GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Why can't the BBC depict the real terrorists???

How much more biased can the BBC get?
The BBC are facing accusations of anti-Christian bias after a BBC drama portrayed evangelical extremists murdering Muslims.

One Christian group said the corporation had a "sinister" and "malicious" agenda against their faith, while another claimed the BBC1 Spooks programme could be an "incitement to hatred" against them.

The row comes in the wake of recent revelations that senior BBC executives had admitted that the corporation was guilty of bias against Christianity at a special "impartiality" summit.

Christians were outraged by the episode of the drama, which showed a group of evangelical terrorists who carry out a number of attacks on the Muslim community and attempt to spark a religious war in the UK.

The programme also depicted a rogue Bishop, who was also a government advisor, organising the assassination of a radical Islamic preacher.
How much terrorism is practiced by Christian? How much by Muslims???

I Can't Wait....

Just what we need...Al-Jazeera in English....
Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television announced Tuesday that it would launch its long-awaited English language channel Al-Jazeera International on November 15.
I bet the CRTC will license this very quickly....

Hurray for Norman Spector...

He calls it as he sees it...and he's right....
Spector told a Vancouver radio talk show that Stronach's public breakup last year with Peter MacKay, who is now foreign affairs minister, as well as a role she is alleged to have had in the marital problems of former Toronto Maple Leaf Tie Domi, means she is a bitch.

"I think she's a bitch. It's as simple as that," Spector said. He added that he believed 90 per cent of men would agree, considering her involvement with the former National Hockey League player and her breakup with MacKay.

Green Totalitarianism....

Terence Corcoran in the Financial Post today on the coming green totalitarianism...it looks like it's going to start in the UK.
To avoid catastrophe, the report calls for a global assault on energy and carbon consumption. Greenhouse gas levels can be stabilized at something like 500 parts per million (current level 430 ppm) at a cost of "only" a 1% reduction in annual global GDP. How do we do that?

Enter Arthur C. Pigou, 20th Century socialist economist who is credited with inventing the idea that market failures create externalities that need to be fixed by government, especially through taxation. Pigou plays a big role in the Stern report. "The first task of policy," says Stern, "is therefore to introduce taxes or prices for GHGs. The Pigou treatment of externalities points to taxes based on the marginal damages caused by carbon emissions." How big a tax? It should be "equal to the social cost of carbon at the point where it is equal to the marginal abatement cost."

Stern gets a bit technical and jargon-filled on these issues, but the report claims to have reached a "preliminary calculation" that the right price is something like $85 for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. If oil is 85% carbon, a new tax would have to double the price of oil to meet the Stern target.

Doubling the price of fuel -- for transportation, industry, electricity, heating, air conditioning -- would just be the start. Stern acknowledges that the there are many obstacles to success. We may need "additional measures." Because people might not trust government, business and individuals might need new special incentives -- subsidies -- to push them into carbon-reducing programs. And then there's the need to "remove barriers to behavioural change." For this, there may be a need for "regulatory measures," such as minimum standards for buildings and appliances.

Here the Pigovian tax theory starts running into some real world problems. It may be, says Stern, that "price signals alone may be too muted to have a significant impact." So the market signals of prices will need to be supplemented with major intervention in corporate and individual decision making. We will need, in short, a global master central plan to get carbon under control.
Wait until we see the details of Taliban Jack Layton's plan!

Hitchens on Iraq....

I love Christopher Hitchens....read his whole opinion piece.
I am glad that all previous demands for withdrawal or disengagement from Iraq were unheeded, because otherwise we would not be able to celebrate the arrest and trial of Saddam Hussein; the removal from the planet of his two sadistic kids and putative successors; the certified disarmament of a former WMD- and gangster-sponsoring rogue state; the recuperation of the marshes and their ecology and society; the introduction of a convertible currency; the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan (currently advertising for investors and tourists on American television); the killing of al-Qaida's most dangerous and wicked leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and many of his associates; the opening of dozens of newspapers and radio and TV stations; the holding of elections for an assembly and to approve a constitution; and the introduction of the idea of federal democracy as the only solution for Iraq short of outright partition and/or civil war. If this cause is now to be considered defeated, by the sheer staggering persistence in murder and sabotage of the clerico-fascist forces and the sectarian militias, then it will always count as a noble one.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Swedes think US is the biggest threat....

At least Iran beat out Israel...
Swedes think that the United States and North Korea pose the greatest threats to world peace, according to the results of a poll released on Sunday.

Nearly one in three Swedes, 29 percent, think that the US is the biggest threat to peace on earth, the poll, commissioned by Axess Television, reveals.

Around 1,000 people answered the question "Which of the following countries do you consider to be the greatest threat to world peace". Respondents could choose between six countries - Israel, China, Russia, the United States, North Korea and Iran.

North Korea was a close runner up to the United States - 28 percent of respondents thought that the secretive communist dictatorship was most dangerous.

Iran was in third place, at 18 percent. The poll results showed that more people between the ages of 16 and 29 saw America as the biggest threat, while a majority of those over 60 picked North Korea.

Borat on Feminism

Lomborg on Kyoto...

Nice column by Steven Edwards in today's National Post.
"If we did Kyoto, we would spend about US$150-billion every year, but would end up only postponing global warming by about half a dozen years in 2100," said Mr. Lomborg, referring to world spending.

"On the other hand, the UN estimates that for about half that amount, we can fix all major basic problems right now -- providing clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education to every human being on the planet."

He argues that rapidly improving the lot of individuals will even make some problems disappear.

"We can save 28 million people in Africa over the next 10 years from HIV/AIDS, and that means making them productive participants, which in turn makes African nations richer and better able to deal with other problems like deforestation," he said.

"After all, rich people don't cut down forests; almost all rich countries re-forest because they can afford to."

Fun in France...

I wish the media would report on the ongoing violence in France....
Youths threw stones from an overhead bridge onto a tramway, breaking the windshield and injuring the conductor, whose face was cut by splintered glass, police said Monday.

The Sunday incident in Grenoble, followed a bus attack a night earlier in Marseille in which youths tossed a bottle of flammable liquid into the vehicle, seriously burning a 26-year-old woman.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

One law for all, please!

Either smoking is banned for everybody...or it is not.
A looming court battle over Manitoba's anti-smoking law will hinge on whether the province must treat white bar owners the same as their aboriginal counterparts, an issue that could have implications across the country.

The section of the law that exempted aboriginal reserves from the smoking ban was struck down in August by Justice Albert Clearwater of Court of Queen's Bench, who ruled it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Manitoba government is trying to appeal the decision by arguing, in part, that the charter guarantee was not designed to provide a level playing field for white males.

Heather Leonoff, director of constitutional law in Manitoba's Justice Department, said Manitoba wants to argue that the charter guarantee of equal treatment under the law was meant to address historic wrongs.

"Not make everybody treated the same, not level the playing field necessarily, but to have an opportunity to address certain historically disadvantaged groups," she said.

The province argues that if everyone must be treated equally under the law, employment equity programs and other initiatives designed to help minorities could be struck down.
Yes, please strike down the equity programs!

How Hezbollah Used Lebanese Civilians...

Why isn't this more widely reported?
Long before hostilities erupted on July 12, Hezbollah construction teams had gone out and modified numerous Lebanese homes. Sometimes with, but most the time without, the homeowner's permission, workers began adding on a large, single-function room. These rooms were unique for, when completed, they lacked an essential element of all rooms -- a door. Each room was sealed shut -- but only, and immediately, after an object was placed inside.

Often homeowners and neighbors did not know what exactly was entombed within the room as the object's insertion and the subsequent sealing of the room normally took place at night -- with the object always kept under wraps.

The residences Hezbollah selected for these unsolicited "home improvements" were chosen for their proximity to the Israeli border. When the fighting started after Tel Aviv responded militarily to Hezbollah's July cross-border raid, resulting in the deaths of three Israeli soldiers and the capture of two more, the purpose of the covert home improvements became evident to the owners -- though many were destroyed by Israeli air strikes before they could be activated.

When war erupted in southern Lebanon, designated leaders of Hezbollah combat teams received envelopes, each containing an address of one of the modified homes. The team quickly deployed to its assigned location, immediately breaking through an exterior wall of the sealed room. Each envelope contained aiming and firing instructions for the object prepositioned inside the room before it was sealed -- a surface-to-surface missile atop a launcher. After removing part of the room's roof to allow for unobstructed flight and on command, the team was to fire the missile, raining death and destruction down upon Israel's civilian population.

