Barrel Strength

I always thought we were, in Catholic eyes. A Jesuit tells his fellow conservative believing Catholics that we are not. Sheesh! What does it take?

Hats off and best wishes to the unpronouncable Deborah Gyapong (Japong?, Gyapong?) for this one).

The Reverend Father Oakes says:

“I do hereby conclude: When the Western Church fissiparated in the sixteen century, the Reformers took a portion of the essential patrimony of the Church with them, and they thereby left both the Roman Church and themselves the poorer for it.”

And further:
“All I can say is this: We live in strange times when I find greater doctrinal fellowship among many Protestants than I do among far too many Catholic theologians!”

To which I can add, welcome to the club, dude.

Rev. Oakes’ article is far more interesting than these teaser excerpts.

The following is taken from the judgment of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in Phipps versus Toronto Police sevrices Board, Shaw and Blair.
The facts are summarized in the Toronto Star article here. Phipps, the black postman, was asked for identification by the white cop when he was delivering mail inthe Bridle Path area. He gave it, the cop thanked him. Later when the postman saw the cop again, they got into an altercation as to why the postman was asked when other white people in the neighbourhood were not. (Does “you are black in an expensive white neighbourhood” suffice?)

The judgment of the OHRC reads in part as follows.

[16] The relevant principles that apply in cases where an allegation of racial discrimination has been raised have been usefully summarized as follows:
(a) The prohibited ground or grounds of discrimination need not be the sole or the major factor leading to the discriminatory conduct; it is sufficient if they are a factor;
(b) There is no need to establish an intention or motivation to discriminate; the focus of the enquiry is on the effect of the respondent’s actions on the complainant;
(c) The prohibited ground or grounds need not be the cause of the respondent’s discriminatory conduct; it is sufficient if they are a factor or operative element;
(d) There need be no direct evidence of discrimination; discrimination will more often be proven by circumstantial evidence and inference; and
(e) Racial stereotyping will usually be the result of subtle unconscious beliefs, biases and prejudices.
Radek v. Henderson Development (Canada) Ltd. (No. 3) (2005), 52 C.H.R.R. D/430, 2005 BCHRT 302 at para. 482; Pritchard v. Ziedler (2007), CHRR Doc. 07-527 (Sask. H.R.T.).
[Note that the citations are not from Courts but from other human rights tribunals. They are making the stuff up as they go along].

[Now comes the part where the standard of proof for rebutting the allegation of racism is set forth:]

[17] In this case, as in many cases alleging racial discrimination, there is no direct evidence that race was a factor in the officer’s decision to take the actions that he did. As a result, the issue of whether the officer’s actions amount to racial discrimination in violation of the Code falls to be determined in accordance with the following well-established principles applicable to circumstantial evidence cases.
1) Once a prima facie case of discrimination has been established, the burden shifts to the respondent to provide a rational explanation which is not discriminatory.
2) It is not sufficient to rebut an inference of discrimination that the respondent is able to suggest just any rational alternative explanation. The respondent must offer an explanation which is credible on all the evidence.
3) A complainant is not required to establish that the respondent’s actions lead to no other conclusion but that discrimination was the basis for the decision at issue in a given case.
4) There is no requirement that the respondents’ conduct, to be found discriminatory, must be consistent with the allegation of discrimination and inconsistent with any other rational explanation.
5) The ultimate issue is whether an inference of discrimination is more probable from the evidence than the actual explanations offered by the respondent.

End of quote

Would the greater likelihood that the postman belonged to a group that numbers 2% of the population, say, but numbers 50% of criminal arrests, prosecutions and convictions not be a reasonable basis of checking his identity? In short, we profile racially, religiously, sexually, ethnically and in every way conceovable, all the time. Why should the police not do so?

Further on, the presiding judge Kaye Joachim writes:

[37] I accept the applicant’s evidence that he felt intimidated by being approached by two police officers, wearing guns, one of whom, Constable Shaw, is a very large man. I note that the applicant has a small stature. I also accept that he perceived that the officers did not treat him respectfully. However, I am not persuaded on a balance of probabilities that Constable Shaw used the police vehicle in an intimidating manner, that he approached the applicant in an intimidating manner or that he spoke rudely to the applicant.

So it does not matter how politely you ask, you are guilty of unconscious discrimination by asking a black man what he is doing in the neighbourhood if you don’t ask some unknown number of other white people.

The decision is being appealed by the police to a real court.

The longer this sort of nonsense goes on, the more the law is brought into disrepute. Black people should not be made untouchable by police, especially as they have such a strong propensity for criminal behaviour.
Again, it is time to start tarring with the same brush. We need more intelligent discriminations, but we need most of all is the right to make them on the basis of observed realities.

This is one of the best explorations of the difference between classical liberalism and progressivism that I have encountered. A worthwhile read. by Jaacov ben Moshe at Breath of the Beast

It is taking the naive a while to wake up to the basic facts of Islamic social behaviour, first because Islamic male behaviour is so obnoxious, and second because a huge social penalty attaches to any honest observation of racial (biological) or cultural (religious) differences. If all cultures are equal, then honour killings are morally allowed. So to get to the point of condemnation, many people feel they have to become “racists” or “culturalists” – believers in the superiority of their own Christian-derived liberal culture.

If so, good.

