book review

(with Constant Weader)

This month: 'Labyrinth Through The Elephant Grass,' by Jo Wardhaugh Doyle. Published by Georgian Rose Press.

Jo Wardhaugh Doyle's autobiographical book brings us the highly personalised story of an Edinburgh girl, daughter of a famous footballer, a sportswoman in her own right, who grows up to be a nurse, then a missionary in Africa, becomes a nun, witnesses the horrors of civil war in Uganda, soviet communism in Ethiopia, societal breakdown in Kenya, suffers what appears to be some sort of breakdown herself, enters a recovery programme, before fetching up in Ireland, falling in love, and marrying an Irish man.

It is, as it sounds, an interesting story at many levels, not least because after all her struggles, she and the Irishman she married are living just outside my home town of Kilcullen.

But I don't use that cliche beloved of book reviewers and call it a rollercoaster read. It is deeper than that. It is Ms Wardhaugh Doyle's own telling of her own story. Trivial. Explicit. Profound.

At times it reads like an expiation as much as a biography.

Curiously, I wouldn't say it is well written. I would say it is truly written. And that is more important.

There are accounts of the African situation here that bring to mind the phrase "heart of darkness." Her hands on view of the continent is far more incisive than anything I have found in Europe, Britain, Ireland and America's left wing pseudo liberal newspaper and television coverage of the last fifty years of almost continuous warfare across Africa.

Take this paragraph about her time in Uganda in the early 1980's after the ouster of psychopathic dictator Idi Amin. Ms Wardhaugh Doyle and other nursing staff along with a local Bishop had been summoned for a meeting with the new President Milton Obote. Her description tells us more about the real politik of Africa than most of what passes for journalism in Western Europe.

She writes:

"Obote came into the room and sat at the head of the room. He was a very dark man and had eyes that were hard to look at. I didn't want to look at them and I had an awful sense of evil in his presence. He overtly threatened us all saying if we complained again we could all disappear like Father Martin has. We all knew that a local priest had disappeared and we presumed taken by the soldiers. I thought "That's fine, I won't open my mouth again, just let me go." However just as I was thinking that to myself the Bishop spoke up and started to argue with Obote about his unruly soldiers. I was proud yet terrified of what the Bishop was doing. Obote just ended it and warned us all."

During some of the most vicious violence that she experienced in Uganda, Ms Wardhaugh Doyle was horrified to see the BBC reporting Ugandan elections as free and fair and largely peaceful. At the same time the BBC was devoting copious hours, indeed days, of coverage to the death of singer John Lennon.

I was intrigued by Ms Wardhaugh Doyle's insight into the behaviour of the BBC and other media groups in setting the agendas of public awareness.

For her though, the experience of witnessing murders in Uganda while the BBC was shedding crocodile tears for John Lennon, became a source of deep emotional pain.

Her work would carry her on to Ethiopia, a soviet dictatorship where she witnessed whole villages being told arbitrarily by their communist government that they would have to move to another location miles away and leave their crops and land behind them, starting immediately.

Her honest simple comment on this abomination: "No wonder there was famine."

Funny that the great heroes of famine relief Bob Geldoff and Bono Vox never got round to mentioning there might be causes of famine in Ethiopia other than the excesses of the white man.

I find it funny anyway.

The astonishing debasement of whole nations by communists in Africa is evoked by Ms Wardhaugh Doyle without hand wringing or prudishness or without any of my sideswipes at Mr Geldoff or Bono. She is not of my political stripe I'm sure. And she doesn't tell us what to think. She tells us what she saw.

She gives us an even more soul searing account of life in Kenya. Let me digress to give my own views for a moment. To me Africa looks like a land experiencing the apocalypse. I have made my judgement from afar based on a knowledge of the wars and communisms, Islamisms and fascisms, that have riven the continent during my whole life time. But Ms Wardhaugh Doyle gives us a more intimate view of the apocalypse. She shows us the apocalypse of children. This was more shocking to me than anything in the grand theatre of African destruction which I have contemplated for three decades.

She tells how she entered the lives of the children who live in this heart of darkness, sought to give them love and guidance, attempting to create something good amid the desolation and despair.

In the slums of Nairobi she began working with boys whose daily activities include drug taking, rape and murder. We see her establishing social programmes to allow the children to speak about the horrors they have experienced. She seeks to help them to learn a trade, to play football, to hope for a better life.

Then she tells us: "Slowly, and one by one most of the boys died."

What a chilling sentence.

It wasn't entirely clear to me why they all died. She had mentioned diseases, and drug use, and the ever present violence.

Whatever it was, one by one, they died.

Debauched children, raping to numb their own pain, dead before they're twenty.

That's an apocalypse.

More than the armies ravaging the continent, that's the apocalypse.

For Ms Wardhaugh Doyle herself, the spiritual toll was becoming unbearable.

Her story now leaves Africa and unrolls across the Atlantic in the metropolitan modernity of the United States.

She seeks healing through Renewal programmes and embarks on an emotional journey of self discovery which seemed a bit too new age-ish for my liking.

Nonetheless her meditations on suffering bear the hall marks of wisdom.

