Radio Memories: Hope For Haiti

I've often wondered what causes a nation more affliction: to possess too much history, or too little.

The attention to Haiti's tragic earthquake has put her recent and long-term history in the spotlight as well, revealing a nation reliving a cycle of enslavement, revolution and retribution. The history of injustice imposed from without (such as the indemnity French king Charles X demanded in 1825 as compensation for lost profits from a lost colony) competes in outrage with the miseries self-imposed from within. It's a textbook example of fallen mankind's inherent ability to hate "the other", how poisonous the natural urge for revenge can be, and how difficult a path it is to look for ways to forgive past transgressions.

If we possess too little knowledge of the past, the loss deprives us of the awareness of the rare good examples to follow, of the suffering of others before us who nevertheless put aside grievances in order to declare, "the past starts today". Yet knowing too much, being fully aware of humanity's endless capacity for cruelty, makes it only too easy to believe that the past is prologue, and that therefore vengeance is likely justified defense against inevitable aggressions to come. It's so hard to bury the hatchet, when everybody remembers precisely where it is buried... and why it was buried in the first place.

Haiti is haunted by its past, as so many of us are as individuals, chained to our own personal histories, to the sins we chose to commit as well as the sins visited upon us by others. In looking for inspiration to keep faith in the belief of a better future for Haiti I looked back this week to earlier examples offering reasons to find hope for Haiti, examples in the form of radio dramas.

The arrival of television in the 1950s came at the expense of an older art form, performed on radio: radio drama. Radio's theatrical tradition has been all but wiped clean from our cultural memories, rarely remembered today despite the fondness with which it was enjoyed back in its prime. Comedy, romance, westerns, and so much more was dramatized as plays for the ear, a "theater of the mind".

For the last year we've tried to present weekly features devoted to the memory of radio drama, doing our little bit to keep its legacy in mind; there is much to learn from the cultural mirror that these cultural memories have to offer us, modern-day explorers trying to imagine what we might become, through discovering all that we've been.

This week I have not one but two Radio Memories, each devoted to Haiti.

The first episode is from the evocative series Ports Of Call. The Ports Of Call show worked around an intriguing gimmick: each week the listening audience of armchair travelers would join the unnamed passengers of an unnamed ship, as they ventured ashore and visited far-away ports in Africa, Asia, Europe... and this week, Haiti.

The format of the show would normally feature the passengers visiting the local sights, markets, rivers, buildings, mountains; their comments and observations would serve as a cue for dramatized re-enactments of historical events associated with whatever highlights the local areas would have to offer. This week's visit to Haiti, however, seems different; it's almost as if the passengers never leave the boat, and the bulk of the show is devoted to recounting a singular historical anecdote, the life of Haiti's liberator, Toussaint L'Ouverture. I wonder: is this because, back then, there just wasn't anything to see or do in Haiti, due to its condition, or were the writers so fascinated with what they learned of Haiti's origins as a free nation that they uncharacteristically focused so heavily on the one incident?

The episode reproduced below originally aired in 1935, when the medium of radio drama was still in its infancy. Like television, radio's growth as a business as well as an art form brought with it a certain compartmentalization, with new shows judged and approved because they fit easily into pre-existing categories: "detective shows", "situation comedies", "horror anthologies", and so on.

In the beginning nobody had any pre-conceived notions of what the emerging art of radio drama should be, leaving open the possibility that it could be... anything. Therefore what the early broadcasts may lack in technical polish, they tend to make up for in the excitement of discovery, and their awareness that no matter what they had already created elsewhere, they were now starting fresh, exploring something new.

For a brief period in 1935 and 1936, one of the explored possibilities was the fascinating travelogue series itself devoted to exploration: Ports Of Call.

Haiti, how to help

Jay Currie has links to Canadian relief organizations.

Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society

Last time I saw Sowell interviewed, I feared age was getting to him. Here he is with the Hoover Institute's Peter Robinson, showing all the characteristic charm of the relaxed California moralist, looking sharp as ever. Sowell's newest book on the problem of the intellectuals, on their all-too-common desire for power in tandem with their irresponsible detachment from, if not war against, reality, is the topic of discussion.

Canadian history defers to internet cesspool

Blazing Cat Fur, whose name I, in all primness, once took to be a play on "Kaffir", is going to have an opinion on this. I'm a little ashamed to joke about it, but in all seriousness I think there is something to think about here, the future of language, as we become entwined in the darkness of the net:

The Beaver is history.

Thanks in part to the naughty connotations of its title, The Beaver, the 90-year-old Canadian history magazine will be rebranding and relaunching itself as Canada's History this spring.

The inaugural issue will be available on April 1.

The less sexy handle for the Winnipeg-based magazine, with a subscriber base of 50,000 and an estimated readership of more than 350,000, was done intentionally, based on market research that suggested it was time to drop The Beaver.

“In the research, the results showed that people were twice as likely not to pick us up because of the name The Beaver,” Deborah Morrison, president and CEO of Canada’s History Society, said Tuesday.

“As for women, they really didn't like it.”

The name was also a deterrent to the newly planned online strategies. The magazine had been told students couldn't access much of their content on the Internet because school filters often blocked anything that had "beaver" in the parameters.

Two stories that must be related; but how?

Story 1) (HT: Sassywire):

Teenagers have been warned they are becoming unemployable because they use a vocabulary of just 800 words.

The limited linguistic range also consists of many made up words and 'teenspeak' which has developed through modern communication methods such as text messaging and social networking sites.

