...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Beheading on a Greyhound: File this one under “Bus Rides from Hell”—a passenger was murdered and decapitated by another passenger en route from Winnipeg to Edmonton. From Canadian Press via the Edmonton Sun:
WINNIPEG — Police said Thursday they didn’t know what prompted a passenger on a Greyhound bus heading to Winnipeg to viciously attack the man sitting next to him.
Passengers said the man repeatedly stabbed his seat-mate before beheading him and carrying the victim’s head around the bus.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Colwell wouldn’t confirm those details, but did say a 40-year-old suspect was in RCMP custody and police were planning to interview him.
No charges were immediately laid.
Colwell said the behaviour of the passengers and driver probably prevented anyone else from being hurt.
“It’s not something that happens regularly on a bus,” he said. “You’re sitting there enjoying your trip and then all of a sudden somebody gets stabbed. I imagine it would be pretty traumatic ... the way they acted was extraordinary.”
Colwell said they “were very brave. They reacted swiftly, calmly in exiting the bus and as a result nobody else was injured.”
Shocked passengers described the horrific attack as something incomprehensible.
One moment, the quiet man near the back of the bus was minding his own business. The man hadn’t talked to anyone around him, and seemed to pay no attention to the younger fellow sitting next to him, who was listening to music on headphones.
The next moment, witnesses said, the older man stood up, still quiet, and repeatedly stabbed, then beheaded his younger victim.
“We heard this blood-curdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times,” Garnet Caton said Thursday from a hotel in Brandon, Man., where he and other passengers had been taken to rest.
“There was no rage or anything. He was like a robot, stabbing the guy.”
Caton said the bus stopped and everyone scrambled to get out while the attacker started methodically carving up the victim’s body, not paying attention to anyone else.
Caton and the driver shut the bus door from the outside while they waited for police to arrive.
“We put our bodies up against the door, waiting for him to come out ... and he went back and brought the head to the front and pretty much displayed it ... and dropped it on the ground in front of us,” Caton said.
“All very calmly. He was wearing sunglasses. It was no big deal to him.”
Fellow passenger Cody Olmstead from Kentville, N.S., also recalled the chilling scene.
“The guy came to the front of the door with buddy’s head in his hands, decapitated. He dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body back up,” Olmstead said.
When police arrived, the victim and his attacker were the only ones left on the bus, Colwell said.
“When attempts were made to have him exit and surrender to police were unsuccessful, additional resources including the RCMP emergency response team and negotiator team were called in to assist.”
The man eventually tried to flee by breaking a bus window and jumping out, Colwell said.
“He was immediately subdued and arrested without incident and is currently in RCMP custody.”
Both Olmstead and Caton said the attacker and the victim appeared not to know each other.
They said the attacker boarded the bus in Brandon Wednesday night. The victim, who Caton said appeared to be about 19, had been on the bus since Edmonton.
Police would not confirm the victim’s age and said his name would not be released until his family had been notified. The suspect’s name wasn’t released either.
Federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the full weight of the law must be brought to bear on the perpetrator.
“We want to make sure the process is followed as aggressively as possible, the full legal process ....” Day said from Levis, Que., where Conservative MPs are gathered for a summer planning session.
“This particular incident, as horrific as it is, is obviously extremely rare. Certainly the horrific nature of it is probably one-of-a-kind in Canadian history.”
Greyhound called the event tragic but isolated…
Well, I would certainly hope so.
And then there were two (maybe): This one gets two flashing alarms from Ezra Levant, so you know it’s a biggie—B’Nai Brith Canada is calling for a major overhaul of the country’s HRCs:
…The B'nai Brith, historically one of the most partisan supporters of Canada's human rights commissions, has made a dramatic break from the human rights industry, "urgently" calling for a "major overhaul" of Canada's human rights commissions. You can read the full text of their press release on the subject here.
The B'nai Brith is Canada's oldest and largest Jewish service club, dating back to 1875.
Frank Dimant, the Executive Vice-President of BB, said "we have to ensure that commissions do not become abusers of the very human rights they are charged with protecting" -- a clear shot at the HRCs' continuous violation of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, as well as their well-documented procedural abuses and corruption. The Canadian Human Rights Commission, for example, is now under four different investigations, including by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
David Matas, BB's senior legal counsel, was also quoted in their press release, pointing to several illegal and abusive traits of HRCs, including that the same complaints can be filed with multiple HRCs, as was done by the anti-Semitic Canadian Islamic Congress in their complaints against Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn. According to Matas, "Commissions cannot become avenues of harassment in which complaints are simultaneously made in several jurisdictions. The remedy is to introduce rules that will allow for one jurisdiction only."