I was particularly struck by her account of a dream she had at a lowpoint during her therapy when her famous footballer father who had died years before, visited her. She writes:

"I had a dream last night that my dad came to me and talked with me. He asked me if I remembered the time I burnt my leg at school and he put on peroxide to the wound and I fainted. He said 'the pain was awful but were you frightened?' I said, 'NO.' 'Why?' he said and I replied, 'Because I always trusted you, even in pain.' 'Well,' he said, 'Jo, trust in God still, as you trusted in me.' "

Well folks.

This reviewer doesn't believe that healing comes from new age therapy or shamanism even if they are under the aegis of the Franciscan order.

But I do believe in that dream.

Ms Wardhaugh Doyle presents many other fascinating insights regarding healing on the journey through suffering that every human being must somehow face.

She also describes a most dramatic encounter with evil in another dream.

I pretty much think this is for real too whatever quibbles I have about some of her conclusions.

Her story has the ring of truth, even if at times, I felt as with any biography, that there is much she is not telling us.

Most beautifully, she evokes through her own experience the notion of a spirtuality of trauma.

And she puts her own suffering to good use, turning darkness into light by the grace of God, by advocating strongly on behalf of others engaged in missionary work that there should be an awareness by those of us in church and society caring for and organising missionary efforts, of what our missionaries are going to face and of the needs and vulnerabilities and indeed traumas that will arise after they have faced it.

Some of her ideas seemed a tad overpowering to me and a little bit off beam from the theological point of view.

In particular I found myself quibbling with her use of the word hell.

For instance she writes:

"I do know that traumatic wounds need to be healed by someone who knows 'Hell.' That is why I feel that we have not faced the challenge offered to us as Christian people to go to hell, to become the wounded healers that the world is groaning for. "

And again she says:

"We are called to change, not in order to survive but to reflect the fullness of life. We are called to be resurrected light bringers, we do that by descending into hell, sitting in the darkness and rising to new life, and a new missionary era."

And finally she argues:

"Powerlessness in God's case led to life and light. First of all though, His son had to die and go to hell. This too is where we are are called to go if our suffering is to be redeemed."

Hmmm.

I agreed with everything in the above sentences except the mention of hell each time.

She seems to have based her ideas in part on a form of the summation of Christian beliefs known as the Creed which states that Jesus descended into hell between his death and resurrection.

The Church doesn't necessarily stand over that notion. Another form of the Creed states simply that Jesus: "descended to the dead." One of the church fathers writing about 1500 years ago noted that after his death "Jesus preached to the spirits in prison." It might have been purgatory. My understanding is that the church is not absolutely sure where our Lord was between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

I think that Ms Wardhaugh Doyle correctly describes the redemptive power of suffering but that she is incorrect when she suggests that in any actual or mystical sense we must go to hell to be a part of this.

Yes, the Christian teaching is that we must die to self in order to be resurrected.

Yes, there is the notion that the tiny seed must be planted in the blackness of the earth in order to grow into a great tree.

Yes, there is the mystical truth that each of us must take up our cross and follow Jesus to Calvary.

But my personal opinion is that the idea, we must go to "hell" in order to be saved, is more new age, than Christian.

Perhaps I have misunderstood the author on this point.

Jo Wardhaugh Doyle's book Labyrinth Through The Elephant Grass is as I have said a personal telling of her own story.

It commands a personal response.

This has been mine.

What will yours be!!!

close encounters of the snurd kind

(We are not alone.)

Watching a concert on TV with my feminist cousin Pauline.
A tolerably listenable British pop group from the 1980's are singing something called The Sultans Of Swing.
"Why are you smiling?" asks the feminist cousin, "Does it bring back memories of your youth?"
The noble Heelers shakes his head.
"I'm smiling because I'm thinking of my own version of a Dire Straits song," I explain.
"How does it go?" says she.
"It goes: Hey Gerry Adams, you nearly gave me an heart attack, underneath my window, singing hey nah the IRA is back."
"Hey that's kinda funny."
"You like it?"
"I sort of do."
"Does that mean you're going to start reading my blog again?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't need to read things that do nothing except make me angry."

john

you were saying about the meadow
how the grass would get tall
but it was only dull wind in the grasses
not you at all

you were talking about school days
but when you were done
i heard the traffic sighing in the street
and knew you were gone

the world is in winter
and i must be getting old
for the birds across the grey skey
remind me of souls

ireland under the nazis

Fine Gael's Greatest Hits.
The Top Ten

In a few short years of dessicating misrule in Ireland the Fine Gael Labour Party combo government has...

1. Legalised the murder of unborn children through abortion.

2. Proposed to set up injection rooms for heroin addicts thereby effectively decriminalising the drug mafias.

3. Forced Catholic Church run Primary Schools to adopt a government mandated version of religious education written by atheists with a detestation for the Catholic Church.

4. Closed the Vatican embassy.

5. Purchased the worthless Allied Irish Bank for billions of dollars, a bank on whose board sat billionaire Lochlainn Quinn the brother of Labour Party government Minister Ruairi Quinn.

6. Corporatised the water supply establishing a new trade union power brokerage to own water in Ireland using a business model similar to the monoply electricity company ESB whose trade union is controlled by IRA mobsters, I kid you not.

