Former BIS Economist Warns of Dangers in QE

The economic prophet who foresaw the Lehman crisis with uncanny accuracy is even more worried about the world's financial system going into 2015.

Beggar-thy-neighbour devaluations are spreading to every region. All the major central banks are stoking asset bubbles deliberately to put off the day of reckoning. This time emerging markets have been drawn into the quagmire as well, corrupted by the leakage from quantitative easing (QE) in the West.

"We are in a world that is dangerously unanchored," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's Review Committee. "We're seeing true currency wars and everybody is doing it, and I have no idea where this is going to end."

Mr White is a former chief economist to the Bank for International Settlements - the bank of central banks - and currently an advisor to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Read the rest here.

Theophany (old calendar) The Great Blessing of Water

Meet the Islamic Thought Police

“You have shamed the community,” a fellow Muslim in Morgantown, W.Va., said to me as we sat in a Panera Bread in 2004. “Stop writing.”

Then 38, I had just written an essay for The Washington Post’s Outlook section arguing that women should be allowed to pray in the main halls of mosques, rather than in segregated spaces, as most mosques in America are arranged. An American Muslim born in India, I grew up in a tolerant but conservative family. In my hometown mosque, I had disobeyed the rules and prayed in the men’s area, about 20 feet behind the men gathered for Ramadan prayers.

Later, an all-male tribunal tried to ban me. An elder suggested having men surround me at the mosque so that I would be “scared off.” Now the man across the table was telling me to shut up.

“I won’t stop writing,” I said.

It was the first time a fellow Muslim had pressed me to refrain from criticizing the way our faith was practiced. But in the past decade, such attempts at censorship have become more common. This is largely because of the rising power and influence of the “ghairat brigade,” an honor corps that tries to silence debate on extremist ideology in order to protect the image of Islam. It meets even sound critiques with hideous, disproportionate responses.

Read the rest here.

50 Years Ago: Remembering Churchill's funeral and the sunset of the Empire

Churchill’s passing at 8am that Saturday morning – 50 years ago this week – at his home in Hyde Park Gate in London did not come as a surprise to anybody. He was 90 years old, after all, and he had suffered a massive stroke two weeks previously.

Yet it did seem a historically significant moment, coming at a time when the Labour government was considering withdrawing all troops from east of Suez and so closing down the last remnants on the British Empire. “Now Britain is no longer a great power,” said Charles de Gaulle when he heard the news.

Many commentators in the British press agreed with him, and saw in the ceremony at St Paul’s the end of the era of British greatness. With the uninspiring Harold Wilson in Downing Street – about as un-Churchillian a figure imaginable – wrestling with recurrent economic problems that were soon to force the government into a humiliating devaluation of sterling, it was natural to fit Churchill’s death into an overall narrative of decline and malaise.

“The day of giants is gone for ever,” the historian Sir Arthur Bryant wrote in the Illustrated London News. Churchill’s own detective agreed, saying: “If the king dies you can say 'Long live the king’, but now Sir Winston’s gone, who is there? There’s no one of his stature left.” A L Rowse, the Oxford don, was equally pessimistic, writing: “The sun is going down on the British Empire.”

Read the rest here.

Israel's Netanyahu seeks more trade partners citing Islamization and anti-Semitism in Europe

Benjamin Netanyahu risked opening a new rift with European leaders on Sunday by announcing plans to boost trade with Asia because Western Europe, its main partner, was experiencing "a wave of Islamisation, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism".

The Israeli prime minister's comments at a weekly cabinet meeting came as he prepared to welcome Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, who arrived in Israel accompanied by around 100 heads of leading Japanese companies.

"We definitely want to reduce our dependence on certain markets in western Europe," said Mr Netanyahu while advocating increased trade with Japan, India and China.

Read the rest here.

The joys of being a lame duck President with a hostile Congress

You can make all kinds of ridiculous proposals that you know are going nowhere.

President Obama plans to propose raising $320 billion over the next 10 years in new taxes targeting wealthy individuals and big financial institutions to pay for new programs designed to help lower- and middle-income families, senior administration officials said Saturday.

Read the rest here.

An Unvarnished Look at Vladimir Putin

A new PBS Front Line documentary takes a hard look at one of the most controversial figures in the world today. It's not pretty, but I suspect it's not unfair either. While there is much to admire about Russian history and culture, the current government is not on that list.

Watch it here.

Thank You Eric Holder

Now there is a blog title I never expected to write without sarcasm. But giving credit where it is due, this is a hugely important move in defense of civil liberties.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without evidence that a crime occurred.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

 Read the rest here.

Supreme Court Will Decide Gay Marriage

No surprise. Given the conflicting rulings at the appellate court level they really had no choice.

Why Switzerland is wreaking havoc in the global currency markets

This is how a currency peg ends. This is how a currency peg ends. Yes, with a bang, actually.

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) shocked markets on Thursday by announcing that it would no longer hold the value of the Swiss franc down at 1.2 per euro, although it would lower interest rates from -0.25 to -0.75 percent. Mayhem ensued. The Swiss franc immediately shot up as much as 39 percent against the euro, before settling at "only" up 17 percent on the day. This is basically the biggest single-day move for a rich country's currency, as economist David Zervos points out, in the last 40 years. And it's sent Switzerland's stock market down 10 percent, as its suddenly more expensive currency will cripple its exporters by making their goods more expensive abroad.

Now let's back up a minute. Why was Switzerland pushing its currency down, and why has it stopped now? Well, in four words, it's the euro crisis. Back in 2011, you see, what looked like the imminent end of the euro made people want to move their money to the safety of Swiss banks. It wasn't about the secrecy, though. It was the fact that Swiss banks use Swiss francs, and those wouldn't get devalued like, say, Italian euros would if the common currency broke apart. The problem, though, was that this flood of incoming money pushed Switzerland's currency up too much, over 40 percent in just a year. The Swiss franc got so expensive that Swiss exporters, who sell 56 percent of their goods to the EU, were becoming uncompetitive, and Swiss prices were starting to fall.

And then the SNB remembered that a central bank can always push its currency down just by printing more of it. So that's what it did. Even better, it told everybody that this was what it was doing. It said it would buy as many euros with newly-printed Swiss francs as it took to keep the Swiss franc from being worth more than 1.2 per euro. That meant that, for awhile, the SNB didn't actually have to do anything, since nobody wants to bet against somebody with infinite money.

Read the rest here.

Further evidence of severe global deflationary pressure.

Taxes

HT: Daily Paul
Via Wilson Revolution Unplugged

Pope Francis on Charlie Hebdo: ‘You cannot insult the faith of others’

A week after the massacre at the headquarters of a French publication known for insulting adherents of several faiths, Pope Francis told reporters that freedom of expression has its limits when it comes to insulting religion.

Read the rest here.

Fred Reed: Diversity: Koom. Bah. Humbug

Regarding the unsurprising slaughter in Paris:
Diversity is a disaster. Why people cannot see this is a mystery. A country can ignore an unfortunate reality, but it cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring it. Why governments allow and even encourage immigration of incompatible populations is a greater mystery. Few things cause more misery, hatred, death, and destruction than does diversity. One may wish it were not so, but it is so.

