Hallowe'en greetings (ignore if you're Catholic)

Mr. and Mrs. Whiteman extend Hallowe'en greetings to all Walt's readers. Except maybe for traditional Catholics, as explained below. To the rest of you, then...

Note to Catholic readers: You realize of course that Hallowe'en is a celebration of paganism and the occult. It promotes diabolical behaviour and strictly observant Catholics shouldn't observe it. That (and only that) is the reason why Walt's log cabin is and will remain dark and undecorated. Don't come to me looking for teeth-rotting candies, razorblade-concealing apples or (especially) a donation for UNICEF.

I'm serious about the first part, though. So is Most Rev. Andrzej Dziega, Archbishop of Szczecin, Poland, who wrote in a letter to the faithful that under the appearance of innocent fun, Hallowe'en can be "destroying the spiritual life." Hallowe'en "tricks" hide "diabolical attitudes", the prelate said, by encouraging readiness to harm the others.

And the Archbishop of Warsaw, Most Rev. Kazimierz Nycz, said in a website message that Hallowe'en goes against the teaching of the Church by promoting the "occult and magic".

So, good Catholics, please keep in mind that "Hallowe'en" is derived from "All Hallows' Eve", the eve of All Saints' Day, which is a national holiday in predominantly Catholic Poland, and still a holy day of obligation throughout the Universal Church. See you in church.

Hockey lovers should throw pucks at Bettman until he goes to hell or the NBA

Yes, there's no paucity of subject material today, what with Mitt and Al and Sandy all vying for our attention. But let us speak of something truly important: the ongoing, contemptible and suicidal lockout of the National Hockey League players by the rapacious, contemptible and incredibly stupid NHL owners and their front man, Gary "Wanna" Bettman.

Readers of WWW know that Walt is a hockey fan. Perhaps the proper tense is "was", not "is". And not because of the absence of hockey from North America's arenas and TV channels. Rather, I am (present tense) a fan of hockey as it was (past tense) in its glory days. I refer to the era from, say, 1945 through 1967, although a Montréal Canadiens fan (which I'm) would doubtless extend the period of glory to the end of the `78-`79 season.

Since then, the fastest, most manly, most exciting team sport in the world -- a sport of speed, grace and power -- has been "modernized" and "improved" to suit the tastes of the denizens of regions more suitable for beach volleyball -- the good ole boys who like NASCAR, arena football and roller derby. Hockey has been transmogrified into a cartoon-like spectacle that combines the sporting qualities of "professional" wrestling with the excitement of test cricket.

If you're a fan of real hockey, think of what you've had to endure to watch today's shoddy facsimile of the game you love:

• outlandishly exorbitant ticket prices
• months and months of virtually meaningless regular-season games
• the destruction of intimate, tradition-rich rinks
• their replacement with mall-like vanilla structures whose main function is to generate luxury-box revenue and put your seats a mile up in the rafters
• the proliferation of "sales points" and "food courts" to fleece you by peddling overpriced junk
• the high-decibel aural assault you must suffer with every visit to the rink
• the diminishment of the quality of every team via runaway expansion
• the cavalier tossing-off of the traditions you love via the "bringing up to date" of uniforms and the annual procession of pointless rule changes
• the creation of a legion of new teams in cities you don't care about
• the disappearance of teams from the cities you do care about
• the liquidation of age-old rivalries to accommodate the gigantism of a league grown too unmanageably huge
• hockey in June, and
• the dumbing down of the game as a whole to teach it to yet another new generation of potential fans in distant hot-weather climes.

Ah yes, the rantings of a Canadian pissed off that Americans control Canada's national winter sport. Walt hears you saying that. But those words were written by Americans, Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif, sometime residents of the great hockey town of Buffalo, who have written about the game they love for the New York Times, the Village Voice and the Hockey News. 

And get this! Messrs Klein and Reif wrote The Death of Hockey, from which that excerpt is taken, in 1998 -- 14 years before Bettman's latest lockout!

I call it "Bettman's" lockout because he ordered and orchestrated it, in a third attempt to get the NHL players to give up some of the share of revenue they wrung out of the owners after Bettman's previous attempts to break the National Hockey League Players Association (the players' union).

