The BBC (like the CBC) also shows junk...

I'd look for the CBC to bring these shows to Canada...

The average age of the controllers themselves, of course, is well over 40. Their desire to appeal to the young is creepily reminiscent of seeing your uncle attempting karaoke, or a senior politician on the dance floor. It might not be anything more than embarrassing if the programmes were any good. Unfortunately, most of them aren't. Current affairs programmes have declined in quantity and in quality: there are ever fewer on the issues which matter, and ever more "lifestyle" programmes which end up more like freak shows.
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Last week, for example, BBC 3 screened F*** Off, I'm Short and F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman. They were produced by the Current Affairs Unit, and count as part of the BBC's current affairs output. They followed the "ground-breaking" F*** Off, I'm Fat, which was evidently adored by the BBC's senior management. F*** Off, I'm Fat was mildly entertaining. But it had no public service element at all. It repeated, over and over again, the message that facilities and services of all types should be adapted to obese people, rather than that obese people should lose weight - so you might well reach the conclusion that it was, if anything, opposed to the public interest. It was at least opposed to the Government's message on public health.

Some good news on Iraq...

Sunnis are turning on Al-Qaeda....

Sunni insurgent groups that were previously allied with Al-Qaeda in Iraq have turned against it, killing its leaders, attacking its supporters and vowing to drive it out of the country.

At least two Al-Qaeda commanders have been killed by Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad. Others have been forced to flee after insurgents passed their details to US and Iraqi commanders. Fierce fighting has broken out between insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda in Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

Until the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a US airstrike last summer, the groups cooperated with it in their bloody struggle with the coalition forces. But the insurgents have come to believe that Al-Qaeda in Iraq is destabilising the country by the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, often with truck bombs.

Some senior Sunni insurgents believe that Al-Qaeda in Iraq shares the agenda of Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias to plunge the country into ever more violent sectarian conflict rather than concentrating on the fight against the US-led coalition.

Late last year Salam al-Zubaie, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, began secret talks with the Sunni groups with the aim of coaxing them away from Al-Qaeda. He held meetings with commanders of groups including the 20th Revolutionary Brigade, the general command of the Iraqi armed forces, the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Ba’ath party and the Salah al-Deen al-Ayyubi Brigade.

He encouraged them to form a unified Sunni alliance that could fight Al-Qaeda and attack Iranian influence. They proved receptive to his arguments.

Jihad alive and well in schools in Pakistan...

There's been a lot of depressing news coming out of Pakistan.

THE International Crisis Group has condemned President Pervez Musharraf's failure to curb Pakistan's extremist Islamic schools.
A report released yesterday by the group, headed by former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, says promises made by General Musharraf in 2002 to reform madrassas, or religious schools, are "in shambles".

Focusing on the city of Karachi as a hotbed of radical madrassa activity that reflects the situation persisting across Pakistan, the ICG report says: "Banned sectarian and jihadi groups, supported by networks of mosques and madrassas, continue to operate openly, with consequences for internal stability and regional and international security."

Karachi's madrassas are "active centres of jihadi militancy and even those without direct links to violence promote an ideology that provides religious justification for such attacks".

The report adds: "The Pakistan Government has yet to take any of the overdue and necessary steps to control religious extremism in Karachi and the rest of the country. Musharraf's periodic declarations of tough action, given in response to international events and pressure, are invariably followed by retreat."

The EU cleans up its language!

Thank God for the EU - they know how to deal with terrorism.

The European Union has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism in their statements.

Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers "non-offensive" phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.

Banned terms are said to include "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist".

The word "jihad" is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life.

One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term "Islamic terrorism" to be replaced by "terrorists who abusively invoke Islam".

An EU official said that the secret guidebook, or, "common lexicon", is aimed at preventing the distortion of the Muslim faith and the alienation of Muslims in Europe.

"The common lexicon includes guidance on a number of frequently used terms where lack of care by EU and member states' spokespeople may give rise to misunderstandings," he said.

Can you imagine selling to jews?

Of course, you can't sell to Jews in the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Authority and Jordan earlier this week arrested two Palestinians suspected of selling a house in Hebron to settlers who have been occupying it since March 19.

One of the suspects is being held in Jordan, and the other in Jericho. PA laws call for a death sentence for anyone found guilty of selling land to Jews.

Why aren't press playing up the hostage crisis?

