is the daily mail infallible

The Daily Mail is reporting allegations that Pope John Paul The Second regularly whipped himself to atone for his sins.

The practice of flagellation exists within the Catholic church but is marginalised and generally frowned upon.

We consider it an insult to God and to the body God gave us.

The Daily Mail report first appeared in the paper's Sunday edition of 22nd November 2009.

The report was given a live action feel by the use of the phrase "a nun claimed yesterday."

The phrase was a lie.

No nun had claimed anything yesterday.

The Daily Mail had simply gained access to documents suppoedly compiled by the Vatican as part of the church's posthumous examination of John Paul's life.

So no nun said anything yesterday.

The phrase was a stylish bit of spin to make the article feel more immediate.

The Vatican is considering the possibility that John Paul is a saint.

The documents, compiled as part of the process of assessing his candidacy for Sainthood, quote one Sister Tobiana Sobodka saying that she heard the Pope whipping himself in remorse for his sins.

The documents also refer to a Bishop named Emery Kabongo, a Bishop with whom I am not familiar.

Emery Kabongo does not claim to have heard the Pope whipping himself.

Emery Kagongo is quoted saying: "He would punish himself in particular before he ordained bishops and priests, before passing on the sacraments. He would prepare himself."

Emery Kabongo adds the fifty billion dollar statement: "I never actually saw it myself but several people told me about it."

Ah yes.

Several people.

Good witnesses were they?

Got names have they?

My analysis is this.

Three immediate possibilities present themselves. I do not mean any of these possibilities to be a sneer towards the people quoted in the Daily Mail.

 

1) The story may be a plant by infiltrators seeking to discredit the life and legacy of John Paul The Great. It is a matter of fact that attempts have been made to infiltrate the church over many centuries. The most recent and egregious known infiltrations occurred during the reign of communism in Russia. A putative Cardinal in Poland was unmasked as a former agent of the Soviets recently on the eve of his nomination as Cardinal. Previous infiltrations have included significant and concerted efforts by those lovable goons the Freemasons. We must also postulate that if Satanic networks are real, they too will have sought to subvert the ancient church. (Hint: I am not referring to any church founded by King Henry The Eighth.) Even if it wasn't an infiltrating faction that planted the story, it may still have been a faction arising organically within the church, say a liberal faction, that wished to discredit John Paul.

 

2) The story may be a plant by a faction within the church that wishes to promote self whipping as a respected method of atoning for wrongdoing. The practice at the moment is rare and held in low regard generally by the faithful. This possibility would not imply that such a faction wished to discredit John Paul. It would merely imply that they wished to gain the cachet of his approval for their devotional (in my view dysfunctional) modes of worship.

 

3) The story may be true. It would not change how I view flagellation. I would still disapprove of it. Nor would it change how I think of John Paul The Great. I believe he may indeed be a saint, a gift from God to all humanity, and a powerful intercessor before the throne of heaven for those who suffer.

a rooskie in dublin

DUBLIN VS MILAN ART SHOW!
By Irina Kuksova

RDS (Royal Dublin Society) is a place in Dublin where magic - such as major shows and exhibitions – happens. This year I had the privilege to attend it for the first time.

The difference between a Dublin art show and, say, an art show in Milan is the same as between the two cities themselves. The latter is roughly five times bigger in size and more costly in price – a toll for the sine qua non "coolness".

Milan Show has pieces like Fontana's "cuts" ("Tagli" – just a canvas with a cut in it), which require a six-figure sum to acquire it. An Irish friend of mine still tells it as a joke of sorts. To him, indifferent to the Italian cult of "coolness", the price is ridiculously high. Especially if you covert it into kegs of Guinness.

If Milan Show is akin to "golden youth", Dublin Show is more like a grandpa with his collection of more down-to-earth stuff and an occasional "deadly" item submitted by his oh-so-contemporary grandchild.

