A A R D V A R K

What I Did On The 4th of July

Rafa — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 03:17:44 +0100

Relaxed. Enjoyed the tranquility of my home office. Appreciated the beauty and serenity of my garden. Cherished my significant other. Played with my dog. Cruised my favorite Internet sites. Texted a good friend of mine who lives in Florida. Chatted with another friend in Malaysia. Spoke with my brother and wife who live in San Diego. Worked out for over an hour. Watched "The Wizard of Oz" for the first time in its entirety. Listened to my selected MPGs. Cropped photos with my Adobe Photoshop. Laughed at reruns of "What's My Line?" on BBC America.

Great to be free to do whatever I want. Great to live in America.

2006 Boston Gay Pride Parade

Rafa — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 03:43:42 +0100

I watched the 2006 Boston Gay Pride Parade last Saturday, June 10th, along with friends at the corner of Appleton and Columbus Streets in the South End. It was raining all day long, as you can see in the photos below. Luckily, I had worn my old PVC yellow rain jacket with hood - and let me tell you - it was everyone's envy! When everyone else was carrying umbrellas too feeble to withstand the winds, I stood comfortably on one corner enjoying the parade and secretly gloating over others who were stupid enough not to wear practical raingear.

Speaking of the parade, it was the most pathetic parade I've ever seen in the nearly ten years that I have been watching. Due to inclement weather, the parade had to be delayed one hour. But it wasn't the weather that bothered me as much as it was the disorganization and the commonality of the parade. There were more of the same from previous years, and much less of new. You had the usual characters like drag beauty queens, topless dykes on bikes, and leathered muscle boys - nothing that I have never seen before. I was hoping that the two gay male mannequins would be paraded, but none of that sort. There was not a soul protesting Macy's either. And lo and behold - miraculously - I didn't see any religious freaks carrying "God Hates Fags" signs!

Last night, I watched Larry King Live on CNN and the panelists debated a rather cliché topic: Is Homosexuality a Sin? The panel included America's first openly gay Episcopal bishop V. Gene Robinson, an openly lesbian Episcolian minister, a Southern Baptist minister, a conservative Catholic priest, a conservative Episcopalian priest, and Andrew Sullivan, an openly gay TIME columnist and devout Catholic who runs his own blog. Sullivan argued that he was born gay, that he is what he is, that he loves the Catholic Church, and encourages lapsed gay Catholics to come back to the church and to love their faith. The conservatives held on their literal interpretation of certain scriptures that allude to the condemnation of homosexual acts.

Like the Boston Gay Parade, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that I have not heard before. Religious gays will always find ways to make themselves believe that God loves them for who they are and what they do in the privacy of their bedroom as long as they're monogamous. On the other hand, the religious conservatives will always find ways to make themselves believe that every word in the Bible is divinely inspired and closed to interpretation. As Robinson brilliantly stated, the conservatives waste too much time scrutinizing, criticizing, judging and condemning gay people instead of focusing on real issues that truly threaten the world like diseases, poverty, social injustice, crimes, etc. We can spend as much time as we want debating human sexuality, doctrinal differences, theological questions and whether or not Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children. Who cares? The conservatives may claim to be God's favorite children, but they also know that they will always fall short of His glory. Anyone who presumes to be spiritually pure will be the last to enter paradise. After all, we will all be judged for the way we treat each other, and not for how much goodness we have accomplished or how many Bible verses we can recite.

I'm off to Washington, D.C. this weekend to attend a fashion show! Woo-hoo!

Gay Male Mannequins Unite!

Rafa — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 13:29:53 +0100

Now here's something to make your gay blood boil. Boston Herald reported:

Macy's removes gay pride display
June 7, 2006
BOSTON --Macy's department store has removed a window display marking Boston's gay pride week after a group that opposes gay marriage complained it was offensive.
The display at the downtown Boston store featured two male mannequins, with one wearing a gay pride rainbow flag around his waist, next to a list of several planned Boston Pride Week events.
MassResistance, formerly the Article 8 Alliance, which has campaigned against gay marriage and gay-themed textbooks in public schools, objected to the display and said the mannequin wearing the flag had a "skirt" on, the Boston Herald reported.
The group posted pictures on its Web site and scores of its supporters complained to Macy's by phone and e-mail.
Elina Kazan, a Macy's spokeswoman, said the store decided to remove the mannequins but leave the list of events in order to strike a balance. Displays in previous years did not use mannequins.
"We believe in diversity, and our customers are very important to us," Kazan said. "But (the display) did offend a few of our customers, and we had to re-examine it.
ACLU of Massachusetts spokeswoman Sarah Wunsch criticized Macy's for "succumbing to the bigotry" of what she said was a fringe anti-gay group.