It amazes me that the even the British press are downplaying what I consider to be the next hostage crisis. If you go the Daily Mail website, the lead headline is about a fifteen pound speeding tax for victims of violence...while the hostage crisis is just another headline. In the Daily Telegraph, their lead story is on Gordon Brown and penion problems. Has the government told the press to cool it? Or, are the newspapers afraid to show too much support to Tony Blair? That perhaps this crisis can also be blamed on Iraq?

And, yet Israel is always condemned for treating women poorly...

When will western feminists start protesting?

Islamic extremists are fuelling the spread of "honour" based violence against women in Britain, the country's most senior Muslim prosecutor has warned.

Nazir Afzal, the Crown Prosecution Service's director for west London, said that foreign Islamic terror groups had been identified as the driving force behind one murder and another threat to kill.

He also highlighted two cases in which women overseas had been forced to act as suicide bombers after being accused of shaming their families, and warned that the use of the Muslim faith to justify oppression and violence was spreading in Britain.

Mr Afzal's comments came at a London conference in which he spelt out the CPS's determination to bring the "full force of the law" to bear on the minority of Muslims who perpetrated or connived in honour-based violence.

He said that there were estimated to be about a dozen honour killings in Britain each year - and many more incidents of violence and bullying - and expressed concern that the problem was being inflamed by extremist ideology.

"When you talk to women who are victims of this type of behaviour you often find that they will say that their husbands or fathers have been radicalised in the way that they think about women," he said.

"They will use Islam as a justification for telling women how to behave and for punishing them. There is no religious justification for forcing your children to marry or harming them because they behave in a particular way, but there are people out there who are using their faith as a reason to do this.

"In the past, they might have said 'do this because I'm your dad', but when they are radicalised it is making them feel more confident about the way they behave towards the women in their family.

"It is allowing the man to say 'my religion says you must behave this way' and it puts a lot of extra pressure on the women in their families and can make them feel that they should toe the line because it is about faith and their culture."

Mr Afzal said that several cases had highlighted the link between extremist Islamic organisations and honour violence. One was a threat to kill a woman, known as B, whose name cannot be given for legal reasons, and the other, 16-year-old Londoner Heshu Yones, who was murdered by her father Abdalla in 2002 after forming a relationship of which he disapproved.

He added: "At least two female suicide bombers in recent months have had their terrible acts attributed to a choice - die for dishonouring your family or die in so-called jihad. There is no way out.

"In the UK case of B, the threats to kill Miss B may have come from her family but they originated in an Egyptian terrorist group who felt it was their job to enforce social order and the woman's place in society. They told the father to clean up his family's act."

More Saudi Justice...

What a legal system!

A Saudi court sentenced a 20-year-old Saudi woman to 6 months in prison at a foster house for girls for running away from her family's house, Saudi al-Watan newspaper reported Sunday.

The woman - who said she ran away due to the pressures she was facing at home - will also receive 60 lashes as punishment for the same offence, al-Watan added.

In Saudi Arabia, every woman must be accompanied by a responsible male guardian - either a close relative or her husband.

Meanwhile, Saudi Ministry of Interior announced Sunday a Saudi man was executed by decapitation for killing an Ethiopian man to steal his money.

In 2007, 21 Saudis have been sentenced to death so far. Saudi Arabia sentences to death people charged with drug smuggling, murder, rape, armed robbery and apostasy from Islam.

Yay!!! Gay Rabbis!!!

Can't wait till we see gay imams as well...

The Jewish Theological Seminary announced Monday that it would change admission policies to accept openly gay students at its rabbinical school.

Arnold Eisen, chancellor-elect of the Conservative movement's flagship institution, made the decision after consulting with the seminary community and conducting a movement-wide survey, both of which found strong support for the change.

China to top US in CO2 Emissions in 2007

This underscores that what Canada does in controlling CO2 emissions is really unimportant....

China is on course to overtake the United States this year as the world's biggest carbon emitter, estimates based on Chinese energy data show, potentially pressuring Beijing to take more action on climate change.

China's emissions rose by some 10 percent in 2005, a senior U.S. scientist estimated, while Beijing data shows fuel consumption rose more than 9 percent in 2006, suggesting China would easily outstrip the U.S. this year, long before forecasts.

Bjorn Lomborg on Al Gore

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the Skeptical Environmentalist takes on Al Gore.

The Supreme Leader of the Muslims in Australia...

Gee, they just re-elected him.

A Muslim cleric who whipped up a storm last year when he told his Sydney flock that women who don't wear the veil invite rape has been endorsed as the supreme leader of Australia's 300,000 Muslims.

