Good Friday

Romans 5:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? [shall] tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

War time Humour 2017

The  BBC comedy sketch "Real Housewives of Isis"  is being condemned as absolutely tasteless, but I thought it was funny, topical and a lot less offensive to pious ears than the lyrics of "Colonel Bogey" (which, if you don't know, describe the anatomy of various leaders of the Nazi high command).

I hope it is seen by a hundred thousand British schoolgirls. Mocking murderous thugs (and their female enablers) is an enduring part of freedom-loving British culture.

Update: I am not sure how people assert with intellectual honesty that the sketch mocks ISIS's victims. These girls are clearly from England. One even mentions Birmingham.

Is the Burqini Bad?

WHAT a MODEST pose! 

Oh dear. I have just written a post on how I feel about the burqini/burkini which I won't post because I have changed my mind again.  This article did it. 

Is the burqini useful, harmless beachwear, or is it a uniform expressing adherence to anti-western ideology?

I can't decide. As much as I fear the sun--being blue-eyed, red-haired and fair-skinned, fear of skin and eye cancer haunts me--I would not wear a burqini, let alone a burqa, because I don't want to be perceived as wearing an Islamist uniform. To completely block out the sun on the beach, I could wear a surfer's or long-distance swimmer's neoprene swimsuit and nobody would give me a second glance.

Should the burquini be banned? My best Catholic friends fight me on any kind of governmental bans on public dress because they fear this will come back to bite Catholics. I don't mind "hijab" aka foreign-looking headscarves because Christian and Jewish women in the west covered their hair day in, day out for centuries. Naturally, I think it is nicer and less ghettoizing when western Muslim women wear western headscarves instead of Saudi desertwear; I know a Muslim female theology student who tucks her hair into a big knitted cap. If you want to cover your hair, cover you hair. I don't mind. If you want to cover your hair with a silk square covered in swastikas, I wonder if covering your hair is actually your intent.

What I object to are uniforms, the uniforms of anti-western ideologies.  My father's mother's people were German-Americans, and my grandmother was a proud German-American, but neither she nor her family wore traditional German dress during the First and Second World Wars. I mean, it's not just that they didn't wear Nazi uniforms--which I am sure would have got them arrested for disturbing the peace, if for nothing else--it's that they didn't wear HIYA! I'M A PROUD GERMAN-AMERICAN NOT ALL GERMANS ARE NAZIS YOU KNOW clothing either. And France, as politicians solemnly tell us, is at war.

Well, sound off in the combox if you are moved to, but remember that as usual on my blogs, the tone of the combox is sternly restricted to good humour, wrinkly-foreheaded thought and mildly hurt feelings soon soothed by apologies and explanations.

UPDATE: This Spectator article explains the current social and cultural climate in France. I think one thing to be kept in mind is that the current fuss about the burkini is about the burkini in France. When we read about massacres in France, we feel sad and upset for a week or so. When the French read about (or see or survive) massacres in France, they stay mad. Understandably.  Especially in Nice.

Love Local

It's almost ridiculous, but an ISIS sympathizer in Strathroy has been killed by police in Strathroy, Ontario after detonating "a device".  Where? Well you may ask.

Strathroy is a tiny town near London, Ontario in what I call farm country. The ISIS sympathizer was named Aaron Driver; I would not be surprised to discover men on both sides of his family fought for Canada in the First and Second World Wars. I would also not be surprised to find out that half his ancestors were from Holland, because I associate Strathroy with ollie balls, not freaking ISIS.

Strathroy is a fair distance from my native Toronto, but I had a friend from there in my university days (the maker of the ollie balls) who had come to the Big Smoke to work for IBM. In the 1990s, working for IBM carried the caché of working for Google now, but I digress.

I'm really thinking about living and loving locally, which may sound rich coming from me, an expat who married a Scot and relies greatly on the internet to make and sustain relationships. However, when people are so into the internet that they heed voices that come out of it telling them to kill their actually physically near neighbours, there is definitely a problem.

No doubt journalists in Canada will find out exactly WHY an Anglo-named Canadian from the sticks was attracted to a violent form of Islam. I shall read with interest. I understand that there is a lot of boredom (and therefore drugs) in farm country nowadays, but surely the neighbours think of interesting things to do outdoors in their spare time?

