St. Louis African-Americans protest racist police brutality

Summertime...and the lootin' is easy... This AP photo was taken in Ferguson, Missouri, a predominantly black suburb of St. Louis. The thief pictured is protesting in the traditional African-American manner and against the racism of American society and the brutality of the local police.

A white police officer shot non-white Michael Brown, 18, on Saturday afternoon, after encountering Mr. Brown and another man on a street in Ferguson. According to County Police Chief Jon Belmar, one of the non-white men shoved the cop into his cruiser and a struggle began. At least one shot was fired inside the cruiser, presumably from the cop's gun, since the black kids were unarmed. Several more shots were fired, as a result of which Mr. Brown died from exsanguination.

Mayor James Knowles said he understood that people of the African-American community would "want to vent their frustrations. We understand they want to speak out." Quite right. It only took a couple of hours for John Gaskin, speaking for the NAACP, to shout "We're outraged because yet again a young African-American man has been killed by law enforcement."

Following the ensuing candlelight vigil, people of the darker persuasion looted shops, vandalised cars and stores, and set a gas station on fire as police tried to block off access to several areas of St. Louis. Rev. Al Sharpton is expected to arrive today to urge his people to even greater feats of peaceful demonstration. Stay tuned.

Notes from Ed.: (1) Walt has been waiting for decades to use the word "exsanguination" in a sentence. (2) If you can't remember what NAACP stands for, please rest assured the first word is not the N-word. Anyway, as demonstrations such as this show, the NAACP doesn't stand for very much.

Book review: "Crucial Truths to Save Your Soul"

If you don't believe in the afterlife -- in Heaven and Hell -- you can stop reading right now. This is not for you. But if you do believe, or even if you're just unsure, you should read Crucial Truths to Save Your Soul, the latest book by Father Nicholas Gruner, "the Fatima Priest".

Father Gruner has written many short pieces -- magazine articles, papers and the like -- but this is only his second book. The first was World Enslavement or Peace, which concentrated chiefly on the Message of Our Lady of Fatima, which Father Gruner has been preaching relentlessly for nearly four decades. In Crucial Truths to Save Your Soul, Father Gruner answers the question: What is the purpose of human life?

The answer, as anyone who has been properly taught the basics of the Catholic Faith should know, is that the purpose of human life is to save our immortal souls.

Sadly, fewer and fewer people -- even highly educated people, even Catholic churchmen -- actually know the Catholic Faith. They have come of age since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), which blurred and distorted the clear truths of the traditional Faith handed down to us from the Apostles through the great doctors, teachers and leaders of the Church. As Father Gruner says, they have not been nourished on the solid food of the true Faith, but have been fed "the sentimental pablum of our times".

This lack of formation in Catholic truth has terrible consequences. People make decisions about crucial matters -- marriage, for instance -- based on wrong information, on false ideas. As a result, their lives become a mess -- full of confusion and disorder.

In the 50 years since Vatican II, the condition of the Church and the world has grown steadily worse. Most Catholics don't understand why so many bad things are happening in our society and in their own church. In Crucial Truths to Save Your Soul, Father Gruner argues that we can no longer rely on our Church leaders to be faithful to the immemorial truths of the Deposit of Faith. He clears away the fog that has settled over the Catholic landscape since Vatican II, and shows clearly how we can separate the things we must believe to be saved from the things -- the novelties and heresies -- we must reject.

Crucial Truths to Save Your Soul is concise, factual, and easy to read -- unlike some other "Fatimist" books. Reading it is like having a conversation with Father Gruner about what his work has meant and what he has learned over the years. One of my dear Catholic friends told me "I learned things I should have known before, which became perfectly clear to me as I read this book."

The book includes, as an appendix, the interview given by Sister Lucia, the chief seer of Fatima, to Father Augustine Fuentes, on 26 December 1957. We can see now the accuracy of her prophecy of the defections and betrayals of so many priests and nuns. Her plea is even more timely for us today than when she spoke in the last known public statement she gave before being silenced almost totally for the rest of her life.

Also worth reading is the preface by James Hanisch, who collaborated with Father Gruner in the writing of Crucial Truths to Save Your Soul. He recounts his conversation with Father Gruner in April of 2013, which led to the writing of the book.

"If only [he writes] there were a brief and simple booklet...demonstrating that the true Catholic Rule of Faith is not arbitrarily subject to the whims and fads of a 'living magisterium', and that no churchman of any rank has the 'authority' to change Revealed Truth or to undermine the good of the Church."