Christie Blatchford calls them the “magnificently misnamed honour killings“, whereby Muslim men dispose of females who they feel have diminished their “honour”, which appears to consist of women acting in such a way that they appear to believe they have a right to sexual choice and happiness in their mate. They have neither. They are inferior. They are as close to personal property as you can conceive without being slaves. Since everything in Islam is dictated by the revelation from God through Mohammed, recorded in the Word of God in the Koran, the Sacred Word of God, I infer this state of affairs arises not because of some Pakistani hill-tribe social practices, but because these attitudes are authorized by the Koran. And if not, prove it.

I noted that half of the six Canadian women slain by their relatives were Sikh, half Muslim. So maybe we need to cast a more suspicious eye on Sikhism too.

The burden of proof has to shift, from the benign acceptance of Islam or Sikhism as if they were just another flavour of worshipping the Deity, to a much more critical and informed stance.

It is an observable fact to those who have had to share an office or a car with Muslim males (many exceptions exist) that their attitudes towards women seem consist of absolute disdain. They seem no more able to contemplate the equality of women and men than one could contemplate the equality of men with domestic animals. The very idea is absurd.

Now whether this is derived from religion or the culture of the place is really a nice academic question – but has no bearing on the issue of why we are allowing these people to immigrate to this country in such numbers.

It is time to start tarring with the same brush. It is time to revive “stereotypes” to the useful devices they really are; they guide you to understanding without your needing to gain experience the hard way. For many western women, gaining experience with Muslim men is fatal.

An art installation funded by the Scottish government permits viewers to scrawl obscenities on pages of the Bible, under the pretense that those who feel “excluded” by the Bible can write themselves back into it:

The exhibit, Untitled 2009, was proposed by the Metropolitan Community Church, an international Christian group which describes itself as offering “inclusive Christian ministry to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities”.

The £7,000 exhibition, which is funded by the Scottish Arts Council and is free of charge, has been created by the artists Anthony Schrag and David Malone in association with organisations representing gay Christians and Muslims.

And now the money shot:

The Church of Scotland said it condemned any sacrilegious act, while a spokesman for the Catholic Church said: “One wonders whether the organisers would have been quite as willing to have the Koran defaced.”

Indeed.

http://westernstandard.ca/website/article.php?id=3007

More investigation needed before commenting.

Alex Pang presents an incisive critique of futurist bluffers, and you will find his “tips” manifested throughout our chattering classes, whether it’s crypto-nationalizing the economy or serving up climate change you must believe in:

No expertise, no problem! It’ll actually make your work more accurate if you claim to be an expert– if you’re certain that you’re an expert– but you actually aren’t.

Sounds counterintuitive, right? (This is how you know I’m a successful futurist. I said what you didn’t expect. Now I’ll quote some Science to make my point.) In fact, advanced degrees and deep knowledge don’t make you a better forecaster. Statistically, experts are hardly better at predicting the future than chimps throwing darts at a board.

In the past one billion years of the earth’s history, only about 200 million have seen ice at the poles. Why is there ice at the earth’s polar caps and why is this unusual?

I came across a straight explanation in After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North Americaby Professor E.C.Pielou

Professor Pielou, a specialist in mathematical ecology, taught at Dalhousie University and published this book in 1991, before the global warming hysteria had reduced the question of climate change to partisan shouting.

This book succinctly tells us about why ice ages come and go. It supplies essential background information for those who wish to know about our climate, and conforms to what I have read in other books by geologists and science writers.

Read the rest…

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg demonstrates that sometimes sunshine is not the most effective disinfectant:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of [emphasis added].

One will not find after this statement any effort by the New York Times interviewer to obtain a clarification, much less any sign of a jaw dropping.

Lest we forget, Canada’s contribution of the first female judge in the British Empire was clearer about her racial pseudo-science and yet is celebrated as a “Hero for Today”.

H/T NRO Corner

Pat Condell minces no words in his atheism. So I do not agree with his idea of God, indeed, I do not think God is an idea. (Someone needs to inquire why so many ex-Roman Catholics are so hostile to religion in general and God in particular. Time for some inquiry by the Church on that topic).

But his latest posting (about July 8, 2009) on the wearing of the burqa, and the silence of feminists on the same topic, is profoundly agreeable to hear. Where the hell are the feminists when it comes to the oppression of women under Islam? The most important issue for women in the world now is Islam. Why the complicit silence?

An American president stands before a Russian audience and denies his nation’s primary role in winning the Cold War:

Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.

Just when you thought the man could push the envelope of narcissistic self-delusion no further.

Contemplating the 13C temperature through a rainy weekend in July, I turned to
the google entry “global cooling” and came across this National Geographic
entry of May 2009.

The article notes that solar output has declined somewhat, but then here comes
the kicker:

“But researchers are on guard against their concerns about a new cold snap being
misinterpreted.

“[Global warming] skeptics tend to leap forward,” said Mike Lockwood, a solar
terrestrial physicist at the University of Southampton in the U.K. (Get the
facts about global warming.)

“He and other researchers are therefore engaged in what they call “preemptive
denial” of a solar minimum leading to global cooling.
Read the rest…

Canadian researchers found those with low self-esteem actually felt worse after repeating positive statements about themselves.

And it took science more than a decade to confirm what Variety had discovered.

Looks like the End of Days is coming earlier than expected.

At least Jerry Lewis may finally be vindicated.