After reading this news, I went to the nearest  proper supermarket which is a mile away and across a river. I took the time to have a proper look at who else was at Tesco before noon. Not surprisingly, they were mostly elderly people and mums with prams. I recognized a cabbie from the local taxi company helping an old wifie with her bags. I tend to be a daydreamer when I walk, but this time I really wanted to focus on who my neighbours were.

On the way back, I popped into the Historical Coffee Shop to have a wee bit of a blether in Polish with the Polish server, who is literally the Pole closest to me, being only metres away from the Historical House. Then I went into the HH to put away the groceries, say hello to my mother, and work on learning a Polish song about the Vistula (Wisła) River.

The song is very sweet, and its proud conclusion is that Poland will last as long as the Wisła flows, and I was delighted that the Polish composers and singers of the song identify so much with something physical, something local, something in the landscape that came before them, something so many Poles live near, as it flows from the mountains to the south to the Baltic Sea in the north. I wish I knew a song about my local river here in Scotland.

Europe at War--But Who is Fighting?

I have been wondering about what I personally can do to stop the ISIS-inspired attacks in Europe. The recent atrocities in France and Germany have shaken and reminded me that B.A. and I and our friends in Europe are all potential victims. However, the murder of Father Jacques Hamel, a small town priest in his eighties, has enraged me against helplessness.

"If we can't do anything, don't tell us," I am wont to rage unfairly at journalists. My own journalism is about doing and finding out more. This is why I stay away from "Kasper said this" and "Marx said that" stories. A much more interesting churchman is young Ks. Jacek Międlar, who believes Catholicism is the very foundation of his country (for which, incidentally, there are incredibly strong arguments) and harangues enormous crowds of Polish nationalists. Ks. Międlar obviously believes Poles can do something against Islamist violence, and part of it is physically to keep Islamists out.

This, however, is a less obvious solution for western Europe, which has unwittingly let Islamists in and somehow incubates new ones, usually the European children and grandchildren of Asian or African or Caribbean immigrants. There is a mentality among some young men that delights in, and is inspired by, ISIS snuff films. I read somewhere or other (no link, sorry) of a young man in a London university classroom horrified because fellow students were sniggering over a beheading playing out over a smartphone. (Did he have the guts to shout at them? To denounce them before their professor? To call the police?) Meanwhile, it is coming out only now that the Bataclan terrorists actually mutilated their wounded victims. These terrorists were born, raised and "radicalized" in France and Belgium. Belgium--land of Tintin and Snowy, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus. 

Such young men and women are already here in Europe, and their recruiters and hate preachers are already here too. Who knows who they are? It's not like they wear uniforms, or when they do wear uniforms, we are told not to assume that they belong to the army. 

"If you see something, say something" is rather meaningless when, if I were to say, "When in Scotland, dress as Scots do" to the brace of women covered in black cloth pushing prams up Nicholson Avenue, I could be arrested. Worse yet, some self-pitying Edinburgh teenager could hear the women's version of the story and swear to avenge affronted Islamic womanhood upon the Scottish infidels. Meanwhile, the kneejerk British (and British-Canadian response) to women dressed in embarrassing and offensive clothing (like a burkha or a shirt reading F*** off,  Europe) is to silently judge them and otherwise ignore it. (I think, however, I would scream like a banshee if I came across young men having a chuckle over another human being having his or her head lopped off.)

So what can we do? This morning a friend sent me an email suggesting I sign up to the Pray the Rosary again ISIS. Yes, that would be something. But the Ottoman Turks were not turned back at the Battle of Vienna by prayer alone. Fifteen thousand Europeans (1.3- 5 thousand of them Poles) lost their lives and, more importantly, deprived twenty thousand Turks of theirs. Still, there was a religious aspect to this--according to our old friend Wiki:

Because Sobieski had entrusted his kingdom to the protection of the Blessed Virgin (Our Lady of Częstochowa) before the battle, Pope Innocent XI commemorated his victory by extending the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, which until then had been celebrated solely in Spain and the Kingdom of Naples, to the entire Church; it used to be celebrated on the Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity of Mary and was, when Pope St. Pius X intended to make room for the celebration of the actual Sundays, transferred to 12 September, the day of the victory.