We could have a good (and never-ending) debate on which show is "better" and why. Today, I propose to judge by the amount of care put into artwork. Perhaps Fontana put care into his "cuts", but can one even start comparing it with the amount of care put in every brushstroke by Eileen Meagher?

untamed horse

By Joanna Lyons

the prime minister of australia on judgement day

Elmer Rudd stood before the throne of heaven.
He was smirking smugly.
He looked expectantly towards the throne.
What would he see?
Maybe a Chinese communist.
Or a Muslim.
Something good anyway.
The clouds around the throne had not cleared yet.
Elmer Rudd could not see the real presence.
But Elmer Rudd knew he was in heaven.
He knew he was where he was meant to be.
"How do you plead?" asked an angel seated below the throne.
The angel had a voice of thunder.
"I plead that I was a good man and deserve to be in heaven," answered Elmer Rudd confidently.
"Wrong," thundered the angel.
"But I apologised to the generation of children who were abused in care homes fifty years ago," mouthed Elmer Rudd.
And there was silence in the house of judgement.
Then the voice of the angel spoke again.
"You apologised for crimes you said had been committed by an entire generation of care workers against children in state homes," rumbled the angel. "You implied guilt to everyone who'd worked in the caring profession fifty years ago whether they were guilty or not. You did so in fact without caring whether they were guilty or not. The people you impugned were all old or dying. Not really your target demographic come election time. Most of the guilt you imputed was based on hind sight and not on any fair assessment of the work of the people you accused. Yet you yourself were Prime Minister of Australia at a time when millions of children were killed in their mothers' wombs either through abortion operations in hospital or abortion pills bought over the counter. At least the children in the care homes for which you apologised all got to exist. You dared to judge the previous generation that sought to care for all its children born and unborn. You permitted the present generation of pleasure seeking scoundrels who were murdering untold numbers of children in the womb, you permitted those self obsessed self worshipping loathsome twits, to stand in judgement on a generation whose greatest collective crime was failing to provide an adequate school environment. You, an arrant cavalier abortionist, dared to stand in judgement on a generation that never once collaborated in mass murder through abortion. You dared to cast judgement while you yourself were master of a charnel house. You Mr Rudd were Prime Minister of the most barbaric generation of Australians who ever lived."
Elmer Rudd hung his head in shame.
The angel stood up.
"Get thee hence to endless night."
His voice was like many waters roaring.
In a flash the Prime Minister of Australia was gone.
And there was silence in the house of judgement.

the confederacy of dunces

They're off again.

Once more Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times, the Irish national broadcaster RTE, along with sundry British tabloids and a few lesser breeds without the law, once again the same collection of clowns are attempting to manipulate old child abuse cases in order to villify the Catholic church.

Their latest excuse for restaging their favourite persecution is the publication of some new report into child abuse in Ireland.

Here is my opinion.

Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times, and RTE, have each committed the worst crimes of which they accuse Bishops.

Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times and RTE, have concealed child abuse.

Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times and RTE, have concealed the worst cases of child abuse simply by failing to make clear to the general public that the vast preponderance of child abuse cases occur within the broader community (within the general public), in family homes, in educational institutions, in hospitals, in swimming clubs, at the hands of organised paedophile rings and so on.

Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times and RTE, have concealed child abuse by deliberately fostering and promulgating the false impression that the majority of child abuse cases have occurred at the hands of priests or believing Christians.

They did not do this for profit.

They did it for power.

Because Indedependent Newspapers and The Irish Times are going bust, and RTE has no viewers and only exists because the citizens of Ireland are compelled to pay a tax to it whether they watch it or not and whether they believe it depicts their church fairly or not.

No, Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times, and RTE, have not told lies for profit.

There is no profit in what they do.

Even the most cretinous among them realises that now.

It is as I've said.

They told lies for power.

Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times, and RTE, have concealed the true nature and extent of child abuse throughout our culture, they have lied in pretending child abuse was prevalent in the church, and they have done so solely because they wanted to destroy the church as a platform for influence among the Irish people.