Now, that book is available. To get a copy, send an e-mail to info@fatima.org, or call toll-free: 1-800-263-8160. Tell them Walt sent you. And no, Walt doesn't get anything for making this recommendation. I believe Crucial Truths to Save Your Soul is a book you should read for the purpose disclosed by the title, so I'm telling you about it. Period.

Iraq: Is calling in air strikes enough?

The Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities of Iraq clearly needed help to resist the invasion by the Sunni Muslim terrorists who call themselves "the Islamic state" (ISIS). The word "genocide" springs to mind when 1000s of people are herded like sheep -- lambs to the slaughter -- to the top of a mountain and told that they must either convert to Islam or die.

Divine intervention is called for, prayed for. But God and the Pope have no divisions, as Joseph Stalin famously said, so help must come from those that do. Walt therefore applauds the decision of President Obama to authorise the bombing, by drones and manned aircraft, of ISIS artillery and other positions.

But a question nags at my mind [or what passes for such. Ed.] Can the air strikes be anything but a prelude to an invasion by ground forces? Air power first, tanks and troops next. That's what happened in Iraq the first time. And in Afghanistan. And in Vietnam. That's because air power, awesome though it may be -- remember those scenes in Apocalypse Now? -- is never, by itself, sufficient to enable a foreign power to defeat an army or guerrilla force of locals. Take Gaza as today's example. Hamas isn't beaten yet, and the Israelis know it.

If the Gaza argument isn't persuasive enough, consider the thoughts of Matthew Bunker Ridgway. General Ridgway held several major commands in the United States Army and was most famous for resurrecting the United Nations war effort during the Korean War. Several historians have given him the credit for turning the war around in favour of the UN side.

To quote from The Fifties, by David Halberstam (Villard Books, New York, 1993): In World War II and Korea, and in Korea particularly, [Gen. Ridgway] had seen what the Air Force had promised to do with strategic bombing and how limited, in fact, strategic bombing was as an instrument of policy. If we bombed, he argued, we would end up inevitably using ground troops. Ridgway saw air power as as a sort of high-tech aspirin; it gave some immediate relief, but it did not cure the underlying problem.

In Walt's view, we can no longer refer to the ISIS forces as just terrorists. They are a large, well-trained, well-equipped, battle-hardened army. They are in control of large chunks of Syria and Iraq. How they can be defeated without yet another Western invasion of those countries is our dilemma for today. If anyone has a solution, please don't write to me. Send it to the Prez, because neither he nor his advisors seem at all sure of what to do next.

Waiting for the balloon(s) to go up

This just in...

"President Barack Obama has approved targeted air strikes in Iraq, near the site where some 40,000 religious minorities are trapped on a mountaintop after fleeing from Islamic State militants who have threatened to kill them.

"Obama said the Iraqi government asked for U.S. help in fighting Islamic State militants, who have surged across northern Iraq in the country's Kurdish region, forcing tens of thousands of Christians and Yazidis — a Kurdish ethno-religious community — to leave their homes or risk death."

Meanwhile, to the northwest, Russian troops are massing along the border with Ukraine. NATO has called on Russia to "step back", otherwise they will, errr, well... that's kind of unclear. If (God forbid) NATO wants to call in an airstrike on the Russkis, who're they gonna call? The USAF will, it seems, be occupied elsewhere.

And... yes, there's more... there seem to be two chances of a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, the two chances being slim and none.

What next? To be clear, Walt is glad the USA is coming to the defence of the Christians (etc) in Iraq. Better late than never. And Walt would support the use of lethal force to keep the Russians from gobbling up any more of Ukraine. The fear, of course, is that the Islamic militants and/or Russians might stand and fight. So what should we do? Walt's answer: Go big or go home! But...

Memo to Ed.: Remember that bomb shelter we built out in the back 40? Do you remember where I put the key?

Rap VIDEO shoot turns out to be just that!

That an "aspiring rap artist" nearly died of gunshot wounds is hardly news, but when the shooter turns out to be the shootee's bro, that's news! So here's this month's nomination for a Darwin Award (Honourable Mention).

Early last Saturday, a music video shoot at a Bronx bodega turned violent after one member of a rap duo reportedly opened fire on his partner, wounding him in the head, legs, and chest. According to the bodega's owner, the shooting was triggered by an argument over who was the video's star.

The owner of the store, one Ali Abdul [No relation to Apu Nahasapeemapetilon? Ed.] told the New York Daily News, "They were fighting over who's the star, who's better. They were drunk. They spit at each other then one guy pulled out a gun and shot the other guy five times."