Matas also suggested deep re-education for the HRCs' corrupt censors, accusing them of ignorance and anachronism. “The remedy for ignorance is education and training. Investigators must be required to undertake compulsory in-house courses that meet these needs. They must always be able to distinguish between hate and protected political speech," he added. That's a pretty clear shot at political censors like Richard Warman and Dean Steacy, the latter of whom actually testified that free speech is not a Canadian value -- despite its entrenchment as a "fundamental freedom" in our Charter of Rights, our Bill of Rights, and our inherited unwritten U.K. constitutional corpus.
Finally, Matas called for costs to be awarded against clear nuisance litigants, like the CIC and the Jew-bashing imam Syed Soharwardy, who simply walked away from his Alberta HRC complaint about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, after saddling taxpayers with $500,000 in costs, and me with nearly $100,000 in costs (another, identical complaint, continues against me.)
Matas said: “Costs must be levied against those whose clear aim is to abuse the system by launching attacks designed to harass bona fide respondents. This would be a deterrent against those who deliberately seek to hijack and corrupt the human rights system in pursuit of their own ideological bent.”
Again, you can see the entire release here.
This is enormous, because it ends the false unanimity amongst Canada's "Official Jews" in support of HRCs. As I've written here, most real Jews are not for censorship; it's just the personal obsession of a few "Professional Jews", like Bernie "Burny" Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and Leo Adler of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
It's not surprising to me that B'nai Brith was the first to bolt the troika of Jewish groups that has turned a blind eye to the HRCs' corruption...
No surprise to me, either. However, I’m not quite as excited about the whole thing as Ezra is, and left the following comment on his blog:
I agree that BB's "breaking ranks" is big news, and could see it coming based on Frank Dimant's blog post of a couple days ago. Unfortunately, I also see this as a case of BB's wanting to have its cake and eat it too, or, as it was expressed in a CJC newsletter, of not wanting to "throw the baby out with the bathwater."
As I wrote re the CJC cliché: The baby's a killer. The bathwater's toxic. THROW THEM BOTH OUT!
So, yes, this is a positive sign and a good first step. However, BB has still to be struck by the epiphany that you can't "fix" something that is inimical to democracy and rotten to the core. It should have learnt that lesson from the UN's "human rights" apparatus, which, despite a major overhaul, is worse than ever, and being used to batter Israel and the interests of the Western world.
“Revirginization surgery”: Yes, that’s really how some plastic surgery clinics refer to hymenoplasty, the procedure which restores a woman to her previously intact condition (so her hubby and his kin, who prize her virginity above almost everything else, won’t be disappointed by the absence of blood on the couple's wedding night).
I got the idea to google “hymenoplasty toronto” from this article in the Toronto Star. The piece is an attempt to normalize the surgery—which really amounts to a doctor colluding in a scam and performing a completely unnecessary procedure— by making it sound as unremarkable as a nose job:
Twenty-five years ago, a young professional couple in Toronto visited a plastic surgeon's office with an unusual request.
She wanted her virginity back.
The pair, born in Iran but raised in Canada, dated through university. She was a lawyer, he, a doctor. They talked often about marriage but a letter from a college in the United States threw a wrench in their plans. He wanted to pursue a medical specialty and that letter was his ticket. She couldn't dream of leaving the rest of her life behind to follow him to Baltimore.
They agreed to part ways but not before she persuaded him to pay for her revirginization.
Since that day, Dr. Robert Stubbs, a Toronto-based plastic surgeon, has performed the operation on hundreds of other women across Canada. He has won international acclaim for refining the hymenoplasty procedure, which involves cutting away the scarred edge of the membrane broken during intercourse and narrowing the entrance of the vagina, then putting the pieces back together. One hour, $2,500, a few dissolving stitches later and voilà: a surgical virgin is made.
"The women came from all backgrounds," says Stubbs, 59, who closed his Yorkville practice last summer to build his dream home in the Haliburton Highlands.
"They were Coptic Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim. The majority were educated, from upper-status families. In spite of their exposure to Western ways, they still had this need to follow their family's culture. They said they would not force their daughters to do this but they were caught with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new."
While women around the world have been secretly reclaiming their virginity for decades, the procedure, and its moral and legal implications, has recently been thrust into the spotlight.