There was one major flaw in Hezbollah's home-conversion-to-missile-launch-site plan: Their construction activities had not gone unnoticed by Israeli intelligence. Closely monitoring Hezbollah's activities, they knew in advance the locations of most sites. As each room was completed, it had been added to Israel's target list so, once fighting started, it could quickly be destroyed -- its civilian hosts in many cases becoming collateral damage due to Hezbollah's illegal use of such a tactic.

Hezbollah tries to take over Lebanon....

If this happens, the Islamists will have taken yet another country.
Emboldened by this summer's war with Israel, the radical Islamist Hezbollah party has gone on the political offensive inside Lebanon, determined either to replace or to bring down the pro-American government.

Political leaders in Hezbollah, Lebanon's main Shi'ite Muslim movement, say the Shi'ites have proved that they command far more popular support than is reflected in their share of government posts under Lebanon's delicate power-sharing arrangement. That system, adopted under a deal that ended the nation's deadly civil war in 1990, divides power among the country's main sectarian groups -- Shi'ites, Sunni Muslims, Druze, and Christians.

Now, Hezbollah and an allied Christian political party led by General Michel Aoun are demanding a government reshuffle that would give them more positions -- and would in effect give Hezbollah veto power over any legislation. They have threatened to boycott the government or try to bring it down through strikes and street demonstrations if they don't get more posts.

Terrorism rehearsal on Oslo flight...

Was this a test?
Czech security police (BIS) have reported an attempt to storm the cockpit of a flight from Oslo to Prague.

The BIS annual report for 2005, released on Tuesday, mentions flight OK 447 in September 2005, where three Egyptian citizens tried to gain access to the pilots.

According to BIS spokesman Jan Subrt, police terrorism experts believe that the three Egyptians were not trying to hijack the plan but rather testing the security measures on board the plan, which was owned by Czech Airlines (CSA).

"The crew on board discovered the three Egyptians trying to open the door into the cockpit. When the stewards intervened they immediately gave up their attempts and gave the excuse that they were looking for a staff member because they wanted to buy chewing gum," Subrt said.

BIS managed to identify the trio but could not demonstrate any links to Islamist terrorist organizations. The three were apprehended upon landing and Czech security police escorted them to Egypt after questioning.

Pollution can help alleviate global warming...

Finally, a sensible solution....
Growing forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It may be possible to speed up the oceans’ absorption of carbon dioxide. And a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research has shown how deliberate pollution of the atmosphere can cool the Earth. This approach, he argues, could stabilize global temperature and greatly reduce the needed cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, or substantially extend the time over which they would have to be made.

This notion could drive die-hard environmentalists into a frenzy as awareness of it spreads. But if the threat is as serious as they say, they should not rule out any promising ideas.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Making money from the climate scare...

Canadians are ready to be taken, too.
Tomorrow, when Sir Nicholas Stern, the head of the Government's Economic Service, publishes his 700-page report claiming that global warming could shrink the world economy by 20 per cent, Ru Hartwell will have some reason to feel optimistic.
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He has just taken out a £30,000 mortgage on his home in Tregaron, west Wales, in order to set up a business, treeflights.com, which helps airline passengers assuage their consciences by having a tree planted, at £10 a time, every time they take to the sky.

In the three months since he started his business he has already taken 600 orders on his website, plus another 200 to 300 through a link-up with several travel agencies.

Buyers are promised that their tree will be numbered and tagged, so that they can come and inspect the sapling planted in an attempt to counter the environmental vandalism of their fortnight in Marbella.

"I have been planting trees for years to offset my carbon emissions," says Mr Hartwell, 48. "But I ran out of resources and thought, rather than just me making a contribution, why not get people who are polluting more than I am to make a contribution too?"

Mr Hartwell is one tiny part of a multi-million pound industry that has grown out of the guilt created by grim predictions of global warming.

What's going on in UK prisons?

This sounds like a joke, no?
Hundreds of Pagans serving prison sentences are to be given the day off work for Halloween out of respect for their religious beliefs.

Prison Service bosses have instructed staff to grant the convicts, who include Devil worshippers and Satanists, special privileges on Tuesday.

While fellow prisoners sew mail bags and undertake other jail work, the Pagans will be allowed to celebrate their 'holiday'.

They can use certain artefacts, including rune stones, flexible twigs and hoodless robes, provided they are kept in their cells or worn during communal worship. Robes with hoods are banned for 'security reasons', however.

How about a muslim flag over the seat of government in Ireland?

It's nice to have a lofty ambition.
The flag of Islam should be flown over Leinster House, an Islamic extremist said tonight.

Speaking in Dublin before addressing a Trinity College debate, Anjem Choudray also reiterated controversial views that Muslim violence is justified in certain circumstances.

The British-born lawyer, 39, angered the Irish Government last year when he said that Ireland risked becoming a target for a 9/11 style attack because it allowed US war planes to refuel at Shannon Airport.

Mr Choudray said: “As a Muslim, I believe Islam is superior to every other way of life and that it can resolve all the social and economic problems that Ireland suffers from.

“And as a symbol of that, the flag of Islam should be flown over the Dáil.

“This is symbolic of the fact that all societies will be run better according to God’s law.”

Friday, October 27, 2006

Spending money on diversity...not on crime!

I wonder what the figures are like for Canada.
Scotland Yard has spent almost £450 million on promoting 'equality and diversity' in the past three years. In the past year alone £187 million - six per cent of the Met budget - went on 'equalities-related expenditure'.

This included recruitment, training and research within minority communities, as well as crime fighting and prevention.

It covered not just race issues, but those of gender, faith, disability, age and sexuality. Since 2003, more than £21million has been spent on interpreters' fees.

Is Javier Solana out of his mind?

No matter how many times Hamas says it wants to destroy Israel, they'll be Europeans like Solana who will cling to 'hope'.
Hamas wants to "liberate the Palestinians," not to destroy Israel, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

In an interview following his talks in Tel Aviv with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Solana insisted that it was "not impossible" for Hamas to change and "recognize the existence of Israel." History had shown that people and nations "adapt to reality," he said. "I don't want to lose hope."

Pressed as to whether he was underestimating the fundamentalist religious imperative at the heart of the Hamas ideology, Solana said, "I cannot imagine that the religious imperative, the real religious imperative, can make anybody destroy another country... Therefore that is an abuse of religion...

"I don't think the essence of Hamas is the destruction of Israel. The essence of Hamas is the liberation of the Palestinians," he added. "The liberation of their people, not the destruction of Israel."

South African reporter banned for being Jewish...

A lot of anti-semitism in South Africa these days.
The head of news at the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has been accused of acting arbitrarily in unofficially blacklisting eight journalists and commentators. Among the banned journalists is Israel-based freelancer Paula Slier, a Jerusalem Post contributor, who has been barred from reporting because she is a Jew.

SABC management set up a commission under former SABC head Zwelakhe Sisulu and advocate Gilbert Marcus - after complaints about a ruling, allegedly by news head Snuki Zikalala, that certain commentators and analysts not be used because they were critical of South African President Thabo Mbeki.

The commission, which has now released its findings, said AM Live anchor John Perlman was right when he had said that blacklisting of commentators and analysts was happening "by instruction."

Zikalala ordered an outright ban on reports from Slier because, the commission found, he assumed that since Slier was Jewish she supported Israel.

Zikalala admits to supporting the PLO and justified his ban on Slier, who used to report regularly for the SABC until barred in 2004, by calling the conflict in the Middle East a "Jewish war" and saying the corporation needed someone who was "impartial."

But the commission ruled that Slier's reports were impartial and that the ban was in direct conflict with SABC's policies and bylaws.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

They should be fired...

Their job is to deliver the mail, not to editorialize on it.
Vancouver postal workers who walked off the job in protest of an "anti-gay" booklet are back to work Thursday.

Sixty-eight employees, who worked for a medium-sized postal facility in the Commercial Drive area, walked off the job Wednesday rather than distribute a brochure they characterized as homophobic.

They decided to return to work Thursday morning after Canada Post decided not to pursue any disciplinary action against the workers who refused to deliver the unsealed booklet to some 200 homes, Vancouver president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers Ken Mooney told CTV.ca.

"Of all the communities to target, this is probably the poorest choice," Mooney said of the community he described as left-leaning.

"The consciousness of social issues is very high here," he said in a telephone interview from Vancouver.

Mooney said his office received several calls from members on Wednesday regarding a booklet prepared by an Ontario-based church group that was to be distributed as unaddressed mail.

