Anglican Samizdat

Flying has suddenly become much more appealing knowing that the threat of breast pump wielding mothers has been contained. First the underwear bombers and now the breast pump guerrillas. I wonder what would have happened if Amy Strand had been wearing a burka?

From here:

The Transportation Security Administration in Hawaii says an agent was wrong to tell a nursing mother she couldn’t board an airplane with her breast pump.

The TSA tells KITV the agent at the Kauai airport mistakenly told Amy Strand she could only bring the pump onboard if the bottles contained milk.

She was allowed to board after pumping in a bathroom and showing the full bottles to the agent.

Strand was traveling home to Maui with her 9-month-old daughter Wednesday when her pump raised questions during screening.

She asked for a private place to pump and was told to go to the women’s restroom. Strand says the only outlet was next to a sink facing a wall of mirrors, so she had to stand in front of others.

From here:

A video showing fifteen Pakistani soldiers being lined up and shot dead by a firing squad has been released by the Taliban.

The paramilitary troops were abducted on December 23 in what the terror group described as an operation to avenge the deaths of insurgents in Pakistan.

The release of the horrific video is intended to serve as a warning to Pakistan’s 600,000-member army, which has failed to break the back of the insurgents despite superior firepower and a series of offensives against their strongholds in mountain regions.

Someone should explain to these Taliban chaps that they really shouldn’t go round kidnapping people and shooting them in the back of the head because it will be used as a recruiting tool by the U.S. military.

From here:

[T]he media—both in Canada and the United States—have not been helpful in reporting the Norwegian tragedy. They have repeatedly characterized Anders Breivik as a “right wing, Christian fundamentalist.” However, at least two of these three assertions are not true.

[…..]

To put it bluntly, Mr. Breivik is a racist and a bigot who upholds a Scandinavian version of a master race—an ethnocentric superiority that views foreigners, and especially Muslims, as a virus to be eliminated. Whatever else his philosophy may be, it is NOT Christian.

Nor is Mr. Breivik a fundamentalist, if one means a Christian fundamentalist. I know some Christian fundamentalists, and none would ever consider murdering innocent people.

Only two assertions not true? According to Rev. Nicolosi, Breivik is definitely not a Christian or a fundamentalist. That leaves us with his being merely “right wing”, just like William F Buckley and Ronald Reagan.

How helpful, Rev. Nicolosi.

Nor was his evil, murderous rampage inspired by any form of Christianity, fundamentalist or otherwise.

Nevertheless, media articles repeatedly refer to him as a Christian fundamentalist. For example:
Here:

Anders Behring Breivik, the main suspect in the Norwegian bomb attacks and shootings, has been described by police as a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing views.

Here:

On the Facebook page attributed to him, he describes himself as a Christian and a conservative.

Here:

What has emerged so far paints a disturbing picture: a Christian fundamentalist with a deep hatred of multiculturalism, of the left and of Muslims, who had written disparagingly of prominent Norwegian politicians.

The enthusiasm that the mainstream media has demonstrated in identifying – misidentifying, really – Breivik’s religion is quite absent when it comes to identifying the religion of those responsible for Islamist attacks – around 16,000 since 9/11. Going by media accounts, when it comes to Islamist terrorism there is not a Muslim to be found anywhere – except among the victims.

From here:

Live coverage of events after a huge explosion in Oslo, Norway leaves seven dead, before a gunman opens fire at a youth camp west of Oslo, with unconfirmed reports of up to 30 dead.

[....]

Marcus Oscarsson emails that Sweden has raised the security around the Government Offices in Stockholm and other key buildings in the Swedish capital. The Norwegian PM Mr Stolenberg stressed in Norwegian State TV recently that it is not known who is behind the attacks. Norway is eager to point out that it is possible that it is not Islamists.

Why would anyone think it had something to do with the religion of peace? Let’s see: a bomb planted in a car designed to kill and maim indiscriminately coordinated with the shooting of young people for no apparent reason.

Update: Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested for the murders. He has been described as a Christian and  freemason. A conservative Christian being a freemason makes no more sense than one who indiscriminately murders people; perhaps Breivik is just stark raving mad.

It isn’t as easy as it used to be.

