merry christmas to you all! feel it! + christmas movies i watch

indi padashow says "it feels not like christmas". wtf? is he nuts?

yes spirit of christmas is a subjective thing, but that blogger always writes like a 'civilized' tourist in native drag for a photo op, observing and commenting on 'barbarian' sri lankan customs. that is why he has a long record of getting all things sri lankan wrong; from fight against terrorists down to christmas in sl. that is why he thinks there is a competitive election going on when everyone who is connected to the soil knows that it was a walkover from the start and after the irresponsible lies/gaffes of fonseka a boring old trashing. but i will save those thoughts for another post.

this is about christmas.

as regular readers of this blog know i was brought up as a roman catholic. i call myself an atheist simply bc i am unable to believe in god, rather than bc i have any antipathy towards the church or any love or respect for irrational inconsistent confusions of fellow atheists. people i live with, friends with, or in love with, have always been catholics for the most part.

from my point of view this one of the best christmas seasons i have lived through. iow indi padashow is nuts.

parties, carols, shopping, baking, decorating, cards, school holidays for kids (of my partner), wrapping presents, and thousands of other things are already past or on going. there will be mass, opening of presents, visiting and receiving relatives, cake, more parties, eating and drinking, games, to come. all round good cheer.
btw we do our little bit to spread it to everyone.

suburbs i live around are choked full of ppl and lighted up. driving is impossible.
as always this is the best season for businesses (even in mostly buddhist sri lanka). btw as i have written before, i welcome unabashed consumption and commercialism; "world will be boring and poor (literally) if not for the rampant consumerism of this season".

happy holidays, christmas, and a new year to every one!

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christmas movie tweets

as followers of my twitter know i have been watching christmas movies (alone, with others, or with kids,) in past week or so. i haven't finished them yet. but wanted to gather the tweets into one place. i may update it with later tweets.
term 'christmas movies' used loosely. i don't intend to define it.

"the shop around the corner"(1940). charming, funny & touching, but well grounded not cloyingly sentimental 4.5/5
btw "you've got mail" (1998) is a remake of "the shop around the corner". while not terrible,it is imo very much inferior. 3/5


'miracle on 34th street' 1947 original in b&w. classic! what more can i say? 4.5/5
'miracle on 34th street' 94 remake on tv. should really show much better 1947 original with edmund gwenn, maureen o'hara & natalie wood.


watched "it's a wonderful life" for nth time . 4.5/5 no need to say more.
talking about "it's a wonderful life" > a 1991 article by jimmy stewart about the film & frank capra http://tinyurl.com/ylem9vg


watched "bishop's wife" for the 1st time. enjoyed it very much. 4/5.



'a christmas carol'-1938 version-short,pointed & nicely put together.1984 ver-fleshed out & real. both 4/5


'christmas in connecticut' starring barbara stanwyck et al. forgotten how hilarious it is. 'moonlight snow and a cow' 4/5

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my twitter - http://twitter.com/sittingnut
this blog's twitter - http://twitter.com/llibertarian

time for mannar bishop rayappu joseph to speak up

photo click to enlarge - catholic priests taking part in a terrorist propaganda rally and holding photos of the mass murderer to their heart

i was a roman catholic for most of my life and i have a hunch that i will return to the church before i die. my love for the church was based on more than my faith in god (which at present is non existent). imo its theology is better and more sophisticated that any other religions' philosophy (including buddhism's which i consider a religion btw). i am a great fan of both the current and the previous pope. i also think that catholic church was the greatest formative influence in creation of the modern world and culture in which we live, whether or not we, or the church itself, like how it has turned out. and i love the pageantry, singing, and all other associated paraphernalia.

throughout its history (and especially in recent history) catholic church has been a courageous moral support for peaceful struggles against authoritarian regimes. but unfortunately it is also true that church (or more correctly individual members of it, including very high ranking ones), throughout its history ( and again esp. during recent history ) has been an active collaborator of fascist regimes and political groups, including ones that have used violence and terror against their opponents, ranging from hitler to franco to argentine junta, to columbian paramilitaries, to perpetrators of rwandan genocide, to many others

bishop and terrorists
but church as a whole is not the subject of this post, subject of this post is the behavior of bishop of mannar the most rev. dr rayappu joseph

i oppose peaceniks because they think peace is worth any cost including the cost of democracy, freedom, justice, and human rights. i do not oppose broad calls for peace issued by the church though i consider them rather naive. such calls are generally not slanderous against sri lankans and military (unlike say statements and writings by peacenik ngos like center for policy alternatives, by such terrorist back lickers like groudviews' sanjana hattotuwa, or by racists like indi.padashow, all which are ultimately based on terrorist pussy propaganda and not on facts)

but there are exceptions and mannar bishop is one. he is acting like a peacenik and a ltte back licker, in contrast to archbishop and most of his colleagues.

he has been active in propagating several ltte propaganda inspired slanders. among many, pesalai incident is a case in point. though there was no evidence to back him up he turned what was, at most, either an accident or a case of indiscipline on the part of few navy personnel, and more probably nothing of the kind, into a wholesale and totally unjustified denouncement of the navy and military in general forgetting his christian participles. he had a right to ask for an investigation and to criticize investigation if it was improper, but he had no right to pass judgment. there were several such occasions when he forgot principles of justice and became a terrorist parrot.

priests under him led some police officers in sl child protection agency, to so called ltte controlled areas during ceasefire to arrest a british pedophile ( that catholic priests of all people should help arrest pedophiles is ironic but that is another matter) hiding there. whether the priests were in cahoots with terrorists or not we do not know for certain, but the police officers were kidnapped by ltte and held against their will for months. they were used as bargaining chips by murderous terrorists. and what did bishop of mannar did during that time? nothing.

he has allowed priests under him like the ones depicted above to participate in ltte propaganda and has not disciplined them as far as i know. bishop of mannar himself has attended ltte propaganda rallies and other functions, including reportedly the funeral of roasted murderers like thamilchelvan and have turned a blind eye to child soldiers participating in such functions.

all of that lead us to believe he is a willing collaborator of a murderous fascist group.

a golden opportunity
but if he is not, or at least has changed his mind, he now has a golden opportunity to take the neutral ground that christian shepherds should take .

during the ongoing operation in mannar district ltte has broken its agreement ( great surprise that!) to keep the vicinity of madhu church free of war. it has placed artillery there and is using them to attack security forces as we write. so far military has not retaliated against those positions.

if bishop of mannar is not a peacenik and a ltte bottom licker (all of whom as expected are silent on this), he should speak up and publicly ask ltte to remove the said artillery.

will that influence the ltte to remove the artillery? probably not. but it matters that bishop prove himself to be a christian and not a terrorist supporter. all catholics from archbishop down must pressure him to do so.

without such a call from him, all his statements esp his denouncements against military if and when madhu church sustains damages (hopefully not) will be hypocritical . (this will also be true of all other peaceniks as well, but most of them are beyond the point of no return; they will never oppose terrorist murderers).

so which are you, lord bishop? a supporter of terrorist murders, or a christian?
should we too be forced to prosecute you as a collaborator of terrorists and lover of fascists when the war is over, as argentines have done with several of their priests?

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