"It's a 28-page booklet I would character as nothing but a 28-page diatribe against members of the homosexual community. It's hate literature and nothing else," he said.

"It never should have been accepted for delivery by Canada Post," he said.

The pamphlet calls homosexuality "ungodly," "unhealthy," and "unnatural" and blames homosexual people for spreading AIDS by living without "any moral restraints."

Australian imam blames women for rape...

This guy is one of the most senior imams in Australia.
Australia's most senior Muslim cleric compared women who go without a head scarf to "uncovered meat" left out for scavengers, drawing widespread condemnation and calls Thursday for his resignation.

Sheik Taj Aldin al Hilali denied he was condoning rape when he made the comments in a sermon last month, and apologized to any women he had offended, saying they were free to dress as they wished.

Hilali was quoted in The Australian newspaper Thursday as saying in the sermon: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's?"

"The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred," he was quoted as saying, referring to the headdress worn by some Muslim women.

French Foreign Minister now supports Israel security fence....

And, why shouldn't he?
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy declared last week he has changed his opinion on Israel's controversial separation barrier in light of its drastic effect on terror, forcing French authorities to clarify their position on the issue.

The barrier, which separates the West Bank from the rest of Israel, has garnered much criticism for creating a ghetto-style situation for the Palestinians and for allegedly appropriating Palestinian land on the Israeli side.

But although the French government has been critical of it since the start of its construction four years ago, Douste-Blazy has now reversed the feeling.

“I have significantly evolved on the matter of the separation fence” said Douste-Blazy on French Jewish television TFJ on Thursday. “Although the wall was a moral and ethical problem for me, when I realised terror attacks were reduced by 80 percent in the areas where the wall was erected, I understood I didn’t have the right to think that way.”

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

More on British Airways and the veil....

Totally befuddled thinking...
British Airways has been accused of appalling double standards after admitting Muslim staff may be allowed to wear veils - just weeks after it sent a Christian home for wearing a cross.

Check-in worker Nadia Eweida has been on unpaid leave for a month after the airline banned her from wearing her tiny cross on a necklace over her uniform.

BA added further insult to injury yesterday when it said she can return to work wearing her cross -but only if she accepts a back room job where she will not come into contact with the public.

Hours later the airline's muddled thinking was confirmed when a spokesman said any request from stewardesses or other uniformed staff to wear a full-face niqab would be given serious consideration.

BBC executive admits it's out of touch...

It seems that other national broadcasters are starting to admit their biases....I just can't imagine the CBC doing the same.
A senior BBC executive has admitted the politically correct views of the corporation are at odds with most of its viewers.

BBC commissioning editor for documentaries Richard Klein admitted the broadcaster was out of touch with the British public, saying it was guilty of "ignoring" mainstream opinion.

Speaking to a room full of TV viewers and BBC staff, he suggested that if the current situation continued it could affect the organisation's long-term future.

Klein said: "By and large, people who work at the BBC think the same and it's not the way the audience thinks. That's not long term sustainable."

Trial halted because of Ramadan...

This is from the Scotsman...I'd like more information.
LEADING Scottish lawyers have condemned a sheriff's decision to halt a trial yesterday after Muslim witnesses refused to give evidence because they were celebrating the end of Ramadan.

Jamie Weir, 17, of Motherwell, is accused of assaulting Nasir Ahmed by hitting him with a glass bottle in an attack last April. But as the hearing was due to start at Hamilton Sheriff Court, it was revealed that witnesses had refused to turn up.

The fiscal depute, Angus Crawford, said the witnesses, all Muslims, were unwilling to attend court during the festival of Eid. He asked for an adjournment until the festival was over. Sheriff Daniel Scullion adjourned the trial until 17 November.

In a separate case at Glasgow High Court yesterday, an accused failed to appear because he was also observing a religious festival.

Mohammed Atif Siddique of Alva, Clackmannanshire, accused of terror charges, was excused.

The virtual jihad....

The mosque is being replaced by the web as the place for recruitment and subversion.
Salafist ideologues are reinventing Islam, firing the imagination of Internet-savvy Muslim youth from Morocco to Mindanao and from Sweden to Spain. Mohamed Atta trained his 9/11 teams face-to-face. The successor generation now meets in an Open University of Jihad on the worldwide Web.

We can no longer measure success as we did before 9/11. The death of a leader, even of Osama bin Laden, makes no difference at all. Violence is only the tip of a huge, previously uncharted iceberg.

What increasingly looks like a looming disaster in Iraq is already multiplying jihadi cyberwarriors. Britain's homegrown terrorists are organized, trained and controlled directly from Pakistan or via Pakistan networks in the U.K. and the rest of Europe. MI5's Joint Terrorism Analysis Center has concluded the Internet is the key to the intelligence conundrum.

More important than the recipes for homemade bombs -- e.g., hair dye mixed with nail polish remover detonated by the flash mechanism on a throwaway camera -- are the Web sites hosted by university servers, which direct them. MI5 keeps close tabs on 1,000 known extremists, tying up some 6,000 agency personnel. But what about those who conceal their thinking, or confine their traffic to the doctrine of jihad?

Could you imagine the CBC admitting bias?

Progress in Australia...
ABC managing director Mark Scott last night admitted the national broadcaster had to respond to claims it was politically biased in its news, current affairs and other programming, by launching new editorial guidelines.

Mr Scott singled out the watchdog program Media Watch as needing an overhaul in his plan to ensure more balance and diversity of opinion on the ABC, long accused of perceived left-wing bias.

In a speech at the Sydney Institute, Mr Scott would not be drawn on whether he believed the ABC was biased, but said: "I suspect that we are by no means as bad as our critics might suggest and not as blameless as our defenders might wish."

However, Mr Scott said he accepted a July ruling by broadcast watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority that found a Four Corners report on the Tasmanian forest industry by journalist Ticky Fullerton was not impartial. "I can understand how they reached that finding," he said.

As for Media Watch, presently hosted by Monica Attard, Mr Scott said he had "encouraged the director of television (Kim Dalton) to work with the Media Watch team to review their format and content next year to ensure there was more opportunity for debate and discussion around contentious and important issues".

Mr Scott chose the conservative think tank run by ABC critic Gerard Henderson to unveil a tough new editorial policy that subjects all radio and television programs to the same editorial scrutiny as news and current affairs.

He created a new position - director of editorial policies - to report to him in his role as "editor-in-chief of the ABC" to monitor and assess editorial performance across alltelevision and radio programming.

Palestinians building underground city in Gaza...

Obviously, they have money for this....
Palestinian militants are constructing an "underground city" in the
Gaza Strip to store weapons and attack Israeli forces in the future, army chief of staff Dan Halutz has been quoted as saying.

"The Palestinians are continuing digging an underground city in the Gaza Strip," said Halutz, who appeared before the parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee on Tuesday.

"They are constructing tunnels in the urban parts in order to confront our forces," a member of the committee quoted Halutz as saying.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Some Celebrities who claim to be green, but....

The article names four celebrity hypocrites. Here's one.
Brad Pitt

On the ground: Eco-champ Brad is yet another Prius-lover, and he reportedly has several hybrids in his stable.

In the air: Los Angeles/Namibia, 9,400 miles in a private jet.

Gas guzzled: 11,000 gallons of jet fuel.

Prius penance: Brad burned enough fuel to take a Prius to the moon.

So Brad says: Pitt didn't have any comment. His rep tells TMZ that Pitt is out of the country.

Muslims want national holiday in Norway....

It's just a matter of time, no?
Muslim politicians in Norway are lobbying for establishment of a new national holiday to celebrate the end of a month of fasting. They think the holiday should be recognized along the same lines as Christmas.

"The best would be to get Eid-al-Fitr (most commonly called "id" in Norway) on the calendar as a public free day for everyone," Yousef Gilani, a city politician in Drammen, told newspaper VG. Eid-al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Fast of Ramadan, was celebrated on October 24 this year.

It's an occasion of family feasts and celebration for thousands of Norway's immigrants and descendants of immigrants, the majority of whom are from Pakistan. Muslim families and groups were celebrating their religious holiday around the country on Monday night, rather like Christmas Eve for the Christian community, but all had to work or go to school as usual the next day.

Hezbollah won't release hostages....

Why can't the UN come out publicly and tell the truth about Hezbollah...
The United Nations special envoy responsible for mediating between Israel and Hezbollah in an effort to secure the release of the Israeli captives in Lebanon has so far been unsuccessful, Arabic-language daily Al Hayat reported Tuesday.

"The prevailing impression is that Hezbollah is not interested in resolving the matter," reported the newspaper, which is published in London and Beirut.