They view the church as their rival for power.

If the Irish people no longer possess the Catholic church as a platform for influence, why then the Irish people will be so much fodder for the controlling aspirations of hedonistic sex and drugs neo feudalists in Independent Newspapers, the crass managerial and editorial class whose only desire, whose only principle, is that which augments the power of Independent Newspapers proprietors the O'Reilly family within Irish public life.

If the Irish people no longer possess the Catholic church as a platform for influence, why then the unreconstructed atheistic Marxists of The Irish Times and RTE will be able to walk away with the ball game.

Abortion culture, Euthanasia culture, Life in test tubes culture, promiscuity culture.

There'll be nothing to stop them.

My analysis is this.

We are living in an age of massive sexual dysfunction.

The prevalence of sex abuse throughout all sectors of our society has been caused in part and facilitated in general by the media's deliberate strategic degradation of Christian belief.

The worst crimes regarding the concealment of sex abuse which are attributed to the Catholic church by Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times, and RTE, the very worst crimes I tell you, are being committed daily and on a far greater scale by employees of Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times, and RTE.

Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times, and RTE are attempting to eradicate the Catholic church, as truly as the Nazis, the communists, or the Islamists ever did.

This is a persecution.

No less a persecution because their strategy is not to kill but to villify priests and nuns in their old age.

Thank you for your interest.

the monica leech laugh in

In Wiesbaden in Bavaria, there lived a nun of strange and striking beauty.

One day she was having a bath.

There came a knock on her chamber door.

"Who is it?" said the nun.

"It is only I, the poor blind man from the village," answered a voice.

"Well I suppose you can come in," said the nun reluctantly.

She stood up in her bath.

The door opened to reveal John Fry, Chief Executive Officer of the Johnston Press, carrying a Venetian blind.

"Cor blimey Sister," exclaimed John Fry. "That's a great pair of **** you've got there."

swine flu h1n1 is a con job designed to sell pharmacy products

Sitting in the kitchen at the old chateau with Doctor Barn and the Mammy.

I am telling them about my latest scientific advance.

They are listening enraptured.

"So," says I, "for twenty years I've had some sort of a snuffle in my nose. Occasionally it becomes the flu. Occasionally it's just a niggle. Then earlier this year I began to think logically about what I might do. Just because I'd always had it, didn't necessarily mean I always had to have it. I suspected the cause was multi factorial. A few causes. It seemed that the cigarette smoke in the house might have been one cause. My mental state might have been another. The old psychosomosis and all that. You know. That stuff about me being a werewolf. Anyhoo. So what I did was made sure the house was aired out. I kept a window open in my bedroom. Regularly aired out the rest of it. My symptoms reduced drastically. Then about a month ago I got the flu. Woke up with it. Shrugged my shoulders and said: Ah well, there goes the next six months. Only I decided to look around for logical steps I could take to help myself. No, not pharmaceutical products. Although I did drink Lemsip. I read in Padre Peter's herb book that garlic had strong medicinal qualities. Now I don't believe in con job natural remedies sold by confidence tricksters any more than I believe in con job pharmaceutical remedies sold by Merck Sharpe Dome Steinervortzel and their collection of associated Frankensteins. But I decided to give the garlic a chance. I went and bought some garlic in the supermarket. Only I didn't know what garlic looked like and ended up buying a red onion by mistake. I spent a week eating slices of the red onion every morning, along with apples and bananas, and drinking Lemsip. The flu cleared completely. My nasal passages are clearer than they have been for twenty years. What I want to ask you is this. Is it possible that the onions have a practically curative effect? I mean is it possible that since onions open up the tear ducts and make us cry, that they could also open up other ducts. The Eustachian tubes in the ears. The nasal passages. I submit my thesis for your consideration. The whole world is throwing money at scare mongering pharmaceutical companies when people should be just looking after themselves and eating onions. What do you think?"

