Anglican Samizdat

It has been subject to a denial of service attack, apparently. Those who live by the hack will die by the hack.

From here:

What goes around comes around: Someone is hacking the hacktivist. And it may be none other than the hacktivist himself.

A self-described patriotic hacktivist known as “The Jester” — who has garnered a reputation for taking down jihadist websites and is believed by those familiar with his work to be responsible for taking WikiLeaks offline during its recent dump of State Department cables — is claiming to be the victim himself of an online impostor trying to cash in on his name.

But that’s hardly all there is to the story.

The Jester — who describes himself online as a “Hacktivist for good. Obstructing the lines of communication for terrorists, sympathizers, fixers, facilitators, oppressive regimes and other general bad guys.” — says he’s “an ex-soldier with a rather famous unit, country purposely not specified.”

Following that ignominious rout, the DNS provider for Wikileaks has terminated the domain name:

The WikiLeaks website has been taken off on Thursday, Dec 2 after its domain host provider EveryDNS.net terminated its account.
The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has told in its Twitter account that, “WikiLeaks.org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks.”

h/t to my underpaid research assistant.

For some reason Rick Patel at Avaaz.org keeps sending me emails asking me to sign a petition denouncing “Fox News North”:

“Fox News North” is back trying to make us pay for poisonous media — this time through backroom corporate deals that include them in cable packages with channels we actually want. Send a message to cable giants Shaw, Bell and Rogers demanding that they give Canadians a choice and offer Sun TV as a stand alone option to consumers.

I would be delighted if the CRTC would not force unwanted news content down everyone’s throat by bundling channels: I could kiss goodbye to news from CTV and CBC among others. And no more “Little Mosque on the Prairie”. That’s not how it works, though: channels are bundled together and there is no reason why Sun TV’s channel should be singled out for special treatment.

The email continues: “Canadians should not be forced to pay for right-wing agenda news”. According to Patel we should only be forced to pay for left-wing agenda news – what he calls “regular” news channels.

Wikileaks has revealed that:

Clinton ordered diplomats to spy on UN – even asking for DNA

Claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the British royal family

Chinese operatives waging cyber war on U.S.

The bargains to empty Guantanamo Bay

Arab leaders privately urging an air strike on Iran

Ahmadinejad compared to Hitler

Stand-off with Pakistan over nuclear fuel

Plans for collapse of North Korea

Details of corruption in Afghan government

Who cares? Didn’t we suspect all that already? What I really want leaked is the number of women Julian Assange has raped:

A Swedish court ordered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange detained on suspicion of rape and sexual molestation Thursday, and an international warrant will be issued for his arrest, according to the judge and prosecutor on the case…..

Assange’s lawyer in Sweden, Bjoern Hurtig, also said the prosecutor’s petition was “exaggerated” and “out of proportion.”

He stressed to AFP that his client

“is absolutely prepared to come to Sweden (and) wants to cooperate,” and had even proposed some dates that would work for him, “but we have not been able to agree.”

It’s a measure of Assange’s ego that he believes that, having been accused of rape, appearing before a court  should be at a time “that would work for him”.

A French video of a baby gymnast-in-training still in the womb.

In Canada it would be legal to murder this child.

Easy: spend 3 weeks in Russia. That’s what I did last summer, eating borsch soup – there’s only so much of that that one stomach can take – consuming “meat” (you don’t ask what sort of “meat”) and washing it all down with copious quantities of vodka. At last, a diet that works.

Or there’s the cream cake diet.

Toronto Archbishop Colin Johnson ate out of a food bank for three days to make a point to the Ontario government. I’m not convinced he made much of a point other than that Archbishops have little better to do than indulge in temporary play-act poverty before returning to the comfort of their Pâté de Foie Gras, Chardonnay and lattes.

The point he wanted to make has nothing to do with Christianity: he thinks it is the government’s responsibility to create a “just” society by redistributing wealth through taxation. He is entitled to his opinions however wrong headed; what he is not entitled to do is dignify them with the stamp of approval of the church – even the Anglican Church.

