Magic Statistics

The first destination of St Paul's first missionary journey, on which he was accompanied by St Barnabas, was Cyprus.

While they [the Christians at Antioch] were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.

The ancient city of Salamis was located in north Cyprus, an area that in 1974 was invaded and occupied by Turkey, forcing 200,000 Greek Cypriots living in the north to flee to the south. Since then, Cyprus has been divided. The Turks have been destroying the north's Christian heritage and conducting a program of Islamisation.

[I]f Paul and Barnabas were to return to Cyprus today, to the northern part of the island, they would find not the Romans as governors, but the Turks.

And instead of a Christianity being born, they would find a dying Christianity, with the churches and monasteries in ruin, or else transformed into stables, hotels, and mosques.
. . .
Almost the entire artistic patrimony of the Orthodox Church in the territory occupied by the Turks – 520 buildings between churches, chapels, and monasteries – has been sacked, demolished, or disfigured. Only three churches and one monastery, the monastery of Saint Barnabas, which has been turned into a museum, are in a more or less dignified state.

“The ruin is before our eyes, but the European Union prefers to look the other way,” the Cypriot foreign minister, George Iacovou, bitterly tells us. “The only hope is that, in the course of negotiations for Turkey’s adhesion to the EU, someone might pull out the dossier of shame.”

Islamic sites in the south have not been so treated.

Huseyn Ozel, a government spokesman for the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, displays great cordiality with the foreign journalist. The destroyed and sacked churches? “There was a war, and bad things happened on both sides,” he explains.

I point out to him that most of the mosques in Greek Cypriot territory have been restored, while his government has authorized the transformation of churches into restaurants and hotels, an insult to the sentiment of believers. “They did this to keep the buildings from falling into ruin, and anyway, these are decisions made by the preceding government, which I do not share,” Ozel counters.

I insist: what do you have to say about the churches that, still today, are being turned into mosques? The Turkish Cypriot functionary spreads his arms wide: “It is an Ottoman custom…”

Greek Cypriots still hope that Europe will pressure Turkey to preserve Christian sacred sites that remain in north Cyprus. Turkey's desire to join the EU gives some leverage, but there has been no interest in exploiting this on behalf of Cyprus.

Read the whole thing.

via Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has proposed that the country's coat of arms be re-designed to alter "reactionary" aspects, viz, the posture of the horse.

Specifically, the white horse now gallops to the left across the coat of arms, rather than to the right, as a symbol of the "21st century Socialism" being created in Mr Chavez's Bolívarian republic.

The new horse is also looking straight ahead, in a change from the existing design, in which it is looking backwards over its shoulder.
. . .
This deplorable situation was first pointed out to him by his youngest daughter, Rosinés, who asked why the white horse was galloping to the right.

Venezuela's Congress has approved the change. The original coat of arms is shown here.

Mr Chavez is also threatening bloggers.

Venezuela’s dictator has issued his first threat against bloggers. The threat his supporters ran in Ultimas Noticias today identifies them as ‘The Anglo-Venezuelan Connection’, presumably because they write in English.

He's probably upset because they're making fun of his horse.

PubliusPundit link via Dust My Broom.

An advertisement filmed in Yukon and shown on British television provoked 71 complaints from viewers.

The complainants said the ad is racist and denigrates Inuit culture. They also said the ad promotes activities that are harmful to the environment.

The commercial for Land Rover's Discovery 3 shows an Inuk musher driving his sled and dog team across the frozen wastes when the Discovery 3 SUV cruises up alongside and passes him. As the Land Rover goes by, the musher is captivated by the vehicle and becomes so distracted that he doesn't see a snow bank ahead. His dog team runs over the bank, the sled tips, and he falls off in the snow. The ad ends with him chasing the Land Rover and his dog team as they head off into the distance.

The commercial was filmed in the Yukon around the Dawson City area in 2005. The dogmusher was played by Nunavut resident Natar Ungalaq.

The complaints were considered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which absolved the ad on all counts. The decision is found on pages 4 and 5 of this pdf document. Some of it made for hilarious reading on the part of this Yukon resident. The overly sensitive British TV viewers apparently know little about real life here in the frozen North.

60 viewers complained the ad showed behaviour harmful to the environment. Many objected that it was distasteful to show a vehicle such as the Discovery 3 in an Arctic landscape because of the effect climate change had had in the Artic [sic] and therefore on indigenous people. The viewers considered such vehicles contributed significantly to global warming.

It's "distasteful" to show an SUV in the Arctic? They're all over the place around here. You can buy them at local car dealerships. Some are even purchased and driven by indigenous people!

As for "contributing significantly to global warming", I hope no one gets upset to be informed that, when the temperature drops below -25C or so, locals drive to the stores and leave their vehicles idling in the parking lot while they're shopping. When it was -35C, cars were left running outside the movie theater while the family was inside watching The Lord of the Rings. If you leave a car or truck turned off and sitting outside for an hour or three at that temperature, it probably won't start without a battery boost. And, even if it does start, motor oil has congealed and that's murder on the engine. Best just to leave it running.

The racism charge is completely wrong-headed. Aboriginal people drive the same vehicles as non-aboriginals: cars, trucks, snowmobiles, SUVs, dog sleds, motorcycles (in the summer), you name it. There is no longer anything specifically indigenous about dog sleds.

The advertisement can be viewed free through this site, so you can check it out for yourself.

Shane Rosenthal, producer of the White Horse Inn, went to the National Pastors' Convention in San Diego last month and asked several attendees some simple questions about Christian doctrine. The results, he says, "are not only shocking, they are maddening!"

via Christdot via Relapsed Catholic.

We can only hope.

The headline is a quote from Microsoft commentator Paul Thurrot, speaking about the similarities between Mac OS X and the new Windows operating system Vista.

I have certain misgivings about Vista resembling Mac OS X. With its translucent windows, such comparisons are going to be hard to avoid. But Vista's similarity with OS X goes well beyond window dressing. Certain applications, such as Calendar, Sidebar, and Photo Gallery, appear to be directly, ahem, influenced by similar applications in OS X.

Mac OS X has been out since 2001, and Windoze is still trying to catch up. Typical. Vista is currently scheduled for public release in December, so it should actually arrive in stores within a few years.

via Macworld UK.

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