Today Jean Gross, who advises the Government on children's speech, said urgent action was required to prevent children failing to find jobs because they are unable to communicate.

[...]

'We need to help today's teenagers understand the difference between their textspeak and the formal language they need to succeed in life — 800 words will not get you a job.'

The majority of teenagers should have developed a broad vocabulary of 40,000 words by the time they reach 16.

Linguists have found, however, that although they may understand thousands of words, many choose to limit themselves to a much smaller range in regular conversation and on a daily basis could use as few as 800 terms.(Daily Mail)

Now here's a brain teaser for you: are kids maybe illiterate because they see how stark raving bonkers their "literate" "betters" are and so naturally isolate themselves in their cybershells? or are kids illiterate because under the new and ever yet more crazy welfare state socialism there actually are "jobs" for illiterates who only know One Dumb Word/Thing (it begins with r!)? Story 2 (HT: Walker:)

A wealthy businessman was arrested at home in front of his wife and young son over an email which council officials deemed ‘offensive’ to gipsies – but which he had not even written.

The email, concerning a planning appeal by a gipsy, included the phrase: ‘It’s the ‘do as you likey’ attitude that I am against.’

Council staff believed the email was offensive because ‘likey’ rhymes with the derogatory term ‘pikey’.

The 45-year-old IT boss was held in a police cell for four hours until it was established he had nothing to do with the email, which had been sent by one of his then workers, Paul Osmond.

But police had taken his DNA and later confirmed they would be holding it indefinitely.(Daily Mail)

UPDATE: this just in via Belmont Club:

The British government has decided to go ahead with its plans under what it calls the Intercept Modernisation Programme to force every telecommunication company and Internet service provider to keep a record of all its customers’ personal communications, showing whom they have contacted and when and where, as well as the Web sites they have visited, according to The Daily Telegraph and various other British papers.

The information gathered, The Telegraph says, will be accessible to 653 public bodies, ”including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

”They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to obtain the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority,” The Telegraph says.

The only bit of good news, if you can call it that, is that the information won’t be held in a central database because of privacy concerns (that seems a bit oxymoronic to me), and the full rollout will be delayed until after the next election.
[...]
The British government is also going ahead with ContactPoint, a database containing the details of England’s 11 million children. As described in a 7 November Telegraph story,

The computerised database contains a record for each of the 11m under-18s living in England, containing their name, address, gender, date of birth and a unique identifying number. It also holds information on their parents, their nursery or school, their GP and whether they have a social worker, health visitor or probation officer assigned to them. If the young person consents, it will also give details of sexual health or drug abuse counsellors.

Interestingly, this database is assumed by the government to be secure and private. So secure and private, in fact, that the children of celebrities and certain others—for example, the children of government officials—are to be excluded from it.

It has not passed without notice on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall the irony of the British government’s dogged efforts to spy on its own people in a way that would make the Stasi envious.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s remarks marking the anniversary included this:

What has happened here in Berlin tells the world that the tides of history may ebb and flow, but that across the ages history is moving towards our best hopes, not our worst fears; towards light not darkness; and towards the fulfillment of our humanity, not its denial.

So governmental spying is moving toward our best hopes, toward light not darkness, and toward the fulfillment of our humanity? George Orwell, who once wrote, ”To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” would probably be very depressed by the state of affairs in the United Kingdom—but probably not very surprised

It strikes me that the unnamed writer at IEEE Spectrum doesn't quite get what is Orwellian here. If the internet means that our lives are going to become more and more transparent to others, freedom actually requires something like a central data base. I do not think i want to see the collecting of information on web browsing without search warrants. But if we are going to have it, freedom requires that I be able to search Gordon Brown's habits just as easily as he searches mine. Then we can all be equally transparent and accountable to each other and discover a new kind of freedom without privacy. What is Orwellian is when all the power is in the hands of the Stasi; but when we can call out any cop for his bad habits, or when we can discover Gordon Brown's porn addiction, should he have ever had one, then we are free to develop a new sense of tolerance and standards and name-calling and scapegoating in full view of what we are doing to each other. It might make us capable of relearning what really matters. Then again, maybe not.

Torment in a railway timetable!

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The Tate Galley in London has announced a new acquisition of yet unknown William Blake etchings. It is one of those amazing stories by which things lost come back to life (HT Flea):

In among a box of second-hand books bought from a North London dealer in the late 1970s was a thick international railway timetable.

So boring did this tome appear to be that the seller apparently missed the eight small etchings hidden between the pages — a mistake that, in effect, handed the buyer a small fortune when they were identified three years ago as unique works by the visionary artist and writer William Blake.

Tate galleries have now bought these brilliantly executed and disturbing pictures for £441,000 and will exhibit them at Tate Britain in July.

They are not the sort of images that are likely to be ignored again. In one a naked man screams in horror as flames rage around him. In another a figure with long hair bends over a glowing red pool. Blake’s caption reads: “vegetating in fibres of blood...

I couldn't find any web page that has all of the newly-discovered works. This Google News page has links to stories which each feature one or two of the works.

Bat Ye'or reviews Richard Rubenstein, Jihad and Genocide

Excerpt:

Rubenstein pleads for recognition that the world is engaged in a religious conflict. Here he candidly touches on the great taboo, the truth hidden at all costs: neither Israel nor the West have been willing to recognize the religious dimension of the conflict. Given the nature of their societies, they fear that they have no viable solution. But falsehoods do not change the nature of the conflict; they only enable it to simmer and strengthen from Chechnya to India, from Nigeria to Finland, from Spain to Armenia.