Clerics from around the country meeting in Sydney decided Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, 67, should keep the post of Mufti of Australia that he has held since 1988.

Prime Minister John Howard last year urged Muslims to dump al- Hilali, as did New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma.

Earlier this year al-Hilali raised the ire of Australians when he said Muslim migrants had a greater entitlement to the country than those who arrived at the time of colonial settlement.

"We came as free people, we bought our own tickets, we are entitled to Australia more than they are," al-Hilali told a television station in his native Egypt.

Howard called on Muslims to show a willingness to join the mainstream by ditching their controversial leader.

Al-Hilali, an Australian citizen, has been censured before for his extremist views and each time the Muslim community has closed ranks behind him.

He made international headlines when he told the congregation at Sydney's largest mosque that a woman in revealing clothes was herself to blame for sexual assault "because if she hadn't left the meat uncovered the cat wouldn't have snatched it."

After the remarks, 34 Muslim community organizations signed a petition urging al-Hilali to defy calls for him to stand down.

Al-Hilali has denied the Holocaust, defended suicide bombers, described as "God's work against oppressors" the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, and blamed Jews for "all the wars and problems that threaten the peace and stability of all the world."

Moderate Muslims under Threat in Canada....

Will other muslim groups come to their defense?

A moderate Muslim group that called for a separation of religion and state in a recent documentary has received a pointed death threat.

The Muslim Canadian Congress received the message Tuesday morning. It was left on the Toronto telephone of secretary general Munir Pervaiz.

"I swear on 99 names of Allah, if you don't cease from your campaign of smearing Islam … I will slaughter you," the unidentified caller said.

Toronto police and its hate-crime unit are investigating.

The message was addressed to congress president Farzana Hassan and founder Tarek Fatah, and mentioned Allah's name three times in a row.

"It is scary," Pervaiz told CBC News on Wednesday.

Is changing a lightbulb risky at the CBC too?

I bet the CBC is similar...

With a few simple precautions, thousands manage it every day. Yet BBC staff have been stopped from replacing lightbulbs because of concerns for their health and safety.

Instead, the corporation is paying up to £10 for each replacement bulb to be fitted.

The situation came to light when Louise Wordsworth, a learning project manager with the BBC, complained.

"I called up to ask for a new lightbulb for my desk lamp and was told that this would cost £10," she wrote in a letter to Ariel, the corporation's magazine.

"On telling them I'd buy and replace the bulb myself (bought for the bargain price of £1 for two bulbs) I was told that it was against health and safety regulations. So guess how many BBC colleagues it finally took to change a lightbulb (risking life and limb to do so)?"

A BBC spokesman confirmed that there had been a number of complaints, but said that each request was judged on its merits to save staff time.

As for Ms Wordsworth's unanswered question, three years ago it was calculated how many people it takes to change a BBC lightbulb.

The member of staff left in the dark would need to find a clerk to get a reference number so that the repair could be paid for, then report the fault to a helpline. An electrician would ask the store manager for the part and install the bulb, making a total of five people.

Another global warming hypocrite...

Good the see the press exposing these hypocrites...

The diplomat charged by the Government with lecturing the world on global warming has been revealed as one of the biggest contributors to it.

John Ashton, whose role is to persuade other countries to reduce CO2 emissions, has made so many foreign trips by air in his job that his carbon footprint is already 30 times bigger than the UK average.

Figures obtained under Freedom of Information legislation show he has flown more than 80,000 miles since his appointment last June.

If he continues at this pace, he will clock up an annual mileage equivalent to flying five times round the globe.

The 50-year-old former diplomat's travels have taken him to climate-change conferences in Moscow, Stockholm, Beijing, Washington, Chicago, Berlin, Houston, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Bombay, Delhi, Nairobi and Copenhagen.

On five of his trips he accompanied Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who was responsible for his appointment.

By the end of his first year in office, Mr Ashton's travel schedule will have added 22.3 tons to his personal carbon footprint, compared with the average Briton's 0.7 tons.

The Jihad in Thailand...

I've blogged on Thailand several times, but here's a good overview of the Jihad in Thailand.

TWO weeks ago, gunmen stopped a small passenger van in the street. They forced all of its occupants out and on to the roadside. The gunmen then shot all nine of them dead. Three of the passengers were women, one was a young girl.