Doctor Barn did not reject this in the decisive manner he reserves for most of my crackpot theories.

"Actually," he murmured thoughtfully, "you might have something there. About the nasal tubes."

The Mammy chortled.

"Really?" quoth she. "And do you not think all the millions being spent on research, all those people in laboratories, would have found out if onions could cure the flu?"

The noble Heelers furrowed his brow furrowingly.

"I'm not so sure," he said thoughtfully. "I think maybe they find only what they want to find. The observer affects the thing observed. Sometimes people only find what they are prepared to find. No researcher is going to get an extended grant from a pharmaceutical company if he contacts them and says: Your products are rubbish, but onions can cure the common cold. There's no immediate multi billion dollar profit for a pharmaceutical company that tells people: Go to bed, eat full meals, join a prayer group and eat onions. Although I think the very integrity of it would mean more sustainable and more honourable profits for them eventually. But you can see how they might be reluctant to advocate healthy lifestyles instead of a lifetime's addiction to their products. Even though ultimately their lies must destroy them. They will follow the lie right to the end. And the lie always collapses on itself eventually. They are so limited morally that they can't see any possibility of making billions in profits simply by telling people the truth. They have no business model for that."

"Unless they start selling onions," crowed the Mammy cheerily.

And there our story ends.

ten best anti war songs of all time

1) Sleep Now In The Fire, by Rage Against The Machine. More an anti western society song than anti war. We include it here because it's never been bettered. The video, featuring television celebrity Regis Philbin presenting the American version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, is the best piece of communist agit prop I've ever seen. The song is all the more powerful for focussing on the real dysfunctions, genuine hypocrasies, and blatent corporate banking criminalities which have infiltrated and currently hide behind our freedoms.

 

2) Serge Tankian's anti Iraq war thing. Serge is an immigrant to America who did his level best to make it impossible for America to defend the world against the Muslim terror army which currently seeks to enslave us. The video is a strikingly manipulative example of back stabbing pious defeatism. We encounter a series of set pieces featuring children in a play school with Serge singing among them. Slowly you realise the children are acting out scenes from the Iraq war. The whole montage amounts to a quisling work of art. Serge should go live in a Muslim country and make a few anti Jihad songs, and see how he gets on. But wrong minded, false and crass as the song is, it's also an exceptional work of art.

 

3) Broken Boy Soldier, by the White Stripes. Another one Intended to break the will of the West to fight Jihadis in Iraq. A sublime piece of defeatist treachery released by Jack Black when he wished to run Pass Defence for Saddam Hussein. Still it's poetry.

 

4) Goodnight Saigon by Billy Joel. The classic anti Vietnam war anthem with nifty helicopter sounds crafted into the melody. Billy Joel was typical of many of those musicians who sang about Vietnam in the 1980's. They'd never been there and yet they benefited directly (and financially) from the freedoms upheld by those who had been.

 

5) War, What Is It Good For, version by Bruce Springsteen. A general 1980's indictment of war. Not clear what Springsteen advocates when Hitlers tanks appear on the horizon. Singing maybe. Springsteen was also responsible for a most poignant anti Vietnam verse in Born In The USA. It would draw tears from a stone. To wit: "I had a brother at Khe Sanh, Fighting off the Viet Cong, They're still there, But he's all gone." Springsteen is another passionate peacenik in the Billy Joel mould. Opposed to Vietnam. Never been within an asses roar of the place.

 

6) Paul Hardcastle's 19. The million selling rap song about Vietnam. Hardcore cornography. This was unbelievably popular in the Summer of 1985 among the brain dead set on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

7) Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. More responsible than any other creative work for the ongoing knee jerk anti Americanism of a certain generation of pseuds in Great Britain. The stunningly executed video featured lookalikes of then United States President Ronald Reagan and Communist Russian President Constantin Chernienko in a wrestling match fight to the death surrounded by a baying blood thirsty, audience.