Read the rest here.

Disclaimer: This post should not be viewed as an endorsement of brother Fred's column, though I think he makes some some points worthy of discussion.

AEP: Europe's imperial court is a threat to democracy

The European Court of Justice has declared legal supremacy over the sovereign state of Germany, and therefore of Britain, France, Denmark and Poland as well. 

The ECJ's advocate-general has not only brushed aside the careful findings of the German constitutional court on a matter of highest importance, he has gone so far as to claim that Germany is obliged to submit to the final decision. "We cannot possibly accept this and they know it," said one German jurist close to the case.

The matter at hand is whether the European Central Bank broke the law with its back-stop plan for Italian and Spanish debt (OMT) in 2012. The teleological ECJ - always eager to further the cause of EU integration - did come up with the politically-correct answer as expected. The ECB is in the clear. The opinion is a green light for quantitative easing next week, legally never in doubt. 

The European Court did defer to the Verfassungsgericht in Karlsruhe on a few points. The ECB must not get mixed up with the EU bail-out fund (ESM) or take part in Troika rescue operations. But these details are not the deeper import of the case.

The opinion is a vaulting assertion of EU primacy. If the Karlsruhe accepts this, the implication is that Germany will no longer be a fully self-governing sovereign state. 

Read the rest here.

Top Anglicans: Church of England cannot carry on as it is unless decline ‘urgently’ reversed

The Church of England will no longer be able to carry on its current form unless the downward spiral its membership is reversed “as a matter of urgency”, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have warned. 

Read the rest here.

Sorry your lordship; the problem is not administrative, it's spiritual.

Pope considers adding cardinal-electors for next conclave

(ANSA) - Vatican City, January 9 - Pope Francis is considering the feasibility of expanding the number of cardinal electors who will chose the next pontiff to 140 from the current 120.

Read the rest here.

Hmmmm... I cannot imagine why he would do such a thing.

Sorry, liberals, Scandinavian countries aren’t utopias

Want proof that the liberal social-democratic society works?

Look to Denmark, the country that routinely leads the world in happiness surveys. It’s also notable for having the highest taxes on Earth, plus a comfy social-safety net: Child care is mostly free, as is public school and even private school, and you can stay on unemployment benefits for a long time. Everyone is on an equal footing, both income-wise and socially: Go to a party and you wouldn’t be surprised to see a TV star talking to a roofer.

The combination of massive taxes and benefits for the unsuccessful means top and bottom get shaved off: Pretty much everyone is proudly middle class. Danes belong to more civic associations and clubs than anyone else; they love performing in large groups. At Christmas they do wacky things like hold hands and run around the house together, singing festive songs. They’re a real-life Whoville.

In the American liberal compass, the needle is always pointing to places like Denmark. Everything they most fervently hope for here has already happened there.

So: Why does no one seem particularly interested in visiting Denmark? (“Honey, on our European trip, I want to see Tuscany, Paris, Berlin and . . . Jutland!”) Visitors say Danes are joyless to be around. Denmark suffers from high rates of alcoholism. In its use of antidepressants it ranks fourth in the world. (Its fellow Nordics the Icelanders are in front by a wide margin.) Some 5% of Danish men have had sex with an animal. (I could have lived without that piece of information.) Denmark’s productivity is in decline, its workers put in only 28 hours a week, and everybody you meet seems to have a government job. Oh, and as The Telegraph put it, it’s “the cancer capital of the world.”

So how happy can these drunk, depressed, lazy, tumor-ridden, pig-bonking bureaucrats really be?

Read the rest here.
(Fixed the link)

Russia continues to reel as credit rating is slashed

Fitch has downgraded Russia's credit rating and painted a horrific picture of a struggling economy rocked by a collapsing rouble, falling oil prices, high inflation and declining international reserves.

The ratings agency cut the country to BBB- from BBB with a negative outlook, meaning further downgrades are possible.

But it was the language Fitch used in its reasoning that was most shocking.

Read the rest here.

Russian government bonds are now just one short step from being graded as "junk."

A British ex-Pat on why he loves Romania

His 25 reasons for why he loves Romania wore both informative and at times funny.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Pondering French gun laws and the terrible "what ifs"

When American audiences read of a dramatic event in a foreign country, they often frame it in terms of the political debates occurring at home. As such, it was no surprise that after shootings at the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris this week, some Americans began to wonder about gun control laws.

"Isn't it interesting that the tragedy in Paris took place in one of the toughest gun control countries in the world?" American reality television star Donald Trump wrote on Twitter shortly after the news broke. The tweet prompted both praise (over a thousand retweets) and scorn (Trump was labelled a "moron" and an "idiot" by other tweeters).

Trump, a perennial attention seeker, was likely attempting to score political points and insult liberals with his tweet. But behind the disingenuity, there is is a genuinely troubling question: Why didn't France's gun laws save the Charlie Hebdo victims?

Read the rest here.

So, would the outcome have been different if this had gone down somewhere a bit more friendly to the right of self-defense? We will never know with any certainty, but let's consider a hypothetical alternative scenario.

Let's move the crime from Paris to San Antonio Texas. Texas, for those who don't pay attention to such things has a pretty libertarian approach to gun ownership. Assuming you are not a convicted felon, you can pretty much own anything that is legally sold in the United States. A concealed carry permit is required if you want to carry a weapon, but again, barring a serious criminal record getting one is mostly just a matter of filing some paperwork and getting fingerprinted.

So would the victims have been armed? Again, we cannot know with any certainty. These were mostly left wing wienies, so maybe not. But even Democrats have been known to pack heat in Texas. And we are talking about people who had been directly, and very credibly threatened. My gut says at least some of the ten targeted victims would have been armed.

Would the presence of one or more armed persons among the victims have changed the outcome? This is HUGELY speculative because there are so many variables. How many would have been armed? What would they be carrying? Remember the bad guys had fully automatic assault weapons and were at least competent in their use. And contrary to rumor those kinds of guns are generally illegal, even in Texas. So the victims would almost certainly have been outgunned. Most likely they would have been carrying sidearms of some kind. And then we have to factor in training. The bad guys had some. Who knows about our victims. And of course the bad guys were fanatics willing, and perhaps even desirous of dying in their twisted cause. So it's unlikely they would have been deterred or frightened off by a few shots fired in their direction. But probably the one factor that would have weighed most against the victims is that the bad guys were wearing at least some level of body armor. That, plus the huge difference in firepower would have tipped the odds severely in favor of the terrorists.

Conclusion: The best that can be said with even a moderate level of confidence is that the bad guys would not have had a walk over. Which is to say that if even one or two of the victims had been carrying something as simple as a .38 revolver, it would have instantly added a degree of danger and complication that the assassins did not have to face in France.

How long can you last...

...before hitting the "off" button or violently regurgitating?

HT: Fr. Z on whose post you can find some interesting (and amusing) commentary.

Atlanta's Mayor Sacks Fire Chief for Anti-Gay Religious Comments

Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran — the subject of recent controversy over remarks made in a self-published religious book — has been terminated from the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department, Mayor Kasim Reed announced today.
 