Meanwhile we see the Islamist Turkish regime loosening its ties with Israel and joining the OIC Islamist front in view of bringing the restoration of the Caliphate that dominates already at the UN and has taken Europe hostage. Blinded by a vicious repressed antisemitism, the West supported jihad against Israel and consequently failed to suppress an ideology that targets itself and the world with the same, if not greater, violence. Riddled with an immigration that fuels social conflicts within its population, surviving on disinformation and security ransoms, it has become at best the auxiliary of the OIC.

Written in a clear style, Rubenstein’s book evokes in simple language, the most crucial issues of our time: is the West repeating the scenario of the 1940s, organising through a UN, dominated by the OIC – particularly the UN Human Rights Council – a worldwide campaign of demonization of Israel in order to justify its destruction? The Council’s acceptance of the Goldstone Report condemning Israel for self-defence adopts the Islamic view in which jihadist attacks are commended but the resistance of those aggressed upon is taken to be aggression against Allah’s rights. Having lost its legitimacy according to the permanently valid concept of dar al-Harb, Israel is thus alleged to be guilty of the “war crime” of defending itself against its own destruction. In effect, this view condemns any resistance to terrorism and gives a free pass to terrorists. What does this policy tells us about the West, and particularly Europe’s own policy? Does its mean that the West approves the jihadist strategy of world Islamization while self-defence is prohibited? Has the West already adopted this policy for itself as the politically correct culture, as the sanctions against ‘Islamophobia’ seem to suggest? In this case, we have to reflect on the spiritual and political meaning for us of the current anti-Israel hatred and policy in the West, and Rubenstein’s book is an indispensable start.

European Forecast: Cloudy With Occasional Signs Of Kindness

A collection of some small news stories hidden behind the dominant headlines on a wistful Thursday morning.

21st Century Book-Burning: UK pensioners are resorting to buying books as fuel for home fireplaces and stoves in order to keep from freezing to death:

Temperatures this week are forecast to plummet as low as -13ºC in the Scottish Highlands, with the mercury falling to -6ºC in London, -5ºC in Birmingham and -7ºC in Manchester as one of the coldest winters in years continues to bite.
Workers at one charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, how the most vulnerable shoppers were seeking out thick books such as encyclopaedias for a few pence because they were cheaper than coal.
...
A 500g book can sell for as little as 5p, while a 20kg bag of coal costs £5.

UK Garbage Wars: There's no money for pensioners to heat their homes but there's plenty of time and money to keep track of trash collectors who are caught in the act of taking out too much trash on their neighborhood routes: Hard-working binman Albert Stewart was been disciplined for helping residents by taking away extra bin bags left beside overflowing wheelie bins.

[H]is obliging nature has angered his employers at West Lancashire Borough Council who've accused him breaking strict refuse rules.
They say binmen should only empty wheelie bins and must leave other rubbish dumped beside the bins behind.
...
[Mr Stewart] accused the council of "spying” on its own binmen and said bosses were being motivated by money.
"I have done the same round for over 30 years, and now, just because I took some side waste, I’m being punished," he said.
"All I was doing was helping people out by taking the odd black bag or two from beside their full wheelie bins.
"The council found out because they've had people going around spying on their own dustmen. It’s ridiculous.
"Personally, I think it is for financial reasons. People can get fined for putting out too much rubbish and the council didn’t like me being helpful because it meant they were missing out on money."
Householders caught leaving extra waste beside their wheelie bin are issued with a £100 fixed penalty notice but repeat offenders can be taken to court and given a £1,000 fine.

As penance for his efforts the 30-year trashman has been made to work another route, much to the frustration of the families who got to know him over the years he served them:

"Albert was not just a binman he’s also a friend. He was always willing to help and it’s very sad that he has been taken off his route. I’m not the only one – everyone appreciated him when he came round."

Maybe one of the reasons his compassionate attitude was so appreciated is revealed in a Daily Mail story from the day before: UK trashmen are not required to pick up refuse from bins if they are open more than a quarter of an inch, and are issued tape measures to assist them in determining whether they should bother taking out the trash or not:

Bill Gough, a 54-year-old office manager, confronted the collectors when they refused to empty his bin on Tuesday.
"I’d stamped on my rubbish to get it as flat as possible but the lid was still a little open," he said.
"I’d managed to wheel it down to the bottom of my driveway without any spillages and was shocked when a binman told me they couldn’t empty it because the lid was more than quarter of an inch open.
"I thought he was joking but then he got his measuring tape out and showed me. They said they had no choice for health and safety reasons.
"I’m asking them to take away a few bits of extra wrapping paper – not dispose of nuclear waste."
...
Grandmother Doreen Stubbs, 66, said: "The binmen were totally obnoxious and swore at my son when he asked why they hadn’t collected the rubbish. There was no talking to them, they were like the Gestapo.
"If little old ladies can drag their bins then surely men, who we pay to do their jobs, can use a bit of common sense and compassion.
"There are people around here who are disabled. Some of them have no transport, how are they expected to take their rubbish to the tip?"