Bettman is not a hockey man, never was. He is a New York Jew labour lawyer, whose previous experience was in the management [obviously not playing! Ed.] of the NBA.  Of Bettman it was said, "Someone handed him a hockey puck once, and he spent two hours trying to figure out how to open it."

Klein and Reif quote an op-ed piece by Stu Hackel, a former NHL director of communications, written during the 1998 Stanley Cup final:

When the present regime [Bettman and his minions] came to power in 1993, they moved to "fix" the game and the business with an army of executives from other sports and fields. Their unspoken theme was that hockey people had made a mess of things and they were going to show how it was done.

Their modernization has included a damaging lockout [the first of three], an on-ice officials' strike, four franchise relocations, two realignments, a flattening of licensing growth, a merry-go-round of rule changes, an ill-conceived venture into the Winter Olympics [Klein and Reif -- and Walt -- disagree on this point], unmanageably soaring salaries, escalating ticket prices, too many empty seats, the specter of four more diluting expansion franchises, lots of red ink, and now a drop in television viewership on both sides of the border.

One trusts that these are all temporary conditions or problems of growth, but if this were politics, an incumbent with that record might have trouble getting reelected.

That was in 1998. But hockey is evidently not politics -- not by a long shot -- and things just got worse and worse and worse. And now the National Hockey League is out of business. Is this a temporary condition? The removal of Mr. Bettman -- not just from the negotiating table but from any position whatsoever in organized hockey anywhere in the world -- would be a good way to begin the resuscitation of the best of all sports.

Catholic voters must put Church teachings ahead of politics, say US bishops

The Church ordinarily tries not to interfere in "the democratic process", we are told, but these are extraordinary times, and America faces an extraordinary crisis -- not just a political crisis and/or an economic crisis, but a moral crisis. That being so, good Catholics should pay close attention to statements made by three American bishops this weekend.
Most Rev. Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia, called on Catholic voters to "stand united" on the issue of abortion. The killing of innocent children before they have a chance to take their first breath outside the womb is "a big issue today," the prelate said, "and I think what it requires of Catholics is a loyalty to the Church prior to their political party. We’re Catholics before we’re Democrats. We’re Catholics before we’re Republicans. We’re even Catholics before we’re Americans, because we know that God has a demand on us prior to any government demand on us. And this has been the story of the martyrs through the centuries.

"If we don't stand united on this issue, we're bound to failure," Abp. Chaput continued, "not only in the area of protecting unborn human life but in maintaining our religious freedom."

Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, who also serves as apostolic administrator of his former Diocese of Portland (Maine), issued a statement on the upcoming election, in which Maine voters will be asked to permit same-sex marriage.


"Maine citizens have the right and obligation to cast their votes for federal, state and local candidates for office, as well as to make decisions on various referendum issues, including the referendum that would attempt to redefine marriage as something other than the union of one man and one woman open to children,” the bishop said.

But he reminded Catholics that "we do not scrutinize a candidate’s positions or other issues within a vacuum, but within the context of an educated conscience formed through scripture and the teachings of the faith. For us, the sanctity of life from conception to natural death is non-negotiable; euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are never to be sanctioned; embryonic stem cell research and experimentation are considered nothing short of the taking of human life; marriage between a man and a woman must be valued and protected as the foundation of family and society; religious freedom must always be protected, and the care and nurturing of the poor is not simply a kind act, but a societal obligation…

"A Catholic whose conscience has been properly formed by scripture and Church teaching cannot justify a vote for a candidate or referendum question that opposes the teachings of the Church. The definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, open to the birth of children, is a matter of established Catholic doctrine. Any Catholic who supports a redefinition of marriage -- or so called “same-sex marriage” -- is unfaithful to Catholic doctrine."
A third bishop, Most Rev. Thomas Paprocki of Springfield IL, has explained his recent statement that "a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy."

"Some who try to navigate this labyrinth of moral analysis simply rationalize their way to a desired conclusion, for example, by saying that voting for a pro-choice candidate is justified by their support for other 'social justice' causes," said Bishop Paprocki. "But such people should apply the Golden Rule by placing themselves in the shoes of the people who are going to be killed by abortions. Would these voters really think it is more 'just' to vote for the 'pro-choice' candidate if they or their own children or their brothers and sisters were going to be deliberately killed -- along with 1.3 million others?"