Cochran returned to work today following a month-long suspension for comments in his 2013 book “Who Told You That You Are Naked?” Many criticized the book as promoting discriminatory and anti-gay views, while Cochran’s suspension — and now termination — has since become the focus of a fight over “religious liberty.”

Read the rest here. See also this related story.
HT: Dr. Tighe

David Brooks: I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.

Read the rest here.

Good points. Defending someone's right to be an anti-religious bigot should not be seen as an endorsement. And freedom of expression runs in every direction, something that far too many liberals don't want to acknowledge.

Quote of the day...

"This may sound pompous, but I would rather die standing than live on my knees."

-Stéphane Charbonnier Senior Editor of Charlie Hebdo and martyr to the cause of human liberty

Je suis Charlie

Republican Congress Plans to Dilute Regulation of Wall Street

WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives expects to vote Wednesday on legislation retooling a series of financial regulations, an early sign that Republican leaders will attack President Barack Obama's Wall Street reforms this year.

Scaling back reforms including the so-called Volcker rule on banks is a top Republican priority as stated on the website of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California

.

The proposal is one of the first votes House lawmakers will take this year after the Republican Party formally took control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress this week following last November's congressional elections.

Read the rest here.

Ignoring the fact that this is just plain wrong, it's also stupid politics. The GOP is playing into the hands of Obama. The mega  banks are as crooked as my dog's hind legs and pretty much everybody knows it. Obama will veto anything along the lines of what the GOP is planning thus coming across as a hero for the folks on Main Street who are sick of the preferential treatment that the Wall Street banksters get.

Massacre in Paris

Prayers for everyone affected.

Christ is born! (Again)

A joyous Feast of the Nativity to those on the traditional church calendar.

Many Years!

To George and Barbara Bush on their 70th (!) wedding anniversary.

“I married the first man I ever kissed; when I tell my children that they just about throw up.” -Barbara Bush

HT: Fr. Z

GQ Magazine eat your heart out

Introducing the 1926 man and car of the year.

When cops are the killers

Over the holidays, a federal district judge in Massachusetts issued a ruling in the lawsuit brought by the family of Eurie Stamps, a 68-year-old man shot and killed by a Framingham, Mass., SWAT team during a drug raid in 2011. The ruling actually allows the lawsuit to go forward, but only in a limited capacity. The family will only be permitted to sue the officer who shot Stamps, and only for compensatory damages. The family’s bid for punitive damages and its claims against the city were dismissed. In fact, despite the fact that Stamps was not suspected of any crime, that he was fully compliant with the police when they stormed his house with guns, that the raid on his home itself was unnecessary, and that the judge concedes that Stamps did absolutely nothing to facilitate his own killing, the family has already lost on eight of their 10 claims before the case will even get to a jury. (Though that could still change, as both sides could appeal.)

Read the rest here.

What pit bull activism says about our culture

Last weekend in Saanich, B.C., a 16-day old baby was mauled by her family’s pit bull-Rottweiler mix on the same day as an elderly man was attacked by two pit bull dogs outside a Langley, B.C. dollar store. News like this is reported, but commentary-wise, dog-related public safety is virtually an orphan topic. Which is why I adopted it.
 
Public-safety regulation is usually linked to what is deemed a critical number of injuries or deaths. Between 1971 and 1980, for example, Ford produced three million Pintos. Due to a peculiarity in the Pinto’s structural design, its fuel tank was prone to puncture in rear-end collisions. Consequently, over Pinto’s 10 years in operation, 26 people died in fires that a better design could have prevented. Ford was forced to retire the model in the interest of public safety.

By coincidence, there are about three million pit bull type dogs in North America today, representing 6% of all breeds. But about 26 people die from pit bull type dogs in the U.S. every year (out of about 40 from all 400 breeds combined). Pit bull type dogs maul, maim, disfigure or dismember hundreds more. By no coincidence, when pit bulls were few in number — 200,00 before 1970, most clustered in marginal districts — dogbite-related fatalities in the general population were freakishly rare. In my youth, when middle-class neighbourhood dogs ran loose, and average families didn’t own fighting dogs, years went by without a single fatality. If pit bull type dogs were cars, they’d be long gone. But unlike car victims, pit bull tragedies don’t arouse public outrage.

Read the rest here.

Russian Orthodox Church Publishes Scathing Attack on Pro-Gay UNICEF

As Christians around the world got ready to contemplate the innocence of the child Jesus, last week the Russian Orthodox Church took on a UNICEF paper that says children have LGBT rights.

The Patriarch’s Commission on the Family of the Russian Orthodox Church released a scathing statement criticizing a UNICEF position paper that urges countries to protect LGBT rights because, it says, it is in the “best interests of children.” The Commission turns the tables on UNICEF and says: “Placing children to be raised by same-sex couples is a gross violation of the rights and interests of a child.”

The Orthodox Commission said it was “gravely concerned” that UNICEF would throw its weight behind what it calls notions that are “devoid of sound international legal basis” and “contrary to most of the nations’ traditional cultures, as well as norms of natural and religious morality.” As a result, the commission says it is “harmful to the international community and will undermine the moral legitimacy of UNICEF and other UN bodies.”

Read the rest here.

Episcopal Church to Host Dinner Celebrating Abortion

St. James Episcopal Church will celebrate 42 years of abortion with Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid Missouri on January 22, 2015 for their Chili for Choice. 

Read the rest here.

The Episcopal "Church" is simply apostate. It is not a Christian body and it is time to say this frankly. All of the Orthodox jurisdictions need to stop sucking up to these pagan child killers and terminate any so-called ecumenical dialogue. Further we need to stop recognizing their sacraments, yes including baptisms. I would sooner accept Mormon baptisms as potentially Christian (they are not). It is time for us to stop living in the land of make believe.

A Reflection on Modern China by an American ex-Patriot

...The question about capitalism is... tough to answer. In my mind, white-bread-American capitalism is a combination of a company trying to make money in the confines of a society that's sure as hell gonna know if it dumps metric tons of company waste in the nearest river while being watched over by a government that is reasonably free from graft and will freak out if that dumping happens while also operating in a society where everyone has the freedom to take pictures with their cell phones and put them up on Twitter if the rivers turn purple/blue/green, etc.

China is... different.  On one hand, Chinese (and, of course, Japanese) people work a thousand circles around a typical American. Capitalists could find this attractive, of course. A capitalist might be really thrilled by the idea that in China there really aren't weekends and the average worker gets one day off PER MONTH. Also, in China the workers sometimes come from other parts of the country and leave their children behind. This is because in China children tend to be raised by the grandparents, and this is because there are mandatory retirement ages (in the 50s for both men and women though the men are usually allowed to work a bit longer than women), so that there is really no such thing as older workers.

The family relationship in China is one where the husband and wife and child also have the husband's parents living with them in a tiny little apartment. The husband and wife both work, the grandparents were mandatorily retired years ago, and take care of the grandchild. The husband and wife might work where they live or one or both might work in another city altogether tons of miles away. They all might see each other once or twice a year. This is why "golden week" or other such vacation weeks are so incredibly important... it's when families see each other.