Germany's Soldiers Fight Alone: Reinhold Robbe, the German Parliament’s military commissioner, is struck by the differences he sees while visiting the US. Americans greet returning servicemen with applause and offers to buy them a beer, while back home in Europe, “There’s no real empathy in Germany toward the soldiers who risk life and limb every day...”:

A staff sergeant, who had been risking his life almost daily outside Kunduz, recalled a trip to Berlin during which he was wearing his uniform at a train stop. He was told to make himself scarce or he would be beaten up.
“It was shocking,” said the sergeant... “We’re looked down on. With American soldiers, they tell me how they receive recognition, how people just come up to them and say they’re doing good.”
...
"This sense of appreciation, you don’t get that, the feeling that wearing your uniform people are going to be proud of you,” said Heike Groos, who has written about her time as a German military doctor in Afghanistan. “Young people die. Young people are badly wounded and one feels out of place and lonely when one thinks, ‘No one in Germany understands and no one in Germany is even interested.' ”

France's Car Burnings: 2009 Numbers In Perspective

Back in 1999, France was rocked by the scandal brought to their attention by then-President Jacques Chirac, blasting his political rival, then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's government in a speech delivered at a firefighters conference: a shameful 14,000 cars were burned by youthful vandals in 1998 (the previous year), with a shocking 100 vehicles burnt on New Year's Eve alone.

This week the French newspaper Le Figaro contrasts those halcyon days with more recent incendiary statistics:

1998: 14,000 cars burned
2005: 45,588 cars burned
2006: 44,157 cars burned

2007: 46,814 cars burned

2008: 40,496 cars burned

2009: the expected final number will again exceed 40,000

Fast forward to January 2010 and current Minister of the Interior Brice Hortefeux's patting himself on the back for a "calm" New Year's Eve: only 1,137 cars set on fire, a 0.87% decrease over the previous year. (As a sardonic French commentor points out: at this rate it would take 115 years for there to be zero cars burned on New Year's Eve... ) Le Figaro puts those numbers in perspective, citing the Ministry's own figures as their source:

2004 New Year's Eve: 324 cars burned

2005 New Year's Eve: 337 cars burned

2006 New Year's Eve: 425 cars burned

2007 New Year's Eve: 397 cars burned

2008 New Year's Eve: 878 cars burned

Two factors are cited for the slight drop this year: minimal television coverage, with French tv "sober if not silent on the subject". Next, an "exceptional police presence": 45,000 police and riot squad officers mobilized for the night of December 31 2009, and 34,000 called out for the night of July 14th (Bastille Day in France), said by police unions as operating at "near maximum capacity".

Le Figaro editorializes that "the experience of the last few years shows that arson has become a banal tool for protests, of rage but also of joy. All the important events involving youth are now at risk: New Year's Eve, but also the nights of July 13 and 14 (when 500 cars were burned), soccer games (at least 300 cars burned in France as fall-out of the Egypt-Algeria match), important elections (730 cars burned the night of Nicolas Sarkozy's electoral victory in 2007). A unique phenomenon in Europe..."

... for now.

[Translated from the original French source at Le Figaro; thanks to Le Salon Beige for the story, where a commentor there remarks that these official figures do not count the vehicles that end up burning by being parked next to cars set on fire. That is a statistical detail left out of most of the english media's reporting on the story. As we reported way back in our January 2008 coverage of that year's inflammatory car burning figures, France keeps two separate sets of statistics for their auto-da-fe; as far as it's known, Dec 31st's 1,347 figure only includes the cars targeted by vandals for burning, it excludes the vehicles that caught on fire due to flames spreading to adjacent automobiles.]

UPDATE: France-watcher Tiberge carries a couple of posts at her blog this week that will be of interest to readers looking for more news on the subject of France's fiery New Year's Eve: translations of reader comments from the French mainstream media's reporting of the ritualistic arson, and a review of the unprecedented security procedures put in place that were necessary to reduce the total by only ten burned cars.

Binks and May, and the choice of death or life

Did you know the great web elf Binks is a priest? In his latest he tells a story of having a conversation with a severely paralyzed stroke victim, while doing pastoral service in a hospital. It seems everyone has left her for dead, mentally as well as physically, but Binks discovers she is fully conscious and talks with her. Tears flow. This only wins Binks fury from those who want to hurry her death. Mbrandon from Freedom Through Truth has reproduced Binks' story, out from the longer original post.

We Canadians are in more than one way an aging society; will this also entail our spiritual death? Binks' story is a severe warning. But his post also links David Warren who argues

The forces sustaining civilization are always less visible, and more powerful, than the forces of barbarism can understand. And the greatest of these defences is truth itself: the truth that was written from the beginning into the human heart, and will persist to the end. For every human being is endowed with a conscience, whether he wishes to have it or not. He may use various kinds of painkiller to suppress feelings of guilt, for crimes that really are crimes in the sight of God and nature; but the cause of that pain will never go away.

Hence, what we see in the streets around us every day: disinterested acts by people who believe only in self-interest; acts of decency, from people who hardly know what they are doing. Why, this past week, I even witnessed a gratuitous act of kindness towards a man, by a hardened feminist! (Can you believe it?)

B'nai Brith beclowns itself

Whatever you think of the International Olympic Committee's decision not to allow women to compete in ski jumping at the upcoming Vancouver games - the IOC claims the women's sport is not yet sufficiently established - it is surely not a decision that merits comparison to the Nazis. B'nai Brith Canada does all Jews a disservice in demonstrating an inability to move their political discourse beyond the Nazi-Jew model of victimhood (a now much abused revelation, as evidenced by the fact that antisemites currently invoke it to "Nazify" Israel and other Western enemies of Islamofascism). Here's what B'nai Brith says in its latest press release

TORONTO, January 4, 2010 – The League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada, has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to reconsider the continued exclusion of Women’s Ski Jumping from the upcoming Olympic Games. According to the League’s National Chair Allan Adel, and its National Director, Ruth Klein, although the recent Supreme Court decision technically places the IOC outside the ambit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the position taken on women’s ski jumping violates the spirit of the Charter, which prohibits discrimination based on gender.