Islamists declare war on Ethiopia...

Poor Ethiopia..the last thing they need is this....
Ethiopia is 'technically at war" with Islamic forces in Somalia and has become a target for terrorism, the prime minister said yesterday.

Hard-line clerics of the Islamic Courts Union who now hold sway over Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, and several key towns in the south of the country have declared holy war against Ethiopia.

They accuse their majority Christian neighbour of sending thousands of soldiers over their shared border to prop up the weak transitional government, which stands as the only counterpoint to the fundamentalists' power.

"The jihadist elements within the Islamic Court movement are spoiling for a fight. They've been declaring jihad against Ethiopia almost every other week," Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's prime minister, said. "Technically we are at war."

Monday, October 23, 2006

NO man could get away with this....

This is a story from the UK....
A single mother who falsely claimed raiders tied her up and started a fire in which her four-month-old son died has walked free from court.

Danielle Wails, 22, received three years probation, after admitting killing her son.

She initially told police she was tied up by intruders who set her flat ablaze last year, but later her story unravelled and she admitted setting the fire herself.

On the first day of the trial at Newcastle Crown Court in August, Wails' guilty plea to the lesser charge of infanticide was accepted by the prosecution after two psychiatrists both agreed she was suffering from postnatal depression and that the balance of her mind was disturbed at the time of the tragedy.

Leave the johns alone...

This seems designed to harass men..and nothing more...
A new provincial law allowing Alberta police to seize the cars of people soliciting sex trader workers comes into effect on Monday.

First-time johns can get their cars back after performing community service, but those who get caught more than once could see their vehicles seized by the province and auctioned off.

"The focus here is about creating safe and healthy communities,'' Kate Quinn, head of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton, told The Canadian Press.

"Children and women in the communities are leered at, they're harassed by men.''

Cars stolen in Norway turn up in Iraq....

and are then used in suicide bombings...
More and more cars stolen in Norway are turning up in Iraq, with some of them being used by suicide bombers.

The car thefts in Norway are thus being linked to terrorist activity and the financing of terrorism.

Car thefts have often been carried out by criminals who later use them in armed robberies, the drug trade or for sale in developing countries. Investigators are now tracking them to the Middle East, where sometimes their license plates are merely covered over by local plates.

Many of the cars carry large loans, meaning their theft amounts to a swindle against the lender financing them or the car's insurance company. Nearly 60 stolen cars worth as much as NOK 20 million are believed to have been sent to northern Iraq via Syria and Turkey as early as 2004.

Geir Skjelstad, whose company Hera AS works for an automobile finance company, claims some of the cars were then smuggled into southern Iraq. "The information we're getting is that they are used in suicide bombings or in other terrorist operations," he told newspaper Aftenposten over the weekend.

Muslims and Doctors in France....

A new problem has emerged....male doctors.
France's leading gynecologists have challenged hard-line Muslims to bow to France's secular, "modern" rules of society and to stop insisting that female doctors examine their wives.

The heads of the French National College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians issued a public declaration rejecting any moves to undermine the principle that public hospitals are part of a secular state in which patients must accept being examined by a doctor of the opposite sex.

The move came after a consultant in Paris was punched by a Muslim who was concerned that a male doctor wanted to examine his wife after complications in childbirth. Though incidents of gynecologists being attacked on religious grounds remain rare, the declaration said some Muslims' rejection of secular norms appeared to be rising.

The college said: "Thirty years ago, Muslim women came into our hospitals without any alarm at being taken into the care of doctors, most of whom were men, and there were none of these difficulties. Why are things going backwards? It is for Islam to adapt to the liberties that all must possess in a modern state."

Sunday, October 22, 2006

I can see this coming to Canada...

This is from the Daily Mail in the UK.
Smokers will be denied life-changing operations unless they agree to kick the habit, it was revealed today.

Cash-strapped hospitals say patients will not be given treatments such as hip and knee replacements until they try to give up. Those who fail could be denied treatment all together.

Managers in Norfolk and Newcastle, where trusts are millions of pounds in debt, say smokers are at a greater risk of complications and the move will help save them money on further care.

More on the intifada in France...

I wonder if this can also be blamed on George Bush?
Police moved into a neighborhood in a southern Paris suburb Sunday after some 30 youths burned an empty bus in broad daylight, local officials said.

No one was injured in the bus attack at about 2 p.m. in the town of Grigny, in the Essonne region south of Paris, the Essonne prefecture said. One person was detained

British Imam says killing gays is OK...

I wonder if this will hit the gay press....
Manchester’s leading Imam has confirmed that he thinks the execution of sexually active gay men is justified.

Mr. Arshad Misbahi, who is based at the Manchester Central Mosque, confirmed his views in a conversation to Dr John Casson, a local psychotherapist.

“I asked him if the execution of gay Muslims in Iran and Iraq was an acceptable punishment in Sharia law, or the result of culture, not religion,” said Dr. Casson.

“He told me that in a true Islamic state, such punishments were part of Islam: if the person had had a trial, at which four witnesses testified that they had seen the actual homosexual acts.

“I asked him what would be the British Muslim view? He repeated that in an Islamic state these punishments were justified. They might result in the deaths of thousands but if this deterred millions from having sex, and spreading disease, then it was worthwhile to protect the wider community.

Dr. Casson said that he ten checked again that this was not a matter of tradition, culture or local prejudice.

“‘No,’ he said. ‘It is part of the central tenets of Islam: that sex outside marriage is forbidden; this is stated in the Koran and the prophet – peace and blessings be upon him – had stated that these punishments were due to such behaviours.’

The latest from France...

They're trying hard to keep the car industry moving...
The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”

Car-burning has become so routine on the estates that it has been eclipsed in news coverage by the violence against police. Sebastian Roche, a sociologist who has published a book on the riots, said that torching a vehicle had become a standard amusement. “There is an apprenticeship of destruction. Kids learn where the petrol tank is, how to make a petrol bomb,” he told The Times.

You have to love the socialists....

The Norwegians would have sent troops to Afghanistan, but the socialists said no.
Labor Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Center Party leader Åslaug Haga were ready to commit more forces to Afghanistan, but their Socialist Left (SV) alliance partners said no.

The left-center majority alliance, led by the Labor Party, had planned to send 150 special troops to southern Afghanistan, as requested by NATO, but SV made their opposition a point of principle, government sources told newspaper VG.
NATO countries have to step up to the plate.....otherwise, why bother having NATO?

The real victims of global warming...

Paul Driessen has a good overview of global warming silliness.
Just the current Kyoto Protocol could cost the world up to $1 trillion per year, in regulatory bills, higher energy costs and lost productivity. That’s several times more than the price tag for providing the world with clean drinking water and sanitation – which would prevent millions of deaths annually from intestinal diseases.

Over 2 billion of the Earth’s citizens still do not have electricity, to provide basic necessities like lights, refrigeration and modern hospitals. Instead they breathe polluted smoke from wood and dung fires, and die by the millions from lung diseases. But opposition to fossil fuel power plants, in the name of preventing climate change, ensures that these “indigenous” lifestyles, diseases and deaths will continue.

Opposition to hydroelectric projects (damming rivers) and nuclear power (radioactive wastes) likewise perpetuates endemic Third World poverty. So would a new European Union proposal to tax imports from China, India and other poor countries that are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol, because this gives them an “unfair trade advantage” over EU countries that are struggling to meet their Kyoto #1 commitments.

But UK Climate Change Minister Ian Pearson insists that climate change “is one of the most pressing issues facing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.” And environmental zealots blame malaria rates on climate change, to deflect charges that their callous opposition to insecticides is killing African babies.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

I'm in love...

She's my new hero....can she visit Canada please?
THE latest media darling of Scandinavian politics is not only black, beautiful and Muslim; she is also firmly against the wearing of the veil.

Nyamko Sabuni, 37, has caused a storm as Sweden’s new integration and equality minister by arguing that all girls should be checked for evidence of female circumcision; arranged marriages should be criminalised; religious schools should receive no state funding; and immigrants should learn Swedish and find a job.

Supporters of the centre-right government that came to power last month believe that her bold rejection of cultural diversity may make her a force for change across Europe. Her critics are calling her a hardliner and even an Islamophobe.

“I am neither,” she said in an interview. “My aim is to integrate immigrants. One is to ensure they grow up just as any other child in Sweden would.”

Sabuni believes all immigrants must try to become proficient in Swedish — just as she did when she arrived from Africa aged 12 — rather than alienating locals.

