Walking Out

Take a look as scores and scores of representatives get up and walk out on Iran's insane President as the derides the entire western world for promoting Zionism and the economic woes of the Arab nations.



Too funny.

xtnyoda, shalomed

9/11 Stories, a baseball field

Preparing for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, let's take a few days to hear from those who were there ... and lived to tell and remember that fateful day ... in world history.

On a summer day in Shoreham, New York, the Kevin Williams Memorial Field is a peaceful place. An American flag ripples as its steel chain clanks against the 40-foot pole. At the base of the pole, worn baseballs seem to grow from the earth, resting among the flowers. On one baseball, there's a handwritten message:

"We Will Never Forget."

Kevin Williams was 24 years old when he was killed on Sept. 11, 2001. He worked on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower as a bond salesman for investment firm Sandler O'Neill. He loved his job and was planning to marry his high school sweetheart on Dec. 1 of that year.

After the pain and grief of Sept. 11 and the weeks of uncertainty that followed, the Williams family wanted to honor Kevin's memory. So his father, Mike, mother, Pat, brother, Jamie, and sister, Kelly, turned to the sport that had given their family great joy: baseball.

Kevin played golf, basketball, and baseball in high school; in his senior year, he was MVP of all three teams. He used to joke with his fiancée that if he hadn't gone to college on a golf scholarship, he "could've given Derek Jeter a run for his money." He was a huge Yankees fan and would often meet his dad at the Bat, a seven-story boiler stack just outside Yankee Stadium that is decorated to look like a baseball bat and is a popular meeting point before games.

The family created the Kevin Williams Memorial Foundation, which sends children who could not otherwise afford it to baseball and softball camps. The first year, the family raised enough money to send 20 children to camp. This year, says Pat Williams, "we just passed our 500th child." One child who was sponsored by the foundation is now attending college on a four-year baseball scholarship.

Williams says, "The foundation we created and everyone who came to support us in the foundation that was our hope -- knowing that there was something positive we could do, Kevin going on through the lives of other children."

The foundation also raised money to renovate the baseball field (now named the Kevin Williams Memorial Field) at Shoreham-Wading River High School, where Kevin and Jamie both wore number 16. Just past the bleachers, there's a small memorial garden; at the center of the garden is a bronze plaque honoring Kevin. It was made by the same company that creates the plaques to honor legendary New York Yankees in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.

On Sept. 11 this year, the Williams family will attend the unveiling of the names at the National September 11 Memorial in New York City, then drive home to Kevin's field. Each year on that day, the grounds crew places a bat and a ball at home plate and chalks white lines on the field, as if for a game. But on that day, no baseball is played on Kevin's field; there are only memories of a lost loved one for a family who will never forget.

"Oh Father, Yahweh, grant strength and grace, as we wage this war against those that would defame Your Son and His sacrifice for all of humanity and creation. Grant that we would recognize the consequences of complacency and indulgence. Grant that in our hearts that we would rise up ... and take the mantel of warrior ... for the fame of our Great and Only True God.

Honor Your Name among man.

xtnyoda, shalomed

9/11 Stories, Firefighters

Preparing for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, let's take a few days to hear from those who were there ... and lived to tell and remember that fateful day ... in world history.

Remembering 9/11

Career firefighters Kevin McCullagh and Jerry Walsh had retired weeks before terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Their years at Ladder 126 in South Jamaica, Queens, were over. But when they heard the news, they didn’t hesitate to drive across the Hudson River and volunteer to support their fellow firefighters

McCullagh took along his retirement gift: a camcorder. Aware that history was in the making, he started filming snippets of what they saw from a firefighter’s perspective: a giant pall of smoke rising over the Manhattan skyline, ash a foot deep, firefighters sifting through a sea of rubble, little fires burning here and there, trees blown on their sides, gouges in buildings, and, yes, the collapsed Twin Towers.

“It was unbelievable,” McCullagh recalls. “It was surreal. I realized what we were in for when I saw a fireman coming toward us. He was just beside himself. I asked him, ‘What’s it like over there?’ And he briefly described what it was like and I knew it was going to be something quite unique. There was carnage. There were a lot of crazy things.”

One sight especially surprised the two friends. Amid the twisted metal and burning rubble were smashed fire engines, crunched flat and caked with dust. “I had been around fire trucks my whole professional career and you’d never seen anything like it,” McCullagh says, still amazed today. “You see them as indestructible. When the big red fire truck shows up, everything is going to be OK. And seeing them tossed around like little toys, and smashed and burned, it was pretty amazing to see them like that.” ....