Kazan said that the display offended "a few" of Macy's customers. Why would Macy's yield to the demands of just a few narrow-minded customers when it should be spending more of its energy in attracting a larger open-minded customers? A few years ago, I had written to Macy's customer relations department protesting the sale of real fur coat at its downtown Boston store, and the only reply I got was a generic "thank-you-for-writing-but-we-do-believe-that-it-is-appropriate-that-we-offer-all-of-our-customers-a-wide-array-of-merchandise-choices."

Every winter, there isn't a day when you don't see fur-wearing mannequins at Macy's display windows, and as an animal welfare activist, I am offended everytime I see them. I am offended by the horrendous cruelty and violence involved in the manufacture of fur, yet Macy's and other stores continue to deny such abominable practice even when it is well-documented. Now the religious freaks at MassResistance claim that they are offended by the sight of "two male mannequins, with one wearing a gay pride rainbow flag around his waist." How could anyone, seriously, be offended by a pair of plastic mannequins especially when no living creature was purposely killed or hurt in the making of the mannequins? How often do you see male mannequins together ("celebrating" Gay Pride) in a Macy's display window, compared to female/male mannequins wearing real fur coat and/or skimpy swimwear (I am surprised the religious nuts have not made a big deal about the latter!)

Just based on the arguments above, I don't see the logic behind Macy's decision to remove the mannequins whatsoever. By caving in to the demands of a religious few - which, by the way - may not necessarily affect Macy's profits - Macy's has now officially become a "slave" to religious fundamentalists, in the same way that European host countries have submitted themselves to the demands of their Islamofascist residents. Yes, Macy's has allowed a fringe minority group of ignorant, miseducated, misguided and obnoxious individuals to affect the way the store handles its business and its relationship with the gay community which, by the way, is a far greater consumer than the MassResistance barfbags.

The Controversial Mannequins: Before & After

Mannequin police on patrol to nip it in the bud

The Boston Pride Committee's Response

MassResistance Watch

Islam & The Question of Attire

Rafa — Tue, 30 May 2006 04:00:16 +0100

Recently in Baghdad, an Iraqi tennis coach and two of his players were shot to death because they were wearing shorts. That's right, shorts! Guess who the perpetrators were? The Islamofascists. Associated Press writes:

The men were killed Wednesday, a week after the warning was issued in leaflets distributed in southwest Baghdad.
An official of the Iraqi Tennis Union says gunmen stopped the car the athletes were riding in and asked them to step out before shooting them.
The coach was Sunni and the two players were Shiite.
It was the second attack against athletes in just over a week. A taekwondo team was kidnapped in western Iraq on May 17. The 15 athletes were members of a sports club that hopes to one day send athletes to the Olympics.
     What is wrong with the killers? Everything. From their twisted interpretation of their so-called holy texts to their unhealthy Weltenschaaung. From their incurable lunacy to their outrageous lack of fashion sense. And lack of playfulness, I may add. Not only do they hate sports attire that exposes a lot of skin, but they hate all sports, period.
     I'm not a big lover of sports as I am a big lover of beauty pageants. I have been following pageants for nearly thirty years and I can tell you that I have never heard of a beauty pageant that does not include a swimsuit competition. Even Miss America, which does not consider itself a beauty pageant but a scholarship pageant (read: you don't have to be pretty to win) has always had a swimsuit event. In virtually every beauty pageant, the contestants are given the option to wear a one-piece or a two-piece. There is never the option to wear a loose swimwear (you know, the kind that does not touch your genitalia). When a British Iraqi Muslim woman, Sarah Mendly, was participating in the Miss England 2005 contest, she opted to wear a one-piece swimsuit with a sarong - a swimwear that might be considered traditional or conservative by those who have been accustomed to wearing a bikini. Despite Mendly's "modest" swimwear, Muslim leaders in Britain called for Mendly's withdrawal from the pageant. Mendly eventually won and represented England in Miss World.
     Islamic countries have been sending beautiful young women to international beauty pageants, and several Muslim women have won international beauty titles, such as Lebanon's Georgina Rizk (Miss Universe 1971) who, by the way, chose to wear a two-piece see-through harem pants (left photo); Turkey's Azra Akin (Miss World 2002) who wore a two-piece swimwear (center photo) and Afghanistan's Vida Samadzai who caused international sensation when she wore a two-piece red bikini in Miss Earth 2003 (right photo):
     Although Samadzai did not win Miss Earth 2003, she did receive a special award called "Beauty For A Cause." In Miss Universe 2005, Indonesia's Artika Sari Devi wore a one-piece swimsuit and made the top 15, despite protests from angry Islamofascists in her country. Samadzai and Devi truly deserve a medal of courage for defying their Islamofascist detractors, more so that the two women come from countries where Islam has a stronghold on people's lives unlike Lebanon (which is very Western) or Turkey (which is a secularized society). But the point is, no matter where a woman lives, or whether she's pretty or ugly, she should have the fundamental right to wear whatever she pleases.
     Modest Islamic Swimwear
Warm Welcome for Sharia Swimsuit
"Oh my, God! Her legs are exposed!"