Good Catholics, as we are so often told by the President who wants to destroy our Faith and our freedom, let us be clear! As these three American bishops have told us, the key question is whether we love God more than a political party or candidates that promote intrinsic evils and serious sins. The First Commandment is that we not worship false idols. That means God comes first and his moral law trumps politics. Vote your faith on November 6th!

This post is an adaptation of articles in CatholicCulture, for which Walt and Ed. thank God.

"I'll kill you! And your little dog too!"

OK, Hamed Shafia didn't say those exact word directly to his sister Geeti, aged 13, on their sister Zainab's wedding day. When 19-year-old Zainab's husband-to-be arrived at the wedding reception alone -- unaccompanied by any members of his family -- Hamed told his sister "If you leave with him, I'm going to kill everyone here and then I'll kill myself."

And, even though the wedding was called off, that's just what he did. Or someone did. Late last year, Hamed Shafia was convicted of first-degree murder, along with his father, Mohammed Shafia, and mother -- Shafia's #2 wife -- Tooba Yahya.

The Ontario Superior Court jury found that the three of them had acted together to murder Zainab, and two of her sisters, Sahar, 17, and Geeti (the one with the little dog) and Rona Amir Mohammed, their father's first wife in his polygamous marriage. Their bodies were dumped into the Rideau Canal near Kingston, Ontario.

As reported in WWW in January, the convictions are being appealed, but journalist Ron Tripp isn't going to await the results of the appeal. His book on the most sensational "honour killings" ever to be perpetrated in Canada will be released by Harper Collins this coming week.

Without Honour: The True Story of the Shafia Family and the Kingston Canal Murders reports Hamed's threat, and details the layers upon layers of violence and control exerted by the Shafia men over the female members of the Muslim family. Here, from the book, are a few glimpses of life inside the brutally oppressive Shafia household.

• Sahar told a schoolmate just weeks before her murder that she was pregnant, although the truth behind that claim remains unknown;
• Before arriving in Canada, the Shafia family was kicked out of Australia, when trying to immigrate from Afghanistan, for violating the terms of their visa, a fact that contradicts evidence presented at their trial;
• The Shafia children got into trouble at a school in Dubai, including Geeti, who was suspended for kicking a teacher, and a younger brother (not named because of a publication ban) who was expelled when caught with pornography;
• A schoolmate, who did not testify at trial, said the girls' younger brother had told him that shunning Sahar at home was a Shafia family "rule" because she upset her father;
• Other school friends with stories of the girls' abuse at the hands of their father and brother Hamed, and others with accounts of the desperate ploys the girls used to avoid their father's wrath, were not interviewed by investigators or called to give testimony at trial.

Although the girls spoke out to friends, classmates and even teachers, there was no effective follow-up by provincial or local authorities. Mr. Tripp puts the lack of concern or action down to political correctness. When talking of the missed opportunities, the writer told an interviewer, "Teenaged girls trying to be teenaged girls is no rationalization for murder."

"The cultural sensitivities among organizations and institutions [suggested] that we need to allow this family to preserve their culture, and that is a noble goal," he said. But the good intentions meant that a dangerous family situation went unchecked. "Political correctness and this belief that families are sacred cows, and cultural sensitivities: all those things conspired to seal the fate of these [women]."

Even after the horrific murders, Mohammed Shafia had nothing good to say about the dead girls. "Even if they come back to life a hundred time, if I have a cleaver in my hand, I will cut [them] in pieces. Not once, but a hundred time," he ranted.

"May the devil shit on their graves… whore… honourless girl… They betrayed kindness, they betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed our tradition, they betrayed everything." He added, "There is nothing more valuable than our honour."

Click here to read the National Post 's full report on Without Honour: The True Story of the Shafia Family and the Kingston Canal Murders.

Previous posts here on WWW:
"Honour killing trial: video on dad's testimony"
"GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY in Shafia honour killings"
"What's wrong with Afghans?"

SSPX gives Bishop Williamson the boot

Rorate Caeli reports that the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has expelled Bishop Richard Williamson for what it calls "refusing to show respect and obedience to his lawful superior". That would be the Society's Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, who Bishop Williamson has criticized repeatedly for betraying the True Faith and the work of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in  Bishop Fellay's quest to bring the society back into communion with Rome.