Still, that was in 1683, and we (in Europe) are not looking at a struggle involving large armies of soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat (or are we?), but emergency services coping with sneaks who walk into places where they have been welcomed, where they grew up. One imagines politicians coldly pondering how to calm their restive, frightened, angry  countrymen and get them to accept the fact that their fellow countrymen are being murdered and to carry on regardless. "At least it wasn't you, right?" 

I really, honestly, want something to do to stop wicked people from killing babies, children, men, women, lay, priests and religious out of their own sense of self-righteousness. I want to do something to stop their teachers from whipping them up to such disgusting evil. 

I have always wondered at Christians who somehow think we ourselves share in Islamist violence. One of my Catholic theology professors told me and my classmates that he almost quit teaching his field on 9/11. This made absolutely no sense to me then and  it makes no sense to me now--unless  it is a way of coping, of feeling that one is somehow responsible for the violence, and so one has power over it. Imaginary guilt is apparently easier to bear than abject helplessness. 

Well, I am not helpless. I am just out of ideas. If I were gifted at languages--not a tone-deaf dummy who has to pound them into my greying brain and clumsy tongue--I would learn one of the enemies' languages and get a job in intelligence. If I were a young man, I would join one of Europe's armies. If I were a young woman, I would have as many children as I physically could and bring them up to love, cherish and defend Christendom. 

When I was a theology student, I wrote frankly about the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis, which no doubt impressed or embarrassed my fellow students, but that's about the extent of my influence . Horrified by the failed Cologne train bombing--and left-wing coddling of Islamist terrorism--I eventually wrote Ceremony of Innocence. That has given a few thousand (I hope) people a day or two's entertainment, but I can't imagine it has done much to save lives or turn teenagers from the path of bloody, self-righteous violence. Amazed by the passionate speech of Ks. Międlar, I told the majority-American readers of Catholic World Report about it. But other than praying and demanding that Catholic bishops in Europe ensure the safety of their priests, nuns and elderly parishioners who go to morning mass, I don't know what to do next.

Update: Here is David Warren on the subject of the murder and our leaders' pussyfooting.

Update 2: For those who can read French, here's a snapshot of modern life in a small French town via Le Figaro.

"Europe, wake up!"

The Polish Partitions

Good morning! It is Polski Piątek, so let us contemplate the three Partitions of Poland. Apparently the Nazi-Stalinist pact revealed in 1939 does not count as a partition. "Tylko okupacja!" said my Polish teacher, and who am I to argue, eh? I am keeping my powder dry until she blames the British for something, and then I will suggest the French generals or Roosevelt were to blame. Maybe I should prepare my argument po polsku in advance, so as to sound properly impressive.

It turns out that when my Polish teacher announced we were going to concentrate on politics this term, this was not an excuse to complain about the current Polish government but to teach proper Polish history. This is a great relief to my mind because the current Polish government is just too easy a target in Guardian-reading Edinburgh and my classmates might faint in horror if I mentioned that when it comes to life issues, the Polish Bishops Conference and I are at one.

As there are no Prussians, Austrians or Russians in the class, the Partitions of Poland are controversy-free in Polish 2.6. I recall with chagrin that I got the dates wrong in CWR, but this shall never happen again, for they have been impressed upon my brain by the sheer effort of having to pronounce tysiąc siedemset siedemdziesiątego drugiego roku  ( "the year 1772"), etc.

I Rozbiór (First Partition) 1772 r.   Poland, once a staggeringly powerful country with masses of territory (see exciting video below), was in a state of inner turmoil. Austria, Prussia and Russia drew up a treaty saying, in effect, "Hey,Prussia says we should take advantage of this situation. Let's do it!" So they toddled in and took away a third of Polish territory before the Poles could do anything about it.

II Rozbiór (Second Partition) 1793 r. Austria was busy fighting France, so this time Prussia and Russia drew up a treaty saying they could further annex Polish territory. This totally destabilized the Polish government and destroyed Polish manufacturing and banking. The economy was shot.