Georgia On My Gay Mind

Rafa — Wed, 17 May 2006 03:10:19 +0100

Finally, a sane, rational and compassionate judge supports gay marriage! Hee-haw! The Associated Press reports:

Judge Strikes Down Ga. Ban on Gay Marriage
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer
5/16/2006
A judge has struck down Georgia's ban on same-sex marriages, saying a measure overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2004 violated a provision of the state constitution that limits ballot questions to a single subject.
The ruling by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Constance C. Russell had been eagerly awaited by gay-rights supporters who filed the court challenge in November 2004, soon after the constitutional ban was approved.
Russell said the state's voters must first decide whether same-sex relationships should have any legal status before they can be asked to decide whether same-sex marriages should be banned.
"People who believe marriages between men and women should have a unique and privileged place in our society may also believe that same-sex relationships should have some place — although not marriage," she wrote. "The single-subject rule protects the right of those people to hold both views and reflect both judgments by their vote."
Russell said "procedural safeguards such as the single-subject rule rarely enjoy public support."
"But ultimately it is those safeguards that preserve our liberties, because they ensure that the actions of government are constrained by the rule of law," the judge wrote.
Jack Senterfitt, who challenged the amendment on behalf of gay rights organization Lambda Legal, said the ruling "protects the right of voters to make independent decisions on each independent issue."
Gov. Sonny Perdue said the decision ran counter to the voice of Georgia voters in defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
"The people of Georgia knew exactly what they were doing when an overwhelming 76 percent voted in support of this constitutional amendment," he said. "It is sad that a single judge has chosen to reverse this decision."
Perdue said the state is considering appealing the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court.
    The real issue, then, is defining the word "marriage," and not so much whether or not gay people have the right to marry. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines marriage in these terms:
Etymology: Middle English mariage, from Anglo-French, from marier to marry
1 a (1) : the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2) : the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage <same-sex marriage> b : the mutual relation of married persons : WEDLOCK c : the institution whereby individuals are joined in a marriage
2 : an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities
3 : an intimate or close union <the marriage of painting and poetry -- J. T. Shawcross>
     I love this definition by George Bernard Shaw: "When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition until death do them part."
     Russell obviously subscribes to the traditional definition of marriage as a legally recognized union between man and woman, and she intimates that a union between two people of the same sex should be called something else. Fine. I think the term "civil union" suits many gay couples; if civil unions are recognized in all states, and "marriage" is strictly reserved for straight couples, then everyone will be happy. This should not, in any way, prevent gay couples from uttering the words "marriage" or "marry" when they refer to their civil unions. Now the question is, are there straight couples who'd rather go gay by adopting "civil union" instead of "marriage?" Will these straight couples be allowed to get married, err, "civilly united," because they feel that the word "marriage" has too much negative stigma attached to it?
     The only people who want to preserve the traditional definition of marriage are sadly those who cannot see beyond definition. True marriage is not about definition or roles; it is about companionship, trust, honesty, mutual respect, mutual edification, and of course, unconditional love - at least - this is the kind of relationship that my partner and I have had in the last eleven years. Any rational person will tell you that gay marriages will not cause the human race to vanish, any more than straight marriages will establish perpetual world order. Yawn.
Religious Support for Equal Marriage Rights
The Content of Historic Same-Sex Unions

U.S. Legal Residents: Do You Value Your Property?

Rafa — Thu, 11 May 2006 16:15:47 +0100

You live in a beautiful house with a beautiful garden in a beautiful and peaceful neighborhood in a beautiful city. You and your partner have been living in this beautiful house for nearly a decade and you have done several renovations - inside and out - to maintain the beauty and charm of the house. Not too long ago, you had a beautiful new wooden fence put up.