Sons are more valued than daughters not because one gender is more prized than another but because sons are usually an aging parent's only hope for a semi-comfortable retirement. When you grow old, you move in with your SON, not your daughter, for your daughter already married some guy and his parents already live with them and there ain't no room for you and even if there were, it's not what's done. If you have no son, you're pretty much screwed, unless you've amassed money, but that doesn't happen for the typical worker in China.

Sure, there is unbelievable wealth in China, but the typical worker doesn't have any of it. Business and moneymaking in China is wrapped in graft, rolled up in intellectual property theft, and includes generous amounts of corporate espionage.  One could argue that it's actually far more capitalistic than what you see in America! Businesses, free from that pesky EPA, can (and will) dump what they wish in the rivers.  Free from labor laws, they can (and will) have workers working 16 hour days with only one day off a month.  Free from any kind of court system that functions, they can (and will) steal intellectual property from any and all without shame or even self-consciousness.  There was an "Apple" store (the fake kind) just down the street from my apartment the whole entire time I lived in Chengdu. It looked and functioned EXACTLY like a real "Apple" store. They had the logo out front, the same shirts worn by the workers inside, the same displays/posters/advertising, the same everything. Anyone would have thought that it was a real Apple store, but it was total fraud from start to finish. And no one cared at all or did anything about it, because in China it was totally normal. 

Read the rest here.

I think this may be one of the best short descriptions of modern China that I have read. The description of China's economy reminds me in many ways of our own during the so called "Gilded Age."

RIP: Mario Cuomo

The onetime lion of the left, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo (father to the current Governor) has reposed. I never cared for his politics, but he was one of the last truly grand orators of the old school in American public life. Hearing him speak about his parents coming over from Italy could bring a tear to the eyes of the most hardened conservative and his speech to the 1984 Democratic Convention brought the house down. As a Catholic who supported abortion rights he clashed often, and publicly, with the leadership of his church, usually in the person of the late Archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor.

UGCC is Equipping Ukrainian Troops

Ternopil, Ukraine — As the train bringing the wounded soldier home from the front line grinds to a halt, the crowd on the platform bursts into patriotic song. Maj. Ruslan Androsyuk’s three-year-old son jumps into his arms, unsteadying him as he limps from the carriage.

Relatives and friends wave balloons and Ukrainian flags, welcoming Major Androsyuk back after a mine ripped through his armored personnel carrier in the Donetsk region, leaving him with a broken leg, fractured ribs, and pierced lungs. “If it wasn’t for his bulletproof vest he wouldn’t have survived,” says his wife Olga, choking back tears.

But it wasn't Ukraine's government that supplied Androsyuk his gear. Like hundreds of other soldiers fighting against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, his equipment was provided by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).

...The UGCC's direct role in the conflict is substantial. The powerful UGCC dioceses of Lviv and Ternopil have donated over $200,000 worth of equipment since March to Ukrainian forces, mostly body armor, ammunition, helmets, sleeping bags, stretchers, and medical supplies, official church records show.

Read the rest here.
HT: Ordo Antiquus

In fairness there is little doubt that some of the Orthodox churches are also meddling to varying degrees on both sides, with the canonical Church backing the Russians and the schismatics backing the nationalists. But it has become fashionable for Catholics to pretend that it is only the evil Orthodox who are interfering, and of course this is simply not true. The UGCC has been involved up to its eyeballs in the anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalist movement from its inception.

From my perspective this low intensity civil war is a spectacular tragedy and  an indictment of all the major churches in Ukraine, none of whom have clean hands in this business.

And now for something a bit more serious

Dan Carlin discusses the background of one of the  most important, and largely forgotten, chapters in American history. The pivotal moment when the United States decided to step into the world of Great Power politics and conflicts, and began its transformation into the imperial power it is has become.

Kaiser Bill's Yacht

A brief musical interlude

Bishop of Antwerp advocates church blessings for homosexual unions

The [Roman Catholic] Bishop of Antwerp, Johan Bonny advocates an ecclesiastical recognition of homosexual relationships. The dogma that the Catholic Church can only accept male-female relationships, he put in question in an interview with this newspaper. "There should be a diversity of recognition forms." 

With his plea Bonny, is one of the first church leaders who attacks the absolute monopoly of the male-female marriage. "We have to look inside the church for a formal recognition of the relationality which is also present in many gay couples. As a variety of legal frameworks in society exist for partners, he wants to instate a diversity of recognition forms in the church." 

Read the rest here.
Original source

Greece: Here we go again

 ATHENS — The long-dormant euro crisis could come roaring back to life Monday with a vote in the Greek Parliament that is expected to bring down the pro-austerity government and open the way for a radical leftist party to take power for the first time in the history of the European Union.

The vote will be watched closely around the continent as a marker of economic peril in the year ahead as Europe gazes into the abyss of another recession. But it could also be a key political milestone as the center gives way to forces that were once relegated to the European fringe and are now buoyed by a populist, anti-austerity backlash.

For Greece, the expected collapse of the government comes just as the economy here had begun to stabilize. Now, with the far-left Syriza Party forecast to win the elections that would follow at the end of January , all bets are off.

The party has vowed to halt payment on Greece’s debt until the terms of the country’s $284 billion bailout agreements can be renegotiated, and it says it will thumb its nose at international lenders by ramping up public spending.

Read the rest here.

A Sea of Blue in Mourning

The temperature was generous for the season. Christmas decorations bedecked doorways and windows, clashing with the morning’s solemn event: the funeral of a police officer whose barbaric death has sliced deep into the city’s conscience and tested its character.

On Saturday, one week removed from the slayings, the city wept for an officer, Rafael Ramos, N.Y.P.D. Shield No. 6335, who was murdered Dec. 20 along with another officer for their choice of occupation.

The turnout was extraordinary. Though no reliable count was made, it appeared that more than 20,000 police officers came to Queens, from as far away as Wisconsin and California and England, some driving through the night to make it. Bordering streets were shut to traffic for blocks around. Traffic lights continued to change their colors, but there was no traffic, nothing but thick rows of police officers as far as anyone could see.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis and the Social Gospel

Standing before a statue of Mary near the Spanish Steps on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Benedict XVI reminded his listeners that the Gospel is the good news of freedom from sin, that it is "the proclamation of the victory of grace over sin, of life over death."  Proponents of the "social gospel" have forgotten this.  The mission of the Church is not to eradicate poverty or social injustice.  As Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand explains, while "a deep interest in the earthly welfare of our neighbor is a central duty of the Christian and an essential demand of the love of neighbor," still, "it is definitely no part of the message of Christ that there is to be no more poverty, no more war, that the earth is to become a natural paradise."

Proponents of the "social gospel" fail to understand, as Dr. Hildebrand reminds us, that "..the primary task of the Church is the proclamation of the divine Revelation, the protection of it against all heresies, the the sanctification of the soul of the individual, the securing of his eternal salvation - this is the spreading of the kingdom of God on earth, and not the attempt to build up an earthly paradise." (Essay entitled This-Worldliness).