From here (Page 4):

Foodbanks were created by churches and others to deal with the crisis of people in our province going hungry. That was a quarter of a century ago. It was meant to be a temporary relief, but it has tragically become an expanding social safety net. We should not rely on the generosity of a small percentage of folk to voluntarily provide food and labour, nor on the largesse of a few companies.

Poverty has an impact on the whole community. It is the responsibility of the whole community to deal with poverty through its government’s resources. The government can use its tax base to build a healthy, sustainable strategy to reduce poverty, a strategy where everyone contributes to the solution, not just a motivated few. That’s what a just society is about. In the Old Testament, we read about provisions for leaving the edges of the fields un-harvested so the poor could glean. It wasn’t about encouraging the generosity of an individual farmer; it was a societal injunction that was to govern a society’s responsibilities (Leviticus 19:9; repeated at 23:22; see also Ruth).

The passage from Leviticus is exactly what Johnson claims it isn’t: God’s instruction to individuals on their responsibility to help the poor. It has nothing to do with God giving tax advice to governments.

A recent tweet exchange made me think that the common misunderstanding it revealed was worth exploring further. The exchange went something like this:

Me: You can’t explain the universe without God.

Him: How do u explain God then?

Me: You don’t: he explains you.

Him: The greatest cop-out ever…

The misunderstanding – and it’s one that flourishes as much in the Dawkins-Hitchens conglomerate as in the mentally less well endowed specimens that answer my tweets –  is that God is in the category of things that need explaining: he isn’t. He is in a category that has one member: himself – not created, indivisible, beyond nature, omniscient, omnipotent, omni-present. If he could be “explained” he would no longer be God.

So, if an answer can be found to questions like, “who made God” or “how do you explain God” it means the questions have been asked of something that isn’t God. It makes little sense to ask for a cause of something that is the First Cause. If the cause could be found, that god would not be the first cause and, therefore, not be God.

God is the great explainer; he is to be worshipped, loved and enjoyed. Not explained.

It tears at the heartstrings.
From the BBC:

Fidel Castro has said that he is ultimately responsible for the persecution suffered by homosexuals in Cuba after the revolution of 1959.

The former president told the Mexican newspaper La Jornada that there were moments of great injustice against the gay community.

“If someone is responsible, it’s me,” he said.

In the 1960s and 70s, many homosexuals in Cuba were fired, imprisoned or sent to “re-education camps”.

….

‘At the time we were being sabotaged systematically, there were armed attacks against us, we had too many problems,” said the 84-year-old Communist leader.

“Keeping one step ahead of the CIA, which was paying so many traitors, was not easy.”

I knew about the exploding cigar, but this is the first I’ve heard about the CIA paying people in Cuba to be homosexual. It must be the same in the Anglican Church: there are so many homosexual priests because of a CIA plot to bring down Anglicanism.

I’m sure you do, too; here are the subject lines of some of mine – those more or less fit to print :

Subject: Your wife photos attached
And to think I nearly forwarded them to my wife before looking at them – well, I didn’t actually look at them.

Subject: Your originality starts with branded accessories. You will be able to find a lady as soon as you buy Armani bangle.
I wish I’d known that when I was 15

Subject: Mr. mr.toad, we offer 80% off. several used an
All these years I’ve been looking for an “an” and now, finally it is within my grasp.

Subject: Sale note for mr.toad – 70% lowered prices. His York is
OK, stop these tantalising headings: His York is what?

Subject: 15mg x 60 Codeine $264.00 (+4 FreeViagra pills), No RX required! Highest Quality! Buy now! 12o3
Do I take the 60 Codeines before the 4 Viagras or after?

Subject: * Wal-Mart earnings rise adenectomy aggrandizing accomodate adneural acarus
No thanks, I cleaned the acarus out of my adneural yesterday

Subject: Bang her till she drops
Can’t, tonight’s the night for cleaning the acarus out of my adneural again.

Subject: Everyone dreams about a university degree but you can get it for almost FREE. You will become a valuable employee if …
What about those of us who are looking forward to being laid off and are trying to project an aura of worthlessness?

The Gospel on wheels from a Roman Catholic priest in Hungary.