The martyrdom of the Iraqi Church

Let this be a kind of postscript to the Blogswarm post of the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraqi-American War, to which there is no end in sight.

Did the neocons think about this when they unleashed the dogs of war in Iraq? Do they care?

clipped from blogs.telegraph.co.uk One ancient Christian Church will have no difficulty identifying with the Passion of Jesus during Holy Week: Iraqi Christians, who – thanks to Muslim persecution and Western indifference – may be forced underground, as they were in the days of the Roman Empire. An Iraqi Christian outside the Syrian Catholic church in Baghdad Thousands of Iraqis attended the funeral of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, whose remains were discovered two weeks after his kidnap. A few years ago, the crowds would have been bigger. That is because half of all Iraq’s prewar population of 1.2 million Christians have left the country since the invasion of the country. Did that possibility ever occur to the American neocons? Do they even care?

Hat-tip to the Western Confucian.

Singing to the Plants: Buryat Shamanism Exhibit

This caught my eye since we've been discussing Christianity and shamanism here and here.


Singing to the Plants: Buryat Shamanism Exhibit: "The first seventy years of Soviet power, writes historian Philip Walters, 'saw a sustained offensive against religion on a scale unprecedented in history.' Shamanism — sometimes called black faith — was a particular target; shamans in Siberia were subject to public denunciation, confiscation of their property, and imprisonment. Their drums were impounded, and they were branded kulaks, class enemies — not a frivolous charge, since many shamans were in fact centers of anti-Soviet resistance. Olga Kharitidi tells how, in the 1930s, a number of influential Altai shamans were taken by Soviet KGB employees to Kazakhstan and dumped from a train into the snow."