Did you notice that the gunman never let go of his drink during the shooting? How cool is that! The video shows several cool witnesses casually stepping over the victim as he writhed on the floor in pain. The victim is in critical condition at a local hospital and is expected to survive. The shooter remains at large. He is described as black [that's enough description... Ed.]

How black do you have to be to be "black enough"?

What you have to understand, to appreciate the irony of this story, is that Canada's equal rights laws -- included in its "Charter of Rights", a part of the constitution -- are so progressive and righteous as to make America's seem like Jim Crow laws by comparison. Never should anything done by anyone in the Great Not-so-white North be tainted by the merest suggestion of discrimination on the basis of colour. Hiring/firing decisions, for instance, mustn't betray a hint of tint!

Poetic justice, then, that a woman of colour [person of colour, surely! Ed.] took to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission a complaint that she had been wrongfully fired by her employer because of the colour of her skin. Her employer was the Black Educators Association. And the problem with Ms Brothers's colour was that she was not black enough!

No, gentle reader, Walt is not making this up. Unfortunately, the Canuck lamestream media seems unable to find even a tiny picture of Ms Brothers, so we can see what colour she might be. Apparently she's not white, else she wouldn't have been hired in the first place, so Walt assumes she's what was once called a "high yeller". [Are you referring to the pitch of her voice? Ed.]

In a decision released this morning, the Human Rights Commission found that Brothers was "undermined by association staff whose 'colourist thinking' and behaviour created a toxic work environment at the head office in Halifax and the Annapolis Valley regional office in Kentville, where Ms. Brothers was employed as a regional educator."

The woman named in the report for discriminating against Ms Brothers was Catherine Collier, who was vying with Ms Brothers for the same regional educator position, a job which Ms Brothers landed. The HR police chief [Human Rights Commission Chairman, surely! Ed.] said in his report, "It is clear to me that Ms Brothers was undermined in part because she was younger than, and not as black as, Ms Collier thought Ms. Brothers should be.... In Ms. Collier's eyes, Ms. Brothers was not really black enough."

The Association has been ordered to pay Brothers C$11,000 -- $10,000 in real money -- plus interest, for general damages and lost income. The Black Educators Association is, errr, taxpayer-funded, so the award, the lawyers' costs, the Commission's costs -- the whole ball of wax -- comes out of the pockets of the thrifty New Scotlanders.

But never mind. Tracy Williams, CEO of the Commission, assures taxpayers that "This decision addresses an important human rights issue. The commission needs to explore this sensitive subject to better understand its impact and identify ways we can be of assistance." If you pay taxes in Nova Scotia and you disagree, send a postcard saying "I'm a sucker and I'm tired of being licked!" to Human Rights Commission, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Footnote: It's worth reading the decision made by Donald Murray, Q.C., in its entirety, in order to appreciate the kind of thinking that has created the latest in a long line of sins against human rights. The new sin is called "colourism" (or "colorism" if you're in the USA). A bit of good news: apparently people of colour can be just as GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY or colourism as us whiteys.

Monkey impersonators in high demand in India

Is this a monkey or a man? It looks like a langur monkey, but if you're visiting India's capital, you might want to look again. That's because the Indian government has just fired 40 Indian men to impersonate langur monkeys to scare away some of the smaller, red-faced macaque monkeys that infest Delhi's parliament and other government buildings.

1000s of macaques monkeys roam the streets and alleys of Delhi, trashing gardens, attacking people for food, and disturbing the legions of humans who sleep in the streets. Unfortunately, Hindus consider the animals sacred -- incarnations of Hanuman, the monkey god -- so the devout often feed them and encourage them to stick around. What to do?

Delhi's civic authorities tried using real langurs to keep the macaques away from the parliament buildings. However, after protests from animal rights activists and a court order that keeping monkeys in captivity was cruel, they had to come up with a Plan B.

So, India's Minister for Urban Development told Parliament yesterday, the New Delhi Municipal Corporation has hired "40 young persons" trained to impersonate the langurs and scare the macaques away. Officials of the NDMC called the monkey impersonators "very talented", experts in imitating the whoops and barks of langurs and hiding behind trees to ward off the aggressive animals.

So far the impersonators are only working in and around the parliament buildings -- particularly the defence ministry and the prime minister's office -- but consideration is being given to deploying them on the city's metro trains, where they are a great nuisance, refusing to produce tickets and generally annoying the passengers both inside and on the roofs of the railway cars.

Lesson for Americans: Having the deer and the antelope roam through your country is nothing compared with troops of macaques!