In my crabbed old age, I have become suspicious of organizations claiming to promote charity. It's not that this charity or that doesn't do good work. Most of them do, I guess. It's that I've seen one story too many in which a "charity" was just a front for crime. We've all seen articles about "charities" that collected funds for some noble cause that turned out to be fake, or about "charities" that spent two percent of the funds collected for the ostensible beneficiaries and the rest on the people running the "charity."
The "charity" most recently in the news was The Second Mile, founded by Jerry Sandusky as a means, it is now clear, of bringing in and "auditioning" boys for rape. The hilarious, in a very sick way, stated purpose of The Second Mile was to give otherwise unattainable "opportunities" to "at risk youth," a phrase which often (and especially in the hands of the defense bar) means switchblade-wielding juvenile delinquents, but this time was right on the mark, since, as long as Sandusky was around, the kids really were at risk. The Second Mile might at some point have done good things -- for example, for girls, in whom Sandusky apparently had no interest -- but it has recently had to dissolve, for obvious reasons.
Not doing anything to resuscitate my opinion of charities was this recent squib from the Wall Street Journal titled "Life Imitates the Onion," concerning a Muslim "charity" dedicated to attacking "stereotypes." I repeat the WSJ's one-sentence entry without comment, none being needed:
"A Quebec activist who fought the stereotyping of Muslims was charged with supporting terrorism on Friday after an RCMP investigation linked her to an alleged scheme to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon."--National Post (Canada), July 13
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