Offering up a prayer of gratitude for our nations 1st responders ... each one ... the making of a hero.

xtnyoda, shalomed

9/11 Stories, The Arab community

Preparing for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, let's take a few days to hear from those who were there ... and lived to tell and remember that fateful day ... in world history.

Anniversary Profiles

xtnyoda is praying that Muslims around the entire world will openly and resoundingly reject terrorism as a weapon.

xtnyoda, shalomed

9/11 Stories, "Unknown Soldier"

Preparing for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, let's take a few days to hear from those who were there ... and lived to tell and remember that fateful day ... in world history.

Richard Drew put down his camera bag and looked up at the colossal skyscraper that seemed to be racing toward the clouds at an accelerated clip.

"I'm really surprised how fast this building's gone up," he said of the rising edifice at 1 World Trade Center, peering at the monolith from beneath the brim of a tan baseball cap. "I just hope it isn't another target."

It was around 2 p.m. on a bright Wednesday afternoon in mid-July, and Drew, a veteran Associated Press photographer with wire-rimmed glasses and a neatly cropped silver beard that betrays his 64 years, was standing near the northwest intersection of Vesey and West streets in Lower Manhattan, across from the noisy jungle gym of cranes and steel where a global business hub is currently being reconstructed. Nine years and two months earlier in this very spot -- now an austere pedestrian plaza in the shadow of the Goldman Sachs building -- Drew took a picture that became one of the most iconic images of one of the most catastrophic events in American history.

"I don't like coming down here," he admitted.

But he had nevertheless returned to retrace his steps for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, when he had watched dozens die through the lens of a Nikon DCS620. On that similarly brilliant morning a decade ago, two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers by the time Drew emerged from the Chambers Street subway stop around a quarter after nine. The 110-story buildings looked like a pair of giant smokestacks spewing plumes of black soot into the crystal blue sky. He began shooting, focusing on the topmost floors. It wasn't long before he realized that some of the people trapped inside -- as many as 200 of them, it was later estimated -- had decided that plunging thousands of feet to their deaths was preferable to burning alive.

"There's one. There's another one," he said, recalling the horrific scene with a detached ease. "I just started photographing people as they were falling."

One of those people would come to be known as the Falling Man. Though his identity remains unconfirmed, some believe he was Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old sound engineer who worked in a restaurant on the top floor of the North Tower. The man fell at 9:41, and Drew caught about a dozen frames of his fatal descent. In one of them, the subject soars earthward in a graceful vertical dive -- arms at his sides; left leg bent at the knee.

"Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it," wrote Tom Junod in a renowned 2003 Esquire piece that coined the title of the photo, which won a 2001 World Press Photo award and is the subject of a 2006 documentary film. "If he were not falling, he might very well be flying."

Newspapers the world over made space for the Falling Man in their Sept. 12, 2001, editions. But the widespread publicity sparked a debate as to whether the image was too gratuitous for public consumption. "To me, it's a real quiet photograph," Drew argued. Unlike fellow AP photographer Nick Ut's Pulitzer-winning 1972 shot of a naked 9-year-old girl fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam or Drew's famous photos of Bobby Kennedy's bloody dying breaths, "There's no violence in it," he said.

It was now close to 3 p.m., and Drew had decamped to a Shake Shack a few blocks from Ground Zero for a late lunch. Waiting for his food to arrive, Drew said he doesn't attend the memorial ceremonies held each year at the hallowed site nearby, nor does he plan to show up for the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. He was just doing his job that day.

"I don't need to be here to commemorate what happened to me," he said. "I record history every day. Everything I do, whether it's photographing DSK [Dominique Strauss-Kahn] in court, or the World Trade Center, or spring training baseball, it's all part of history, no matter how small or how large."

Drew likewise doesn't reminisce much about his experience on Sept. 11. (No lingering nightmares or PTSD, either.) He is reminded of the photo, however, twice a day, every day, through online news alerts that track mentions of the words "falling man" in the press. He picked up his BlackBerry to check the latest, in which "a 22-year-old man died Monday after falling off a rocky cliff and being swept out to sea in Hawaii," he reported. The alerts, which he created on his Yahoo! and Google accounts about eight years ago, rarely have anything to do with the actual Falling Man, but he likes to keep up anyway.