III Rozbiór (Third Partition) 1795. The Polish uprising (1794) led by Tadeusz Kościuszko vastly annoyed Austria, Prussia and Russia because of its revolutionary ideals as much as its threat to Prussian and Russian bullying. So they all got together and ended Polish self-rule, which made just as much sense to the Poles as Canada, Mexico and Russia dividing up the USA would make to American readers. (Mexico has the numbers, Russia has the cash, Canadians conveniently look and sound like Americans... Hmm. Hmm. Get back to me on this.) At any rate, there was no more Polish government and therefore no more Polish state for 123 years, but clearly there were still Poles.

Here is an amusing Polish video to illustrate all the above. Stick around for the end to watch Poland swell, shrink and swell again through the centuries:

Speaking highly generally, if your first language was Polish during this period of Polish statelessness, you were a Pole. Some argue that to be a Pole is to be a Catholic or at least a Christian (as well as Polish-speaking), but I am not going there. This is the sort of idea the Guardian wails over with barely disguised glee. Adam Mickiewicz and other Polish writers since 1795 have been very keen on the idea that there have been lots of patriotic Polish Jews, and I'm leaving it at that. Presumably Polish Tatars were also patriotic when they were not in cahoots with the Ottoman Empire.

Now the poor Tatars have to put up with foreign Wahhabist immigrants throwing their weight about--yet another reason why the Polish government is absolutely right to limit Islamic migration. Remember, boys and girls, when you are accused of being Islamophobic before some authority figure, this useful speech: "I like ordinary Muslims. It's the Wahhabist bastards I object to, and their attempts to destroy native Islams, like the faith and way of life of the Tatars in Poland." This should knock your enemy off-guard, as they will have no idea whatsoever that there is an ancient native community of Muslims in Poland, and thus you will have out-sympathized him/her.

By the way, as part of my preparation for my trip to Paris, I have been reviewing in Survival how best to survive a terrorist attack.  (Hint: I'm not fussed about the Huguenots or the Soixante-huitards.) The times we live in, eh?

So What Was He Doing?

Interesting story in the UK press today about a chap taken off the Easyjet flight from Rome to London. Apparently a female passenger told someone that he made her feel uncomfortable.

Man, after you leave behind the food court, Ciampino is already the height of discomfort. Come to think of it, I once feared I would be chucked off my Easyjet flight the moment the security lady found my 200 mL bottle of sunscreen. The look she gave me would have singed the eyelashes off a goat.

In the combox of the Daily Mail (a tabloid), commentators are having a go at the woman who supposedly "felt uncomfortable". They assume that she must be racist, and she should be arrested herself, sued, etc. They also assume she exists. Easyjet lied about the luggage; who's to say they didn't lie about the complaint?

But what is lost in the story is the word "behaviour." I found this interesting because recently I mentioned a strangely behaving fellow airline passenger to a woman at the final security desk. To be honest, I would have been more embarrassed had the woman not been--as far as I could tell--white. The directive "Don't be racist!" was banged into my head just as hard as it was into the heads of all the other kids at school. I cannot imagine saying anything to anyone about any black or brown guy unless he was actually rocking, crying and wailing "Inshaallah" in the passenger lounge.

One comfort in my life of frequent flying is that terrorists tend not to target poor old Easyjet and other cut-price airlines.  The actor James Woods may have seen the 9/11 bombers doing a dry run in first class. This is actually true: I found it on Snopes. The hero of the story is James Woods, who reported what he saw. Too bad he wasn't taken more seriously.

If you see something, say something. If someone calls you a racist, pinch yourself to make sure the bad word hasn't caused you to melt into a puddle of loathsomeness.

What Can We Do?

The Spectator has produced a good editorial on yesterday's Islamist bombings in Brussels.

My question, as ever, is "If we are at war, why don't we try to win it?"

During the Second World War, the fighting was not left to the soldiers. The entire citizenry of the UK, for example, was expected to contribute to the war effort in some way. The will to do this was easily aroused by the thought of a German invasion. (The Germans did, as a matter of fact, invade and occupy the Channel Islands.) 