7. Continued and extended their Fianna Fail predecessors in government's bail out of the IRA controlled front company styled Anglo Irish Bank.

8. Financed through State funding a website to tell children how to have what the Fine Gaelers euphemistically describe as safe sex, during threesomes.

9. Promoted a wittering wimminy insider (Noirin O'Sullivan) from the Irish Police Force to Chief Of Police having promised to appoint someone from outside the Force in order to combat the congenital corruption of Ireland's police officers. As Chief of Police, Noirin O'Sullivan's contribution to law enforcement in Ireland has been to move corrupt precinct chiefs to other precincts and to state that she isn't sure if the IRA exists or not.

10. Allowed liberal Judges to continue releasing murderers on bail so that the murderers can kill, kill and kill again.

11. Failed to hold a public enquiry into the circumstances under which satanist Lorcan Bale was given a false identity and released into Britain after his murder by crucifixion in 1973 of a little boy called John Horgan. The cover up included members of the Judiciary, the police and the Media.

12. Failed to prevent drug gangs from controlling our prisons.

13. Failed to prevent the IRA from presiding over a Murder Incorporated confederacy of mafias in Ireland including Al Qaeda Muslim Gangs, Chinese Triads, Cosa Nostra, devil worshipping Nigerian Covens, the Russian mob, et al. The Irish police admit that 26 international mafias are operating here. Although Police Chief Noirin O'Sullivan has stated she's not sure if the IRA exists or not.

14. Failed to prevent the IRA from establishing and mentoring drug gangs in every town and village in Ireland.

15. Introduced gender mandate legislation compelling political parties to field female candidates at election whom party members have rejected for selection on a free vote.

16. Attempted to distract public attention from their own corruption and scurrilous mismanagement of the country by introducing a thoroughly frivolous same sex marriage referendum.

17. Allowed Fine Gael Councillor John McCartin to aid IRA Capo Sean Quinn to regain control of the front company Quinn had used to bankrupt Ireland through illegal billion dollar loans from the IRA controlled front company Anglo Irish Bank.

18. Allowed a bunch of poor little rich boys led by one Willie Walsh (two Willie Walshes would have been ridiculous) to take control of the Irish national airline Aer Lingus.

19. Failed to take any action against White Collar super thief Denis O'Brien who has been found by a Judicial Enquiry to have bribed Fine Gael's corrupt former Communications Minister Michael Lowry in order to obtain billion dollar mobile phone service supply contracts dirt cheap.

20. Failed to take any action against Michael Lowry.

21. Allowed the now billionaire white collar criminal Fine Gael financier Denis O'Brien to take overall control of Independent Newspapers.

22. Purchased the bankrupt Allied Irish Bank (Note: not Anglo) which had gone bust lending billions of dollars to Independent Newspapers and whose Board of Management included billionaire Lochlainn Quinn the brother of then Labour Party Education Minister Ruairi Quinn,

23. Allowed Labour Party Education Minister Ruairi Quinn's billionaire brother Lochlainn to be head of the State monopoly electricity company the ESB.

24. Permitted the newly nationalised worthless Allied Irish Bank to write off Independent Newspapers billion dollar debts without requiring Independent Newspaper's new billionaire owner the Fine Gael financier white collar criminal Denis O'Brien to pay a red cent of the billion dollar debts his company owed.

25 Allowed Labour Party Education Minister Ruairi Quinn's billionaire brother Lochlainn to keep his 30 million dollar vineyard in France and his personal billion dollar fortune after Lochlainn had allowed Allied Irish Bank to go bankrupt under his Boardroom stewardship.

26. Introduced a frivolous tax on anyone who dares to own their own house, a charge intended to enable the Gaelers to avoid any confrontation with the nurses, teachers, transport workers and electricians whose trade unions are controlled by the IRA.

27. Failed to tackle the IRA's control of the trade union movement.

28. Failed to tackle the IRA's subversion of the Judiciary.

29 Failed to tackle the IRA's subversion of Fine Gael through Councillor John McCartin.

god on trial

Day Two of the Trial of the Century.

The State versus God.
Charge 1: God is charged with not existing.
Charge 2. If he does exist, God is charged with not creating the universe the way Stephen Fry would have liked it.
Amicus briefs: American Civil Liberties Union, Al Qaeda, and Planned Parenthood.
Judge Erwin Liberal presiding.

**************

Bailiff Rusty Birell: All rise. The court is in session.

Judge Liberal: Mr Fry?

Stephen Fry: Your Honour, the prosecution calls... James Healy.

(Sounds of pandemonium.)

Judge Liberal: Order, order. Mr Fry it is highly irregular to call the opposing defence attorney as a witness for the prosecution. (Whispering) And once he starts he may never shut up.

Stephen Fry: Your Honour I think I can show relevance. The prosecution will contend that James Healy while purporting to defend God is the biggest atheist here.

Judge Liberal: Proceed.

(James takes the stand)

Bailiff: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

James: No.

Judge Liberal: Mr Healy you must take the oath.

James: No Your Honour. I won't lie. But I won't take an oath.

Stephen Fry: Might we be permitted to know why.