Just a few weeks ago, a court in northern France annulled the marriage of a Muslim couple because the bride had lied about her virginity. The groom reportedly learned of his bride's deception the night of their wedding and promptly outed her to the guests who were still partying on the dance floor. The annulment sparked a national debate so heated that the justice ministry asked the local public prosecutor to appeal the case. The appeal court is expected to deliver its ruling this fall.
Named after the Greek god of marriage, the hymen has no known biological function. While cultures that highly value virginity believe an intact hymen is the marker of a pure woman, scientific fact shows the hymen can break for reasons that have nothing to do with sex.
In Canada, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons does not keep tabs on who performs hymenoplasty or how many of these surgeries are logged each year. "From the college perspective, it's not owned by one particular specialty," says spokesperson Cecily Wallace.
In Toronto, an increasing number of cosmetic surgery clinics, where some doctors may have limited training, seem to be cashing in on hymenoplasty, promoting the service online and in print...
After including some criticism of the practice, the article wraps up on a positive note, with the words of Dr. Stubbs, revirginizer: "For years I've been telling my colleagues, and everyone else I'm not crazy. Maybe the reality's setting in."
Maybe. Then again, Star readers who left a comment didn't appear to be buying it. Here’s what a few of them had to say:
· And we wonder why the health care system is overburdened?
This has got to be the most ridiculous waste of time on an already overburdened health care system that I have ever heard. What is obvious is that physicians who are performing this medically unnecessary surgery on women are making a good buck from it. It is only a matter of time before, in the name of multiculturalism, O.H.I.P will begin footing the bill and and we will all be paying for this procedure while the wait times for essential surgery continues to grow. What a travesty!
· The doctors cynically use ignorance and fear for profit
No self respecting physician would do such a procedure. It's catering to medievalism and ignorance. The profit is obscene. Similar minor local surgeries are billed to OHIP at 100-200$. Taking $3000 is disgusting. No doubt there is a reason why the two clinics mentioned in the article are under investigation. The mere fact that they offer this procedure tells me what I need to know about their ethics and how much they care about their patients. Multiculturalism is a curse on this country. When will be put an end to that foolishness.
· Hymens can be broken in many ways
It is not just sex that breaks a hymen. It can be caused by all sorts of sports and activities and since women in the west are a lot more active in these ways then women in these traditional cultures it would seem to be impossible to claim that a broken hymen could be used as evidence of a non-virgin. And as the story says, insuring virginity is just a way for men to show their dominance over and ownership of women. It has no place in our society. Just one more piece of multi-culturalism run amuck!
A triumph for Elmo, Mr. Boudjengles and “hurt feelings”: The news that airport security officers at Toronto’s Pearson airport will be forced to endure “sensitivity training”—the result of concerted lobbying by two of Canada’s most prominent Muslim groups—has ricocheted off the pages of the Toronto Star right into Islam Online (my bolds):
CAIRO — Hundreds of officers at Pearson, Canada's busiest airport, will receive sensitivity training to guarantee a better treatment of Muslim and Arab passengers, to the welcome of lobbying groups, Toronto Star reported on Thursday, July 31.
"The CBSA constantly takes steps including outreach and training to ensure our services are not discriminatory or perceived to be discriminatory," said Patrizia Giolti, spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency.
The sensitivity courses, to start from September through March, will be give to 500 officers at Pearson airport, Canada's busiest airport.
The aim is to help officers "effectively perform their enforcement responsibilities in a respectful manner," said the CBSA.
Muslim passengers have long complained of being singled out for searches at Canadian airports.
They are often questioned about their activities and purchase abroad, have their luggage searched and passport information taken down.
"We feel that this is a type of profiling, which must cease," said Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.
"After 9/11 we became all potential terrorists without doubt, and we still have some examples of people being picked up from the line because they wear long beards or the hijab," agrees Mohamed Boudjenane, executive director of the Canadian Arab Federation.
"It still happens on a regular basis."
Lobbying
Elmasry hailed the sensitivity courses are an "excellent idea".
He said the courses are in line with seminars and speeches his group has organized for federal employees over the past two years about the treatment of Muslim passengers.
Boudjenane, of the Canadian Arab Federation, agrees.
"That sort of proactive act, or measure, didn't come out of the blue," he insisted.
His group has organized meetings with federal employees to discuss complaints of profiling of and discrimination against Muslim passengers.