In a letter to John Furlong, CEO of VANOC, the League recalled the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the OIC turned a blind eye to Hitler’s fascist regime, which was even then implementing discriminatory policies against Jews that impacted Games that year. The League asks the OIC and the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to focus on its policies and practices relating to discrimination, “and that includes eliminating discrimination against women now, just as it should have included resistance to discrimination against Jews then”.

B'nai Brith can't be taken seriously as a voice for real human rights if it indulges in the ultimate tyranny of making it imperative to label every institutionalized recognition of human differences as Nazi-like.

Letter from Afghanistan

As Terry Glavin never tires of showing, most Afghans want foreign troops in their country, to defeat the various Taliban and terrorist outfits. Today Terry posts a letter from a mourning Afghan thankful for Canadian sacrifices: A Letter of Grief and Hope from Kandahar

Belgian Antichrist?

Is a socialist Eutopia a particular Belgian idea? Paul Belien thinks so. I don't know... isn't a man who wears such a collar and tie perhaps the end of the line for a bureaucratic empire, a self-revealing bad joke... or is he truly the Godfather of "global governance", grand molly coddler of globalization's many left-Islamic resentments?

There is something nasty about the look, like he could be the accountant or inside man for the more flamboyantly evil Jew in a James Bond film. It seems to me that both James Bond and his villains are fantastic projections of a modern reality on which the other characters in the films are more plausibly based. In related news:

‘This guy clearly does not have anything better to do... What does he think we do? Does he think we sit on our hands waiting to read emails from a ten-year-old who has just discovered Conservatism, on a £200,000 salary in some farmhouse with a wife who works for Google?
[...]
Other figures in the party say that when they first received the bulletins, they thought they were a spoof from the BBC’s political spin doctor satire The Thick Of It, which features a Hilton-style PR guru called Stewart Pearson who ‘hangs’ at Tory HQ dressed in jeans and T-shirt and talks impenetrable gobbledegook.
[...]
One emailed bulletin that has particularly irritated some Tory frontbenchers urges them to discuss ‘cool examples of the post-bureaucratic approach’ by directly contacting American gurus such as Richard Thaler, the co-creator of the fashionable ‘nudge’ theory which suggests that people can be persuaded to change their behaviour without heavy state intervention.

Mr Hilton then uses the example of ‘binge-drinking in Montana’ to explain his theory.

‘The authorities in Montana managed to cut binge drinking amongst students – something that the Labour Government has tried and failed to do,’ he writes.

‘How? They simply put up advertising that stated, “80 per cent of Montana college students drink fewer than four beers per week.” This led to an immediate fall in drinking because of the power of social norms.’

Right... and will we soon be wearing van Rompuy ties?

Canada, loony bin

How much hate can a country of stoned death hippies "tolerate"? The story from Terry Glavin:

“Long live the Taliban” might seem an unlikely thing for a prominent anti-war figure to declare, but that’s today’s peace movement for you. Stranger still, the man who recently uttered those words, Azzam Tamimi, is a central figure in a new Toronto-based institute that is embarking upon what it describes as a national campaign to cultivate wholesome, faith-based civic virtues among Canada’s young Muslims.

The Al-Fauz Institute for Islamic Thought says its purpose is to teach young Muslims how to apply Islamic ideas to Canada’s pluralistic society and “prepare young minds that will take up the mantle of the Muslim community.” Tamimi is scheduled to launch the institute’s ambitious public-relations and proselytizing efforts in Canada with a July 24-27 Islamic history course at Ryerson University.

But Tamimi has loudly renounced democracy, explicitly praises suicide bombers, and he’s said he’d even be happy to blow himself up in Israel: “It’s the straight way to pleasing my God and I would do it if I had the opportunity.” Tamimi distinguishes good Muslims from their adversaries this way: "We love death. They love life."

Tamimi recently proclaimed: “I don’t believe in democracy anymore,” and it was at an anti-Israel rally in Dublin only three months ago that Tamimi declared: “With regard to their attitudes to liberation, I say ‘Long Live the Taliban’.”

You’d never know any of this from the billing the Al-Fauz institute gives Tamimi. He’s presented as a Palestinian-born British academic and a “political activist.” His leading role with Britain’s Stop The War Coalition is noted. But nowhere does the institute mention that Tamimi is also high-ranking ideologue for Hamas, one of the deadliest organizations listed under Canada’s anti-terrorism laws.

Glavin also has a count of the Taliban's latest bombings and death toll.

Mail Minister Jason Kenney kennej@parl.gc.ca and his Communications Director Alykhan Velshi alykhan.Velshi@cic.gc.ca to ask that Canadian Border Services be informed on this guy so they can make the right decision on allowing him entry.

Witness to Faith, Pervaiz Masih

Maybe you've heard this story, but today it's news to me; anyway, it deserves much repeating. Most people, if faced with a gunman who seems intent on committing a horrible crime would either freeze or try to run away. How many of us would have the courage to die that we might save elite women of a society in which we are of the lowest ranks?

ISLAMABAD, Oct 21: The courage shown by two unsung heroes, including one who lost his life during the two suicide bombings in the International Islamic University (IIU), saved lives of hundreds of girl students in the institution’s cafeteria on Tuesday.