"I'm curious to see if people are writing about it or talking about it," he said. "To see how they might interpret the picture."

Sometimes the Falling Man reveals himself where it's least expected. Drew's longtime neighbor, the author Helen Schulman, lives five floors above the apartment Drew shares with his wife, his two daughters, and the family's 5-year-old golden retriever, Ajax, in a prewar building on the Upper West Side. Schulman wrote an entire novel without knowing that Drew, as she explains in the acknowledgements, had taken the "picture that haunted and inspired me throughout the years of writing" it. Drew and Schulman serendipitously connected the dots after she completed the first draft of the book, "A Day at the Beach" -- about a distraught family that flees Manhattan for the Hamptons on Sept. 11 -- which was published in 2007.

"It's always going to be a part of me," perhaps more than any other photo he's ever taken, Drew said.

But has it changed him?

He put down the last bite of his Chicago dog, took a sip of beer, and dabbed his mouth with a napkin before pausing to contemplate.

"I think of it as a learning experience," he said of the photo and Sept. 11 in general. "I get so caught up in the adrenaline of doing this job. So, looking back on it, I think a lot about being able to go home to my family every night. Whether I decide to think about it daily or not, it's always in the back of my mind. It's this world event that I have become a part of in my own little tangential way. I'm not a hero fireman; I didn't die there; I didn't have a loved one who passed away there. But it's something I'll never forget."

As for the anonymous soul whose legacy Drew has unwittingly preserved, "Even if people don't want to see my photograph, that man did fall out of the building," he said. "To me, he'll always remain the unknown soldier."

Anniversary Profiles

xtnyoda, shalomed

Humpty Dumpty Sat On A Wall....

I bet there is some gnashing and thrashing of teeth in Iran over this development!

NY Times article

Iran told atomic inspectors this week that it had run into a serious problem at a newly completed nuclear reactor that was supposed to start feeding electricity into the national grid this month, raising questions about whether the trouble was sabotage, a startup problem, or possibly the beginning of the project’s end.

In a report on Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran told inspectors on Wednesday that it was planning to unload nuclear fuel from its Bushehr reactor — the sign of a major upset. For years, Tehran has hailed the reactor as a showcase of its peaceful nuclear intentions and its imminent startup as a sign of quickening progress.

But nuclear experts said the giant reactor, Iran’s first nuclear power plant, now threatens to become a major embarrassment, as engineers remove 163 fuel rods from its core.

Iran gave no reason for the unexpected fuel unloading, but it has previously admitted that the Stuxnet computer worm infected the Bushehr reactor. On Friday, computer experts debated whether Stuxnet was responsible for the surprising development. ......

Just a little gratifying to see.

xtnyoda, shalomed

H/T Jeremy!

Jordan minister dubs Israel girls’ killer a ‘hero’

This story today is the definition of evil sickness.

Islam Tribune

AMMAN (AFP) - Jordan's justice minister on Monday described a Jordanian soldier serving a life sentence for killing seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997 as a "hero," drawing an expression of "revulsion" from Israel.

"I support the demonstrators' demand to free Ahmad Dakamseh. He's a hero. He does not deserve prison," Hussein Mujalli, who was named minister last week, told AFP after taking part in the sit-in held by trade unions.
.....
In March 1997, Dakamseh fired an automatic weapon at a group of Israeli schoolgirls as they visited Baqura, a scenic peninsula on the Jordan River near the Israeli border, killing seven and wounding five as well as a teacher.
.....
The motives of Dakamseh, who was 30 at the time and a married father of three, were never clear.
.l...
"We cannot imagine that a great fighter like Dakamseh is in jail instead of reaping the rewards of his achievement," the letter said.

Jordan's powerful Islamist movement and the country's 14 trade unions, which have more than 200,000 members, have repeatedly called for Dakamseh's release.

Killing ... cold blooded slaughter of 7 school girls makes one a ... hero?

Putrid.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Jingle Bells - The Bethlehem 2010 Version

Care to support the faithful in Iraq?

Rick over at Brutally Honest, has given us a GREAT opportunity!!!

I'm certain we have all heard about the Muslim killing of Christians in Iraq in the last few days... and we've all felt the grief at the loss our our dear ones. Now, there is a way we can actually respond in prayer and support of the Christians there.