Bishop Williamson was declared "excluded" from the Society on October 4th, 2012. However, he was given a final deadline of October 14th, by which date he had to "bend the knee" -- declare his submission to Bishop Fellay and the Society's council. Bishop Williamson evidently thought he could not do so in good conscience, and announced the publication of an “open letter” asking the Superior General to resign.

He also travelled to Brazil recently, where he administered the sacrament of Confirmation without approval from the SSPX leadership.

Unfortunately for the Superior General, Bishop Williamson is not the only one who believes that Bishop Fellay has gone too far -- much too far -- towards conformity with the modernist teachings and practices of Pope Benedict XVI and the Second Vatican Council. He will not be silenced by his "exclusion", and others will listen... and follow.

"My wife dissed me; I couldn't stand it", Muslim wife-killer tells trial

What with the presidential "debates" and other inconsequential matters, a week and a half has gone by since we had an update on the murder trial of Peer Khairi, the immigrant who allegedly slit his wife’s throat, as far back as her spine, because she wouldn’t follow the Islamic customs of their "old country" -- Afghanistan.

It was Khairi himself who called 9-1-1 to report that his wife had been "murdered" and was lying dead in their cockroach-infested west Toronto apartment that very minute. After the corpse had been removed, Toronto's finest escorted Khairi to the batcave [police station, surely! Ed.] where they interviewed him for over three hours.

Standard operating procedure now is to videotape these interrogations, to obtain statements which may be used in court and to ensure that no rubber hoses or other extreme interrogatory techniques are used. But you know how it is with modern technology. Unnoticed by the gendarmes, the video camera quit functioning after the first hour or so. Weak batteries, perhaps. They did have a backup camera, but the detective in charge, errr, forgot to turn it on.

Nevertheless, the presiding judge has admitted, as part of the Crown's case, not just the videotape, but the testimony of the inquisitor, Detective Sergeant Peter Code, as to what he remembers of the conversation. Following are excerpts from Khairi's tearful depiction of the pitiful image of his life in the months before he almost cut off his wife's head.

"He said [his life] was unbearable," Det.-Sgt. Code testified yesterday. "He went on to make a comparison by stating that even an elephant, when it has too much weight on its back, will start to moan or cry."

The great weight, said the accused, was his family's incomprehensible willingness to embrace Canadian culture after emigrating from Afghanistan by way of India. Imagine! Not only did his children refuse to dress "sufficiently Muslim", but his wife not only allowed this, but stood up for her six kids' freedoms and her own!

That, Khairi told the police, was the last straw. Det.-Sgt. Code remembers him saying "he couldn't take it anymore and [the killing] happened."

At various times during the interrogation, Khairi said he was "out of his head" or "not thinking properly" when he butchered Randjida Khairi in March of 2008. But the more he told his tale of woe to the police, the more the fatal stabbing appeared as the culminatino of years of repressed fury, rather than the temporary loss of control which might see the charge reduced to second degree murder or even manslaughter.

"The children were doing anything that they wanted, they were wearing whatever they wanted, and [their mother] would let them do whatever they pleased," the detective testified. Khairi, now 65, was furious at his four daughters for going out at night. One even had the audacity to sleep over at her fiance's house.

He was angry at his two sons, who were unemployed, for "stealing communication services." He was angry at his wife for failing to properly dote on him after he crashed his car. She would make breakfast and do laundry for the children, but leave him to fend for himself, the admitted killer told police. "His family wouldn't even get him a cup of tea, let alone a meal, when he was suffering," Det.-Sgt. Code testified, reading from his notes of Khairi's statements.

The night he killed Randjida Khairi, the two were embroiled in a fight over his son's alleged theft, the court heard. "His wife had taken his son's side and she was yelling at him to leave their son alone," the court was told.

Their son eventually left the room, but Mr. and Mrs. Khairi continued screaming at each other. Tired of being "disrespected" by members of his family, Mr. Khairi then armed himself with two (2) knives and stabbed his wife until she was dead.