“Language and jobs are the two most crucial things for integration,” she said. “If you want to become a Swedish citizen, we think you should have some basic knowledge of Swedish.”
Hurray!

Some resistance in North Korea....

This is very good news...
AN underground resistance movement in North Korea, capable of smuggling out videos of executions and staging violent acts of defiance, has emerged as the Kim Jong-il dictatorship faces international sanctions for testing a nuclear bomb.

The latest evidence of North Koreans willing to risk their lives to tell their story is a video showing the execution by firing squad of a woman convicted of murder committed in the course of stealing food last July.

Captured by a bystander with a tiny camera, it shows the victim being tied to a stake, watched by other convicts, in a field next to the Juyi River in the north.

There are sounds of people muttering in Korean, “See, that’s how they blindfold them,” as three executioners prepare to fire. Shouted commands are then heard.

As a ragged series of 12 shots resounds, blurry clouds of smoke break out around the distant figure, which slumps in its bonds. The body is then wrapped in what appears to be a plastic bag for burial.

The video was aired by Japan’s Asahi Television, which said the dead woman was named Yoo Bun Hee, but gave no details of how it obtained the pictures. North Korean exiles said they believe it is authentic.

The footage provides a clue to an unexplained series of border incidents earlier this year which North Korean officials blamed on a shadowy “resistance”.

In one clash North Korean border guards confronted three men creeping at night across the frozen Tumen River from China. In the ensuing fight the intruders stabbed several soldiers and escaped, leaving a bag containing three guns, ammunition, a video camera and a phone.

On the same night in late January men opened fire on a frontier post at the town of Huiryeong, causing an unknown number of casualties before escaping.

Chinese witnesses and foreign diplomats say there have been repeated outbreaks of gunfire, usually at night, along the mountainous barren borderlands. Lim Chun Yong, a former North Korean special forces officer who has defected, claimed that four or five groups of an “armed resistance” were in the area.

The BBC admits it is biased...

Could you imagine the CBC doing the same?
It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

One veteran BBC executive said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

'Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it.'

In one of a series of discussions, executives were asked to rule on how they would react if the controversial comedian Sacha Baron Cohen ) known for his offensive characters Ali G and Borat - was a guest on the programme Room 101.

On the show, celebrities are invited to throw their pet hates into a dustbin and it was imagined that Baron Cohen chose some kosher food, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a Bible and the Koran.

Nearly everyone at the summit, including the show's actual producer and the BBC's head of drama, Alan Yentob, agreed they could all be thrown into the bin, except the Koran for fear of offending Muslims.

In a debate on whether the BBC should interview Osama Bin Laden if he approached them, it was decided the Al Qaeda leader would be given a platform to explain his views.

And the BBC's 'diversity tsar', Mary Fitzpatrick, said women newsreaders should be able to wear whatever they wanted while on TV, including veils.

Ms Fitzpatrick spoke out after criticism was raised at the summit of TV newsreader Fiona Bruce, who recently wore on air a necklace with a cross.

The full account of the meeting shows how senior BBC figures queued up to lambast their employer.

Political pundit Andrew Marr said: 'The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'.

Another problem with global warming....

The models are very, very simplistic.
An international effort to determine the variability of recent snowfall over Antarctica shows that there has been no real increase in precipitation over the southernmost continent in the last half-century.

The results are important since most accepted computer models assessing global climate change call for an increase in Antarctic precipitation as atmospheric temperatures rise.

Al-Qaeda in the UK....

They're getting more organized...
Al-Qaida has become much more sophisticated and organized and the UK is the terror organization's prime target according to British counter-terrorism experts.

British security sources told the BBC last week that al-Qaida is now operating in the UK with a cell structure, each with a leader, a quartermaster dealing with weapons and volunteers. It was thought that five years ago al-Qaida was a number of loosely connected organizations with common aims, but it is now more organized, similar to how the IRA was set up.

According to the BBC report, training is taking place in the UK and Pakistan and says that the July 7 terrorist attacks "is just the beginning."

Can Israel ever negotiate with Hamas?

Hamas has always been clear - why the Europeans keep hoping they will recognize Israel is beyond me.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar said Friday that Israel is an abomination in the Middle East that will some day disappear.

"We will never recognize Israel, and the end the [fate of] Zionists will be like that of the Crusaders, the Persians and the English, who left. We want all of Palestine, every centimeter, from the river to the sea, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah. If we can form a state within the 1967 borders we will do so, but this doesn't mean that we will relinquish our right to every centimeter of Palestine's land," said Hamas' Zahar.

In his speech, Zahar also addressed the Palestinian prisoners in Israel and promised them that Hamas will do all that it can to secure their release, including kidnapping more Israeli soldiers.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Ahmadinejad threatens Europe...

Of course, no one will pay attention.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday called Israel's leaders a "group of terrorists" and threatened any country that supports Israel.

"You imposed a group of terrorists ... on the region," Ahmadinejad said, addressing the U.S. and its allies. "It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow."

Ahmadinejad warned Europe it was stirring up hatred in the Middle East by supporting Israel and said it "may get hurt" if anger in the region boils over.

"You should believe that this regime [Israel] cannot last and has no more benefit to you. What benefit have you got in supporting this regime, except the hatred of the nations?" he said in a speech to mark Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day, when Iranians are officially encouraged to demonstrate in support of the Palestinians.

"We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region. We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt," he said. The remarks were broadcast on state radio.

Bribery???

I don't know if this is true..but it would certainly explain why every deal to free Shalit has been sabotaged.
Israel's envoy to the United Nations on Thursday accused Iran of bribing a Hamas leader to sabotage the release of Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured by Palestinian militants near Gaza in June and has not been heard from since.

Ambassador Dan Gillerman told the UN Security Council that "we heard news" earlier in the day that Tehran had paid $50 million to Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who lives in the Syrian capital Damascus, "to sabotage the negotiations on the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit and prevent his release."

"We have every reason to believe that the Iranian regime has bribed Khaled Meshal," he later told reporters. "I cannot divulge the sources or give you any further details on this."

Hurt Feelings?

He feelings were hurt? And, she has to be paid?
A Muslim teaching assistant who was suspended for refusing to remove her veil during lessons has been awarded £1,100 for "injury to her feelings".

Aishah Azmi, 24, lost her claims that she was discriminated against because of her religious beliefs and that she had suffered harassment.

But an employment tribunal ruled that she had been victimised through the environment created as a result of her stance.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Another horror story about a father....

This one takes the cake...
Viola Trevino is a walking-talking explanation of why the family court and child welfare systems across North America are widely accused of being part of the problem, not part of the solution, in resolving custody issues and protecting children.

The Trevino case spun out in New Mexico, but there is nothing unique about the laws or procedures of that state.

Trevino's fraud began in 1999 when she and her former husband Steve Barreras divorced. Trevino claimed she had given birth to a child after the divorce and sued Barreras for child support, claiming he was the father. This fraud dissolved in 2004, when it was finally discovered that there was no such child. But Barreras, who works as a corrections officer in law enforcement, was forced to spend the ensuing years trying to make the New Mexico courts and child welfare service even look at evidence that the child for whom he was paying support did not exist.

More than $20,000 in payments later, a judge finally did the obvious. Trevino was ordered to produce the disputed child, then supposedly 5-years-old. On her way to the court appearance, Trevino snatched a 2-year-old off the street to pass off as her own daughter; the ruse collapsed when the infant's distraught grandmother trailed Trevino into the courtroom.

With such high drama, the media took notice…and politicians followed suit. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson called for a full accounting. At issue: how did several government agencies act as unwitting partners in a sustained and outright fraud? Why did they resist correcting the error?

She should be fired....

Bus drivers should have no say about the ads on their buses.
A bus driver who says homosexuality is against her religion will be allowed to refuse to get behind the wheel of vehicles displaying gay ads.

Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit agreed to the demand by driver despite objections from her union according to an internal transit authority memo obtained by the Star Tribune newspaper.

The controversy arose after the authority accepted an ad from local LGBT magazine Lavender. The ad shows a photo of a young man and carries the slogan "Unleash Your Inner Gay."

The ad runs on about 50 city buses.

When the driver objected the companied issued a memo to dispatchers instructing them not to assign the driver, identified only by her employee number, to any of the buses running the ad "under any circumstances" the Star Tribune reports.

BBC Fun....

I just couldn't resist this column from teh Daily Mail in the UK.
The BBC is launching two new channels. One, in Arabic, will compete with al-Jazeera. The other, in Farsi, will be beamed into Iran. A spokesman said of the Persian-language venture: 'The new television service will be editorially independent of the UK government.'