James: The supposed witnesses to Jesus life claim in the gospels that Jesus told them not to swear oaths but to let their yes mean yes and their no mean no. I take him literally on that.

Judge Liberal: Well Mr Healy. Does your yes mean yes and your no mean no?

James: It does.

Judge Liberal: Are you satisfied with that Mr Fry?

Stephen Fry: Not satisfied exactly. Strangely intrigued.

James: You were very good in the Jeeves And Wooster television series.

Stephen Fry: Oh. My blushes.

James: I haven't really enjoyed anything else you did.

Stephen Fry: Ah thanks, thanks. Too kind. And why might I ask exactly?

James: There is genuine joy in your Jeeves And Wooster performances. You extend experience. You affirm life. I think you make people feel they can deal with life and that life is good. The other stuff you've done is joyless. In one way or another it's propaganda for joylessness. I'd bet you believed in God while you were filming Jeeves And Wooster.

Stephen Fry: Well now really, I can't say. Now that you mention it. But I was younger, you see.

James: No it wasn't youth. It was an artist doing what God created him to do.

Stephen Fry: What a curious insight.

Judge Liberal: If I might interrupt this mutual appreciation society. We are here to conduct a trial.

Stephen Fry: Ah yes of course. Mr Healy, do you believe in God?

(There is silence)

Judge Liberal: Mr Healy, we must have an answer if you please.

James: Yes, I believe God exists and that he made the heavens and the earth and that he loves every human being.

Stephen Fry: You hesitated. Why?

James: For dramatic effect. And because there is a one liner in the Bible where Jesus says that if you speak for him before men, he will speak for you before the Father. I was just reminding him.

Stephen Fry: Mr Healy, have you ever been an atheist?

James: Well I've denied God a hundred times, I've told him to get lost, I've betrayed him more times than I can number.

Stephen Fry: Have you ever been an atheist Mr Healy?

(Another pause)

James: You could say I have.

Stephen Fry: When?

James: About six times this morning. Any doubt you have known, I have probably known. My prayer is: Lord I believe, help my unbelief.

Stephen Fry: Do you really believe in God?

James: Yes. The truth of God is the only thing I have encountered in the world that makes sense to me. It is the only truth I believe. Everything I encounter seems to me to point to him. Every beauty. Every accomplishment. Every suffering. Every language. Every great philosophy of life. Every person. Every good actor. He is the source of all truth. Every step away from him leads to lies.

Stephen Fry: Mr Healy, I put it to you that your every statement about God is couched in conditional terms. You are trying to persuade yourself as much as us. You do not really believe in him, do you?

James: He exists whether I believe in him or not.

Stephen Fry: Have you ever met him?

(A long pause)

Judge Liberal: Mr Healy?

James: I was visiting a dying person. She was so alone. I said: Where are you God, where are you? And I felt Jesus there.

Stephen Fry: But did you see him?

James: I couldn't see him.

Stephen Fry: Well then. We can all imagine any presence we want to.

James: I couldn't see him because he was in me. He was in me looking out at her. He let me know it at that moment. And afterwards the nurse said to me that the girl had told her: He never leaves me. And the nurse asked me who she might have meant. I knew.

Stephen Fry: So you're God?

James: No. But Jesus has said that if anyone seeks to do his will, he will be with them and that he and the Father will come and live with them. Whenever you do good to someone or good in the world, he is working through you. And what the nurse said was another affirmation, a way for God to let me know, that he never abandons anyone even the one I thought most abandoned.

Stephen Fry: Why couldn't he just tell you himself?

James: God doesn't owe me any explanations.

Stephen Fry: He couldn't tell you Mr Healy because he does not exist.

James: Whatever way the universe is ordered, there is nothing without an act of faith. And yet everything points to him.

Stephen Fry: Even evil?

James: The multiplication of evil where God is absent or rejected, points to God.

Stephen Fry: No further questions. For now. But don't leave town.

Judge Liberal: Er. Mr Healy do you wish to cross examine yourself? Sort of like from the Woody Allen film Bananas? Does the code name Sapphire mean anything to you, I swear to God, pant pant, and all that. No? Ah. Pity. Alright, you may stand down. The court will adjourn until tomorrow. I would remind the Jury that they are not to discuss this case with anyone.

midnight melodies

hark i hear the music come
sweet attendant of the dark
not bitterness nor yet regret
but bathos pathos listen hark

a certain call to greatness
it chimes upon the midnight air
my poems that i never wrote
arise and bid me hear them there

sweetest softness of the dark
haunted melodies of night
that clamour in their silences
now up now weep now write

a certain call to greatness
it chimes upon the midnight air
how dared i hope for triumph
till first i knew despair

live feed from tonight's friends of sinn fein $500 a head fundraising dinner at the sheraton hotel manhattan usa

The guests are mingling.
Every gangland IRA thug in America is present.
An interesting touch has been provided by the choice of house band who are none other than the British 1980's combo styled Dire Straits.
Dire Straits are singing their most famous song.
It goes:

"A lovestruck Rah man
In a street suss serenade
Laying Ireland low
With a terror group that he made
For 30 years they tried to hand us over to communist Russia
They thought that would be alright
A killing and a torturing
Every day and every night
Oh Gerry Adams
It was over from the start
You never saw a human being
You couldn't blow apart
I forget
I forget
Just how many people you murdered
Tell me when the music started
Maybe it was just that the time was wrong
Oh Gerry Adams
Nerdle nerdle nerdle
Ner ner ner ner
The IRA is a full time mafia
Sinn Fein is just their front
For the murders carried out in backrooms
By drug dealing psychopathic delinqu-i-unts
Remortgaging their souls
A hundred times over to the devil
For so many murders Gerry
Hell is gonna need another level
And they raise cash from little bank robberies
They raise cash from multiple extortions
Rather hilariously they also find time to advocate on behalf of same sex marriage
And they simply love abortions
Whenever there is a murder on
They always make best haste
The IRA has a motto
To never let a chance for torture go to waste
And we can fall for chains of silver
We can fall for chains of gold
We can fall for murderers talking history
And the promises that they hold
Underneath the street lamps
Where only the blood flows free
Nerdle nerdle ner
Ner ner ner ner
Hey Gerry Adams
You nearly gave me a heart attack
Underneath my window
Singing 'Hey na the IRA's back'
Calling you scum would be libel
To any card carrying scum
It doesn't matter
There's nothing we can do about it
I guess it's just that the time is wrong
Oh Gerry Adams
Nerdle nerdle ner
Ner ner ner ner
Killing by any other name
Is always something good
Oh Gerry Adams
You spiller of innocent blood
Oh Gerry Adams
Life was over from the start
You murdered for the fun of it
You murdered from your heart
I forget
I forget
Exactly how many people you killed
When was it the mayhem stopped
And the torturing Gerry the torturing
It never stopped
It went on all along
With new IRA mentored gangs in every town and village in Ireland
Maybe it was just that the time was wrong
Oh Gerry Adams
We grew up on different streets
They both were streets of shame
But your mafia enforcers
Make all streets the same
Can you remember the fear in their eyes Gerry
Can you remember the people you killed
In the backrooms and the torture chambers
Do you remember every gallon of blood you spilled
And you can corrupt the Irish Judiciary
And subvert the trade unions too
You can lie to gullible Americans
Who should know better than to succour you
You can form alliances with Al Qaeda
And the Triads and the rest
As you turn our beautiful Ireland
Into your own personal mafia fest
Oh Gerry Adams
Nerdle nerdle ner
Ner ner ner ner
Nerrrrrrrrrrrrr"

You know I quite like this song.

the trial of god

Day One.
Supreme Court, Judge Erwin Liberal presiding.
The case: The State versus God.


The prosecuting attorney is British actor Stephen Fry who has brought a class action law suit against God accusing him of not existing. Fry has a double jeorpardy case against God with an additional charge if he does exist, of not having created the universe the way Stephen Fry would have liked it.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Al Qaeda and Planned Parenthood have filed amicus briefs in support of the case against God.
The plot thickens as God is being defended by James Healy who may or may not be up to the job.
In addition, Judge Liberal, an infiltrated Irish IRA mafioso, has a grudge against God ever since he recognised himself in one of the Bible's teachings about an unjust judge.
Can God hope to get a fair hearing in a court run by atheistic liberals and with his own defence team led by me?
You the jury must decide.

Judge Liberal: Order, order. This court is now in session. Mr Fry you may call your first witness.

Stephen Fry: Call Richard Dawkins.

(Mr Dawkins is sworn in.)

Stephen Fry: Does God exist?

Richard Dawkins: I would say speaking as a scientist that the consensus among thinking civilised intelligent people is that God does not exist.

Stephen Fry: Are you sure? Can you prove it?

Richard Dawkins: I am sure. Consider it. If there's one God, why not many? Look, I cannot prove that the flying spaghetti monster does not exist either. Yet no one seriously asserts that he does.

Stephen Fry: You have a certain animosity towards the Christian conception of God do you not?

Richard Dawkins: What I have said is that the God described in the Old Testament is an evil, misogynistic, racist, genocidal, bully. This is an objective assessment.

Stephen Fry: But you insist he doe not exist?

Richard Dawkins: There is no evidence for his existence.

Stephen Fry: No further questions.

Judge Liberal: Mr Healy, your witness.

James Healy: Mr Dawkins you have described the God of the Old Testament in a particular way.

Richard Dawkins: Yes.

James: An evil mysogenistic racist bully?

Richard Dawkins: Yes.

James: The God who said: Thou shalt not kill.

Richard Dawkins: Among other things attributed to him yes.

James: The God who said: Thou shalt not steal.

Richard Dawkins: My point is...

James: The God who said: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Richard Dawkins: If you let me...

James: The God who said: Honour thy father and thy mother.

Richard Dawkins: You are missing the point.

James: The God who said: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Richard Dawkins: Those sayings are attributed to him by unidentified tribal scribes.

James: The God who said: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

Richard Dawkins: This means nothing.

James: The God who said: "You shall love your neighbour as much as you love yourself."

Richard Dawkins: Are you finished?

James: The God who said: Hear oh Israel, I am the Lord thy God. And thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, all thy soul, and all thy being."

Richard Dawkins: What is your point?