Two knives, right? You'd think that would indicate some degree or premeditation. Wouldn't a man in the grip of an insane rage just grab one knife, the first one that came to hand? In his interview with police hours later, Det.-Sgt. Code asked the accused if he believed he was crazy. "Mr. Khairi advised no, that he had problems but that he was not crazy," the officer testified.

At two points in the interview, according to the detective's testimony, Khairi began to cry. One was when the accused spoke of his first wife, the one he married before Randjida Khairi. Sadly, she was barren, lost a leg in a car accident and then died by, errr, accidentally falling down a set of stairs.

The other time Khairi shed tears was when he spoke of the elephant. His family life had become "too much," he said again and again. "Even an elephant," he whined, "will cry underneath all that weight."

Det.-Sgt. Code was the Crown's last witness. The defence opens today. Agent 3 will be on hand to see if Khairi takes the stand to turn on the tears for the jury.

Debate? What debate?

Some debate, eh, boys and girls? When I went to school, "debate" meant a discussion of two opposing points of view, with the goal of reconciling them or deciding between one and the other.  The outcome would be the resolution of a difference of opinion. So how can you have a debate when both sides agree?

That's what I heard last night -- the Inevitable Mitt agreeing with President Al O'Bama on every conceivable issue of American foreign and "security" policy. Not once did I hear the challenger say "That's completely wrong. My policy is as different from yours as, errr, white is different from black."

Perhaps because of my endorsement of Ron Paul, I was not asked to help prep Romney for this last debate. I didn't worry about it because I thought surely one of his puppet-masters ["handlers", surely. Ed.] would have coached him to put the Prez on the wrong foot immediately by clarifying what the lamestream press called Mitt's "gaffe" about it taking 14 days for Obama to admit that the 9/11 attack in Libya as an act of terrorism.

That was the point at which "Creepy" Crowley jumped in on Obama's side to make Romney look as if he was wrong. A forceful, word-by-word examination of what Obama said in the Rose Garden the next day would have shown that Romney was quite right. But did Mitt get that out? No.

Rather, Romney started off slow and cautious and then went backwards from there. He quickly and explicitly gave ground on so many issues -- "I agree with the President"; "What the President did was right" -- that he simply didn’t have any wiggle room by the time he got to the debate’s later stages. Romney was getting pummelled so he went into the clinch and held on for dear life.

Even though he decided to give it a miss during his mid-East "apology tour", Obama portrayed himself as Israel's greatest friend in the whole world. So what? Romney let us know that, if he were president, he would be even farther up Netanyahoo's arse. Specifically, he said that if Israel were attacked by Iran or any other anti-Semites, he'd say "We've got your back." And yes, that would include military intervention.

Obama gave the order to take out Osama bin Laden, and it was done even as he commanded. What could Romney say? That he would not have ordered bin Laden killed? All he could say was that he was sorry it wasn't done sooner.

And on and on it went. Romney and Obama agreed that American should have a strong military, with Mitt predictably saying that he was going to build up the military establishment which the Prez was letting run down. Unfortunately for the wannabe, the example he chose was the US Navy, which he said had fewer warships now than at any time since 1917.

Obama countered -- rather meanly, I thought -- that it's not a game of "Battleships" any more. What counts, he said -- rather meanly, I thought -- was not the number of ships you have, but the kind of ships. What a modern navy uses, he explained (as if to a schoolkid), is aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines, not battleships. And, he went on -- rather meanly, I thought -- the army doesn't use horses or bayonets either. Thus ended the lesson.

Walt's verdict: Gotta give this one to Mr. O on points, but the decision wasn't close at all. Romney never laid a glove on him. So for the series, that's one for Romney, one for Obama, and one "no decision". Which leaves the contenders just where the polls say -- pretty much tied. Should be an interesting election.

Footnote: Why oh why did the Republicans not nominate Ron Paul, so Americans would have a clear choice? Congressman Paul was the only candidate with a new and different approach to foreign policy. I defy you to discern any practical difference between Romney and Obama when it comes to Iraq or Afghanistan or Israel or Iran. Ron Paul was the only one to advocate bringing US troops home immediately, and an end to American interference in the Middle East. It's not too late to write him in. Here's how you spell his name: R-O-N  P-A-U-L.  Come on people. You know he's right!