Since you and your partner have been living in this beautiful house in this beautiful and peaceful neighborhood, you have hosted many beautiful gatherings with friends and family. So far, you have nothing but beautiful memories, and these memories bring you a sense of peace and inspire you to create even more beautiful memories.

You and your partner value your house not because of its beauty, but because it is your home. You have invested a lot of time, money and energy in converting your house into a true, beautiful, peaceful and inviting home.

But alas, the beauty and the peace and security of your home has been threatened by illegal aliens who are trespassing your property, leaving trash all over the place, and even urinating and defecating on your freshly mowed lawn. You are not alone. You are among the hundreds and thousands of law-abiding U.S. citizens (native-born or naturalized) whose very existence and whose way of life are constantly being threatened by hundreds and thousands of illegal aliens who have no respect for law. Some of these aliens have strong criminal backgrounds...

... and some are men who have abandoned their wives and children!

If you value your property, if you value your home, if you value your way of life, if you value America, say no to illegal immigration and say yes to building the fence!

And can you imagine America encouraging its poor legal residents to move up to Canada? My God! Would our Canadian friends still remain our friends?

Stars and stripes... olé!

Rafa — Tue, 02 May 2006 03:05:11 +0100

I listened to the infamous, newly minted Spanish version of the "Star-Spangled Banner" called "Nuestro Himno" and here's what I think:

1. It is painful to listen to it and hard to sing (at least in the current version). I speak fluent Spanish and I just couldn't follow the excessive elongation of the last syllables in each verse.
2. Some blogger commented that the lyrics in Spanish are whiny. I don't think so. In the original English version by Key, the flag is still "gallantly" standing after giving a "perilous" fight. In the chorus of the Spanish version, the singer questions the invincibility of the flag. The second verse evokes images of slavery and oppression as the singer urges his "people" to break the chains and to continue fighting (I suppose, for their "right" to remain in America).
3. I don't have any problem with national anthems being sung in other languages, as long as the foreign interpretations remain loyal to the original. A good example is the Philippine national anthem written and sung in Filipino, English and Spanish. Besides, the U.S. national anthem has been recorded and sung in jazz, hard metal rock, country, pop and hip-hop. Singing it in Spanish does not worry me; it's how the lyrics and ideas are presented that does.
"Star-Spangled Banner" in its original English written by Francis Scott Key in 1814:
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
And now the Spanish version and its English translation:
And what are your thoughts, dear readers?

Oh, Compassion!

Rafa — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:48:15 +0100

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, in her latest article, decries President Bush's claim that Americans lack compassion towards illegal aliens. Malkin fires back by saying that Bush lacks compasssion towards U.S. citizens:

The victims of illegal immigration
By Michelle Malkin

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
President Bush accuses those of us who want to secure America's borders and fully enforce our immigration laws of lacking "compassion."
Huh. Well, I have yet to hear an ounce of compassion from President Bush for America's countless casualties of lax immigration enforcement. Where's the sympathy for innocent, law-abiding citizens who have lost their lives at the hands of illegal aliens and their open-borders enablers?
Nope, we haven't heard a word about the victims as the White House pours on its unadulterated pro-illegal alien rhetoric and "undocumented workers do the jobs Americans won't do" propaganda — all in support of a massive, ill-timed, bureaucratic nightmare-inducing amnesty plan that will inevitably increase illegal immigration.
Last week, a notorious illegal alien serial killer who traipsed freely across the U.S.-Mexican border during a 25-year, escalating crime spree popped up in the news again. The case of Angel Resendiz, a convicted death row murderer in President Bush's home state of Texas, is a timely reminder of the deadly costs of our continued homeland security chaos.
Time and again, illegal alien day laborer Resendiz broke the law getting into our country; broke more laws while in the country; and then broke the law repeatedly and brazenly after being released, deported, and allowed to return. His most brutal acts included the slayings of 12 people, ranging in age from 16 to 81, which ended in 1999 when Resendiz surrendered to a Texas Ranger in El Paso. For the last seven years, Resendiz has been perched comfortably on Death Row — eating chocolate cream pies, watching Spanish-language television, whining about depression, and selling locks of his hair on Internet auction sites.
His execution, scheduled for May 10, has been delayed pending yet another of his endless appeals claiming to be "insane."
As I recounted in my book Invasion, Resendiz entered and exited our country at will. From the time he was 14, he racked up arrests and convictions ranging from trespassing, destruction of property, burglary, aggravated batter, and grand theft auto to carrying a loaded firearm and false representation of U.S. citizenship. He had at least 25 encounters with U.S. law enforcement between August 1976 and August 1996, when he was arrested and released for trespassing in a Kentucky railyard.
During that period, he was convicted at least nine times on several serious felon charges. He was deported to Mexico by the feds at least three times and was "voluntarily returned" to Mexico at least four times without formal proceedings. Throughout 1998, the Border Patrol continued its blind catch-and-release policy — apprehending Resendiz seven times and letting him go on his own recognizance despite his massive criminal record and three prior deportations. Shoddy fingerprint databases, immigration paperwork negligence, and unpoliced borders led to:
- The bludgeoning death of Florida teenager Jesse Howell and the rape and strangulation murder of his fiancé, Wendy Von Huben.
- The bludgeoning death of University of Kentucky student Christopher Maier and the rape and near-murder of his girlfriend, who survived the attack.
- The murder of Leafie Mason, an elderly Texas whom Resendiz hammered to death with a fire iron.
- The rape, stabbing, and bludgeoning death of Baylor College of Medicine researcher Claudia Benton.
- The sledgehammer bludgeonings of Texas pastor Norman Sirnic and his wife, Karen.
- The bludgeoning death of Houston teacher Noemi Dominguez.
- The murder of elderly Texas widow Josephine Konvicka, who was killed with a grubbing hoe.
- The murders of George Morber, shot in the head, and Carolyn Frederick, clubbed to death.

