my favourite rejection slips

 The following poem was submitted for consideration to a magazine styled The Curate's Diary.

descant of man

there are those who will tell you it all happened quite suddenly

rationalising prevaricating over who was to blame

as once they rationalised to euthanise the elderly

our societies fell before the jihadis came

as once they rationalised their pornogrification of the peasantry

with drugs and abortions and a cult of the inane

oh how they applauded themselves for their cultured high mindedness in repudiating christianity

our societies fell before the jihadis came

in the end most of us were too narcoticised to notice hell

mohommedan madness even blended somewhat with our own shame

when all was said and done the hell of islam seemed just another hell

our societies fell before the jihadis came

*********

The rejection slip read:

"Sorry. We only publish poems inspired by the love of God."

the biggest story on earth

The biggest story on earth at the moment is the cultural shockwave slowly engulfing Islam from critiques by an array of internet based commentators who are subjecting the Prophet Muhammed and his faith to what seems almost unprecedented historiographical scrutiny.

What is equally unprecedented is that many Muslims are talking to these new critics of Islam instead of murdering them.

In significant numbers, Muslims are reading their works, engaging with their ideas, clearly wishing to test honestly and intellectually whether their insights are true or not, rather than simply using violence to silence them.

I repeat.

This is unprecedented.

The most notable of the new commentators on Islam are American philosopher David Wood and British street debater Hatun Tash who both pronounce themselves Christians, along with ex Muslims some of who now also pronounce themselves Christians such as Al Fadi and Brother Rachid, and other ex Muslims some of whom pronounce themselves atheists such as Abdullah Sameer and Ridvan Aydemir.

David Wood is unusual in being a Westerner who actually knows the sources of Islam, the Quran, and the Hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet) from which the written repositories of the Islamic faith are drawn.

The former Muslim commentators in this debate are unusual in their role in that they haven't yet been murdered (the sentence for apostasy from Islam is death) and in that they know Islam from the inside.

The contrivance of red lines, sensitive limitation points within speech, things you just can't say and for which a Muslim will kill you if you do say them, has been the key definitor of debate within Islam and between Muslims and non Muslims for thirteen centuries.

In the past few weeks David Wood and his fellow internet apologists have made 1300 years of red lines irrelevant.

For centuries, the power brokerages within Islam treated criticisms of the Prophet Muhammed as an excuse to commit murder.

Muslims used any critical assessment of the Quran likewise as an excuse to murder.

Muslims used any attempt by a Muslim to leave Islam as an excuse to murder.

As recently as the year 2006, Muslims around the world were rioting because Pope Benedict had referred to a remark from the 14th century Emperor Manuel Palaiologos of Constantinople who had said in a letter to a Muslim leader: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Benedict merely quoted from the letter but did not point out that the Muslims of the era had repaid the emperor for the frankness of his remarks by stealing his country, the Byzantine empire, within a short period of his lifetime and in 1453 turning it into Turkey.

La plus se change, la plus se reste meme.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

As recently as 2015, Muslims were murdering people at a magazine office in France for printing cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammed.

The attacks on the magazine were folllowed up the same year with generalised Jihad attacks on Paris. Muslims killed 130 people in the later attacks.

We might also mention the bombing of children and adults at a pop concert in Manchester in 2017 where Muslims murdered 22 people.

Then there's the Muslim truck rammings, stabbings, beheadings and shootings across America and Europe which are proliferating but which media groups are sweeping under the carpet faster than you can say: "Police believe the killer was mentally ill."

Funny.

I'd have thought calling Muslims mentally ill when they kill for Islam would be a racist thing to do. 

Anyhoo.

David Wood prints a couple of cartoon pictures of Mohammed every week.

He has incepted an internet TV show called Mohammed's Boom Boom Room with guests interviewed by an actor portraying the Prophet and each show ending with the Prophet self detonating.

He has also created a broadcast series entitled Islamicise Me whose potential capacity to cause offense, was only partially mitigated by its precise enumerating of Muslim sources for every single controversial representation of Islam which it contained. The whole thing seemed a little shoddy to me, with generally poor acting, and weak production values. (The music was good though.)

David Wood's delicatesse in assessing the Prophet Muhammed is evinced by his frequent statements to wit:

"The Prophet Muhammed married a six year old girl."

"The Prophet Muhammed was a seventh century caravan raider."

"The Prophet Muhammed was the most obvious false prophet in history."

What is unique about David Wood's analysis is that it has gotten the attention of Muslims.

Muslim parents are purportedly complaining to their Imams that David Wood is drawing young Muslims away from Islam.

No less a power broker than the Islamic government of Pakistan ( I kid you not) repeatedly lodges complaints about David Wood to the Youtube internet service provider which hosts his videos.

What we might call chest thumping Muslims like the famously aggressive British campaigner Mohammed Hijab (who has been known to challenge debating opponents to fight him) have sought to orchestrate staged complaints to internet service providers in an attempt to get David Wood banned.