 

8) Wish I Was At Home For Christmas by Jonah Louis. A classic. Touching and tender. Song and video. Tends to get played interminably by radio stations over the Christmas period.

 

9) Army Dreamers by Kate Bush. Another Brit turning her nose up at the freedoms won by her soldiers. Video not great. Song contains moments of unfathomably poignant lyric splendour.

 

10) War Baby by Tom Robinson. Oddly brilliant. Is he singing about war or about a love affair? "I can't stand another ten years of this fighting. All this stabbing and wounding. Only getting our own back. And later that same evening, I saw you in the car talking. And I wondered who the hell it was we were trying to fool."

 

11) Out In The Fields by Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. An all Irish effort. Phil Lynott was drugging and would soon be dead. Gary Moore was a rocker metamorphosing into a bluesman. Between them they came up with a piece of pure hokum which in spite of all the wall to wall cliches is a great song, at times verging on the ballsy magnificent. "It doesn't matter if you're left or to the right. Don't try to hide behind the cause for which you fight. There'll be no prisoners taken till victory is won. No flag, no uniform ever stopped a bullet from a gun. Out in the fields. The fighting has begun. Out in the fields. They are falling one by one. And today. Death is just a heart beat away... There's no communication. No one. To take the blame. The flags of every nation. They're falling one by one again."

 

12) Lily Marlene, version by Marlene Dietrich. A song taken to heart by the soldiers of both sides in World War One. Marlene Dietrich's recording is the one people know. It has endured. A rarity among anti war songs. Something honest, beautiful and true.

apologia pro parakeets mea

Driving Miss Lily through the heartland of South Kildare.

Wild, wet and windy day.

"Did you by any chance happen to buy a pair of budgerigars?" she enquires pleasantly.

"What would make you think that," quoth me all innocence.

"Because when we were praying the Our Father this morning, I distinctly heard you say Forgive us our trespasses, and then you added particularly ones like buying two budgies and smuggling them into the house without telling anyone."

"Oh Mother, that's an approved variation of the Our Father, it's the Tridentine budgie rite."

"So if I go down to your room I won't find any budgies?"

"No you won't find them," sez me confidently.

She gave me a piercing stare.

"Your father is going to have a canniptian," she mused.

"I know," sez me.

russian for beginners

Even if you study the russian language for many years she will still be a mystery to you
Very beautiful though the russian language is, its beauty is a lifelong quest
Gracious and glorious are the musicalities of the russian language
Exuding warmth in icy mysteriousness
Nurturing your spirit towards strange fantastical visions
In time she may prove a harsh mistress
Alas

The russian language will seduce you
As though she has waited many years only for you
Right up until the moment you met
And if you are true to her
She will smile on you sometimes
Only to withdraw her favour at a whim
Virtue is poor reward for this
Alas

in the brooding shadows

fifteenth century statues at kilcullen graveyard

the waiting

grey light upon sleeping fields

the stillness i have come to love

time and tide cease surcease

peace sits like a glove

shadow sifts like memory

 

the dog stirs at his chain

and whines and lifts his eyes

for the walk he knows we'll take

thought storm clouds steal the skies

and grey light curtains into rain

so waits the world tonight

in darkness and in pain

 

the world waits for christ

my blushes

Me and the Mammy munching dinner in the Cafe Des Beaux Parvenus at Newbridge Silverware.

Mary Maloney, my second cousin once removed, approaches.

"Jamie," she cries, "are you still writing for the Leinster Leader."

My gentle preraphaelite features go a bit gothic.

I allow myself a gentle sigh.

In truth gentle travellers of the internet, I am beginning to wonder if the Leinster Leader actually has any real readers. No one I know seems to be aware of my departure many moons ago from that august organ. (I am of course using organ in its genitalic sense.)

"Mary," I tell her wearily, "I was fired from the Leinster Leader two years ago."