James: Are these the words of an evil mysogenistic bully? He tells us we cannot kill. We cannot steal. We cannot lie about our neighbour. We must love our neighbour as though our neighbour is our own self. Because God said so. No other reason. And he has written this law on our hearts.

Richard Dawkins: Poppycock. You are taking those words out of the context in which they were written and ignoring the mayhem perpetrated and justified in the Old Testiment by the God to which they are attributed.

James: The words are what they are. Are you familiar with Jesus summation of the Bible.

Richard Dawkins: Refresh my memory.

James: Jesus, whom the Christians claim is God made man, is reported by the gospel witnesses to have said that the greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God. The God you assert does not exist Mr Dawkins. Jesus then said that the second greatest commandment is close to the first, namely to love your neighbour as much as you love yourself. And he said that these two are all of the Law and all of the Prophets. The whole Bible. The whole Bible as far as Jesus is concerned Mr Dawkins is love God and love all people. But of course you have summarised it differently.

Richard Dawkins: Gospel witnesses indeed. One wonders who confirmed their bona fides. You are selective in everything you say. You omit what is inconvenient to your case.

James: Do you believe in the devil Mr Dawkins?

Stephen Fry: Objection, objection, objection. M'lud Mr Healy is introducing a second mythical character into the discussion.

Judge Liberal: I will allow it.

James: Well Mr Dawkins?

Richard Dawkins: No, of course not. There is no scientific evidence for the existence of the devil.

James: So you testify that God does not exist? And you testify that satan, the enemy of God and man, does not exist?

Richard Dawkins: There is no scientific evidence for the existence of either of them.

James: The American commentator Ben Stein once asked you how sure you were that God did not exist.

Richard Dawkins: I told him I was very sure. I don't want to put a figure on it. If I had to, I'd say I was 99 percent certain.

James: As Ben Stein said, then why not 98 percent? Or 97?

Richard Dawkins: No. I don't want to put a figure on it.

James: So you're not actually sure. There is a chance that God exists.

Richard Dawkins: A very small one.

James: Fifty, fifty?

Richard Dawkins: Oh much smaller than that.

James: You say the universe exists for reasons that exclude God. You say it just exists due to some sort of physical Darwinian process as yet not understood. I say God exists and created the universe but I don't know why he exists. I'm saying he just exists. It's fifty fifty Mr Dawkins. In your own terms. Either the universe just exists for no reason and always did in some form. Or God just exists for no reason. We're at Fifty Fifty. From the philosphical and scientific point of view. I think you're enough of a genius to know that.

Richard Dawkins: There is no scientific evidence for the existence of God.

James: No scientific evidence? Is the testimony of scientiests like Neils Bohr, Einstein and Arno Penzias not a category of evidence affirming the existence of God? The mathematician David Berlinski avers that the hypothesis of God is consistent with Big Bang cosmology. He adds that your own supposedly scientific postulations about the origin of the universe when stripped bear of the concealing mystification of pseudo scientific terminologies are akin to tribal myths about gods giving birth to eggs. Are his words about your own evidence, not in themselves an important category of evidence? And what of my own testimony? Is it not evidence?

Richard Dawkins: Your own testimony is not credible evidence. You have asserted in The Heelers Diaries that light has no speed and that time is not a medium. Aside from a few buzz words you are entirely lacking in scientific knowledge. Anyone can say anything. It does not necessarily amount to evidence.

James: Nobel Prize Laureate Arno Penzias says that if he didn't have the body of observational data that science has accrued, that what he is finding out now about the nature of the universe is exactly what he would have expected to find from a reading of the Bible.

Richard Dawkins: Obviously I disagree with him.

James: The astronomer Fred Hoyle who invented the phrase The Big Bang, maintained that life could not have started spontaneously by chance. He said that was as much chance of life starting spontaneously by chance as if a tornado hit a junk yard and assembled a 747 Jumbo Jet.

Richard Dawkins: Yes but Fred Hoyle believed that the explanation for the origin of life on our planet was that aliens had seeded it here. I accept there may be some merit in this theory.

James: And where did alien life come from?

Richard Dawkins: The answer is we don't know. And bear in mind that although Fred Hoyle named the Big Bang as the beginning of the universe, he then refused to accept it had happened. He did not believe the universe had a beginning. And he remained an atheist all his life.

James: As far as we know.

Richard Dawkins: What do you mean?

James: Neither of us were with him at the end.

Richard Dawkins: Throughout his public life Fred Hoyle never accepted the existence of God.

James: He preferred to believe in uncaused aliens.

Richard Dawkins: That is your summation not mine.

James: The physiologist George Wald, also a Nobel Laureate and an atheist of your persuasion, has admitted that life cannot have started spontaneously be chance.

Richard Dawkins: I don't know if he has admitted that.

James: His exact words were: We (presumably he meant atheistic scientists in general) choose to believe the impossible, that life started spontaneously be chance. Surely Mr Dawkins, in this he was admitting as Fred Hoyle admitted, that what you followers of Charles Darwin assert when you say life started by chance is not only unscientific, it is impossible. Surely that is his clear undisputable testimony. He is saying he will willingly advocate something that is not true, ie impossible, rather than accept God does and must exist.