Pervez Masih, a 40-year-old Christian worker, saved scores of lives at the double-storey cafeteria, where around 400 female students were present at the time of the attack.

“There would have been dozens of deaths had the suicide bomber not been blocked by Pervez Masih,” said Saifur Rehman, a senior security official of the IIU.

The other hero, Mohammad Shaukat, survived the attack but he is fighting for his life on a bed in the surgical ward of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, as a shot fired by the suicide bomber hit him in lower abdomen.

Narrating the scene of the suicide attack on the cafeteria for women, Shaukat told Dawn that: “The attacker clad in a black burka was heading towards the cafeteria for female students at a time when they were having their lunch. I felt something wrong as no girl student, even one who observes veil, wears a head-to-toe burka on the women campus. I intercepted the bomber, who shot me, and I fell down but Pervez, who witnessed the scene, understood the designs of suicide bomber and held him at the entrance of the dining hall where the blast took place.”

Organs and flesh of the suicide bomber littered the entrance area and Pervez was thrown at the wall on the other side of the dining hall, said another eye-witness.

Christian writer, Mark Earley, elaborates (HT: Vladtepes)

In late October, at Islamabad’s International Islamic University, an Islamic suicide bomber tried to attack the women’s side of campus. But there worked a lowly janitor, Pervaiz Masih, who like so many of the 2 percent Christian minority in this 95 percent Muslim country are relegated to the most menial jobs in society-garbage collectors, sewage workers, and servants.

The suicide bomber was making his way to a cafeteria of some 300 to 400 women students, when Masih came between him and his goal. Masih is a common name among the Christian minority-it means Messiah. And on October 20th, Masih certainly followed in the footsteps of Jesus, the true Messiah. He refused to let the bomber pass. In the process the bomb detonated, killing Masih, the bomber, and three girls nearby. Meanwhile, the 300 to 400 Muslim girls inside the cafeteria were unharmed.

In the midst of the rubble from the explosion lay two martyrs. A so-called Muslim “martyr” had maliciously murdered others. Meanwhile, a Christian martyr had laid down his life for his brethren. A Christian died to save Muslims from a fellow Muslim.

CNN reported Professor Fateh Muhammad Malik, a rector of the university, as saying that Pervez Masih “rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism. Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls.”

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that not “despite being a Christian” but because of being a Christian, Masih laid down his life.

As news cameras showed the garbage-strewn cemetery [see video here] where Masih is buried, I couldn’t help but think of God’s great reversals. A King born in a manger. A hero buried beneath garbage. And I couldn’t help thinking how one day this upside-down world would be turned on it its head at the second Advent, when Christ comes in glory.

In the meantime, pray for persecuted Christians in Pakistan who suffer under unjust blasphemy laws, and who as recently as this past July were murdered, beaten, and had their homes set on fire simply for bearing the name of Jesus.

Pray that Masih’s heroic actions will help many Pakistanis to see Christians in a different light. And pray that Islamic extremists would have their eyes opened to what it means to be a true martyr, that is, to give one’s life to save others, not to give one’s life to kill others.

Most people, I dare say, would be unable to make the split-second decision not to run away but instead to put one's life on the line for others, for women who probably never gave you a second's notice unless, perhaps, it was in caste-bound condescension. Most people couldn't make that important moral decision because in some important sense they are less free than the illiterate janitor with the name of "messiah".

Gil Bailie has put up a quote, from Hans Urs von Balthasar, which might throw some light on this event:

. . . from the true Christian there radiates the kind of freedom that is constantly only being sought after by the non-Christian. In modern times, the freedom of man is a theme which preoccupies both Christian and non-Christian, and a competition is in process as to who can understand this freedom more profoundly, who more effectively put it into practice.

Bailie adds:

One could argue that the failure to understand the true nature of freedom is at the heart of the contemporary crisis, and, moreover, that the very notion of the "true nature" of anything has been put into question by our confusions about freedom.

On the burning of a British mosque...

To my friends who aren't convinced by arguments that the human historical process is in theory infinitely expandable, or inexhaustibly open-ended, that the scenes on which we live can be ever novel, I give you the unprecedented words of the Flea:

My only surprise is it has taken ten years for the great unwashed to stop trusting their future to an anti-Semitic Establishment...

France's Fiery New Year's Eve: 1,137 Cars Burned

French government officials are patting themselves on the back this morning for a job well done: the number of cars burned on New Year's Eve dropped from last year's record total. An unprecedented national deployment of 45,000 police and riot squad troops, supported by 50,000 firefighters, succeeded in reducing the number... by ten.

On the night of December 31/January 1st, 2009, 1,147 cars were set aflame. Last night, "only" 1,137 were torched (according to early reports released this morning to the press). France's Minister of the Interior, Brice Hortefeux, states today that the "calm" New Year's Eve "went well overall throughout the whole national territory".

The increased police presence is cited as a major contribution to the "light drop" in incidents of assaults on police, firefighters and old-fashioned Parisiens, who simply want to pop champagne corks rather than molotov cocktails on their New Year's Eve. "You'd think we were at war", observes a father who had come to the Champs Elysees to celebrate 2010's arrival with his family, in the face of the cohorts of police patrolling the capital city. Estimates are that only half the number of people chose to venture out and celebrate the New Year on the streets of Paris, compared to the year before.

The scorecard: 549 arrests were made, almost doubling the 288 arrests made in 2008/09 (2007/08's event had seen 249 arrests). 16 police officers were wounded this year, compared to the four reported injuries last year.