Her eyes go wide and round.

"Why did they fire you?" she exclaims.

Ah yes.

My relatives are nothing if not tender and diplomatic.

Why indeed.

"They caught me embezzling funds," I answer without hesitation.

Mary stares.

It is not entirely flattering to me that she doesn't seem to doubt for a minute that I was indeed embezzling funds from a newspaper that doesn't have a pot to piss in.

After a bit, she regains the power of speech.

"Well your brother is a priest," she announces cheerily, "maybe he'll give you absolution when you go to Confession."

I shake my head.

"Not possible Mary," I muse. "You see Jesus has put a little codicil into the Christian religion. Any person can be absolved of their sins. Any human being can be forgiven no matter what they have done. While we yet live it is a time of mercy. But the one tiny proviso is... you have to be sorry."

the monica leech laugh in

Question: When is a Muslim not a Muslim?

Answer: When he's torching a French city, he's a "youth."

When he's rioting in the streets of London, he's an "anti fascist protestor."

When he's murdering fourteen people in Fort Hood, he's a "victim of bullying suffering post traumatic stress disorder."

(Copies to: All defunct media groups, namely The Irish Times, The Guardian, the BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Newsweek, Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Compost, et al.)

the prime minister of australia apologises

Prime Minister Elmer Rudd of Australia apologised this week for what he said was the mistreatment of residents at State run institutions over fifty years ago.

Rudd's apology invented a whole new category of crimes ranging from "coldness" to "failing to provide love."

His apology was intended to imply blanket guilt for all those involved in the caring professions decades ago.

His apology is the latest and most blatent attempt by a leader in the present day to conceal currently sky rocketing levels of abuse, violence, murder of children in care institutions, rape of children in care institutions, exploitation of children for pornography in care institutions, suicide among children in care institutions and throughout society, compulsory incarceration of the elderly in care institutions, murder of the elderly in care institutions, torture of the elderly in care institutions, the debasement of an entire generation of young people through sex culture, abortion, life in test tubes culture, death in test tubes culture, promiscuity, revolving door prisons, drug culture, generalised criminal violence against the person culture, and the betrayal of the Free World to Jihadiism via turning a blind eye to the Muslim infiltration of our countries culture, all happening now, all abhorrencies that the present day generation is guilty of on a scale no generation before has ever seen, Rudd's apology conceals this while focussing attention on mostly imaginary crimes which he alleges were committed by members of the previous generation.

Rudd is the Al Qaeda favoured Prime Minister who pulled Australia out of the War On Terror when he stood for election on the appeasement ticket and recalled Australian troops from Iraq.

Rudd is the Prime Minister who is favoured by the Chinese Communist Party as a sound socialist who will acquiesce to China's dictatorship at every turn, never speaking out against Chinese use of North Korea as a province of China which retains vestiges of independence solely in order to plausibly threaten the West, never confronting China's sponsorship of Maoist terror armies in India and Nepal, never ever opposing China's support for the genoicidal (three million dead and counting) Arab Muslim psycho government in Sudan and its equivalent in other African countries.

Rudd is the Prime Minister who has failed to take action against the Al Qaeda members who set forest fires across Australia last year.

Rudd is the Prime Minister who has failed to deal with Al Qaeda's infiltration of maintenance crews at Qantas airlines.

Rudd is the Prime Minister so mired in his own delusional abnegations of the great humanitarian traditions of Australia and the Free World, that he is happy to kow tow to Nazis, Commies and Islamists while falsely and manipulatively inculpating those heroic people who lived lives of self sacrifice and service to the marginalised, he inculpates those decent honourable heroic people who worked for no financial reward in the orphanages and schools of Australia fifty years ago, he inculpates them in their old age, merely to allow a generation of scoundrels to feel good about themselves on the eve of their surrender to black Islamic night.

Rudd has indeed got something to apologise for.

But the apology he gave recently is not it.