So why is Gordon Brown subsidising it to the tune of £15 million?

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to put out the BBC's domestic service on satellite? No one would notice the difference.

In recent days, Radio 4 has given over a substantial chunk of the flagship Today programme to a party political broadcast by an Islamist maniac.

Those of us who live in the London area might just as well be watching the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation when it comes to 'local' news.

One night last week, the first five items on the World's Worst News Bulletin were all about Muslims.

Coverage of the debate over the veil was conducted exclusively from an Islamic viewpoint, from what I could gather.

First, there was a live vox-pop from a curry house opposite a mosque in Southall, where all those asked to comment had just turned out of Friday prayers. Back in the studio, the two invited guests were a 'moderate' Muslim and a bird in a burqa. This is what the BBC calls 'balance'.

We've even had the weatherman standing in the Edgware Road - the famous 'Arab Street' - giving us the forecast for Ramadan.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

How's this for secrecy?

This is from the Daily Mail in the UK.
The war on terror has descended into farce after the Government refused to identify a July 7 suspect on the run from the security services.

The Home Office insists the British Muslim, who describes himself as a 'Holy warrior', is such a grave threat to national security he must be under a control order.

But, despite the 25-year-old committing a serious crime by repeatedly breaching the order and making himself a fugitive, John Reid will not take steps to lift his veil of secrecy.

The Home Secretary's refusal to act is in spite of fears the man is a possible 'missing link' to the London plot.

Investigators have linked him to two of the four bombers who claimed 52 innocent lives last year - ringleader Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer.

The Daily Mail knows his identity, his shocking links to terrorists and has a photograph, but is unable to publish.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Get over it, lady!

She should be sent back to Pakistan from the UK asap.
A 7ft 2ins Pakistani woman is to live in Britain on benefits after claiming asylum because she is 'too tall' to return home.

Zainab Bibi, 33, claims she faces constant persecution and ridicule in her own country over her height. She has lodged an asylum claim with the Home Office and has already been granted a two-year visa to remain in the UK.

Miss Bibi, who in 2003 held the title of tallest woman in the world, plans to live off benefits and take advantage of free NHS healthcare.

A conservative case for gay marriage...

My friend Eric makes a strong case for gay marriage.
The argument about caregiving is also a very conservative one. As Rauch points out, "from society’s point of view, an unattached person is an accident waiting to happen. The burdens of contingency are likely to fall, immediately and sometimes crushingly, on people - relatives, friends, neighbours - who have enough problems of their own, and then on charities and welfare agencies. We all suffer periods of illness, sadness, distress, fury. What happens to us, and what happens to the people around us, when we desperately need a hand but find none to hold? If marriage has any meaning at all, it is that when you collapse from a stroke, there will be another person whose ‘job’ it is to drop everything and come to your aid. Or that when you come home after being fired, there will be someone to talk you out of committing a massacre or killing yourself. To be married is to know there is someone out there for whom you are always first in line". Denying this option to gay couples places this burden of care on the state - how is this good conservative policy?
Please read the whole thing. Eric's a new friend and I am very happy to see him blogging. Please take some time and check out his blog.

Two Fathers

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan's blog.

BBC tries to keep report secret...

Let's hope the BBC loses...
The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers' money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.

The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.

The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.
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The court case will have far reaching implications for the future working of the Act and the BBC. If the corporation loses, it will have to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.

Like all public bodies, the BBC is obliged to release information about itself under the Act. However, along with Channel 4, Britain's other public service broadcaster, it is allowed to hold back material that deals with the production of its art, entertainment and journalism.

The High Court action is the latest stage of a lengthy and expensive battle by Steven Sugar, a lawyer, to get access to the document, which was compiled by Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, in 2004.

Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, who is responsible for the workings of the Act, agreed with the BBC that the document, which examines hundreds of hours of its radio and television broadcasts, could be held back. However, Mr Sugar appealed and, after a two-day hearing at which the BBC was represented by two barristers, the Information Tribunal found in his favour.

A horrible anti-semitic incident in Germany....

This is pretty bad.
School children in a German state where neo-Nazis are in parliament forced a girl pupil to parade in the playground holding aloft a sign saying that she was the "biggest pig" for having befriended Jews.

The language on the sign was straight from the Nazi era when women who befriended or cohabited with Jews were singled out for state humiliation.

"I am the biggest pig in this place because I hang around with Jews," read the placard that the 16-year-old was forced to carry.

It is unclear whether the girl actually had Jewish friends.

The secondary school in Parey in Saxony was raided by police on Thursday after the incident, and three pupils were detained for questioning.

That comes just months after racist attacks in eastern Germany threatened to blight the country’s hosting of the World Cup.

Before the tournament a black man was beaten into a coma at a bus stop, prompting ethnic groups – backed by a former top politician – to declare that parts of the former Communist east were no-go zones for foreigners.

Also, this summer drunken neo-Nazis flung a copy of "The Diary of Anne Frank" on to a bonfire as they sang Nazi songs.

Armin Friedrichs, the police chief in Parey, said: "Never in my long experience have I heard of such a terrible act against a teenager."

Sunday, October 15, 2006

No solidarity with Israeli journalist....

This has happened before - Tariq Aziz, the Vice-Premier of Iraq also refused to answer an Israeli journalist's questions.
Iran’s ambassador to France , Ali Ahani, has refused to address a question by an Israeli journalist in Paris to the indifference of journalists and press conference organisers from the center for foreign journalists CAPE in the French national radio buildings.

“What can you say to Israelis whom are scared of your nuclear bomb after you president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel should be wiped off the map? Is that why you’re developing the bomb?,” Or Heller, correspondent in Paris for the Israeli Maariv newspaper, asked the ambassador.

“If the United States attack Iran would you launch missiles at Israel or other countries of the region?,” he added.

The ambassador refused to answer and the journalist microphone was handed immediately to the next reporter, a Lebanese, who asked her question on ties between Iran and Syria.

The Israeli journalist protested, stressing that the conference was held in Paris and not in Tehran and asked from colleagues to leave the press room out of solidarity.

A Greek and a Jewish journalist followed Or Heller out but the other reporters stayed at the press conference, most of them showing no interest in the incident, some of them hushing the journalist down.

“He knew the Iranian president wouldn’t answer his question. Why did he ask it any way. He is simply a provocateur,” asked one journalist who claimed to be working for French national television over the past 30 years.

Are the snack police coming to Canada?

I'm sure the NDP is watching this closely.
A boy aged 10 has been banned from his school dining hall because his packed lunch broke the government's healthy eating guidelines.

The father of Ryan Stupples is protesting after his son was forced to eat in the headmaster's office at Lunsford primary school, Larkfield, Kent, because his lunch contained two snacks, instead of one.

Ryan's lunch consisted of a sandwich, fruit, fromage frais, cake, mini cheese biscuits and a bottle of water. The cake and the biscuits broke the snack limit. They were discovered when a teacher checked his lunch box.

More on the intifada in France....

Wow, there are 10-12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in Paris.
Turf conscious bloggers in Paris' rundown, mostly Muslim, suburban immigrant housing estates rival in violent messages that threaten to beat senseless and even kill any intruder caught in "our ghetto." Almost every word is misspelled, in both argot slang and pidgin French. And these are not empty threats. An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youngsters.

France's Interior Ministry said 2,500 police officers had been "wounded" this year. The head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel Thooris wrote to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to describe conditions in housing developments turned slums as "intifada." Police cruisers are pelted daily with stones and "Molotov cocktails" (gasoline-filled bottles with burning wicks that explode on impact) and Thooris said cops assigned to what was rapidly degenerating into "free fire zones" should be protected in armored vehicles. Entire tall buildings empty into the streets to chase policemen and free an arrested comrade.

"We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," Thooris told journalists. Sarkozy, the leading center-right candidate for next year's presidential election, responded by dispatching cops in body armor, equipped with automatic weapons and rubber bullets, stun and teargas grenades into several Paris suburbs with orders to "restore control" from "organized crime." In one recent clash 250 cops dispersed a 100-strong Muslim gang armed with baseball bats.

Anti-Semitic incidents have proliferated in France in recent times, but the news seldom makes it across the Atlantic and when it does, it must still fight to be heard above the constant melodrama of constant trivia. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse attacked with Molotov cocktails; in Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish soccer team with metal bars and sticks; the bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers attacked thrice in the past 14 months, synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles and a Jewish school in Creteil firebombed in recent weeks; in Toulouse, a gunman opened fire -- all ignored in the mainstream media in the U.S.

