The WTF stories of the day, plus rants

Netcitizen site Global Voices reports Russia is blocking IP addresses. So what else is new? So is China... and Iran...

and they note this:

Dear Facebook users: unless you’re in Europe, the GDPR won’t save you...

But on April 17, Facebook told Reuters that it will be changing its terms of service so that only EU-based Facebook users will benefit from the privacy protections of the new EU rules.

Once in effect, the data of users outside the EU — all 1.5 billion of them — will instead be governed by US privacy laws, which are less comprehensive and more lenient by far than the EU framework.

4th amendment? What 4th amendment?

But then, I live in the Philippines, so the NSA can spy on me legally anyway.

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I remember a flight to Japan where we had to skirt around a typhoon and were bounced around. I got out my rosary and started to pray, and then the two ladies next to me laughed and got out theirs too.

The only problem with the rosary? The "Hail Mary" ends with the phrase "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death"...uh oh.

Well, GetReligion has links to the story of the Southwest Plane that lost and engine and depressurized at 30 thousand feet before landing successfully in Philadelphia.

they prayed quite a bit.

This was even noted on the NYTimes 

GR also had a post about the Pilot who was flying the plane.

of course, the atheist snide remark is: Well, what about all those who actually crash despite their prayers.

sigh. I know. I knew families of some of those on TWA800.

Well, when I was in medical school, one of our professors noted that few docs were pious, but most believed in God, because we saw many cases where someone should have died, but lives, and tragedies where someone who should have lived, died.

Without faith that there was a plan behind all of this, we would go nuts.

but like "the Miracle on the Hudson" or the story of the Gimli Glider or the Sioux City crash or the Philippine airliner who had a bomb explode, we love to hear stories about surviving against all odds.

So where is God in all of this?
Guiding the hands of the pilot/doctor/rescuer.

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Mark Mallet says don't get upset when the Pope confuses people and hints that rules don't count, because after all he also says such wonderful inspiring things.

The question we must each ask ourselves is this: Have I lost the capacity to hear the Voice of Christ speaking through my shepherds—despite their shortcomings?

Yes. Listen to the Pope, for much of what he says is good.

As Balaam found out, even an ass can speak with the voice of God.

 But does that mean we need to be silent about the bishops/pope's "shortcomings"? (Note: I lived in Altoona when "mercy" was the rule...link2..link3..Link4 )

Mallet then quotes an unnamed source:

... I have been very nourished by his (the Pope's) gentle spirit and call to compassion.

translation: ah but he talks so purty!

this isn't just about sex, you know. It is about every news story where someone embezzled from a church or misused church funding, but didn't get prosecuted because "mercy". And it's about every bishop here in the Philippines who let murderous corrupt politicians sit in the seat of honor at Catholic fiesta masses.

and it gets worse.

 Dreher see the same mindset echoed those nice Canadian bishops, who are looking the other way when baby Trudeau decides he wants to kill off the old. He quotes Flannery O'Connor's tart observation:

“In the absence of faith, we govern by tenderness. And tenderness leads to the gas chamber,” said Flannery O'Connor. Her point was that sentimentality cannot restrain the darker forces in human nature.

(update: the fish rots from the head down in these matters: the newfangled Vatican changes the Vatican pro life academy bodes ill for pro life Catholics.. but that is another rant for another time).

ah but the unnamed "expert" quoted by Mallet goes on to explain that calling evil good and good evil is okay because they are now merely recognizing "ambiguities". The really evil folks are those rigid judgmental types who pop their head up above the crowd to say: wait as second, that's not right.

again, Mallet quotes one of the Pope's defenders who spouts the PC talking points:

I’m afraid schism will come from all this ultra-conservatism in the Church. I don’t like playing into the hands of Satan, the Divider.

(Translation: Bad: that feisty Cajun at EWTN. Good:. wuerl and Daneels).

Joe Paterno call your office...(poor guy: he was only following the example of his bishop).

update. and although it says wuerl promoted strict standards, the dirty little secrets is that this was only on paper; however, the article also notes possible fake accusations (based on heresay rumors) also were going on.

You have to remember two things: One, for an abused young person, the court case that followed was worse than the actual abuse. They would be called liars in front of witnesses, and often treated by neighbors as if they were the cause of the abuse.

Two: the corrupt judicial system meant they covered for each other.

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Spengler on Russia, Trump and the swamp.

Russia is not squeamish about means: Its ally Basher al-Assad killed half a million of his own citizens and displaced about 10 million, while Iran sent 80,000 Shi'ite mercenaries from Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan into Syria to fight next to its own Revolutionary Guard Corps. That is how we got into the present mess. It is hard to untangle this mess without an agreement with Putin.

pol
His opinion is that Trump was duped about the use of nerve gas... and blames the Bushite swamp for pushing it.
I rarely agree with Spengler, but am linking for later slow reading.

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