"We had to lobby very hard with them to realize that you cannot (target certain groups) because you have preconceived perceptions or because there are all sorts of clichés out there."…
Au contraire, Mr. Boudjengles. You most certainly can and should "target certain groups—until such time as those walking cliches cease and desist efforts to hijack airliners and murder passengers: it ain't Wiccans or Mormons trying to sneak onboard with liquid explosives in bottles of dandruf shampoo. Unless we are prepared to see aircraft destroyed and bodies blown to smithereens, "hurt feelings" must not be allowed to take precedence over security. As for "sensitivity training," I think it's a great idea—for Elmo, who has said that all Jewish Israeli adults are fair game for exploding shahids, and for Mr. Boudjengles, whose organization purveys the Big Lies about the Jewish state. However, I'm not holding my breath that those two will ever get "sensitive".
Update: Canadian songbird Jann Arden has some advice on the subject.
Chomsky’s swill: Mullah-booster/America-basher Noam Chomsky offers his take on the current scene to the readers of Tehran Times (my bolds):
TEHRAN - There are some speculations on prospects of Iran-U.S. relations. Washington sent its senior diplomat William Burns to Geneva talks on July 19 to join European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and envoys from China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.
Burns had said that he would be a listener in the meeting. Some analysts believed that his presence was a kind of diplomatic quibble. They believe this is a sign of shift in U.S. policy on Iran.
However, the influential American philosopher and author, Noam Chomsky, has a different view.
“I do not think the difference between participation and listening is a diplomatic quibble,” Chomsky told the Mehr News Agency in a recent interview.
“The Bush administration is under severe international and domestic pressure to rein in its radical extremism, which has led to catastrophes everywhere, and might bring about even worse ones” the American lecturer noted.
“Sending a non-participant observer is a way to avoid negotiations and diplomacy while trying to fend off criticism,” Chomsky commented.
Washington has signaled it is ready to open a diplomatic mission in Tehran for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Chomsky said the U.S. may use the diplomatic outpost to undermine the Islamic Republic’s government under the pretext of defending human rights.
“Setting up a diplomatic office is pretty much the same, I think. The office can also be used for subversion under the pretext of protecting human rights, as in Cuba”.
“Nonetheless, I think these steps should be encouraged, though without illusions. The American population, by a large majority, opposes threats against Iran and favors diplomacy. These small steps can perhaps open the way towards bringing the government towards public opinion,” Chomsky added
Right, Noam, because we wouldn’t want anyone to “undermine” those nice mullahs—them and their nice shiny nukes.
Better late than never: CIJA honcho and newbie blogger Hershell Ezrin says that Mark “Malarkey” MacKinnon’s ‘dozer piece in the Globe and Mail (the one in which Malarkey observed the “irony” of Jews getting flattened by bulldozers manned by Palestinian terrorists) “crossed a line”.
Gee, ya think?
As Hershell sees it,
…For a Canadian public who (sic) accepts equivalency and generally reacts to Middle East violence with ‘a plague on all their houses’, the story might evoke a brief review or a careless acknowledgment. For those who are friends of Israel, the thesis was repugnant. But there have certainly been other stories that have aggravated and frustrated, so why I have singled out this one for commentary?
The answer is that MacKinnon’s article, and the editors who sanctioned its placement in the news section of the Globe and Mail, crossed a very important red line. His reporting was designed, in my opinion, to lead readers to only one conclusion: that the Israelis got what they deserved. In placing this article in the general news sections of the paper instead of its opinion pages, the Globe and Mail entered the realm of advocacy, thereby undermining the ‘objective character’ of its news pages. The result is similar to what you get in the latest Oliver Stone movie about President George W. Bush’s youth or any good HBO biopic; the truth is selected, while objectivity, fairness and accuracy take a distant second place to advancing a one-sided story line. So much for giving readers the facts so that they can form intelligent choices…
Er, sorry to have to break it to you, Hershell, but MacKinnon (along with his wife, the lovely and talented Carolynne Wheeler) crossed that line long before you started blogging. Nice of you to finally notice, though.
Chick “power”: Sharia decrees a second class status for women, who must submit to the authority of both man and Allah. At the moment, though, there is one area in which Muslim women are accorded equal status: the “privilege” of being a mass-murdering "martyr". Phyllis Chesler, a long-time feminist and critic of Islamic doctrine pertaining to women, explains why an increasing number of women are becoming shahidas:
…And, we are used to hearing that women in the Third World, including the Islamic world, are victims, not killers. How can they be both? They can.