The metropolitan Paris police tabulated 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in the past 30 days throughout the country.

Can you imagine jews at muslim schools?

I understand what they are trying to do....but I think this is a wrong approach.
All new faith schools will have to offer up to a quarter of places to non-believers in a move ministers believe will promote integration and ease growing fears that British society is splintering on religious and race grounds.

Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, is expected this week to announce the plans in changes to the Education and Inspection Bill.

The move follows warnings from David Davis, the shadow home secretary, that the country was slipping into a system of "voluntary apartheid" in which there was a danger of creating "a series of closed societies within our open society."

The Church of England has already announced it will set aside a quarter of places at its new schools for people outside the Church.

However, under Mr Johnson's plans Roman Catholic, Jewish and Muslim institutions will be asked to do the same. Where local authorities choose not to invoke the powers, there will be a facility for individuals to appeal to the Education Secretary.
Exactly how do you get muslims to go to a jewish school? Would Catholics want to go to a jewish school? How would jews be treated at a muslim school? How many non-muslims really want to go to a muslim school?

Men need a consent form signed in triplicate....

I;m sorry...this makes me crazy...are women this incapable of protecting themselves?
Men who have sex with women who are not fully sober risk being found guilty of rape unless they have their consent, under controversial new proposals.

Ministers want to close a legal loophole which means that thousands of cases fail to reach the courts because victims have been drinking.

At present, women are deemed to be capable of consenting to sex as long as they are not so drunk that they are unconscious.

But under the new plans, which could be unveiled as early as next month, juries will be given the power to decide whether a woman was sober enough to know what she was doing.

Peace in middle east- Stop the child abuse

The child abuse in the Palestinian territories must stop.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Hamas debates attacking the US....

How on earth could anybody want to give aid to such a government?
Hamas plans to attack American targets in the Middle east, a TIME Magazine report released on Friday said.

According to the report, Hamas officials discussed the idea during underground meetings in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The terrorist organization was "running out of patience" with the US and wants to retaliate.

The organization was fuming over the Bush administration's efforts to bring down the extreme Islamist government, Hamas said.

Gibson blames his tirade on criticism of his movie...

Let's face it, his blood alchohol level wasn't that high...
He said his words may have come from resentment following criticism he received before the release of "The Passion of the Christ."

"Now even before anyone saw a frame of film, for an entire year, I was subjected to a pretty brutal sort of public beating," he said. "And during the course of that, I think I probably had my rights violated in many different ways as an American, as an artist, as a Christian, just as a human being."

The 50-year-old Gibson said his tirade also may have been triggered by Israel's war in Lebanon. The Middle East has troubled him for a long time.

"I remember thinking when I was 20, man, that place is going to drag us all into the black hole, you know, just the difficulty over there," he said.

Asked by Sawyer what Jews are responsible for, Gibson replied: "What are they responsible for? I think that they're not blameless in the conflict. There's been aggression and retaliation and aggression. It's just part of being in conflict, and being at war. So, they're not blameless.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Why exemptions for muslims and sikhs?

She shouldn't have been suspended...
A Christian woman has been banned by British Airways for wearing a small cross necklace to work - while muslims and sikhs are allowed to wear headscarves and turbans.

Heathrow check-in worker Nadia Eweida was sent home after refusing to remove the crucifix which breached BA's dress code.

Her treatment by BA - which styles itself as the "world's favourite airline" - brought condemnation both from Christian groups and members of other faiths last night.

BA's chief executive Willie Walsh has upheld the action against Miss Eweida for failing to comply with "uniform regulations" despite himself coming under fire recently for failing to wear a tie.

Miss Eweida, who has an unblemished record during seven years at BA, is suing her employer for religious discrimination after being suspended from work without pay for two weeks.

She said her treatment was all the more extraordinary as she and fellow employees had just undergone "diversity training" - including receiving advice from pressure group Stonewall on how to treat gays and lesbians in the workplace.

The airline's uniform code states that staff must not wear visible jewellery or other 'adornments' while on duty without permission from management.

It makes exceptions for Muslim and Sikh minorities by allowing them to wear hijabs and turbans.

Under rules drawn up by BA's 'diversity team' and 'uniform committee', Sikh employees can even wear the traditional iron bangle - even though this would usually be classed as jewellery - while Muslim workers are also allowed prayer breaks during work time.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

I wish Harper would say this sort of stuff....

I am impressed!
A generation of boys is being "wasted" by serious failings in schools and society, Gordon Brown has warned.

The Chancellor said underachievement among boys had become an "acute problem" and said the rise of single parent families meant too many no longer had good male role models.

In an extraordinary speech ranging far beyond his traditional Treasury brief, Mr Brown also spoke in highly emotive terms about what he called the "soul of man".

Dirty Bombs in the UK...

He is a convert to Islam...
A British Muslim yesterday admitted plotting a series of co-ordinated terrorist attacks in this country including one involving a radioactive "dirty bomb".

Dhiren Barot, from Kingsbury, north London, also pleaded guilty to planning attacks against the IMF, World Bank and financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark.

Edmund Lawson, QC, told Woolwich Crown Court, south London: "These plans to carry out explosions at those premises with no warning were basically designed to kill as many innocent people as possible."

Barot described a car bomb plot called the "Gas Limos Project" as "the main cornerstone of a series of planned attacks" in Britain.

The court heard that Barot had asked for his plans to be outlined as part of his guilty plea.

"The principal planned attack involved packing three limousines with gas cylinders, explosives and the like and detonating them in underground car parks," Mr Lawson said.

Barot was said to have three other projects, including one that he called the "Radiation (Dirty Bomb) Project".

He had wanted the attacks to be launched in a "synchronised, concurrent and back-to-back" way with the main Gas Limos Project.

But the court heard he believed that the Radiation Project deserved to be an independent plot in its own right and would cause a number of further "collateral" objectives such as "injury, fear, terror and chaos".

Another wacky professor...

How many minds will he poison?
A university instructor who came under scrutiny for arguing that the American government orchestrated the September 11, 2001, attacks likens President Bush to Adolf Hitler in an essay that his students are being required to buy for his course.

The essay by Kevin Barrett, "Interpreting the Unspeakable: The Myth of 9/11," is part of a $20 book of essays by 15 authors, according to an unedited copy first obtained by WKOW-TV in Madison and later by the Associated Press.

The book's title is "9/11 and American Empire: Muslims, Jews, and Christians Speak Out." It is on the syllabus for Mr. Barrett's course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Islam: Religion and Culture," but only three of the essays are required reading, not including Mr. Barrett's essay.

Mr. Barrett, a part-time instructor who holds a doctorate in African languages and literature and folklore from UW-Madison, is active in a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. The group's members say American officials, not Al Qaeda terrorists, were behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11.

"Like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies," he wrote.
Hat tip: Shameer.

More on that global warming discovery in Denmark...

I earlier blogged about the Danish discovery that cosmic rays and their effects on cloud cover may explain up to 75% of global warming.
The Danish discovery has changed this. Researchers led by the Space Centre's Henrik Svensmark published experimental evidence in the proceedings of the prestigious British Royal Society showing that high-energy cosmic rays do have the ability to ionize molecules in our atmosphere and nucleate clouds. Mr. Svensmark's team managed to reproduce the gases and chemistry of the lower atmosphere inside a chamber of seven cubic metres. Into this simulated atmosphere, they fired a beam of charged particles like the high-energy cosmic radiation that manages to penetrate the Earth's magnetic shielding. Their measurements of the charged particles they created and the rates of nucleation match with those required to have a measurable impact on climate. They provide experimental evidence to support the theory.

The Danes are not the only team to have sought experimental evidence for cosmic ray forcing of the climate. University of Ottawa researcher Jan Veizer and colleague Nir Shaviv use geology and meteorites to show a cosmic ray connection with climate over the past 600-million years. The research team at CERN, the EU's foremost centre for high-energy physics, announced last month that their new CLOUD experiments would test the theory of cloud formation by cosmic rays. NASA is also taking the solar connection more seriously. This past spring, two new satellites were launched to collect data on the link between cloud formation and climate. All this activity signals a recognition that the solar-cosmic ray-cloudiness connection must be taken seriously in climate research.

While these Danish experiments provide new evidence to support the theory of solar-forcing of climate change, the CO2 warming theory remains untested and unverified. Beyond wiggle-matching, no experimental evidence has been produced to show that an increase in CO2 can accelerate the water cycle and increase greenhouse warming with water vapour. In fact, ice core evidence from the past shows that it doesn't.