The last four of Resendiz's victims were murdered after Resendiz had been released by federal immigration officials — even though there were already warrants outstanding for his arrest.
Resendiz made a bloody mockery of our homeland security chaos. Congress and the White House are now preparing to add grave insult to fatal injury by refusing to fix the persistent problems that facilitated Resendiz's crimes.
Campaigning for amnesty this week, President Bush mouthed the open-borders mantra against tough deportation policies and lectured immigration enforcement advocates about their lack of sensitivity.
"I can understand it's emotional," he said, but "we're talking about human beings, decent human beings that need to be treated with respect."
I don't think the victims of "undocumented worker" Angel Resendiz would agree.
Right on, Michelle. Although I do not necessarily agree with Malkin's views all the time, her latest column underlines once again Dubya's idiocy and cluelessness in the face of imminent threat and danger.
Crime Victims of Illegal Aliens
The Illegal Alien Crime Wave
Myths and Lies of Illegal Immigration

Abuse of Foreign Domestic Help

Rafa — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 19:03:10 +0100

There are over a million Filipino overseas workers in the Middle East working as engineers, technicians, teachers, construction workers, and caregivers. There are also thousands of Filipinas - who come from impoverished parts of the Philippines (most of whom are undereducated and naive) - who are employed as maids or servants. It has become very common now to hear stories of Filipina maids who are physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by their employers, and some of these poor women find themselves distraught, defenseless and dead.

Here's the latest casualty...

Tragic End for a Maid
By Richard C. Paddock, Times Staff Writer
April 20, 2006

Normina Piang was 17 when her foreign nightmare began. It ended when she died at age 20.

Her home was a one-room bamboo hut in a Muslim village on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. It had neither electricity nor running water.
Desperate to help her family, she applied for work as a maid overseas. A recruitment agency found her a job in Kuwait in exchange for her first three months' pay. Until the agency gave her a two-week housekeeping course, she had never seen a vacuum cleaner.

When she got to Kuwait, she found that she would be cleaning a two-story, seven-bathroom house, doing laundry, cooking and caring for four children, ages 1 to 12. She worked from 5 a.m. to midnight without days off. She slept on the floor without a mattress, she recounted in an interview months before she died.

According to her contract, she was supposed to receive $200 a month, but like many Philippine maids in Kuwait, she got only about three-quarters of what she was promised.

Unable to understand Arabic, she quickly ran into trouble. The older children hit her and threw shoes at her, she said. Their mother slapped her.

Piang said she ran away to her employment agency office, but the recruiter ordered her to keep working to pay back the fee. When she got back to her employers' home, the woman beat her. The husband tried to kiss her and tore her dress. Piang said she asked to be taken to the Philippine Embassy, but the man held a knife to her throat and said he would kill her if she did not work.

At 4 o'clock the next morning, she slipped out of the house. With the help of a passerby who gave her bus fare, she reached the Philippine Embassy. But she was unable to leave the country because her employers had kept her passport and return ticket.

Two weeks later, they turned over the documents. But police said the couple also had filed a complaint against her for running away. An embassy employee delivered her to the police station, she said.