Richard Dawkins: Your interpretation of George Wald's words may not be correct. He might have wished to have chosen other words.

James: Does God owe you an explanation for his existence?

Richard Dawkins: Well as the philosopher Bertrand Russell has pointed out, we might legitimately wonder if God exists why God has so wondrously concealed himself from us.

James: There are old women mumbling in country churches who have not been gifted with your or Bertrand Russell's intellect or education, and yet they can see God and rejoice in his goodness every hour of their lives. Children too. And geniuses. And people in Concentration Camps. And me.

Richard Dawkins: I don't think they can.

James: But do you know?

Richard Dawkins: On the evidence I know there is no God.

James: A psalm in the Bible says: "The fool has said in his heart that there is no God."

Richard Dawkins: The Bible would say that, wouldn't it?

James: Mr Dawkins, God loves you and wishes you to become one of his followers so that you may live forever and do good upon the earth.

Richard Dawkins: Why then has he permitted me to persist in what must surely be my folly and ultimate damnation?

James: You may not be damned. You may be closer to God than any of us. He sees your heart. Because even the mistakes you have made, will be turned to goodness and glory by his light. The Lord turns to the good all things for those who love him. And even if your advocacy has been evil, which I do not insist it is, it has inspired scholarship and honest enquiry. God is doing good through you already. He has shown his favour to you every day of your life.

Richard Dawkins: There is no evidence for this. It is deluded semi literate wishful thinking.

James: Repent and be saved Mr Dawkins. The kingdom of God is at hand. It is right here. He is knocking at the door.

Richard Dawkins. No. No he isn't. I don't see him. So he's not there.

James: I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honour.

Judge Liberal: Thank you Mr Dawkins. You may stand down.

the swan of new hampshire

Political commentator Mark Steyn has published a music video on his website featuring himself singing "I thought I saw a Pussycat."
It is an oddly moving performance.
To me it actually contained intimations of the majestic goodness of God.
When I see swans sometimes I catch my breath and go: "Well God made those. You can see it. The artist exulting in his creation."
But God loves the swans so much, he didn't just make them beautiful.
When they climb out of the pond you see they have big clumpy feet like nature's galoshes.
This too is testimony to God's glory.
God did this so that the swans would not be vain about the extraordinary metaphysical beauty he has crafted into each one of them.
So to Mark Steyn.
He is probably the finest stylist of modern written English working at the moment.
But when he sings it is as though the God of wisdom and holiness is reminding him not to become vain in his other accomplishments.

live feed from the sinn fein polical conference in dublin

The hall is packed.
The members of Sinn Fein are packing. (Not luggage.)
An innovative touch has been provided with the presence as a warm up act on stage of British musician James Blunt who is singing his most famous song.
James Blunt sings:

"And it seems to me
That we'll always be
Rehashing accusations... from a riot in Belfast...
In 1973
Singing here we go again
And no matter how many bodies we hide in the ditch
We'll make Ireland our slap up bitch
We aint never gonna switch
Singing here we go again
And no matter who we drug or rape
We kill human beings like crushing grapes
It's all such a merry jape
Singing here we go again
And as we're hiding bodies beneath the old bog tree
You can still be sure we'll always be
Distracting you with allegations about the British ar-m-y
Dating from our riots in Belfast in nine-te-e-en sev-en-ty three"

For the first time in my life I begin to think James Blunt has something.

south kilcullen

There is a knock on the door.
James Healy, wearing a red bobble hat, opens the door.
On his doorstep is Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and some sinister hangers on.
Gerry and Martin are bedecked in traditional rappers gear so that they look like the American musicians styled Puff Daddy and Snoop Dogg respectively.
Their posse wear knitted balaclavas over their faces.
James exclaims: "Gerry Adams!"
Gerry says in his best soothingly gentle black man voice: "We hear you're refusing to read Sinn Fein's twenty bullet points for the next election..."
James says: "What the hell do you mean by bullet points anyway?"
Gerry Adams takes out his Glock pistol which has been reconditioned for him by the IRA cop killer in County Louth who specialised in reconditioning supposedly unusable IRA weapons for reuse by gangland up until the moment last month when he shot his moll, murdered a cop, and suicided himself.
Gerry Adams cocks the trigger.
Gerry Adams says: "What do you think I mean, bitch?"
Queue a chase scene with rap music and the Southpark song "Vote Or Die Motherf----r," segueing into the Benny Hill theme as per our normal arrangement.

today they said

Irish government spokesman: "We may introduce legislation which would allow us to tag criminals."

James Healy: "Why not just put criminals in jail?"

Irish government spokesman: "We are going to equip the police with new high powered Audi vehicles to enable them to pursue criminals."

James Healy: "Every time our police pursue criminals, and the criminals mow down someone at the side of the road, you put our police under investigation. Everybody knows that consquently the police in Ireland now no longer give chase when they encounter criminals in motor cars. Here's a thought. Why not just take the Audis away from the criminals?"

Irish government spokesman: "We are going to hire 600 extra police in the coming months."

James Healy: "Great. Like the corrupt gangland cop you inflicted on Kilcullen for fifteen years. Oh joy. We'll all sleep easier tonight with 600 of those on the beat."