In the natural sciences, if you can't measure it, you can't prove it.

Hitchens on North Korea....

This regime must go...
Concealed in that pitch-black night is an imploding state where the only things that work are the police and the armed forces. The situation is actually slightly worse than indentured servitude. The slave owner historically promises, in effect, at least to keep his slaves fed.

In North Korea, this compact has been broken. It is a famine state as well as a slave state. Partly because of the end of favourable trade relations with, and subsidies from, the former USSR, but mainly because of the lunacy of its command economy, North Korea broke down in the 1990s and lost an unguessable number of people to sheer starvation.

The survivors, especially the children, have been stunted and malformed. Even on a tightly controlled tour - North Korea is almost as hard to visit as it is to leave - my robotic guides couldn't prevent me from seeing people drinking from sewers and picking up grains of food from barren fields (I was reduced to eating a dog, and I was a privileged "guest").

Film shot from over the Chinese border shows whole towns ruined and abandoned. It seems mines in the north of the country have been flooded beyond repair.

Kim Jong-il and his fellow slave masters are trying to dictate the pace of events by setting a timetable of nuclearization, based on a crash program wrung from their human property. But why should it be assumed that their failed state and society are permanent? Another timeline, orientated to liberation and regime change, is what the dynasty most fears. It should start to fear it more.

The Ahmadinejad Code....

I love Cox and Forkum - they are superb cartoonists.

Check out their entry into the Iranian Holocaust Cartoon contest and the hideen image.

Could you imagine if this had been a father?

The Children's Aide Society can be blind to the abuse from mothers.
The mother accused of first-degree murder in the deaths of her two little girls last week was admitted to a psychiatric ward of a local hospital as a suicidal patient just five months earlier.

Frances Elaine Campione, The Globe and Mail has confirmed, was admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ont., for an emergency assessment.

The 31-year-old's history in an active file at the Children's Aid Society of Simcoe County raises alarming questions about why the agency returned her two vulnerable youngsters — Serena, 3, and Sophia, who was just a year old — to her care and what workers and supervisors were doing to monitor her.

Ms. Campione was admitted to hospital early last June after taking an overdose of medication and leaving a suicide note. She was discharged June 30, and within a week or so, The Globe has learned, had managed to regain custody of the little girls and had them back living with her.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

What's with Ignatieff???

Now, he says Israel has committed war crimes.
Michael Ignatieff, the front-runner in the race for the federal Liberal leadership, has accused Israel of committing "a war crime" during its conflict with Hezbollah last summer.

In an interview on a widely watched Quebec talk show, Mr. Ignatieff apologized for comments in August when he told a newspaper he was "not losing sleep" over an Israeli bombing that killed dozens of civilians in the Lebanese village of Qana.

"It was a mistake. I showed a lack of compassion. It was a mistake and when you make a mistake like that, you have to admit it," he told the French-language Radio-Canada program Tout le monde en parle.

"I was a professor of human rights, and I am also a professor of the laws of war, and what happened in Qana was a war crime, and I should have said that. That's clear."
Is Ignatieff reading the tea leaves? Do Liberals now have to be anti-Israel? And, look who he is making happy!
Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said he was heartened by Mr. Ignatieff's use of the term "war crime" to describe Israel's actions. Last month Mr. Elmasry wrote an essay urging Liberals to choose anyone but Mr. Ignatieff as their leader. "He's taking the time to find out the facts, and, based on that, he's correcting his position. We appreciate that stand coming from him," he said yesterday.

In Defense of MacDonalds...

This lawsuit is ridiculous...
I have a question for federal Judge Robert Sweet: If your own children blamed McDonald's for making them fat, would you buy it?

I don't think so.

Yet the judge has given the green light to a lawsuit against McDonald's by two teenaged girls who claim the popular fast-food chain tricked them into eating food that made them fat and sick. At first it looked as if this lawsuit was going to be pushed down the garbage disposal, but now it's back. What's going on?

Three years ago, the girls accused McDonald's of deceptive advertising and selling unhealthy food. Judge Sweet dismissed the suit because the allegations were too vague. "Where should the line be drawn between an individual's own responsibility to take care of herself and society's responsibility to ensure others shield her?" he asked. "The complaint fails to allege the McDonald's products consumed by the plaintiffs were dangerous in any way other than that which was open and obvious to a reasonable consumer."

But he invited the plaintiffs to re-file it with more specific information. Sure enough, they did, and last month, the judge ruled that the girls had identified to his satisfaction "40 deceptive ads" and "sufficiently described" the harm McDonald's food allegedly caused them: "obesity, hypertension and elevated levels of LDL cholesterol."
Why don't the kids sue their parents?

Misleading statistics at UNICEF,,,,

This is pretty common in the feminist world...
At first I assumed UNICEF director Ann Veneman had been terribly misquoted.

This was the statement the media attributed to her: "We know that women do about 66 percent of the work in the world. They produce 50 percent of the food, but earn 5 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property." But then I checked, and that's what she said. It was right on the UNICEF website.

The implication of Veneman's comment was clear: Around the world, men are lazy dolts who lord over downtrodden women.

But I was a skeptical. So I called the UNICEF press office and asked for the source of those damning statistics. Press aide Kate Donovan cheerfully reassured me that Veneman is "very picky about her facts" and promised she'd get back to me. She never did.

Google to the rescue. Many mouse-clicks later I arrived at another U.N. webpage devoted to the Millenium Development Goals.

Ah ha! – right there on page 2 was the elusive quote, along with its source: Womankind Worldwide.

So then I contacted Womankind Worldwide, asking for the exact name of the source document. And here's the long-awaited response from a Julia Czastka: "I can tell you that the facts given in this quote are from the U.N."

Let's see … Group A relies on Group B, Group B bounces us over to Group C, and Group C sends us back to Group A. In my neck of the woods, that's called recycling the trash. Ms. Veneman, may we consider your statement a candidate for the Phony Statistics Hall of Fame?
If you want a lot more examples, just check out Christina Hoff Sommers book, "Who Stole Feminism?".

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

North Korea's Record of Crime....

It is truly a rogue state.
Illegal export businesses that North Korea is accused of operating include the manufacture and sale of drugs, counterfeit currency, fake brand goods such as cigarettes, the forging of tax revenue stamps and money laundering. On top of this there is the lucrative trade in weapons, principally missile parts, which is perfectly legal but deplored by the United States and its allies.

Over the years North Korea’s partners in these enterprises have ranged from Japanese yakuza, Russian drug dealers, Irish republican terrorists, bankers in Macau, ivory poachers in Africa, and the Armed Forces of Egypt, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Vietnam and Yemen.

If the North does attempt to profit from its nuclear success it will be covert networks like these that it will employ.

North Korean official crime dates back at least to the 1970s when its diplomats based in the four Scandinavian countries were reselling tax-free alcohol and cigarettes.

Diplomatic bags were frequently abused for the purposes of smuggling drugs produced in North Korean factories, beginning with heroin and opium but diversifying in the late 1990s into crystal metamphetamine or “shabu”, the most popular drug in Japan, South Korea and South East Asia.

In 2003, Australian coastguards seized the North Korean boat Pong Su after it dropped off 150kg (330lb) of heroin at a beach in Victoria.

Even harder to pin down are the counterfeit $100 bills known to law enforcement agencies as Superdollar.

US security services have seized $50 million of the counterfeits since they began appearing 1989, of a quality so high that they are often detected only when they reach the Federal Reserve.

Sean Garland, the leader of the Official Irish Republican Army, a Marxist splinter group of the IRA, is presently fighting extradition from Ireland to face charges in the US that he purchased and distributed North Koran supernotes in Belarus, Russia and Ireland.

North Korean factories are reckoned to produce 41 billion fake cigarettes a year, for sale in China, Japan and the US.

Organic gets ridiculous....

Why don't they add the semen of an ox for sexual attraction?
For the first time since it started making trousers for cowboys more than 100 years ago, the famous clothing company is bringing out a pair of "sustainable" jeans to satisfy environmentalists.

The cotton is organic, the button on the waistband is made of coconut shell, there are no metal rivets, the dye is from natural compounds include indigo and the label is from recycled cardboard.

As the factory is in Hungary, the cotton will come from Turkey, the nearest available source, and other materials will come from Europe too, to cut down on long distant transport and associated fuel costs.

Not that it will stop the trendy trousers from having a hefty price tag, at least to start off with. According to reports the first pairs in the US will sell for 250 dollars each, around £140 here.