Magic Statistics

But he didn’t know that at the time, he says.  Wouldn’t it be wise to investigate organisations before lending them your support?  The West Island (Montreal) Chronicle reports:

West Island Liberal MP Bernard Patry defended his recent endorsement of anti-drug organization Narconon Trois Rivière's prevention campaign despite the latter's supposed links to the Church of Scientology.

"I did not know that they might be tied into the Scientology church," said Patry, who represents the Pierrefonds-Dollard riding. "As a former physician, when I started looking into this, I just wanted to try to find out what type of treatment the drug addicts are getting."
. . .
Globally, the Narconon network has run into problems in several countries in the past. In 1988 in Madrid, Spain, 11 members of the Church of Scientology were arrested, according to the St. Petersburg Times, and a local judge decried how Narconon swindled its clients and lured them toward Scientology. In 2003, the state of Oklahoma in the United States narrowly voted down a resolution honouring the work of Narconon Arrowhead, reported the Tulsa World. Last year, the United Kingdom's prison systems ombudsman recommended Narconon not to be allowed in jails due to its connection to Scientology, reported the Sunday Times.

A local Scientology spokesperson denies everything.

Read the comments for more dirt information about Narconon and Scientology.

h/t: Religion News Blog

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The Zimbabwean dollar has plunged to a new low: One US dollar now costs 25 million Zimbabwean dollars.  Only four months ago, US$1 was equivalent to Z$1 million.  The inflation rate has topped a mind-boggling 100,000 per cent.

The cash needed to buy groceries weighs more than the goods purchased.  Stores have taken to weighing bundles of bank notes rather than counting them out.  Forty pounds of Zimbabwean currency is worth about US$100.  Also, credit cards and cheques are no longer accepted because, by the time transactions clear the bank, price increases have more than wiped out sellers' profits.

The madcap economic policies of Robert Mugabe’s government are largely responsible for the mess.

On Monday, the government made it illegal for Zimbabweans to own more than 500million dollars (£10) to stop the hoarding which it claims is fuelling inflation.

Strict government price controls to combat the hyper inflation mean it is uneconomic for traders to produce local goods and food, so they don't bother.

That means expensive imports fill the gap, but they are out of the reach of ordinary Zimbabweans who rely on the black market.

Mugabe contends that businesses want to raise prices in hopes making him unpopular so he will lose the election scheduled for later this month.  It’s all about him!

"They keep raising and raising prices, and we wonder whether they want to raise the prices until the prices reach heaven," Mugabe told thousands of villagers at a campaign rally in Mahusekwa, about 70 kilometres (about 43 miles) south-east of the capital Harare.

"Some are doing it for the elections saying: 'Let's make life hard for the people so that they cry and blame it all on Mugabe's government.

Meanwhile, the government is bringing in freshly minted Zimbabwean currency by the planeload.

Documents obtained by The Sunday Times show the Munich company Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is receiving more than €500,000 (£382,000) a week for delivering bank notes at the astonishing rate of Z$170 trillion a week.

“The regime is surviving by printing money,” said Martin Rupiya, professor of war and security studies at the University of Zimbabwe. “At this stage there is no other way.”

According to a source at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, G&D delivers 432,000 sheets of banknotes every week to Fidelity printers in Harare, where they are stamped with the denomination. Each sheet contains 40 notes and the current production is entirely in Z$10m notes.

Simon Makoni, Mugabe’s former finance minister, is running against him, but the chances of a free and fair election are somewhere between slim and none.

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In 1970, Jo Woodgate had one of the first legal abortions in Britain.  She thought she would soon get over it, but she hasn’t.

Recently, my niece gave birth to her first baby. It should have been a joyful moment for the entire family, but as I stood looking at her cradling her newborn, I felt tears pricking at my eyes.

All of a sudden, I found myself being transported back in time almost 40 years, to the day that I was admitted to a small cottage hospital in Leicester for a termination.
. . .
I had an abortion believing it was the right thing to do, and I presumed I would move on from the procedure without so much as a backward glance.

But I was wrong in thinking abortion was the easy way out of what, at the time, felt like an intolerable situation.

With hindsight and maturity, I now know that I could have coped, and with each year that has passed I've only felt a growing sense of guilt and regret over my actions.

Time does not heal all wounds, even those inflicted by our own choice.

Ms Woodgate’s article does not say if she goes to church or believes in God, but I hope she knows that Jesus Christ grants forgiveness for all wrongdoings, no matter how heinous, to all who believe and trust in him. 

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In the city of Bradford, England, 33 school children are missing and unaccounted for.  It is feared that they and other missing pupils have been forced into arranged marriages.

This and other disturbing information has been gathered recently by the Home Affairs select committee.  Independent columnist Joan Smith argues that “multiculturalism” is far less important than protecting the dignity of women and girls.

Last month the same committee heard evidence from a senior police officer that the true level of forced marriage and "honour" crime is not reflected in official figures, and that as many as 17,500 girls, women and young men may become victims each year. A series of trials has provided horrific insights into honour-based killings, one of the most shocking being the rape and murder in south London of a 20-year-old Kurdish woman, Banaz Mahmod, by hitmen hired by her father and uncle.

Until very recently, respect for the idea of multiculturalism has inhibited discussion of forced marriage and honour-based crimes in the UK. This doesn't help anyone, neither potential victims nor the young men who come under pressure from relatives to commit murder on their behalf; in 2004, two boys aged 16 and 19 were ordered by their Bangladeshi father to kill their sister's boyfriend, a student at Oxford Brookes University, who was from an Iranian family.

We have worrying levels of domestic violence in this country, carried out by people of all races and backgrounds, but it is important to recognise that honour-based crime is different in several important respects; it is planned in advance, may be carried out by more than one family member, and depends on the silent collusion, if not direct involvement, of many more. In Turkey, where hundreds of "honour" killings take place each year, a Turkish documentary-maker, Ayse Onal, has visited prisons all over the country, interviewing men who have been convicted of murdering sisters, daughters and mothers. Few of them show remorse and they are treated with respect by fellow-prisoners and guards, who approve of this method of restoring a family's "honour".

This sort of thing is happening in Canada, too.  Only yesterday it was reported that an Ontario man, originally from South Asia, has been charged with attempted murder in the stabbing of his daughter.

Kamal Khanna, 44, reportedly was arrested while sitting on the steps of his home in suburban Alliston, Ont., south of Barrie, on Tuesday morning when police responded to an emergency call at his home.
. . .
His daughter, Ashna Khanna, a Grade 8 student, was found unconscious and bleeding from several knife wounds. She was first rushed to a local hospital and then flown to Toronto's Sunnybrook Medical Centre, where she remained in critical condition Wednesday night. The man's wife and other daughter were home when police arrived.

Neighbours suspect that the attack was set off by the daughter’s refusal to “wear what he wanted”.  Last December Mississauga teenager Aqsa Parvez was allegedly murdered by her father after she refused to wear the hijab.

Watch for the Canadian Islamic Congress to claim that the stabbing of Ashna Khanna is “a teenager issue”.

h/t: Free Mark Steyn and Dr Roy’s Thoughts

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