Monthly Archives: July 2012

“Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality”

Cross-posted on the Corner: In an attempt to counter the growing encroachment of liberalism into his realm, Czar Nicholas I (reigned 1825-55) argued for an empire based on the three pillars of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality”, an idea that came … Continue reading

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Free the Pussy Rioters!

Via the New York Times: MOSCOW — When four young women in balaclavas performed a crude anti-Putin song on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in February, it seemed like just one more episode in a season … Continue reading

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Balkanization Watch

Via the New York Post: Brooklyn has lost its right to bare arms. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish business owners are lashing out at customers at dozens of stores in Williamsburg, trying to ban sleeveless tops and plunging necklines from their aisles. It’s … Continue reading

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When Leaps of Faith Go Awry

Cross-posted on the Corner: Via the Guardian: During a four-day gathering in California entitled Unleash the Power Within, the famed lifestyle guru [Tony Robbins] encouraged participants to take a leap of faith and test their luck on the red-hot surface. … Continue reading

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A Miserable Chapter

Via Der Spiegel International: Until into the 1990s, doctors and nuns in Spain allegedly stole newborn babies and sold them to couples hoping to adopt. The vast scope of this lucrative baby-snatching network is only now coming to light as … Continue reading

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The Limitlessness of Self-Importance

Plus a little victimhood by proxy… A Pagan Soccer Mom writes: Friday, September 21 has been declared Covered in Light International Day. This event has been started by the group Covered in Light, a group of Pagan/Polytheist women who choose … Continue reading

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The significance of Aurora shootings? Maybe not much.

Another non-Muslim demonstrates how easy it is to inflict mayhem on American civilians.  If we were teeming with home-grown (or immigrant) radicalised Islamists, as U.S. Representative Peter King and his orbiting neocon activists maintain, we should be seeing such attacks on … Continue reading

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Bewitched

Via Guernica, another reminder of the permanence of superstition, the reinvention of the past (the Goddess?) and the magpie “spirituality” of the West: Photographer Katarzyna Majak shoots her subjects in vivid color, posing each one as a healer, a goddess, … Continue reading

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A Question of Identity (ctd)

More on this story (from the Guardian): Proposals to draft ultra-Orthodox men into the Israeli army, ending an exemption that has lasted for 64 years, are bitterly dividing prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition government ahead of a crucial debate on … Continue reading

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Against the Hotel/Porn Axis

Via the Daily Mail: A Christian scholar and a Muslim leader have teamed up to ask hotel chain[s] to stop offering pay-per-view porn. Robert P. George, Princeton University professor and former chairman of the Christian group the National Organization for … Continue reading

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