A group of photographers in London have investigated how easy it is to shoot around the city. The six photographers, backed up with six videographer, attempted to take photographs around the City of London (the city’s financial district), to see what resistance they encountered. The experiment, conducted as part of the London Street Photography Festival, showed several private security guards trying to impede the photographers (often with vague allusions to ‘security and ‘terrorism’). The Police were called in three cases, but, in each instance, the Officers were well aware of the laws concerning photography and appear to have resolved the situations amicably.

I’ve enjoyed taking street photos in over 300 cities in 19 countries and nobody seemed to care much – well other than Russia when someone started waving a gun.

I haven’t been to London recently, though.

After the terrorist butchering of an Israeli family, residents in Gaza celebrated the fact by passing out sweets in the street.

While war is horrible and the death of children in war even more horrible, it doesn’t compare to the especially insidious evil needed to deliberately murder your enemy’s children – particularly at close range.

And it takes an especially odious religion – Islam – to fuel the impulse to celebrate such an atrocity.

From here:

Do you think the State Department noticed that no one in Arizona, Mexico, or even Mars took to the streets to celebrate the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords? No one seemed to think it was a “natural” act — the Islamic term du jour to rationalize the throat-slitting massacre of a sleeping Jewish family: 36-year-old Udi Fogel, his 35-year-old wife, Ruth, and, yes, their three children: 11-year-old Yoav, 4-year-old Elad, and Hadas, their 3-month-old baby……..

Muslims, in fact, are more often exhorted by their scriptures to brutalize non-Muslims than Christians are urged by the gospels to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. Yet, though we assume the latter are meant to take the message to heart, we are somehow sure Islam doesn’t really mean what it says — that when Muslims strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, it must be Israel’s fault, or America’s, or something, anything, other than Islam, the only common denominator in these attacks.

From here:

Shareef Abdelhaleem, the final member of the Toronto 18 to be sentenced for his crimes, has been handed a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years.

Abdelhaleem, 35, was sentenced Friday just before noon for his role in a homegrown terror plot to detonate bombs at the Toronto offices of CSIS, the Toronto Stock Exchange and an Ontario military base. He was found guilty last year of participating in a terrorist group and intending to cause an explosion.

Ahead of his sentence, Shareef delivered a 23-minute rambling speech, in which he claimed he never intended to harm anyone. He also said that Canadians have been silent on the blatant injustice of his case.

He asked the judge to sentence him as if he were a “white Catholic and not a Muslim.”

Shareef has no idea what he is asking for: a white Catholic who threatened to blow up CSIS and the Toronto Stock Exchange would merit a lynch mob outside the courtroom with guest appearances from Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to egg them on.

Here’s a novel idea: stop giving money to countries whose citizens systematically murder Christians. It’s too sensible to ever happen.

From here:

(ANSA) – Rome, January 3 – European Union aid should be tied to respect for human rights in countries where Christian minorities are under attack, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday after a New Year’s Day church bombing in the Egyptian city of Alexandria that killed 21 Coptic Christians.

EU aid “should be reduced if not eliminated” for “those countries that do not collaborate” in protecting Christians, Frattini said.

Lest anyone protest that giving terrorists money will wean them from their nasty habits, this study points out that the reverse is more likely to be the case:

There is also no evidence that sympathy for terrorism is greater among deprived people…

…[T]he poorest countries, those with low literacy, or those whose economies were relatively stagnant did not produce more terrorists. When the analysis was restricted to suicide-attacks, there was a statistically significant pattern—but in the opposite direction. Citizens of the poorest countries were the least likely to commit a suicide-attack. The nationalities of all foreign insurgents captured in Iraq between April and October 2005 also produced no evidence that poorer countries produced more insurgents. If anything, there was weak evidence the other way.

From The Star:

VANCOUVER—More than 100 Canadian-Arab Christians are listed on an Al Qaeda-affiliated website, apparently targeted because of their alleged role in attempting to convert Muslims.

Some of those named say concerned Canadian intelligence officials have contacted them.

The Shumukh-al-Islam website, often considered to be Al Qaeda’s mouth piece, listed pictures, addresses and cellphone numbers of Coptic Christians, predominantly Egyptian-Canadians, who have been vocal about their opposition to Islam.

In a forum on the website, one member named Son of a Sharp Sword, says “We are going to return back to Islam and all of the Mujahedeen (holy warriors) will cut off their heads.”

It would, no doubt, encourage these Christians if leaders of some of the mainline Canadian denominations  voiced their support. Fred Hiltz? Susan Johnson? Mardi Tindal? Anyone?