at the sight of Harrisburg's petits fascistes actually doing something of use to anyone other than themselves.

Take "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while" and cross it with "Even a broken clock is right twice a day" and you get what passes for biting sarcasm in my little idiot corner of Bloggerdom. (Nothing personal, Doc, but you are the first visitor here who has needed that one explained.)

Just in case that was not sufficient to make my opinion clear, I offered the following whimsical critique of those (both in and out of the medical profession) who tend to kill first and ask questions later, if ever:

A new Pennsylvania law helps define who could be making your end-of-life care decisions if you do not have a living will or health care agent. But, according to the Pennsylvania Medical Society, it’s still better for you to have a living will and a health care agent.

Instant translation: Prepare NOW so some dumbass doctor with an early tee time won't kill you!

I think that one sentence of mine, inserted after the very first paragraph of the story, sums up my loathing for the knownothing butchers and death worshippers (and their enablers in the political class) who are all too prevalent among us these days.

Also, I would like to think the more clever of the kiddies in my audience might be inspired by my efforts to make sure someone they trust will be making the life and death decisions for them in case they are incapacitated someday.

All in all, I believe the post in question to be one of my recent best. With a minimum of intrusion into the story, I made my point clearly and effectively. However, I readily admit my idiom is not for everyone. (See the post following this one.)

I am sorry if it confused you or caused you consternation, but that is really not my problem.

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today is the Feast of St. Voloc, an Irish missionary bishop who worked to propagate the Christian faith throughout Scotland. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.


Today's reading is Hebrews 11:32-40.
Today's Responsorial Psalm is Psalms 31:20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
Today's Gospel reading is Mark 5:1-20.


Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTN
National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)
The Catholic Calendar Page for Today
ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome


Just in case you are wondering what exactly Catholics believe, here is

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful; O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.


St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, pray for us.


Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me; Body of Christ, save me; Blood of Christ, inebriate me; Water from Christ's side, wash me; Passion of Christ, strengthen me; O good Jesus, hear me; Within Thy wounds hide me; Suffer me not to be separated from Thee; From the malicious enemy defend me; In the hour of my death call me; And bid me come unto Thee; That I may praise Thee with Thy saints and with Thy angels Forever and ever. Amen.


Prayer to St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire

Dear St. Anthony, you became a Franciscan with the hope of shedding your blood for Christ. In God's plan for you, your thirst for martyrdom was never to be satisfied. St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire, pray that I may become less afraid to stand up and be counted as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


Prayer To Saint Michael The Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.


Prayer to End Abortion

Lord God, I thank You today for the gift of my life, and for the lives of all my brothers and sisters. I know there is nothing that destroys more life than abortion, yet I rejoice that you have conquered death by the resurrection of Your Son. I am ready to do my part to end abortion. Today I commit myself never to be silent, never to be passive, and never to be forgetful of the unborn. I commit myself to be active in the pro-life movement, and never stop defending life until all my brothers and sisters are protected and our nation once again becomes a nation with liberty and justice, not just for some, but for all. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.


Prayer For Vocations

Send forth your Spirit, Lord, into the hearts of your faithful people, that we may be conscious of our vocation to holiness and sevice to others. Grant that many of us may dedicate ourselves to You through the priesthood and the religious life.We pray especially for the needs of our own parish and diocese. Grant that we may always have sufficient good and holy priests, and dedicated Sisters to serve our commumities.We pray, too, for religious orders; that generous men may join them to become zealous missionaries in preaching the Gospel in word and action, especially to the poor and abandoned.We make this prayer through Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Redeemer. Amen.


Prayer Before The Crucifix

Behold, O kind and gentle Jesus, I kneel before Thee and pray that Thou would impress upon my heart the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, with true repentance for my sins and a firm purpose of amendment. At the same time, with sorrow I meditate on Thy five precious wounds, having in mind the words which David spoke in prophecy: "They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones."


Divine Praises

Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
Blessed be His most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be His most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints.
May the Heart of Jesus in the most Blessed Sacrament
Be praised, adored and loved
With grateful affection at every moment
In all the tabernacles of the world
Even to the end of time. Amen.