Yet sincere thinking Muslims more and more wish to affirm their faith by showing they can answer David Wood intellectually and by checking out for themselves his assertions via respected historical accounts.

If David Wood is wrong, they believe, it should be possible to answer all his arguments without recourse to murder in order to silence him.

The former reliance on murder as a key tool of Muslim apologetics no longer convinces young Muslims of the truth of their faith.

They require something more.

The red lines are gone.

Now that's a story.

Of couse this story is not being reported in the media.

It's only the biggest story on earth after all.

As for me and the Prophet Muhammed...

A supposed Muslim challenged David Wood to name some good things about the Prophet. David Wood challenged his own viewers to do the same.

Here goes.

The Prophet Muhammed enjoined his followers to charitable giving.

He taught them to pray constantly.

He preached the truth of the reality of God.

His Quran enunciates beautiful and true names for God.

Some Muslims are good people.

Perhaps they are a credit to him.

In that case he may not be a false prophet.

And Islam may not be a false religion.

birth and dying

 armies were marching

through the lowlands in winter

as she ran through the fields

to her only love

bleak were the hedgerows

the fastnesses lonely

the wind took their whispering

and gave it the wilds

the wilds took their whispering

and made it a song

of dreams that are broken

and dreams yet to be

her footsteps returned

to the place of her growing

and she slept like an angel

though armies were marching

trump n proletariat

 (Lost In Translation)

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Represenatives, has expressed the opinion that Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden should not attend televised debates with Donald Trump.

She elaborated: "Did you see the way Donald Trump tried to physically intimidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 debates? It was disgraceful. Donald Trump is not worthy of a debate. My personal opinion is that Joe Biden should not debate him."

Ah yes.

The old physical intimidation gag.

Al Gore, then Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party tried it at a debate with the Bushwhacker in the year 2000 with vaguely risible results. Mr Bush looked at him bemusedly as Gore sauntered up. Gore tried to stare him down. Mr B gave a curt nod and continued with his remarks. The commentator Mark Steyn remarked at the time: "One thing is sure. If there's a fight, bet on the wiry little guy (Steyn meant Bush) rather than on the big Ox."

Nancy Pelosi expressed no outrage at the time, but perhaps she was less offended by an attempt at physical stalking and intimidation of a candidate on a debate stage when it was her guy doing it.

Some years later I found the Trump use of Al Gore's old gambit via his own attempts to menace Hillary highly comical rather than overtly offensive. Actually in any menacing intimidatory contact between Trump and Hillary my concern would be solely for Trump.

(Heelers, one of mine surely, ie "If Harold got bitten by a snake Sir, in those circumstances my concern would be solely for the snake." - PG Wodehouse note)

(Homage - Heelers note)

The Trump Hillary debate dance of death also provided inspiration for one of the few really nearly funny sketches on the Saturday Night Live television show in the past forty years of blandness, with Alec Baldwin as Trump stalking a really good looking version of Hillary (She was played by an actress called Kate McKinnon) around a debate stage to the accompaniment of the Jaws movie theme tune.

The plain English language translation of Mrs Pelosi's suggestion that Biden doesn't need to debate Trump because Trump is unworthy of debate, is: "Biden shouldn't debate Trump because Biden can't put two words together and Trump will eat him alive."

That is what she really meant and that paradoxically for a demmycrat is actually the truth.

I've nothing against Mr Biden regarding his supposed lack of verbal skills. I liked legendary (No, he was real - Ed note) Ronald Reagan, the great communicator, who managed to become President quite late in his political life when his ability to communicate wasn't as acuitive as it once had been. I seem to remember him welcoming Princess Diana to a dinner at the Whtie House as "Princess David." Princess Diana looked a bit nonplussed. Still none of his occasional verbal faux passes seemed to prevent Reagan from being the key figure in stiffening European and American resolve during the Cold War and eventually bringing down the Soviet Union. (By the grace of God, I believe.)

I also rated the Bushwhacker as the among the best of Presidents, and his brilliance was never overtly evidenced in word play.

I often ruminate wryly that without Bush, the Gadaffis in Libay would still have that A Bomb programme which no one knew about but which they surrendered voluntarily when the Bushwhacker took out Saddam Hussein's murderocracy in Iraq. I wonder what possible use the Gadaffis could have made of a few A bombs during the recent ouster of their government. We'll never know. Thanks to President George W Bush. Just in case some of y'all forgot.

So downgrading Mr Biden because he's not that slick on the verbals, don't impress me much.

Surely there are some more insightful perspectives from which to criteek him.

His son Hunter's billion dollar business deals in China and Ukraine, anybody?

Hello.

Still the reason Mrs Pelosi is telegraphing a Biden pull out from the debates is what it is. You've got to imagine her urging Biden in the voice of Burgess Meredith the coach from the Rocky films: "You can't fight this guy Joe. He'll kill you to death."

He will.

Unless the ref is working for Rocky.