According to the U.S. Military, in the last five years in Iraq, 43 women carried out suicide bombings.Women hide their explosive belts and bombs under their flowing black abayas–one more reason that such outerwear should be banned in the West. Actually, Muslims kill more Muslims than anyone else does. This latest attack was apparently launched by Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims. It might be in the interests of Islam to ban such clothing which has been used to disguise both male and female terrorists.
Of course, The New York Times suggests that “despair” and “spousal grief” drives women to become suicide terrorists.
Not so fast.
Women who have been despised and abused since birth may be especially vulnerable to the kind of ideological and religious entrapment which promises them glory (and their families money). Also, due to inbreeding/first cousin marriage and family violence, they may be mentally retarded, already terrorized, or prone to depression and therefore easy to manipulate. Or, female suicide killers may be filled with rage–enough rage so that they want to scapegoat strangers to avenge themselves against family intimates.
True, some women are mourning the loss of brothers, fathers, and sons but what about Islamist ideology? What about al-Qaeda handlers who tempt women with glory just as they tempt men? What about the Palestinian members of Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigade, Hezbollah and Hamas (al-Qaeda does this too), who exploit depressed, mentally ill, and mentally retarded women into strapping on an explosive belt and blowing themselves up? What about a culture in which being born female is often a capital crime, a culture in which girls and women are honor murdered for the slightest, alleged infringements of the patriarchal rules? If someone feels she is already a marked woman, why not redeem her shame by going out in a blaze of glory and taking some infidels along with her?...
Glory? Money? Surely there has to be some bigger enticement than that. But it seems that, in death as in life, the chicks get stiffed. For while the lads are promised scores of luscious vixens and untold delights forbidden them during their corporeal existence, women are promised…dwarfs? Now, if the payoff was said to be an eternal spa staffed by Cary Grant and Brad Pitt look-alikes, then maybe one could understand the allure.
Bambi’s “puzzling” rut: Despite nine whole days of rapturous media coverage, the candidate returned home from his whirlwind tour to more or less the same polling numbers as before. What gives?, asks an L.A. Times pundit:
…He still leads Republican Sen. John McCain 51-44. But it's the same 51-44 as last time.
A CNN poll average shows an even slimmer 48-45 Obama lead, dangerously close for an experienced opponent who relishes being the underdog.
"Obama has not picked up any ground against McCain on foreign issues," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "And some 52% think McCain would do a better job than Obama on the war in Iraq — virtually the same number who felt that way in April."
Other polls show the same stubborn one-digit lead holding for the Democratic nominee-to-be with only 96 days left until the general election. Some crucial state polls even show McCain gaining.
Obama seems to have everything going for him. A fresh face. A smooth, cadenced speaking style suited for TV. A message of change at a time when Americans historically favor change, after one party holds the White House for two terms. And after several convictions of GOP legislators.
Obama's got tons of money. An attractive family. Energized followers. A media that's curious about the new guy and tired of....
...the dogged old POW one. High gas prices, a poor housing market, a two-front war ongoing and a slightly sagging economy, all of which should help political challengers. Not to mention an unpopular incumbent president.
A lead's a lead, but political strategists are puzzled.
I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Americans weren’t so taken with the sight of a candidate acting as if he were already the president: overweening arrogance is never appealing, especially in one so young. There was also that unfortunate “citizen of the world” remark—not likely to be a selling point with those who prefer that their president, first and foremost, be a citizen of America, one who will represent and fight for America’s interests. (If they love you in France--where, after all, the only Americans they really like are Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen--that's a sign, for some, that something is seriously wrong.) Furthermore, Bambi had hoped that hopping onto the world stage would make it appear as if that was where he belonged—a colossus in the making. Instead, it made him look smaller, punier, like the wet-behind-the-ears, out-of-his-depth one term senator he is. In that sense, while his “optics” are good at home—attractive guy, picture-perfect family—the visuals of Bambi abroad weren’t nearly as compelling.
Green with envy: That's probably how Canada's "anti-hate" types feel, knowing that China is going to be able to "censor" the Internet for the duration of the Olympics (and beyond).
The worst man at the wost possible time: Hasta la vista, Olmert. You were not, as they say, good for the Jews:
A disast'rous P.M. named Ehud
Never, ever did what he should
He was feckless and blind--
The blithering kind--
Who was always up to no good.
Ontario government priorities: "No" to more law schools; "yes" to Palestinian propoganda.