Dr. Hildebrand explains that, "...the motive of many for eliminating poverty (which itself is not morally wicked, but only a morally relevant evil) is not rooted in the spirit of Christ or His Gospel, but in a humanitarian ideal.  The widespread tendency today to demand everything as a right and to refuse to accept any gifts is surely no manifestation of a Christian spirit.  There is in reality a clear, sharply delineated difference between justice and love.  Justice can and should be protected and demanded by state law; but love of neighbor could never be demanded by any law.  For it is a duty before God, and no state law could or should prescribe it or enforce it.  Love of neighbor presupposes the fulfillment of the claims of justice, but it goes far beyond this.  The words of the Gospel, 'if someone asks you to go one mile, go two miles with him,' clearly go far beyond the sphere of justice.  Of course, it is a pharisaical hypocrisy to the demands of justice as if one were giving alms.  But it is a terrible pride not to want to accept any alms, and to demand that which comes as a gift.  The true Christian should be happier to receive alms and to be grateful for them, than simply to receive what he has a right to.  When he receives a gift he is happy not only over the good which is the gift, but also over the goodness of the giver; and he experiences it as a great source of happiness that he can and should be grateful."

Read the rest here.

I have for sometime been wondering if one of the Pope's objectives is not to turn the RCC into a sort of liturgical Salvation Army.

Christ is born!

A blessed feast to everyone!

Some Christmas Music

A Romanian Christmas Hymn



Agni Parthene (O Virgin Pure) in English

Fred on Cuba

...The embargo is the mean-spirited vengeance on the wrong people by a Washington miffed because Fidel beat them. He was a monster, yes, but Washington has never shown a disposition to avoid the company of monsters. Thing is, he won, and he made clowns of the CIA—or more correctly was a bystander as they made fools of themselves. This Washington cannot forgive.

What earthly purpose is the strangulation of the island thought to serve? Yes, yes, I kinow. “Castro is a Comminiss.” Right, got it. Today, Cuba. Tomorrow Arkansas. And so a ratpack of naïve adolescent petulants in the Senate are going to save the free world, which barely includes the United States, from a tiny impoverished country impoverished because we are saving the world from it. Whatever happened to grownups?

Read the rest here.

North Korea's Internet Crashes

It's a mostly symbolic gesture. The whole country has fewer IP addresses than any medium sized office building in Manhattan. But it does send a message to others who may have been watching and getting ideas of their own. We know where the "Off Switch" is, and we know how to use it.

Pope Francis Launches Blistering Attack on Vatican Bureaucracy

The original title of this post was "Pope Sharply Criticizes Vatican Curia." But honestly that was not an accurate description. This was a very broad and scathing attack.

Paul Krugman: Conquest Is for Losers

More than a century has passed since Norman Angell, a British journalist and politician, published “The Great Illusion,” a treatise arguing that the age of conquest was or at least should be over. He didn’t predict an end to warfare, but he did argue that aggressive wars no longer made sense — that modern warfare impoverishes the victors as well as the vanquished.

He was right, but it’s apparently a hard lesson to absorb. Certainly Vladimir Putin never got the memo. And neither did our own neocons, whose acute case of Putin envy shows that they learned nothing from the Iraq debacle.

Angell’s case was simple: Plunder isn’t what it used to be. You can’t treat a modern society the way ancient Rome treated a conquered province without destroying the very wealth you’re trying to seize. And meanwhile, war or the threat of war, by disrupting trade and financial connections, inflicts large costs over and above the direct expense of maintaining and deploying armies. War makes you poorer and weaker, even if you win.

Read the rest here.

I can't believe I'm about to write this, but here goes. While I could quibble with some details, Krugman is basically right.

Rothbard (etc.) on Egalitarianism

There are a lot of things you can say about the left, but one of its most salient characteristics is its total rejection of logic, mathematics, science, and anything that can be considered 'thinking.' With the left, it's all feelings. This is why the left seized on the principle of equality before the law and twisted it into a notion of the intrinsic equality of all people everywhere, an idea, as Orwell put it, so absurd that only an intellectual could entertain it. Of course, he mean [sic] self-styled intellectual, people who reject facts and dress up their whims and enthusiasms with logical-sounding rhetoric. And whims are the opposite of logic, and enthusiasm for an idea is no proof of its validity.

Read the rest here.
HT: The Young Fogey

More Delusion from the Anglicans

The historic consecration of the Rev Libby Lane will transform the perception of an institution that has long been considered out of touch.

Read the rest of the drivel here (if you must).
HT: T-19

Two NYPD Officers Assassinated

Almost certainly a revenge attack for the killing of Eric Garnier. One wonders if Al Sharpton will lead a march protesting their murder.

Memory eternal.

ISIS selling Christian artifacts, turning churches into torture chambers

The Islamic State is turning Christian churches in Iraq and Syria into dungeons and torture chambers after stripping them of priceless artifacts to sell on the black market, according to reports.

Ancient relics and even entire murals are being torn from the houses of worship and smuggled out through the same routes previously established for moving oil and weapons in and out of the so-called caliphate, a vast region the jihadist army has claimed as sovereign under Sharia law.

Read the rest here.

Appeals court: Gun control must meet toughest test

Breaking ranks with other federal appeals courts, and probably setting up a major test case for the Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled that laws imposing controls on the personal right to have a gun must satisfy the most rigorous constitutional test.  And, in another split with other courts, it was the first to strike down a federal gun law under the Constitution’s Second Amendment as expanded by the Supreme Court six years ago.

Since the Justices’ ruling in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, finding in the Second Amendment a guarantee of a right to have a gun for personal use, at least in some circumstances, federal courts have struggled with how to apply that ruling in specific cases testing specific gun laws.  Before the Sixth Circuit ruled, however, none had declared that gun laws should be judged by a “strict scrutiny” test.

The Sixth Circuit’s decision came on Thursday in the case of Tyler v. Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Department, involving a southern Michigan man, now seventy-three years ago, who was involuntarily sent to a mental institution for only a brief period nearly thirty years ago.  He has long functioned normally in society, and is now considered to be mentally healthy and not dangerous.

Because of the brief stay in that institution, however, he is barred for life from having a gun, under the federal law that the Sixth Circuit has now nullified because it failed the “strict scrutiny” test.  He is not eligible for a special federal-state program that gives some who are barred by law from gun ownership a chance to become eligible to have a gun, because Michigan does not take part in that program, and he cannot get relief under another federal program that Congress has refused to fund.

Read the rest here.

How the Patron Saint of Catholic Traditionalism Helped Start the Revolution

In the modern struggles and disagreements over the Liturgy, there tends to be a list of friends and opponents depending on one’s stance. For those of us with a more traditional leaning, Pope St. Pius X looms large as a friend and an image of tradition. He is usually seen as a defender of the tradition and a great proponent of what is called today the Extraordinary Form or Traditional Latin Mass (TLM)—so much so that the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) takes its name from him.

And yet things, people, and movements are seldom as simple as we would like them to be. Despite many good reasons for admiring Pope St. Pius X’s attention to the Sacred Liturgy, he also (arguably) helped lay the groundwork for the revolution that would follow, not so much by his ideas but by his rather sweeping use of papal authority to influence and change the Liturgy in his day.