Paris' notorious trio of troubled suburbs, Seine-Saint-Denis, Hauts-de-Seine and Val de Marne, saw a reduction in the number of car burnings in "seriously more important proportions", the Minister reported: only 198 torched automobiles, a 20% drop over last year's total. 138 arrests were made in the 'sensitive' suburbs, compared to only 41 the previous New Year's Eve.

One of the big stories connected with last year's New Year's evil was the spread of the car burning rituals from urban to rural settings, but so far the French media does not report an increase of that trend this time around. "Just like an ordinary weekend", the Bordeaux police announce this morning.

The average French citizen hardly finds the news accounts reassuring. A comment by "Hadrien" made on Le Monde's coverage of the car burnings serves as a good summary of the comments in general, a response in direct opposition to the gallic shrug of the shoulders being exhibited by French authorities:

"It's not the number of burnt cars that worries me. It's the fact that everyone finds this normal..."

[Translated from French news accounts in Le Figaro, Le Parisien and Le Monde]

Hope For A Better Year

Hoping for better things to come, while finding rays of light beyond the headlines on a quiet Thursday morning.

The six million members of the Church of God in Christ have an unexpected, but welcome, newly ordained minister: Ex-KKK leader to minister in black majority church

[Johnny Lee Clary] had joined the KKK at the age of 14 after his father committed suicide and his mother abandoned him. And for 16 years, Clary advanced in the white supremacist organization, all the way up to becoming an imperial wizard.
After going through a time of torment, anger, and disgust, however, Clary left the KKK and struggled to make an honest living. He turned to God after feelings of guilt led him to depression and on the verge of committing suicide.
He has since become a guest speaker at numerous schools and churches across the nation, and lectures on occasion for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, educating officers on the mindset of white supremacists and how to best fight against domestic terrorism.
“Yes I made mistakes in life, and a person cannot go back in time and change the past, but he can certainly do something about today in order to build a better tomorrow,” Clary says today.

Heroism year-in-review: CNN finds 5 little-reported stories of heroic co-workers whose quick-thinking and initiative earlier this year deserve greater acclaim. Despite the 2009-in-review framework CNN sets for their article, their first candidate was in the news for an action she actually performed the previous year, back in 2008, as she brought a North Carolina co-worker back to life from no less than five heart attacks:

...Everyone in the office rushed to Marlowe's side. Knowing he was a diabetic, they were looking for ways to get his blood sugar up, thinking he had just passed out. But cashier [Debi] Coffman looked at Marlowe and knew it was much more serious. "I knew that he was dead," Coffman said. "I knew he was."
Coffman and another co-worker, Larry Garrett, began performing CPR on Marlowe. "[Garrett] couldn't get any pulse," Coffman said, "and he hit him in the chest and started compressions." Coffman and Garrett are not sure how long they worked on Marlowe before they revived him.
... Coffman would revive him three times before emergency crews arrived on the scene. "I told him, 'I will not let you go,'" Coffman said.
Coffman says she isn't a hero, but she is proud she knew what to do. Proud and glad that she doesn't have to think about what would have happened if she hadn't put her training to use.

Their second story is really full of heroes, but singles out the actions of Arizona's Daniel Anderson, whose initiative helped raise sufficient funds to buy his co-worker, one-legged cancer survivor Gregory Lewis, the new prosthetic leg he so desperately needed:

"He has been walking on what looked like a stick and a brick for close to 30 years. It was starting to crack and part of it was held together with electrical tape," Anderson said.
...
Anderson found Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics in Chandler and a sympathetic employee, Tyler Ritchey. "When I met the guy, I knew we had to do something," said Ritchey, who also is an amputee. "I don't know how he (Lewis) did it for so long. When he walked he dragged [the artificial limb] on the floor to keep it from coming off."
After Anderson raised a $1,000 down payment from friends and family members, Ritchey arranged a partial donation by the company and manufacturer.
David Hyatt, manager of the Fiesta Mall Dillard's, spearheaded fundraising at the store, which included employee donations and proceeds from the sale of surplus store fixtures. One worker contacted Ecco Shoes, which donated a pair to Lewis.

"I saw the lights coming down the tunnel, and I had to do something," said the third hero, Houston Transit worker Eliot Swainson, as his volunteer work in a Washington DC train station saved a woman's life, when she fell onto the tracks right in front of an oncoming train:

[Swainson] was able to direct the woman to safety on the track while a train passed overhead, preventing her from being struck and allowing her to be extricated safely a short time later.
...
[H]e explained to the woman -- as he had been trained to do just the day before by Metro officers -- to stay as close to the edge of the track as possible, under the overhang adjacent to the platform in order to avoid being hit by the train. Metro authorities then cleared the platform and the train, cut the power to the tracks, and eventually got the woman to safety. She was transported to a local hospital "with non life-threatening injuries," according to a Metro spokesman.
...
"This was a new world for me. You still have that fear factor about what's down below there, and what not to mess with. But we had to do something to get her to safety," he explained. Swainson will now head home to his wife and daughter, who turned three years old today. "I'm just happy to have had the opportunity to see somebody safe," he said of the incident.