There were no charges, but police locked her up anyway. During the night, three officers came into her cell. One tore her clothes, beat her unconscious and raped her. It was not until the next evening that an embassy worker returned to pick her up.

After she filed a complaint, the officers offered to marry her or pay compensation. She refused. For the next eight months, she lived on the embassy grounds, waiting for a court date.

The compound was overflowing with runaway maids. By day, the temperature often exceeded 100 degrees. The women bathed by pouring water over themselves with a bucket.

"You sit there, that's it," Piang said. "You line up for food. You line up to use the bathroom."

As she waited, she developed a urinary tract infection that she believed was caused by the rape. It went untreated until it apparently spread to her kidneys. She was hospitalized, but her illness was never cured.

A Kuwaiti judge convicted the three officers, sentencing the one who raped her to 15 years in prison and the other two to 10 years. The sentences were later reduced to seven and five years.

Piang was proud of making a stand.

"No Filipino ever sent a cop to prison," she said. But she went home sick and empty-handed. Unable to work, she lived with her aunt in a one-room apartment in Manila, surviving on the $3 a day her aunt made selling hair clips on the street.

Piang didn't go home to Mindanao for more than six months, not because of the rape but because she had lost her job.

An advocacy group, Migrante International, tried to help her get assistance from the government, which collects millions of dollars from workers leaving the country to aid those who encounter problems.

"Her illness was not fatal, but got worse from neglect," said Migrante Chairperson Connie Bragas-Regalado. "She had to beg for medication from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration," the Philippine agency at the embassy where Piang and the other runaway maids had stayed.

The government gave Piang $180 for medical tests. Instead, she used the money to go to Mindanao.

Bragas-Regalado said that in their last conversation, Piang seemed to know she was dying. But she was more concerned about helping her family. She asked that Migrante International pursue a lawsuit against the Kuwaiti police officers in the hope of winning enough to educate five younger siblings.

Until she died last year, Piang was angry that she had come home with nothing: "I worry because instead of helping my family, I became a problem."

And another one: Lebanon's Sri Lankan maids tell their story

When you're a poor and uneducated woman - and have a family to feed - you would do anything to survive. But what sets Normina Piang apart from most poor and uneducated women is that she never let anyone rob her dignity and self-worth.

Flashback news:

Foreign maids abused in Malaysia
Arab columnist: Why we really don't need maids
Sri Lankan maids abused in the Middle East
8 of 12 Filipino maids are abused abroad
Indigenous maids are target of abuse and racism in Mexico

You Filthy Disbeliever! Yes, That Means You, Too - Lassie and Miss Piggy!

Rafa — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 13:10:07 +0100

Okay, I'm back after a hiatus for three weeks. I have been following news in MSM and in my favorite blogs, so I am not really out of the loop so to speak. Let me see - apart from the continuing debates on immigration reforms in the U.S., the only other issue that continues to interest me is Islamofascism. We all know that any democracy is a potential haven for terrorists, and that in virtually every democratic country you will find mosques where radical imams preach hatred towards non-believers. Today's edition of The Times reports that U.K. Muslim students who wish to be imams are "being taught to despise unbelievers as filth." But the students are protesting this insipid doctrine:

MUSLIM students training to be imams at a British college with strong Iranian links have complained that they are being taught fundamentalist doctrines which describe nonMuslims as “filth”.
The Times has obtained extracts from medieval texts taught to the students in which unbelievers are likened to pigs and dogs. The texts are taught at the Hawza Ilmiyya of London, a religious school, which has a sister institution, the Islamic College for Advanced Studies (ICAS), which offers a degree validated by Middlesex University.
The students, who have asked to remain anonymous, study their religious courses alongside the university-backed BA in Islamic studies. They spend two days a week as religious students and three days on their university course.
Read the entire article here.

Bravo for the students for realizing that Islam is not entirely a peaceful religion. One thing that is equally bothersome is that these students are also being taught to despise animals such as dogs and pigs because they are "unclean" along with "urine, faeces, semen, carrion, blood of carrion, dogs, pigs, disbelievers." Any reasonable modern thinker and proponents of alternative medicine will tell you that urine has medical benefits, that having a pet can extend your life, and that women who swallow their lovers' semen may prevent ovarian cancer and depression. What is gross to many may be tasty to some!

So I guess based on the observations above, it is safe to assume that we - the "filthy disbelievers" - are far more open to scientific and medical explorations than your average Islamo and Islamette.