First... a sampling of Rick's post, and there is much more on his site you will want to go see.

Christians in Iraq have been, and not for the first time, deliberately targeted in a major terrorist attack. Indeed, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Iraq, from the Gaza Strip to Egypt to Sudan to Nigeria, Christians are being assaulted, intimidated, and murdered by militant Muslims.....

Rick's message goes on to share an e-mail address that you can send your prayers and words support... directly to the faithful being persecuted in Baghdad. Your messages will actually be put on paper and shared with the faithful there in Baghdad.

tonuncio@gmail.com

Following is the message and prayer that I sent to the faithful in Iraq this morning.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus.

May the God of all Glory, the Spirit of all Comfort, and Christ our Savior and Sacrifice... be near you.

"Father, as these faithful children endure some of the same hatred and slaughter as did Your Own Dear Son... and as Your heart must have hurt over the sacrifice of Your Son... consider these Your Sons and Daughters. Oh Father, for Your Name's sake, embrace them. Wrap them in the warmth of your love and admiration. Father, if there be any way... deliver them from this evil. Lord, have mercy.

For those who have already paid the highest human price with their martyred blood on the altar of sacrifice... remind their loved ones that it is a sacred altar... sanctified and cleansed in advance... by the Blood of Jesus.

In Jesus Name."

Brothers and Sisters, please know that your great sacrifice is not unnoticed, but is rather being used by God to greatly stir the hearts of God's children around the entire world.

God's Glory rest upon you.

Ptr. Chuck

Also, a H/T to our academy administrator, Debra, for the following links to other current news stories that aren't in the MSM about the persecution of Christians in other places of our world.

xtnyoda, shalomed

Burning Churches and Schools in India and Pakistan.

More Schools and Churches Burned Down

Atlas Shrugs posts today an extremely relevant story that is good news... as well as vital information about the efforts of what she calls the "Stealth Jihad" that is taking place in America today.

The Muslim Student Association (another Muslim Brotherhood proxy) has been suspended from UC Irvine. The magnitude of this victory is incalculable.

....It is a giant stop sign to the Islamic supremacism and jackbootery increasingly found on college campuses. America is waking up to the enemy in our midst.

FOX NEWS report

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A University of California, Irvine, disciplinary committee ruled that a Muslim student group should be suspended for at least a year because of a protest that disrupted a talk by Israel's ambassador and led to the arrest of 11 students, according to documents released Monday.

The letter from a student affairs disciplinary committee to Muslim Student Union leaders said the group was guilty of disorderly conduct, obstructing university activities, furnishing false information and other violations of campus policy.

University spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon said the committee's decision will be a binding recommendation to the campus' office of student affairs if a planned appeal by the group does not succeed.

MSU attorney Reem Salahi said the committee relied on evidence relied that was "inadequate and problematic" but declined to outline the group's challenge in detail. She said the decision, if sustained, would leave Muslim students without an organization representing their interests.

"It really does have very lasting constitutional implications," she said. "It's a chilling effect for Muslims on campus and their right to associate."

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was repeatedly interrupted and called "murderer" and "war criminal" by pro-Palestinian students as he was giving a talk on the Middle East peace process in February.

Eleven students were cited on charges of disrupting a public event after they were requested to refrain from heckling but did not.

The Orange County district attorney's office did not return a phone message seeking the status of its investigation into those students.

The MSU condemned the ambassador's appearance but insisted it did not organize the protests.

The disciplinary committee, however, said a review of online message group conversations and minutes from an MSU meeting revealed that the group did engineer the protests and instructed participants to lie about its involvement.

The group's preparations allegedly included scripting statements for protesters to make during the event and instructing participants to cheer at disruptions.

"Be VERY LOUD, firm and strong ... but remain composed and under control. Do not let your emotions get the best of you. Remember that this is a planned/calculated response and not a venting session," the committee quoted organizers as telling participants in meeting minutes.

It is time for Americans to wake up to the war that is being fought on our ground today by the global jihadists.

This is a stark conflict of cultures that has no middle ground. The progressive term, multiculturalism, is actually a term of a violent movement of one cultural norm to another cultural norm... and culture is determined by law... by what moral standard does a society construct it's laws... and make no mistake... the jihadists are intent in implementing Sharai law... the world over.

Europe is already in a free fall under the boot of the jihadist...

What say ye?

xtnyoda, shalomed