MERRY CHRISTMAS!

To all those who come by here on this great day

And may all those who recognize Jesus as Lord always walk in his wisdom

Being a born pedagogue, I can't resist this occasion to offer a tiny bit of seasonal information: I realized only recently that many people do not understand why "Xmas" is sometimes used as a short form of "Christmas". Rather alarmingly, some people even seem to think that it is yet another attempt to take Christ out of Christmas. It is anything but. It in fact harks back to the earliest Christian times. The original New Testament documents were of course all written in the Greek language of the day and the name "Christos" (Christ) in Greek begins with the letter "Chi". And the Greek letter Chi looks just like a big Latin "X". So X is in fact the earliest symbol of the holy name and it was widely used as such by the early Christians of the Roman empire. So "Xmas" can in fact be seen as an acknowledgment of the early Christians.

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CHRISTIAN BELIEFS STILL PERSECUTED: IN THE AUSTRALIAN STATE OF VICTORIA

Several of my readers have asked me about this news item:

"Two Christian pastors in Australia have been found guilty of religious vilification of Muslims.... One of the pastors, Daniel Scot, is Pakistani. He fled his native land seventeen years ago.... Last Friday, Judge Michael Higgins of The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found him guilty of vilifying Islam in a seminar hosted by his group, Catch the Fire Ministries. The judge noted that during the seminar, Scot stated that "the Quran promotes violence, killing and looting." In light of Qur'anic passages such as 9:5, 2:191, 9:29, 47:4, 5:33 and many others, this cannot seriously be a matter of dispute".

The laws concerned are peculiar to the State of Victoria -- which has a number of crazy Leftist laws -- and there is no substantial move to adopt them elsewhere in Australia. And the ruling is from an administrative tribunal -- something of a kangaroo court, i.e. without all the features of a normal court. I am no student of Victorian law but I understand that such decisions have to be referred to a normal court for enforcement -- at which time this ruling could be, and should be, overturned. Judge Higgins certainly does appear to have been what Australians would call a "galah". The galah is an Australian native parrot noted for low brainpower.

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from The Times: "This time of year captures, perhaps better than any other, the defining characteristic of Americans in the modern world � their lack of cynicism and scepticism, their enduring hope and faith in themselves, their country and even the world around them".

How French! "Police suspect a French prosecutor of paying a prostitute with a stolen credit card just hours after addressing a conference on ethics, a Justice Ministry source says."

Jim Bennett has just put up a long but excellent article that looks at the likely futures of the EU and the USA: A good Christmas read for the times in between eating and drinking. Bennett does not think much of the prospects for the EU. I liked this quote: "[German author Gersemann addresses] the "yes, but..." arguments made by Europeans and their admirers when addressing the visible GDP gaps between America and Continental Europe. These run "Yes, America has a substantially lower unemployment rate ... but that's because so many Americans are in prison", or "America makes more jobs, but they are low-wage, service-sector 'McJobs.'" (Gersemann characterizes the latter argument as "We can't actually make any jobs, but if we did, they would be good ones.") Gersemann systematically and persuasively rebuts such arguments". Details about the Anglosphere institute (founded principally by Bennett) are here. I have just joined, myself.

Iranians are turning in droves to Christ: "This phenomenon didn't take place through the efforts of foreign missionaries, Afshar said, because after the country's Islamic revolution of the late 1970's, all foreign missionaries were expelled from Iran. Much of the evangelism of Muslims in Iran, Afshar said, has been done through shortwave radio and satellite television programs by Iranians who came to know Christ while outside their own country. "With the revolution there also came a mass exodus of almost 6 million Iranians out of Iran to various countries around the world," Afshar said. "It was there that for the first time many of these exiles were exposed to the gospel, and eventually a great number of them became followers of Jesus-50,000 by some estimates. It is because of these exiled believers and other faithful ones who never left Iran that (this) phenomenon is unfolding."

There is a good short summary here of some of the important facts that American High School history textbooks routinely leave out.

Like a lot of Australians with military connections, I have always been a great fan of the Salvation Army so I am delighted to hear that Wal-Mart has taken over where Target left off. And I am betting that it won't do Wal-Mart's bottom-line a bit of harm. (Link via Carol Platt Liebau).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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