No pain, tons of gain: The anti-hate industry mounts a rear-guard action in the National Post— a lame defence of censorship from one of Canada’s long-standing “Nazi hunters”:
…The Canadian Human Rights Commission has been at the forefront of the war against hate in this country for decades. I personally believe it played a key role in eviscerating Canadian hate groups in the 1980s and 1990s. It helped shut down vile telephone hate lines and Internet sites that targeted vulnerable minorities. It forced the Heritage Front to focus on defending itself against complaints rather than on perpetrating acts of hate. After failing to obey cease and desist orders obtained against them by the CHRC, several members of organized hate groups were later incarcerated for contempt of court.
As the Internet grows, so does the commission's important role of defending Canadians against dot-com racists. Ernst Zundel was one of the first in Canada to use the Internet as a tool to spread hatred. I knew Zundel well; I infiltrated his downtown Toronto lair as part of my work with CSIS, and was part of a "security detail" protecting him and others. Zundel's agenda was quite clear to me: target Jews and create an atmosphere of hatred. It is thanks to the CHRC and Canada's anti-hate laws that he was unable to succeed. Canadians should be commending this kind of work, not condemning it.
The CHRC is experiencing growing pains -- the world is changing, and the commission has to change with it. Growth isn't always easy. Sometimes it's messy. But to cut the CHRC off at the knees as it goes through the growth process would be a grave mistake. - Grant Bristow infiltrated Canada's neo-Nazi movement in the late 1980s on behalf of CSIS.
No “growing pains” that I can see. The monster has now morphed into a behemoth that is becoming bigger and more powerful by the day, and that poses a far greater threat to Canadian interests than all of our Zundels combined (all, what, twelve of them?).
But how could a Nazi-hunter ever acknowledge that truth, since to do so would render his services—and his worldview—obsolete?
Update: The article has been posted on the CJC site, of course.
Awwwww: Puppy lullabye.
Wish it worked on my pup. When he hears music, he howls like a banshee.
Little orphan antics: Here’s a heart-warming story from Arab News about orphans and the efforts of one young humanitarian to bring a little sunshine to their drab young lives:
JEDDAH: A group of young Saudis has joined forces with a number of associations to organize the so-called “Love Festival” that aims at helping orphans enjoy the various activities as part of Jeddah summer festival.
The Love Festival, which takes place at King Fahd Coastal City in Jeddah on Thursday, was one of the efforts initiated by the Friends of Orphans group, which was founded last year by a number of young students.
Ghassan Gamal, a 23-year-old soft-spoken Saudi graduate and founder of the group, said that the festival would hold various contests and activities for orphans who are cared for by various charitable organizations.
The event, he said, is co-organized by the Community Friends Committee, the Charitable Establishment for Orphans’ Care and the Jeddah Volunteering Club.
He said that the idea of the group came to him after volunteering with one of Saudi Aramco’s social programs. “I felt good when I saw the orphans happy and smiling, and I just couldn’t stop there,” he said.
Gamal formed a Facebook group, which caught the attention of numerous young boys and girls.
“The group is increasing in number as we receive many messages from young people who are willing to volunteer,” he said.
Members of the group make visits to orphanages, where they present gifts, spend time playing and mingling with the orphans in addition to organizing outdoor events. “We want the orphans to feel that we remember them, we love them and we are there for them,” he said.
Gamal’s group seeks sponsors for bigger programs that involve outdoor events, training courses and many other activities.
The group members meet to brainstorm and finalize organizational issues for the programs they plan. “We have set up many programs and events for this year’s summer vacation with the help of other charitable organizations and the private sector,” he noted.
Apart from the Love Festival, the group has planned a sports event where the orphans will practice soccer under famous Brazilian trainers. “Many other programs will take place during this month and we would hold more meetings to come up with new ideas,” Gamal said.
He said that the group’s activities have extended to other cities around the Kingdom. “We have successfully organized a two-week tour of Jeddah for orphan girls from Madinah and the Eastern Province,” he said.
“The growing number of volunteers has made the group more lively and respected. We will continue our work to support the orphans because it makes us feel happy and blessed.”
And why, you may ask, are there orphanages in the Magic Kingdom? Why aren’t these orphans adopted by their egregiously wealthy landsmen, who can certainly afford to raise another child or two? It’s because back in the day a certain messenger of God renounced adoption (because he wanted to marry his adopted son’s divorced wife), thus setting the precedent that’s been followed ever since.
Way to go, Mo!