Read the rest here.

In fairness, I think Catholic Traddies revere Pius X less for his liturgical contributions than for his unreserved condemnation of Modernism, with which, all other differences aside, I suspect we Orthodox could heartily agree. Still there is some fascinating history here.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev: Atheism and Orthodoxy in Modern Russia

In this talk I propose to outline the history of atheism in Russia during the last hundred years. I will start by considering the kind of atheism present in Russia before the Revolution. Then I will say something about the development of atheism during the Soviet period. And finally I will conclude with some observations concerning the nature of Russian post-Soviet atheism.

I should like to begin with the following questions. How did it happen that the country known as ‘Holy Russia’, with such a long history of Orthodox Christianity, was in a very short period of time turned by the Bolsheviks into ‘the first atheist state in the world’? How was it possible that the very same people who were taught religion in secondary schools in the 1910s with their own hands destroyed churches and burned holy icons in the 1920s? What is the explanation of the fact that the Orthodox Church, which was so powerful in the Russian Empire, was almost reduced to zero by its former members?

I should say at once that I cannot interpret what happened in Russia in 1917 as an accident, the seizure of power by a small group of villains. Rather I perceive in the Russian revolution the ultimate outcome of the processes which were going on within the pre-revolutionary society and so, to a considerable extent, within the Russian Church (as there was no separation between Church and society).

I would claim that the Russian revolution was the offspring of both the Russian monarchy and the Church. The roots of the post-revolutionary atheism should be looked for in pre-revolutionary Russian society and in the Church.

It has been said that Russia was baptized but not enlightened. Indeed, as far as the 19th century is concerned, it is clear that enlightenment was very often in conflict with religion: the masses of illiterate peasants kept their traditional beliefs, but more and more educated people, even from a purely religious background, rejected faith and became atheists. Chernyshevsky and Dobroliubov are classic examples: both came from clerical families, both became atheists after studying in theological seminaries. For people like Dostoyevsky religion was something that had to be rediscovered, after having been lost as a result of his education. Tolstoy, on the other hand, came to a certain type of faith in God but remained alien to the Orthodox Church. It is clear, when one looks at the pre-revolutionary period, that there was a huge gap between the Church and the world of educated people, the so-called intelligentsia, and this gap was constantly growing.

But on the eve of the revolution it became more and more clear that atheism had also invaded the mass of ordinary people. Berdyaev wrote at that time that the simple Russian baba, who was supposed to be religious, was no longer a reality but a myth: she had become a nihilist and an atheist. I would like to quote some more from what this great Russian philosopher wrote in 1917, several months before the October revolution:

“The Russian nation always considered itself to be Christian. Many Russian thinkers and artists were even inclined to regard it as a nation which is Christian par excellence. The Slavophiles thought that Russian people live by the Orthodox faith, which is the only true faith containing the entire truth… Dostoevsky preached that. The Russian nation is a bearer of God… But, it was here that revolution broke out, and it…revealed a spiritual emptiness in Russian people.

Read the rest here.

This is a rather thought provoking piece originally from 2001. It was recently reposted on a Catholic blog and I think it worth some sober reflection.

Quote of the day...

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about truth. 
-Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Russian Central Bank Hikes Interest Rate to 17% as Ruble Collapses

Russia just raised interest rates to 17% from 10.5%.

According to a statement from Russia's central bank, Russia has taken its key interest rate to 17% from 10.5% in a stunning decision made after the collapse of the ruble on Monday.

The Bank of Russia's statement said the decision was driven by the need to limit significant devaluation in the ruble and inflation risks.

The announcement was made at 1 a.m. local time in Moscow.

Last Thursday, Russia hiked rates to 10.5% from 8% in an effort to combat inflation, which rose 9.1% year-on-year in November.

This surprise announcement from Russia comes after the ruble got absolutely crushed on Monday, losing more than 10% of its value against the US dollar, as the  ruble fell to below 64 against the dollar on Monday; earlier this year, one dollar bought about 35 rubles.

Read the rest here.

Not just gay issues: Why hundreds of congregations made final break with mainline denominations

In 2005, two congregations left the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). In 2006, three churches departed.

But the floodgates have lifted since then as decades-old tensions between liberals and conservatives have reached breaking points.

After a 2011 decision allowing gay ordinations, 270 congregations left in 2012 and 2013. And church analysts estimate upwards of another 100 churches may leave by the end of the year as presbyteries vote on a proposal to rewrite the church’s constitution to refer to marriage as being between “two people” instead of the union of “a man and a woman.”

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, some 600 congregations left in 2010 and 2011 following the denomination’s 2009 decision allowing the ordination of pastors in same-sex relationships.

That the denominations’ changing stances on gay ordinations and same-sex marriages were a key factor in the exodus is without question. But new research into why congregations decided to leave reveal differences on sexuality issues were only part of a much larger divide.

Among the broader, longstanding concerns that convinced departing congregations that they no longer had a home in their denominations that Carthage College researchers found were:

• “Bullying” tactics by denominational leaders.
• A perceived abandonment of foundational principles of Scripture and tradition.
• The devaluation of personal faith.

“The ones that left said reform was not possible,” said Carthage sociologist Wayne Thompson, study leader.

Read the rest here.

IOPS to present White Book on slain Mideast Christians at UN

Moscow, December 15, Interfax - The Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society (IOPS) has announced the creation of a White Book on crimes against Christians in the Middle East, which will be presented at the United Nations Human Rights Council in February 2015.

"We are working to compile the so-called White Book, containing a sorrowful list of names of the slain and tortured Christians, instances of churches and shrines being destroyed, and eyewitness accounts. We would like to present this book at the UN HRC at its next session in late February - early March," IOPS Vice President Yelena Agapova told a general meeting of IOPS members.

The book will be available in Russian, Arabic and English.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis praises Pius XII and more alarming quotes from Rome

If I were a Roman Catholic of the serious kind, as opposed to the Episcopalian wannabes, I would be looking for a bunker to hide in until this Pope retires or is called home. Yea yea, I know... he can't teach formal heresy. Setting aside that debatable claim, the man doesn't have to proclaim heresy ex cathedra to do some really major damage. I think there are way too many otherwise sober Catholics who are in denial about how bad this Pope is shaping up to be.

The latest from Rome via Rocco Palmo.

Amidst Russian provocations Sweden begins to grasp the perils of disarmament

Stockholm (AFP) - With an assertive Russia next door, Sweden has started to beef up its military after a decade of downsizing, but a credible deterrent may take years to achieve, analysts warn.

In one of Sweden's most dramatic steps since the end of the Cold War, it has brought back the option of using reservists to boost its military force, making no attempt to hide the fact that the main motivation behind the move is Russia.

Read the rest here.

Non-interventionism is a fine foreign policy. But a neutral country that is unable or unwilling to defend itself is just a free lunch waiting for someone to start eating.

Frank the Hippie Pope and Bart the Patriarch Sing Love Songs

From the people at Lutheran Satire.

Gay Christians choosing celibacy emerge from the closet

When Eve Tushnet converted to Catholicism in 1998, she thought she might be the world’s first celibate Catholic lesbian.