When Canada went to war against the Taliban after 9/11, Canadian soldiers were mobilized, but the Canadian public was not. Although 9/11 woke me up to a serious new danger in the world, my life didn't change--except at the airport, of course. The reason we sometimes have to take off our shoes (and usually our boots) in the security line--or tread on a pad--is because of this man.  All the fuss with our toiletries is because of these people. But other than asking me to submit to airport procedures, Canada never asked me to do anything. Well, other than not take out my indignation on whichever random Muslims my eyes fell upon after hearing of the latest Islamist atrocity. 

The USA did make one attempt to enlist my aid against Islamism, however. As a graduate student in Boston, I received an email from the US government (passed along by the department) offering scholarships to students who would drop their current studies and learn one or more of several listed Asian languages, e.g. Dari, Farsi, Urdu, Arabic. It was open only to U.S. citizens, but I appreciated that the U.S. government was actively trying to recruit civilians to the national security effort. 

The US also has the "If you see something, say something" invitation, which as been trademarked. (Goodness!)   There must be something similar in the UK or Canada for when I saw a woman behaving very strangely at my gate at Toronto's Pearson Airport this month, "If you see something, say something" jumped to the forefront of my mind. 

What was she doing? Well, first of all, although it was evening and we were indoors, the woman was wearing sunglasses. It was uncomfortably warm in the lounge, but she was wearing a long, heavy, black coat and a fluffy tartan shawl. She was a thin and pale with every scrap of hair tucked into her beret, which was perched extended on her head like a mushroom. She was also pacing back and forth, grimacing to herself. I noticed her when I saw the people sitting across from me staring at her. 

Bloody hell, I thought. How weird. 

Since 9/11 I have flown quite a bit--across the Atlantic at least twice a year--and I don't remember anyone at the gate in dark glasses at night, let alone being quite so obviously nervous about something. The impulse not to say anything and just be tolerant of the crazy was strong. However, I was getting on a plane with the woman. Seven hours strapped into a tin can hurtling itself over the Atlantic with two hundred strangers, including Madame X--ugh. "If you see something, say something," repeated my brain. So I crept up to the young woman at the desk and said it. Naturally I began with "This is very embarrassing, but..."

And that was it. The young woman asked me to point out the person, I did, and then I sat down again, feeling mingled shame and satisfaction that I had done something. Of course, there was no guarantee that the airport employee would do anything besides sigh at the paranoia of middle-aged travellers. Therefore I asked myself why, since I had felt the need to point out the weirdness of Madame X, I was going to get on a plane with her anyway. My answer was that she reminded me more of eccentric female academics than of faith-based activists preparing to break the law (of whom I have known many--not that they possessed a particle of violence; it's the excited anticipation coupled with absolute confidence in the justice of one's cause that I'm thinking of). I could imagine her making an unpleasant fuss--and, to be honest, that was it.

In the end, she did not--to my knowledge--make an unpleasant fuss. And although there were a few minor fusses on the plane, thanks to a family trying to reorganize its seats,  the flight attendants were geniuses at resolving them. But I do not feel embarrassed because I had done the one thing the community seems to expect from its citizens when it comes to safety: I had said something.

Amusingly, I said something almost as soon as I landed, too. Some poor woman left her suitcase in a loo stall in a ladies' room at Glasgow airport. When I walked into the stall and saw it there, I shouted at once, "Is this anyone's bag?" Startled faces turned towards me, and I disappeared into another stall. When I emerged, the bag was gone, saving me the embarrassment of having to find an airport employee. 

The time for polite embarrassment--save as a tactic--is over. If there's something to say, we should just say it--aloud, in person,  to the people around, or to someone whose job it is to protect us. The primary (some say the only) justification for paying taxes to the state is that it provides protective services. If it ceases to provide protective services, what is the point of it?  This question is particular pertinent when, as in the UK, the state has a complete monopoly on protective services, and the private citizen is barely able to protect himself. As the European Union seems not only not to protect the borders of the UK, but even render them meaningless, many citizens and residents of the UK are preparing to vote to leave the EU. How effective this would be in ending Islamist attacks in the UK, however, is uncertain, as the UK has its own "home-grown" problem.