And on a lighter note...

US President Barack Obama: "We will go after the oil facilities which Isis is using to gain revenues."

James Healy: "Why not just tell the Turks to stop buying oil from Isis?"

the crunch question

Question: Is there any point to Ireland having a wimminy police chief (Noirin O'Sullivan an "insider" appointed from within the ranks of the corrupt Irish Police Force after our government promised to appoint an "outsider" specifically from outside the ranks of our corrupt Police Force) a woman whose solution to the gangland terrorisation of towns and villages across Ireland is to say: "We recognise there is a fear of crime," and whose solution to the endemic corruption among precinct chiefs in the Irish police force is to move those corrupt precinct chiefs sideways into adjoining precincts, and whose solution to the IRA's establishment of itself as the capo di tutti capi of mafias in Ireland is to say: "I'm not sure if the IRA still exists?"

Answer: Well she probably puts IRA mafiosi and corrupt police officers at their ease. But for the rest of us, no, there's no point to her. She's just a bad joke at the end of Irish democracy.

dog science

Nyumnyums x Tailies/2 Wags, multiplied by ballies/the square root of walkies + 7 bites minus a washie, multiplied by the cubed root of chewing a teddy bear = Chasing a cat.

quibbles

1. Light has no speed.

2. Time is not a medium.

3. Objects postulated theoretically as moving towards the speed of light (as conceived by Einstein) would resolve into elementary particles and then nothingness at some yet to be determined point beyond which no speed for a mass is possible.

4. Theories dependent on the notion that light has speed or that time is a medium are false.

that sinn fein election manifesto for the republic of ireland in full again

THE BILL OF RIGHTS
(Goods surely- ed note)
Twenty bullet points for the first twenty days in government...
(What does Sinn Fein mean by the phrase 'bullet points?' - Ed note)
(What do you think we mean, bitch? - Gerry Adams note)


1. We the Sinn Fein political party know our rights.

2. We have the right to remain silent although we never ****ing shut up..

3. We have the right to be parliamentary proxies for the IRA.

4. We have the right to commit murder.

5. We have the right to deal drugs.

6. We have the right to engage in people trafficking, particularly on behalf of our Muslim Al Qaeda affiliates around the world.

7. We have the right to infiltrate and control the Irish trade union movement.

8. We have the right to infiltrate and control the Irish national broadcaster which is styled RTE.

9. We have the right to infiltrate and subvert the Judiciary of the Republic of Ireland.

10. We have a right to new Audis.

11. We have a right to distract people from our contemporary murders and from our activities as a nationwide international mafia, by continually relitigating various frivolous charges against the British army dating from our riots in the Ballymurphy housing estate in Belfast in 1973, and to do this while the Irish are still pulling the bodies of our 1970's victims out of bogs and ditches, and still searching for the bodies of house wives and musicians whom we kidnapped, tortured, violated and murdered during that period, and also searching for the bodies of the ones our gangs are kidnapping, torturing, violating and murdering now even as we speak.

12.  We have the right to divide up Ireland into personal fiefdoms with gangs mentored by us in every town and village in Ireland.

13. We have the right to apportion territory in Ireland to other mafia groups principally the Muslim mafias generally styled Al Qaeda, along with the Chinese Triads, Cosa Nostra, Russian rackateers, Nigerian devil worshipping gangs, et al, (Particularly Al. You gorra love him.)

14. We have the right to infiltrate the FBI office in Boston USA using Whitey Bolger's IRA affiliated Winterhill gang. (Send a copy of this to Vincent Lisi. He'll get a few larfs out of it.)

15. Gerry Adams has the right to be Capo Di Tutti Capi, ie the head of Sinn Fein, the head of the IRA, and overall godfather of mafia skangs in Ireland.

16. We have the right to finance ourselves from traditional IRA bankrobberies as well as from the high octane avant garde bank robbery that was the institutionalised burglarisation of Anglo Irish Bank which we accomplished by having IRA agents Sean Fitzpatrick and David Drumm and their accomplices overseeing the bank's loan register, and giving out billion dollar loans to IRA agents posing as businessmen to wit Sean Quinn and his odious IRA brood, as well as their wives, mistresses and cats Tiddles. Additional IRA proxies on the share register meant we actually owned the bank we were robbing by giving ourselves illegal billion dollar loans. Thankfully a corrupt Fianna Fail government led by one Brian Cowan (two Brian Cowans would have been ridiculous) and the now conveniently deceased Brian Lenihan, put Ireland in the Third World overnight in order to bail us out.

17. We have the right to field ringers in the forthcoming elections in Ireland, that is to say a host of supposedly Independent candidates who will claim to be Independents right up until the moment they are elected and who will then fling off their disguises and install us in government.

18. We have the right to corrupt the police.

19. We have the right to get the Germans to pay Ireland's bills in perpetuity.

20. And abortions for all.

21. You (the people of Ireland) have no rights. (Except to abortions and to euthanise your family members, and engage in same sex marriages, and if you join Sinn Fein to kill anyone you like, or don't like as the case may be. Ha, ha.)

22. Er, that's it.