Having grown up in a liberal, upper Northwest Washington home before moving on to Yale University, the then-19-year-old knew no other gay Catholics who embraced the church’s ban on sex outside heterosexual marriage. Her decision to abstain made her an outlier.

“Everyone I knew totally rejected it,” she said of the church’s teaching on gay sexuality.

Today, Tushnet is a leader in a small but growing movement of celibate gay Christians who find it easier than before to be out of the closet in their traditional churches because they’re celibate. She is busy speaking at conservative Christian conferences with other celibate Catholics and Protestants and is the most well-known of 20 bloggers who post on spiritualfriendship.org, a site for celibate gay and lesbian Christians that draws thousands of visitors each month.

Read the rest here.

New York City Cops Are Furious With Mayor de Blasio

So yeah, how does the first Democratic mayor of one of the most Democratic cities in the country in twenty or so years deal with the recent controversial police shootings? He tells his son, who almost certainly has around the clock police protection, to be very careful in his dealings with cops. Look, I have been a frequent critic of cops over reacting to situations or abusing their authority; but this clown seems bent on elevating hypocrisy to unusual heights, even for a hard core lefty. Not surprisingly rank and file NYPD don't much care for the man, putting it as gently as I can.

I stopped caring today

Today, I stopped caring about my fellow man. I stopped caring about my community, my neighbors, and those I serve. I stopped caring today because a once noble profession has become despised, hated, distrusted, and mostly unwanted.

I stopped caring today because parents refuse to teach their kids right from wrong and blame us when they are caught breaking the law. I stopped caring today because parents tell their little kids to be good or “the police will take you away” embedding a fear from year one. Moms hate us in their schools because we frighten them and remind them of the evil that lurks in the world.

They would rather we stay unseen, but close by if needed, but readily available to “fix their kid.” I stopped caring today because we work to keep our streets safe from mayhem in the form of reckless, drunk, high, or speeding drivers, only to be hated for it, yet hated even more because we didn’t catch the drunk before he killed someone they may know.

Nevertheless, we are just another tool used by government to generate “revenue.” I stopped caring today because Liberals hate the police as we carry guns, scare kids, and take away their drugs. We always kill innocent people with unjust violence. We are called bullies for using a Taser during a fight, but are condemned further for not first tasing the guy who pulls a gun on us.

Read the rest here.
HT: l82start

A Sad Day for the Royal Canadian Navy

OTTAWA, Dec 12 (Reuters) – The Royal Canadian Navy on Friday imposed an almost total ban on sailors drinking at sea, after a warship had to be recalled from an international exercise because inebriated crew members got into trouble.

Sailors had hitherto been allowed to drink off duty. Now, they will only be able to sample alcohol on special occasions such as Christmas, if the captain gives permission.

In addition, beer vending machines will be removed from vessels. And in the rare instances when sailors are allowed to drink, they will have to pay more, since ships will hike the price of alcohol served in their onboard bars.

Read the rest here.

Happy Birthday Edward G. Robinson

One of the Hollywood greats

Greenpeace Activists Damage Ancient Peruvian Cultural Landmark

When the stunt-planners at Greenpeace sent teams of activists to trespass this week at Peru's Nazca archeological site, they must have thought their bumper-sticker messaging would look good on a Facebook page next to the 2,000-year-old geodesic drawings.

After all, the group is known for stringing banners from bridges and skyscrapers to draw attention to its environmental campaigns, and with U.N. climate talks taking place in Lima this week, the activists clearly wanted to make an impact.

And so they have. The impact of their footprints on the fragile desert site, in fact, will last "hundreds or thousands of years," according to outraged Peruvian officials.

So furious is the Peruvian government that it has barred the Greenpeace activists from leaving the country and is preparing criminal charges for "attacking archeological monuments," punishable by up to eight years in prison.

Read the rest here.

Is there no limit to what these so called liberal activists will do to gain attention for themselves? They habitually act in a manner that screams "IT'S ALL ABOUT US AND OUR CAUSE!" Nothing, and no one else matters including the rule of law. And now apparently even minimal respect for incredibly fragile ancient cultural landmarks must yield to their left wing narcissism.

These self absorbed spoiled brats are in serious need of a "time out." Lock them up and throw the key away. It's long over due.

Waiting for the storm

So all week we have been warned to start building an ark here in California. The biggest storm in forever was supposed to roll in last night and just dump water on us for days. As of 12:30 PM today it's breezy, overcast and bone dry. I don't think I have been this disappointed since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's vault.

Update: OK, we got some rain. Big deal. It looks like folks up north took a hit though.

China's stock mania decouples from economic reality

China’s stock market boom has reached outright mania, with equities galloping higher at a parabolic rate, despite threats of a crackdown by regulators and the continued slowdown of the national economy. 

The Shanghai Composite Index has risen 32pc in the past six weeks, blowing through 3,000 to a three-and-a-half-year high even though corporate earnings are declining steeply.

Read the rest here.

Fred Reed on the News Racket

It is curious: Though I have spent a lifetime in journalism, I do not read a newspaper, not the New York Times nor the Washington Post nor the Wall Street Journal. Nor do I have television service.

Why? Because, having worked in that restaurant, I know better than to eat there. The foregoing media are quasi-governmental organs, predictably predictable and predictably dishonest. The truth is not in them.

Read the rest here.

In case there was any doubt

Yes, Europe has gone mad.

Johnathan Tepper: Why I'm giving up my passport

LONDON — THE mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who was born in New York and holds both American and British passports, recently said that he would not pay a tax bill from the United States on capital gains from the sale of his home in the London borough of Islington. Mr. Johnson pointed out that he hasn’t lived in America since he was 5. He’d like to renounce his citizenship, but said the process was “very difficult.”

It is, but I am doing it. My “in-person final loss of citizenship appointment” is scheduled for Jan. 14 at the United States Consulate here. My British passport, acquired in 2012, will be my only one.

Read the rest here.

Some Thoughts on College

Friend of the blog Anti-Gnostic has a perspicacious post up on some of the problems with college today, in particular its unhealthy relationship with government. I encourage everyone to read it here. To this I will add a somewhat less irenic critique of the socio-political culture on modern campuses from Messrs. Penn & Teller.

Part 1

Part 2

Warning: For the uninitiated, Penn & Teller tend to be VERY frank on just about any topic they (really Penn is the only who talks) are addressing. Which is to say that the two linked videos are definitely Rated PG-13, mostly for potty language. So yeah, some blog readers may wish to skip this post.

RIP: Fabiola Dowager Queen of the Belgians

Belgium's Dowager Queen Fabiola, the devoutly Roman Catholic widow of King Baudouin, has reposed at the age of 86.

Memory eternal!

Worst Op-Ed of the Week

And a strong contender for the worst of the month...

In last month’s deep and damning Rolling Stone report about sexual assault at the University of Virginia, a reporter told the story of “Jackie,” who said she was gang raped at a fraternity party and then essentially ignored by the administration. It helped dramatize what happens when the claims of victims are not taken seriously.

