Monday Post

For the start of the week....



The CIA not the schlubs at the TSA have foiled a bomb plot:

The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said Monday.

The plot involved an upgrade of the underwear bomb that failed to detonate aboard a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas 2009. This new bomb was also designed to be used in a passenger's underwear, but this time al-Qaida developed a more refined detonation system, U.S. officials said.

The FBI is examining the latest bomb to see whether it could have passed through airport security and brought down an airplane, officials said. They said the device did not contain metal, meaning it probably could have passed through an airport metal detector. But it was not clear whether new body scanners used in many airports would have detected it.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Monday that she had been briefed about an "undetectable" device that was "going to be on a U.S.-bound airliner."

There were no immediate plans to change security procedures at U.S. airports.

The would-be suicide bomber, based in Yemen, had not yet picked a target or bought a plane ticket when the CIA stepped in and seized the bomb, officials said. It's not immediately clear what happened to the alleged bomber.

And what of this "alleged" bomber?



This should not be cause to bolster efforts to molest travellers but to add extra surveillance, profile, defund and remove from power all those who would kill "the infidel".



Obama didn't immediately act on the strike against Osama bin Laden, the very man he politicises in his desperate bid for re-election:







There's your steely leader for you.



Quite simply, if I had seven-dollar-a-day child-minding services and one of the lowest tuition fees in the country due to the rest of Canada's (chiefly Alberta's oil sands) largesse, I wouldn't be snotty, presumptive, arrogant and just outright stupid about things:

A key Quebec student leader suggested Sunday that a tentative deal reached Saturday to resolve the often-violent confrontation over tuition-fee hikes might not make the grade when students across the province cast their votes on it this week.

In other education news, intrepid blogger, Flagrantis Felis Capilli, has uncovered nasty anti-Semitic material being taught to students in Toronto:

"Police are investigating a complaint about a Toronto Muslim school whose curriculum tells boys to exercise so they are “ready for jihad,” calls Jews “treacherous” and contrasts Islam with “the Jews and the Nazis.”

“Yes, I can confirm for you that a complaint has been made and our Hate Crimes Unit is investigating,” Acting Sergeant Rebecca Boyd, a York Region Police spokeswoman, told the National Post on Monday.

“However, they are in the early stages of the investigation,” she added."

And TDSB admits they are rotten:

In one session titled Limits of the Law: Guidelines and Procedures for Religious Accommodation, the session leader, a former TDSB Curriculum Project Manager and Equity/ Human Rights Reviewer, admitted that the Toronto school board actively discriminates against Christianity.

That admission came about when she discussed a case study of a Toronto school where the Parent's Council wanted to put on a Christmas Concert, renamed to a Holiday Concert, since the school had also had celebrations of Eid and Ramadan. Even though every reference to Christmas and Jesus was excised from the program, it remained problematic after an organized campaign by Muslim parents to exclude their children from the event.

This led me to ask about the obvious discrimination against Christianity where Muslim holidays are actively celebrated but Christian beliefs and references to Jesus are verboten.

(extra thanks)



In Europe, France has opted to ruin itself by electing a socialist leader and- surprise!- Vladimir Putin is president again.




Related: Russia will not tolerate the US being friends with anyone else in eastern Europe:

Moscow will seek closer ties with the United States but will not tolerate interference in its affairs and wants guarantees a U.S. missile shield will not be used against Russia, under terms of a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

Putin set out foreign policy priorities in a wide-ranging document signed hours after his inauguration to a six-year term as president, veering little from an article he wrote on the subject during the election campaign.

Moscow wants to bring cooperation with Washington “to a truly strategic level” but relations must be based on “equality, non-interference in internal affairs and respect for one another’s interests”, the decree said.

I'm as stunned as you are:

A United Church of Canada minister has started a campaign to get rank-and-file members to reject a proposal from the church’s hierarchy to launch an economic boycott against Israel.

“I really want to believe this is the workings of a very active minority in the church,” said Andrew Love, a pastor at a parish in the town of Arnprior, 55 kilometres west of Ottawa.

“The vast majority of people in the pews are not ready to embrace this kind of extremist and radical agenda from a small minority. There is a real disconnect between the leadership and its people.”

He said the proposal contains “elements of anti-Semitism” by minimizing the importance of the Holocaust.
Last week, a working group of the United Church released a paper that called for a selective boycott of goods coming out of what the authors call illegal Israeli settlements, including East Jerusalem. The authors said that legitimate criticism of Israel is far different than anti-Semitism and that the United Church condemns anything that smacks of anti-Jewish bigotry. The report, two years in the making, will be voted on at the church’s general council in August.

This is the fourth proposal concerning sanctions against Israel in the past six years but none was ever voted on by the general council. However, this is the first proposal requested by the church leadership. Other proposals came from grassroots initiatives.

Rev. Love said he will launch a website in the next few days that will ask for support from co-religionists who are also concerned about calls for a boycott and anti-Israel sentiment in the church.

“This report is biased and one-sided and will erode a commitment we made as a church in a [2003 report] to strengthen ties with the Jewish community,” he said.

In 2009, Rev. Love said he travelled to Israel and spent time on the West Bank speaking to families who were having a tough time under Israeli rule. He said at one point he was pelted by stones by Israeli settlers because he was speaking with Palestinians.

“So it’s not that I’m blinded to the plight of Palestinians,” Rev. Love said. “But where is the sense of balance in this report? Once again we are isolating Israel for all our moral condemnation. Shouldn’t we hold to the same fashion other countries in the Middle East? It’s absurd that Israel is singled out because it’s a democracy.”

Related: read the comments at the end of this interview with Michael Coren and let them cement his total rightness in all of this.



And now, a cat who meows the blues: