The Holidays Around the World

[pelathais]

Due to a coincidence in the timing of the Islamic Lunar calendar, the Feast of Sacrifice (Eid-al-Adha) currently falls near to the "Christmas Holidays" in the West. This Feast follows the Holy Month of Ramadan and lasts for three days. It coincides with the annual Haj or pilgrimage to Mecca and Medinah.

The feast itself commemorates the famous Bible story where Abraham shows his willingness to sacrifice his first born son, Ismail. Or at least it would be a famous Bible story if the Jews hadn't "corrupted" the Bible and inserted their own progenitor Isaac into the text.

Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV, the official TV outlet for the ruling party of the Palestinian people has a show geared toward children called "Pioneers of Tomorrow." The host is a young lady whose on screen name is Saraa. She had a cohost that looked a little too much like Mickey Mouse who caused a bit of controversy. To silence the protests the mouse character was sent on a "suicide bombing mission" and never returned, thus providing Palestinian children with a worthy example to follow.

In place of the Mouse we now have a "friendly" Killer Bee named Nahoul. In this clip, Nahoul and young Saraa talk about sharing the happiness of the holidays with others. The clip is hosted by MEMRI TV - the Middle East Media Research Institute, which translates Middle Eastern news and cultural programs into English for Western audiences.

The clips at MEMRI TV are generally "okay" as far as the discerning viewer is concerned. I was going to embed the video but will just provide a link for now. Interesting holiday children's programming. What do you think? PETA might have some opinions to express about the "slaughter" of the sheep and calves.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1639.htm

[pelathais]

bump... just curious if this is the type of topic that people here are interested in or if I was too cryptic in naming the thread...

[nahkoe]

Originally Posted by pelathais

bump... just curious if this is the type of topic that people here are interested in or if I was too cryptic in naming the thread...

That was just strange...

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by nahkoe

That was just strange...

It's part of the daily indoctrination of children. And we wonder why these kids grow up to hate.

[pelathais]

And now, news from Bethlehem:

Where were these guys when it's time to clean up around here?



Priests brawl at Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus

Dec 27 09:34 AM US/Eastern

Seven people were injured on Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over how to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Following the Christmas celebrations, Greek Orthodox priests set up ladders to clean the walls and ceilings of their part of the church, which is built over the site where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born.
But the ladders encroached on space controlled by Armenian priests, according to photographers who said angry words ensued and blows quickly followed.

For a quarter of an hour bearded and robed priests laid into each other with fists, brooms and iron rods while the photographers who had come to take pictures of the annual cleaning ceremony recorded the whole event.
A dozen unarmed Palestinian policemen were sent to try to separate the priests, but two of them were also injured in the unholy melee.
"As usual the cleaning of the church afer Christmas is a cause of problems," Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh told AFP, adding that he has offered to help ease tensions.

"For the two years that I have been here everything went more or less calmly," he said. "It's all finished now." The Church of the Nativity, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City, is shared by various branches of Christianity, each of which controls and jealously guards a part of the holy site. The Church of the Nativity is built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born in a stable more than 2,000 years ago after Mary and Joseph were turned away by an inn.

[pelathais]

And now... in the midst of summer in the Antarctic a scientific base has to be evacuated due to a drunken brawl:

Antarctic base staff evacuated after Christmas brawl



Barbara McMahon in Sydney
Thursday December 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


A file picture of scientists examining instruments at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole base. Photograph: Ernie Mastroianni/AP

Two men, one with a suspected broken jaw, have been airlifted from the Antarctic's most remote research facility after an incident described as a "drunken Christmas punch-up".

The brawl happened at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, located at the heart of the frozen continent. The station, where staff carry out a range of scientific investigations from astrophysics to seismology, is currently being rebuilt in a £76m project.

After reports of the fight reached staff at McMurdo station, the headquarters of the US Antarctic Programme, which is located on Ross Island, a US Air Force Hercules was sent to pick up the injured man and the other worker.

They were flown back to McMurdo, but it was decided the man's injuries were too serious to be treated in Antarctica and he was taken on to Christchurch, New Zealand, accompanied by a nurse and a paramedic.

Many of the McMurdo staff had been expecting a day off for Christmas but support workers returned to work to deal with the rare emergency medical evacuation.

A spokeswoman at Christchurch Hospital said a man was admitted on Christmas Day and discharged the following day.

"There was an altercation between two people -- there's no indication of the cause or of the background between the two folks," said Peter West, spokesman for the National Science Foundation which manages the US Antarctic programme.

The injured man is an employee of Raytheon Polar Services, one of America's largest defence contractors. A company spokeswoman, Val Carroll, said an investigation into the incident would be held. She said it was company policy not to release names of the two men.

The other man involved in the incident has flown back to the United States.
Polar medivac flights are rare occurrences, one of the most dramatic being a midwinter flight in 1999 for a woman doctor who developed breast cancer and needed urgent treatment. It is currently summer in Antarctica, with light snow falling and daytime temperatures hovering around freezing, making it relatively easy to fly back and forth to New Zealand.