Meanwhile President Trump's personal adviser Kelly Anne Svengali has resigned from his campaign.

"I am resigning to look after my family," she told reporters.

The plain English translation of this is: "I am a talented woman with a bad hairdo leaving a sinking ship.

Saturday Night Live had another amost funny sketch, this time about Kelly Anne after the 2016 elections with the actress portraying her as a dipsomaniac genius, guilt ridden for getting Trump elected (It was Kate McKinnon again) and declaring in a soliloquy: "My soul is as dead as my hair."

It was actually funny. Not mean. Funny.

But then they started hating Trump so much that the humour attending on their pieces simply evaporated.

We're about a month from the next election.

The dirty tricks have started.

The annual forest fire Jihad season has begun with Muslim terrorist group Al Qaeda and attendent coteries of murderers lighting forest fires across America while the media romanically insists it's the climate trying to burn the whole thing down.

Interestingly enough activist Reza Aslan has used the phrase "burn the whole thing down," advising people to strenuously protest should Trump appoint another Supreme Court Judge.

Presumably Reza is advocating burning down something other than America's forests, since his fellow travellers among Al Qaeda and the climate, as well as Putin's proxy radicals who I'm just sure exist, along with sundry devil worship cults and who knows who else, are already attending to the woods and the trees.

Oh the humanity.

I mean the timber.

And lo!

Unidentified entities are staging riots in American cities.

The people are identifiable but the organisation behind them is a tad arcane.

Vladdie the Pute again? The Chinese Communist Party Politbureau? 

A magazine styling itself The Atlantic has published a made up (ie unattributed) claim that Mr Trump once referred to dead American soldiers as losers.

Joe Biden found his tongue and indeed became quite eloquent after this nonsense slander, demanding with strange high passionate dignity that Trump apologise to the troops for what the Atlantic had made up about him.

The intent by the Atlantic and Joe is to slander Trump out of a couple of percentage points in the popular vote.

Ho hum.

I've a hundred Euro bet with Padre Baines that Trump will lose in the November elections.

Padre Baines is refusing to up the bet to a thousand.

At least with a thousand Euro bet, I'd notice I'd had a bet.

Tensions are rising.

This week a good burgher from the town of Kilcullen asked me what I thought of President Trump.

I began to weigh her question thusly: "There is an interesting situation in popular discourse. Many people don't feel free to answer that question honestly. Or they feel they have to answer it in a particular way to satisfy certain criteria of acceptability set by amoral Third parties such as bankrupt atheistic abortionist media groups like the Irish Times, Independent Newspapers or Ireland's Stalinist State broadcaster RTE. This can't be healthy."

She said: "Just tell me what you think of him."

I said: "I have no brief for those who are unfair in their assessment. I want to assess his Presidency sincerely. When I express an opinion or an assessment to you or to anyone else, I don't feel a need to justify myself first to the Bolshevicks of the Irish Times. So for a start..."

She said: "Stop dodging the question."

I said: "When he came to power I advised that those criticising him among his formal opponents and the media should be scrupulously fair but they went about the business of slandering him in exactly the same way they've done for any other non left wing political leader of the past half century in Ireland, Britain, America, Canada or Australia."

She said: "I want to know what you think of him. Give me a straight answer."

I said: "This is a straight answer. These are my thoughts about him. I'm giving you context for my assessment."

She said: "I didn't ask you for any information except what do you think of Donald Trump."

I said: "This is my answer. I'm weighing up first the situation whereby leftists and Demmycrats are demonising him. I am attempting then to critique him clearly using whatever faculties I have. I'm saying my initial concerns about his links to the Cosa Nostra mafia and the illusory nature of his claimed fortune, and his frivolous use of pejoratives against President Bush who led us through the first years of the World Jihad War, were..."

She said: "You probably like him because he's opposed to abortion."

I said: "I certainly think the sanctity of life is the most important issue on the planet and if I thought he was in any way sincere in defence of the unborn, or opposing euthanasia or forbidding assisted suicide, you're quite right, I'd be very impressed. More than I could be impressed by any other issue."

She said: "So you do like him."

I said: "I didn't say that. To begin with you've to look at whether the primary criticisms of him are answerable. Some are. The bit where they tried to run him out of the race in 2016 by misreporting his statement that John McCain was not a war hero. They misreported it by omitting context, by deliberately omitting to point out that Mr Trump said this after John McCain said Trump's supprters were crazies and after interviewer Frank Luntz attempted to prevent Trump from responding robustly to the charge that his supporters were crazies by stating: John McCain said your supporters are crazies and he's a war hero. It was in that context only that Mr Trump said ah he's not a war hero. Perfectly justifiable bit of badinage. But perfectly unjustifiable for any leftist or incompetent media group to report it without telling the full story of the initial provocation. Even comparatively decent journalists apparently didn't feel the need to note what exactly Mr Trump was responding to or the cirumstances in which he gave his response. You see..."

She said: "Oh James, I give up. You just won't give me a straight answer."