What’s the difference between “interfaith dialogue” and abject, dhimmified groveling?: As Isi Leibler writes in the Jerusalem Post, not a whole heck of a lot:
A global conference promoting interfaith dialogue sponsored by the current Saudi regime sounds somewhat like South African proponents of apartheid holding a global kumbaya extolling the virtues of racial equality.
That is not to deny that King Abdullah broke new ground by hosting an interfaith conference and for the first time inviting Jews to participate in a Saudi-sponsored event. Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultation, exuberantly described it as "an historic event" and a prelude "to the opening up of Saudi society," although he did caution that "time will tell if this is the beginning or just another event of no consequence."
Regrettably, being hosted by King Abdullah had such an intoxicating impact on some Jewish participants that they lost their bearings and indulged in excessive praise of their host that degenerated into groveling.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfeld, chairman of the National Center for Learning and Leadership, stressing that he was not naïve, claimed that immediately after he had blessed King Abdullah "with whom God shares divine glory," he saw the king's eyes fill with tears. Rabbi Michael Lerner, head of the radical Tikkun group, suggested that "for those of us who despair about Christianity and Judaism having gone astray... the notion that Islam might be the spark that generates a new religious revival based on mutual respect and spiritual intensity could dramatically expand our understanding of the endless potential for God to surprise us."
Walter Ruby, from the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, compared King Abdullah's initiative to Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, forgetting that the Soviet reformer initiated dramatic reforms within his country, whereas Saudi Arabia still represents the most extreme example of fanatical Wahhabi style Islamic extremism.
In fact, state sponsored export of Wahhabism has produced a global network of jihadist Islamic schools and institutions which sanctify violence. This has led to the creation of centers throughout the world nurturing terrorist cadres and incubating many of the suicide bombers who are at the forefront of terrorist activities.
Saudi Arabia denies entry to Jews and prohibits all religions other than Islam the right to establish houses of worship. Saudi imams openly promote virulent anti-Semitism, depicting Jews in mosques and on TV as descendents of apes and pigs who should be killed. To this day, the Saudi educational system continues to incorporate obscenely anti-Semitic texts.
CLEARLY, KING Abdullah in his old age did not become transformed overnight into a liberal. But he is astute enough to realize that his country is under great threat from the expanding Iranian dominated Shi'ite crescent and is desperately seeking to bolster the regime's poor standing in the United States and Europe. That was the prime objective of Abdullah's interfaith conference.
Not surprisingly, the conference took place in Madrid rather than Jedda or Mecca.
Initially, "Rabbi" Yisroel Dovid Weiss, the New York Natorei Karta crackpot who had previously attended the Iranian Holocaust denial conference, was designated to be the only Jew to speak from the podium. After protests supported by an American Muslim imam engaged in interfaith activity, the Saudis backed down and disinvited Weiss. He was substituted by US interfaith guru Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who had hosted Pope Benedict XVI at his Park Avenue synagogue during his recent visit New York.
No Israeli rabbis were invited. Rabbi David Rosen, being Israeli with dual nationality, was designated as an American. In fact, aside from a brief exchange, Israel was kept off the agenda…
It is shameful that any Jew—even the obviously deranged, like the Natorei nutjobs—deigned to participate in this pathetic, despicable charade.
Moonbat go home: The Ceeb was playing up this story big time yesterday—a clueless useful idiot, a pawn of the jihad, who went to Israel to stir up trouble. From Yahoo! News:
OTTAWA (CBC) - A Canadian student who said he was beaten following his arrest in Israel last week is due to return home Wednesday.
Victor MacDiarmid, 23, was ordered deported after being arrested last Wednesday while taking photographs at a demonstration by women from the Palestinian village of Nilin in the West Bank.
The women oppose the construction of the next section of Israel's security barrier, which they say will separate them from their farmland.
Speaking to CBC News from a phone in the prison where he is being held, MacDiarmid described what happened after an Israeli soldier and police officer arrested him last week.
"They slapped me around, punched me up a bit, gave me a few kicks and spit in my face a couple of times," he said Tuesday.
"All in all it probably took maybe a bit less than 10 minutes, maybe more than five minutes."
MacDiarmid has not been charged with a crime. An Israeli defence spokeswoman contacted by CBC News refused to comment publicly, saying the issue is a court matter as the young man is about to be deported.
In a statement published earlier, however, the spokeswoman's office said MacDiarmid and another man were arrested for violating a closed military zone and attacking two border police officers.