Now the narrative appears to be falling apart: Her rapist wasn’t in the frat that she says he was a member of; the house held no party on the night of the assault; and other details are wobbly. Many people (not least U-Va. administrators) will be tempted to see this as a reminder that officials, reporters and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases. This is what we mean in America when we say someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.

In important ways, this is wrong. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist. Even if Jackie fabricated her account, U-Va. should have taken her word for it during the period while they endeavored to prove or disprove the accusation. This is not a legal argument about what standards we should use in the courts; it’s a moral one, about what happens outside the legal system.

The accused would have a rough period. He might be suspended from his job; friends might defriend him on Facebook. In the case of Bill Cosby, we might have to stop watching his shows, consuming his books or buying tickets to his traveling stand-up routine. But false accusations are exceedingly rare, and errors can be undone by an investigation that clears the accused, especially if it is done quickly.

Read the rest here.

Speaking of morons...

I am back online after a long day without internet. Yes, I am aware that you want a detailed explanation of how such a thing could happen. It went down thusly...

The house I rent has two very large, indeed sprawling pine trees in the yard that help to shade it during the often brutal summer days. However the tree limbs have grown to the point where they overhang the road to a degree that sometimes they fall off creating potential traffic hazards. The city has, somewhat understandably gotten a bit irritated and after the latest such incident they sent a crew over to trim one of the trees back. Since the landlord has thus far shown little interest in the matter, I have no real issue with the city's decision.

But in the course of trimming the tree branches that overhang the road... they CUT THE BLEEPING INTERNET CABLE LINE! After making sure they left word to the effect that the landlord would be billed for the trimming, they got into their truck, performed a well executed K Turn and then stopped before the downed internet cable lying in the street. At which point our fearless tree trimming heroes got out of the vehicle, gathered around the downed cable, picked it up and passed the end around. Then they dropped it, got back into their truck and without another word, DROVE OVER THE DOWNED CABLE and left.

I cannot of course be certain, but I will hazard a guess that no man on the tree trimming detail makes less than $50,000 a year plus full civil service benefits.

It took most of the day to get the Charter internet repair guy out here; not his fault, they were backed up with service calls. Once here the poor guy spent about an hour and half rerunning the cable and then another half hour fiddling with the modem which didn't want to read the signal. He ended up installing a new one. Oh, I forgot to mention that the outdoor work was done mostly in the dark and it was raining. Happily we were his last call for the day. I gave him a couple bottles of Guinness in gratitude for his outstanding customer service.

As for what I'd like to give the the city's tree trimming crew, one wonders if they would even know what a piece of coal looks like. I hope Charter sends a nasty note and a bill to the city.

Quote of the day...

The man is a good-hearted moron, and I mean that in a completely non-malicious way. He is a sentimental, gushing, huggy-bear and would make a great parish priest, but is in well over his head as Patriarch of an autocephalous Church.

-Fellow blogger Anti-Gnostic on Pope Francis from the comment thread here.

Pope Francis Sacks Commander of Swiss Guards

The commander of the Swiss Guard at the Vatican has been removed from his post, apparently as a result of Pope Francis’s unease at the security chief’s militaristic style... 

...The pope’s apparent discomfort with the gruelling shifts and strict rules of the Swiss Guard, which were enforced by Anrig, has been evident since his election in 2013. Italian press reports said the pontiff wanted to see a less rigid military corp and one that was less obsessed by rules.

Read the rest here.

Now that's the ticket. Because everyone knows that the surest foundation stone for a crack military/security service is lax discipline.

It is perhaps worth noting that assassination, like larceny, is primarily a crime of opportunity. Heads of state and other VIPs who insist on moving about in open cars, without bodyguards or who deliberately keep their security at bay are worse than fools. This is because ordinary people can choose to take foolish risks, and in most cases the danger is primarily or exclusively to them alone. But when you are a pope, president or king you are almost never alone in public. The assassin spraying bullets or setting off a bomb is not going to worry about "collateral damage." In the modern world the opposite is more likely to be the case. If you have a martyr complex, that's fine. But you don't have the right to endanger other people by your actions.

Quote of the day...

"You just can't say that, just as you can't say that all Christians are fundamentalists. We have our share of them (fundamentalists). All religions have these little groups,"
- Pope Francis responding to critics of Islam's violent track record

I think we have reached a point where it's time to admit that this Pope has a problem with his off the cuff remarks. Honestly I really don't think that he believes there is some equivalence between conservative or "fundamentalist" Christians, whom he has made it very clear that he doesn't like, and Islamic savages who chop the heads off of women and children for being Christians. But when he makes these kinds of boneheaded comments, it is like a flashing neon sign, practically begging his critics to flay him. And before the inevitable, he was quoted out of context arguments start flying in from his loyal defenders, my response is maybe and maybe not. But so what if he was? He should know better than to be saying things that can be so easily taken advantage of by the enemies of his church. And what about all of the other times he has made comments that make even moderate Catholics cringe? This is getting out of hand.

Flash bulletin: He is the Pope of Rome!

Yet he continues to speak extemporaneously in a manner suggesting his comments are of no more importance than those of the village priest. Popes should never hold press conferences. Never! Not EVER! Nor should he be giving unprepared sermons at his daily Masses. But for whatever reason, he does not seem to have grasped that his words carry massive weight and are going to be parsed and dissected by people all over the world. Often these are people with an agenda.

Benedict XVI occasionally made comments that caused trouble. But compared to Francis, he was a paragon of restraint and caution. I don't know if there is someone in the Vatican with the stature to tell this Pope he is behaving badly, to the point of causing scandal with his careless words. But I hope there is. In the meantime I offer this alternative quote for reflection...

"I find it is the things I have never said that have caused me the least trouble."
- Calvin Coolidge

Gay Marriage Acceptance by Finnish Lutheran Archbishop Prompts Mass Resignations

I am not sure about the term "mass resignations," but some 8,000 people did resign from the state church over the weekend. At least that's something.

Read the story here.

Russia Reels as Oil Plunges and Sanctions Bite

The Russian rouble has suffered its steepest one-day drop since the default crisis in 1998 as capital flight accelerates, raising the risk of emergency exchange controls and tightening the noose on Russian companies and bodies with more than $680bn (£432bn) of external debt.

The currency has been in freefall since Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states vetoed calls by weaker Opec members for a cut in crude oil output, a move viewed by the Kremlin as a strategic attack on Russia.

A fresh plunge in Brent prices to a five-year low of $67.50 a barrel on Monday caused the dam to break, triggering a 9pc slide in the rouble in a matter of hours.

Analysts said it took huge intervention by the Russian central bank to stop the rout and stablize the rouble at 52.07 to the dollar. “They must have spent billions,” said Tim Ash, at Standard Bank.

It is extremely rare for a major country to collapse in this fashion, and the trauma is likely to have political consequences. "This has become disorderly. There are no real buyers of the rouble. We know that voices close to president Vladimir Putin want capital controls, and we cannot rule this out," said Lars Christensen, at Danske Bank.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew Meet

The joint declaration.

And before everybody starts flipping out over "Black Bart" trying restore communion with Rome, I suggest a glance at this uncommonly realistic assessment from a Roman Catholic source. Bottom line; it aint happening anytime in the foreseeable future.