A series of wonderful coincidences underline the fourth hero's story, as hair stylist Carol Morgan is shocked to see her co-worker collapse to the ground. Reflexes kick in, and she draws upon years of CPR training... even though she had never before performed CPR in an emergency situation:

Morgan repeatedly delivered chest compressions and rescue breathing to Sue’s unresponsive body. When performing CPR, Morgan said one worry is that you will hurt the person. She said there is always a possibility of breaking a rib or bruising the person, but it is better they have a broken rib and still be alive.
"I wasn’t scared until it was all over,” said Morgan. Afterward, she wondered if she had done everything right.
...
“I feel in my heart the Lord put me in the right place at the right time,” she said. “He helped me remember all those steps.”
Morgan said “it was strange how everything fell into place.” She normally does not work past noon on Wednesdays. She happened to have the day off from her other job, which is why she stayed later at Innovations.
“I still think that God was watching over us that day,” she said.

The article explains her long-time CPR training:

In addition to being a hair stylist, Morgan works at Central State Consumer Services of Oklahoma. Because she works with persons with disabilities, she is required to know CPR. She has to take the course annually to keep her Red Cross certification current.Morgan had just taken her refresher course in May. She first learned CPR in 1998, when she worked for the Cherokee Nation headstart for a couple of years.
...
Morgan said she wants to encourage people to become CPR certified. She said you never know when you might need to use it.

The fifth heroic act, out of Trinidad, ends on a sad note. Who can imagine the thoughts racing through the mind of young Shiva Jagroop as he says goodbye to his co-worker, at his funeral.

" 'I just want to say thank you, Earl,' he muttered":

[Earl Rampersad, married father of a two-year old boy] pushed Jagroop out of harm’s way and took the full blow of the glass panes which fell on them at their Caroni workplace on Wednesday. Rampersad was already dead when paramedics pulled him from under the broken glass some time later.
...
Gaitri Hosein, an employee at Delta Glass Ltd, where he was employed, described Rampersad as a pillar of strength and a hardworking man.
’He was willing to do anything to make a person happy. He was a humble man who did more than what he was expected to do,’ she said.

Doing more than expected of us, making the ordinary extra-ordinary, seems as good a New Year's Resolution as anyone could look for. I adopt it as mine for this coming year... just like I did last year. Only this time, I hope to keep it...

Happy New Year to all our readers, and Best Wishes for a happy, healthy and successful 2010!

Palestinians, Fascism, and the new Canadian Left

Gil Bailie finds a Cardinal Ratzinger quote from the 1980s:

I learned that it is impossible to discuss with terror and on terror, as there are no premises for a discussion -- and such a discussion becomes collaboration with terror ... I think that in those years, I learned where discussion must stop because it is turning into a lie, and resistance must begin in order to maintain freedom.

Which is why it is crazy for Canadian taxpayers to be funding an organization whose members have a desire to wave Hezbollah flags and make Nazi salutes on the streets of Canada. Write your MP.

More from Jonathan Narvey

Wednesday Wandering

Shining light on obscure news stories trickling by under the recent headlines, on a wet Wednesday morning:

Jonah Goldberg Reviews Avatar: He reviews it from an intriguing angle: Avatar And The Faith Instinct:

"[W]hat I find interesting about the film is how what is 'to the most people' is so unapologetically religious."

Criminals "Living In Fear": Crime is plummeting on the Isle of Man ever since the opening of Europe's first completely non-smoking prison:

One former prisoner, who spent six months there, said the smoking ban had cons 'crawling up the walls' in desperation for a nicotine fix.
... "As soon as word got round that it wasn't a joke and that all smoking was banned, even in the exercise yard, a lot of people I know started having second thoughts about committing crimes.
"It was something they genuinely feared. Not prison itself, but the idea of being forced to give up smoking.
"Some of my mates have simply given up crime, whether it be stealing cars, shoplifting to order or burglary, as a direct result of the smoking ban."

Belgian Tragedy: Sad, sad story... can't imagine the pain the family must be going through right now. Belgian media site 7sur7 reports that an 81-year old woman from Stekene struggles to stay alive after having been attacked by her son's doberman Monday night. Police say that the elderly woman was seemingly bitten a hundred times. The mother lives with her son, who owns three dobermans. At least one of them had attacked her, biting her scores of times. There will be an inquiry to determine whether any of the other dogs also attacked her. A doctor has been assigned to establish the exact number of dogbites the victim endured. It is expected that she will have to have her left arm amputated due to her injuries.
[Roughly translated from French article]

Book Scouting: Yesterday I heard co-author Daniel Senor in a fascinating interview on Dennis Prager's radio show about the recent new book Start-Up Nation: The Story Of Israel's Economic Miracle. As the interview was underway I soon realized I had very little knowledge about Israel's economic history, so I found the talk (and many subsequent interviews that can be seen at both the book's and the publisher's website) about the entrepreneurial spirit that makes Israel "not just a country but a comprehensive state of mind", to be very interesting indeed. Looking forward to reading the book:

Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources—produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?

Drawing on examples from the country’s foremost inventors and investors, geopolitical experts Dan Senor and Saul Singer describe how Israel’s adversity-driven culture fosters a unique combination of innovative and entrepreneurial intensity.

... Whereas Americans emphasize decorum and exhaustive preparation, Israelis put chutzpah first. “When an Israeli entrepreneur has a business idea, he will start it that week,” one analyst put it.

Eagle Spotting: Our intrepid parks correspondant recently benefited from splendid timing as his trail-walking explorations coincided with him arriving upon the scene of a 20-minute nature show: an eagle feasting on a salmon snatched from an ice-cold mountain river.

Our parks correspondant offered us minutes of gory video footage of the dining experience, but I prefer to share the more G-rated conclusion, as the majestic eagle exits stage right: