It was a relatively slow news week so I hope my summation of the week's events shall be quite brief.
In Syria, American bungling is reaching titanic levels - in the modern conception of the word "titanic".
The U.S. said that it would back a Kurdish border force, upon which Turkey promptly initiated a military campaign against Kurdish regions in northern Syria. Now the U.S. is telling Turkey that it should be careful about what it is doing there, and Turkey is responding by asking the Americans what gives them the right to be in Syria in the first place. A major political confrontation between NATO allies is at hand, and if we are lucky it could escalate to a military confrontation and help bring about the end of this out-dated organisation.
I am at times left wondering whether the American leadership - and this is no different under Trump - is simply incompetent or malicious, and I always fall back on malicious because I have a hard time believing that anybody could be as ignorant as the Americans would have to be to think that they would be able to arm a 30,000-strong Kurdish militia while expecting Turkey to sit on the sidelines watching by. My take on this is that the Americans want Turkey in Syria and in order to do this they had to provoke them into a military confrontation. The resentment from the Turks over this certainly seems genuine, so I dismiss the notion that both sides are acting.
That theory at least leaves the Americans in control of their senses, and is about as charitable as I can be towards American imperialist aggression. We cannot dismiss the notion that they are totally intellectually inept, however, and the number of flip-flops that TIllerson makes would be able to give an ordinary man whiplash.
The Syrians threatened to shoot down Turkish jets if they cross into Syria, but I doubt they will follow through on that threat, given the NATO-menace. This is why we must all hope for the quick disintegration of NATO.
The Bergoglio Vatican continues to lie to us, this time telling us that the award it gave to a pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-euthanasia Dutch politician was not done in order to honour her, but in order to insult her. No comments needed on that one.
Sticking to the most perverse pseudo-pontificate in history, we were told that Bergoglio's Vatican is asking faithful bishops in China to resign so that the Vatican can reach a deal with China to have communist-appointed bishops. The strange thing about this whole scenario is that Cardinal Zen seems to have been under the impression that Bergoglio was unaware of the Chinese Catholics being sold out. Alas, the Vatican has been quick to issue a correction to his narrative and assured us that the shenanigans of the Vatican diplomatic corps are in lock-step with the thoughts of the most openly communist pope in history.
I have pointed out before that if you do not feel betrayed by Bergoglio, then you have to question your Catholic credentials. Alas, we now know that the Chinese underground Catholics are true Catholics, because they have joined the large group of faithful Catholics which Bergoglio has sold out at one time or another.
The actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus Christ in the movie "The Passion of the Christ" by Mel Gibson, recently gave a speech to Catholic university students. It is well-worth watching and listening to if you can stand the annoying introduction which lasts less than 80 seconds, or simply skip the firssty 80 seconds - it's somewhat NovusOrdoist ending not withstanding. In brief, it is more Catholic than what virtually any Novus Ordo bishop in the Church has said since Vatican II. It really put our effeminate episcopacy to shame.
VoxCantoris is angry that Catholics in Canada put the most anti-Catholic ruler they have ever had in that country in power. He referenced an earlier post in which Canada's supreme court came down softly on a bestiality case. I sympathise with him, but must point out that under Anglo-Saxon custom, one can only be charged under crimes which are in the statutes. If the wording of the statutes produces undesirable or immoral outcomes, then the statute has to be changed. This is partially why we have had such broad statutes of late that virtually anybody can be found guilty of some kind of law in the Anglo-Saxon countries. That is not a suitable alternative.
A more suitable alternative would be an Old Testament kind of system in which the judges are presumed to be wise and therefore have much greater leeway in issuing their judgements. That however, reminds me of the old Soviet joke, that "if we had ham, we could make eggs and ham, if we had the eggs". One would need wise judges - who are in short supply in the West nowadays - and a moral code which is virtually universal in society, another thing which doesn't exist in 'modern' Western societies.
Finally, we were treated to a very good quote from Joseph Sobran by Laura Wood, regarding Western aggression in the Middle East:
“Let’s face it: Christianity and Islam are eternal enemies. Each makes uncompromising claims of exclusive truth. But this doesn’t mean that the secularist-Zionist war on the Islamic world serves any Christian interest or deserves Christian support.”
I naturally agree with that completely, and it more or less sums up my view on zionist and Western secular aggression directed against non-Jews in the Middle East - many of these victims being Christians even. It would seem the zionists have co-opted the secularists and the Christian zionists (ignorant as they are of both history and theology) in a battle-of-civilisation which rests on completely false grounds - namely, that Christians and Jews stand on the same side religiously, or even morally.
We were also informed that a traditionalism-leaning monastic community in Germany was closed, and that it didn't...