MacDiarmid, who is studying international relations at the University of Toronto, has been held in a detention centre in Tel Aviv since his arrest. A Canadian consular official who visited him over the weekend reported he is in good health.
Victor's father, Robert MacDiarmid, said his wife, Angela Garcia, will be picking Victor up in Toronto, and he will be relieved to get his son home to Kingston, Ont.
"I mean this has been absolutely brutal," Robert MacDiarmid said Tuesday, adding that he just found out Friday that Victor was beaten at the time of the arrest by soldiers or border police.
Victor MacDiarmid has spent the past month in the West Bank volunteering for International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led group that protests against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip using "nonviolent, direct-action" methods.
During that time, he has been hit at least twice by rubber-tipped steel bullets, said MacDiarmid's father, who provided photographs of his son's wounds.
Despite such experiences, Robert MacDiarmid said he thinks his son will want to continue volunteering and he accepts that.
"It's good work, it needs to be done and I wouldn't object if he decided to go back."
Helping jihadis expunge Jewish sovereignty is “good work,” huh? Boy, the rotten apple sure didn’t fall far from that tree.
Silence is golden (saith sharia): Even with a First Amendment affirming an individual’s right to free speech, America is currently succumbing to the same pressures of political correctness that are inhibiting the rest of the West and its ability to defend itself against the onrush of sharia. In the U.S., various federal bodies, including Foggy Bottom, are now eschewing clear-thinking-and-speaking in favour of the kind of mush-mouthed euphemism supposedly intended to spare “hurt feelings”. Fortunately, there’s at least one American politician who “gets” the importance of clarity, and who is willing to fight for it. From FrontPage Magazine:
During the past year, several federal agencies – including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the National Counter Terrorism Center – have declared a war on words. Specifically, these agencies have issued memoranda discouraging their employees from naming the enemy in the War on Terror. The prohibition included words such as “jihad,” “Islamist,” “Islamofascism,” and “caliphate,” among others.
It’s not that the terms are inaccurate. Quite the contrary, as the agencies conceded, they often are used by the terrorists themselves. But they urged censorship all the same. Calling jihadists “holy warriors,” as they call themselves, is accurate, but it risks glorifying them. Moreover, even when used accurately, words like “Islamist” might be misinterpreted by moderate Muslims – who are henceforth to be known as “mainstream Muslims” – and should therefore be avoided so as not to offend anyone in the Muslim community. The phrase “Muslim community” should also be avoided.
To be sure, all the memos featured disclaimers stating that they were “not official policy.” But the fact that they were distributed on agency letterhead suggested at least a tacit endorsement of their content. Taken together, the memos marked a victory for government-imposed political correctness over clarity in the War on Terror.
That’s certainly how Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra saw it. On May 8, 2008, Hoekstra introduced an amendment to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that would prohibit government agencies from using any intelligence funding to enforce their new speech code. The amendment states: “None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act my be used to prohibit or discourage the use of the words or phrases ‘jihadist’, ‘jihad’, ‘Islamofascism’, ‘caliphate’, ‘Islamist’ or ‘Islamic terrorist’ by or within the intelligence community or the Federal Government.”
At first the amendment failed to make it out of committee. Consequently, 900 people signed a petition in protest. As a result, on July 16, 2008, the Intelligence Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2009, which included Hoekstra’s amendment, was presented to the full House of Representatives. This time the amendment passed in a 249-180 vote. All 180 opposing votes came from Democrats. Despite this opposition from their party’s leadership, 55 Democratic Congressmen voted in favor of the amendment.
During the floor debate, Rep. Hoekstra made a case for the critical importance of words in the conflict with Islamic terrorists. “Al Qaeda itself uses these terms to describe its fight against America, our allies, and moderate Muslims around the world,” Hoekstra noted. “Why then would we prohibit our intelligence professionals from using the same words to accurately describe Al Qaeda’s stated goals?”
Hoekstra also noted that the agencies’ memos suppress free speech. Citing death threats that jihadists routinely make to authors, cartoonists and journalists, he insisted that government agencies must not stifle free speech. Yet another danger of mandating political correctness, he observed, it that it would contribute to the politicalization of America’s national intelligence community.
On each of these counts, Hoekstra is correct. But more is at stake than free speech. The government’s memos preclude an honest and open discussion about the nature of our enemy. Terrorism in a tactic, but we are fighting those who subscribe to a dangerous ideology – radical Islam – that we ignore at our peril. It was not a coincidence that the Council on American Islamic Relations, a group with longstanding ties to Islamic terrorist organizations and