Just another day of Baghdad carnage, you say. But no, this was Thailand, traditionally a peaceful, prosperous and stable Southeast Asian state at the heart of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a formal treaty ally of the US and a close trade and diplomatic partner of Australia.

But the truth is that a savage, terrible and appallingly bloodthirsty insurgency is under way in southern Thailand. It is the third great insurgency in the world today, after Iraq and Afghanistan. More people are dying in horrific violence in southern Thailand than in Palestine or the southern Philippines, or in the ethnic strife in some of the outlying islands of Indonesia.

Neither the Thai Government nor the international media quite wants to admit the horrible truth at the heart of the increasingly surreal sadism and violence in southern Thailand. This is an Islamist insurgency. While it is organisationally independent of al-Qa'ida or Jemaah Islamiah, it fits into the global pattern of Islamist insurgency.

It is an insurgency restricted to the four Muslim provinces in southern Thailand. It is true that they are poor, but other provinces are poorer and have nothing like this savagery. It is true there is a good deal of criminal smuggling over the border to Malaysia, which goes beyond any Islamist ideology. But smuggling is even bigger across the Burmese and Cambodian borders and criminality there has not led to the gruesome acts of insurgency seen in southern Thailand.

The difference is the Islamist ideology of the shadowy insurgents. Increasingly the insurgents are killing women and children. The arc of violence has got consistently worse. The best estimates are that since January 2004, about 2100 people have died violently in the insurgency in southern Thailand.

Just Ordinary Kindergarten Kids...

This is from Hamas TV from March 8th..

Interviewer: "Let's talk with the two children of the jihad-fighting martyrdom-seeker Rim Al-Riyashi, Dhoha and Muhammad. Dhoha, you love Mama, right? Where did Mama go?"

Dhoha: "To Paradise."

Interviewer: "What did Mama do?"

Dhoha: "She committed martyrdom."

Interviewer: "She killed Jews, right?"

Interviewer: "How many did she kill, Muhammad?"

Muhammad: "Huh?"

Interviewer: "How many Jews did Mama kill?"

Muhammad: "This many... "

Interviewer: "How many is that?"

Muhammad: "Five."

Interviewer: "Do you love Mama? Do you miss Mama?

"Where is Mama, Muhammad?"

Muhammad: "In Paradise."

Interviewer: "Dhoha, what would you like to recite for us?"

Dhoha: "In the name of Allah the Merciful the Compassionate: 'When comes the help of Allah, and victory, and you see people entering the religion of Allah in troops, then celebrate the praise of your Lord, and ask His forgiveness, for He is ever ready to show mercy.'"

Interviewer: "What else would you like to recite? You have read the surah, 'When comes the help of Allah, and victory.' What would you like to recite for us now?"

Dhoha: "'Mama Rim.'"

Interviewer: "Recite the poem 'Mama Rim' for us. Recite anything. What would you like to recite?"

"I Want to Talk About Kindergarten"

Interviewer: "Muhammad, do you know how to recite?"

Muhammad: "Yes."

Interviewer: "Go on then, recite something for us. What would you like to recite?"

Dhoha: "I just remembered."

Muhammad: "I am in kindergarten."

Interviewer: "Are you doing well in kindergarten?"

Muhammad: "Yes."

Dhoha: "I am in kindergarten, I want to tell."

Interviewer: "Go on then, tell us. You're in kindergarten too? Are you in kindergarten, Dhoha? In kindergarten or at school?"

Dhoha: "In kindergarten."

Interviewer: "That's great.

"One should talk about the innocence of children..."

Muhammad: "I'm in kindergarten too."

Interviewer: "You're in kindergarten too."

Dhoha: "I want to talk about kindergarten, I want to talk."

"Rim, You Are a Firebomb, Your Children and Submachine Gun Are Your Motto"

Interviewer: "What would you like to recite for us? Have you heard the poem 'Mama Rim'? Go on then, recite it for us."

Dhoha: "Rim, you are a fire bomb."

Interviewer: "Go on, recite it."

Dhoha: "'Your children and submachine gun are your motto.'"

Interviewer: "Muhammad, go ahead and recite..."

Muhammad: "I'm in kindergarten."

Dhoha: "That's it, I'm done."

Interviewer: "OK, do you want to go to Mama?"

Dhoha: "Yes."

Animal Rights Terrorists get to Wolfgang Puck...

What a shame that he's giving in....

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck is cooking up kinder, gentler menus.

As part of a new initiative to fight animal cruelty, Puck said Thursday he will no longer serve foie gras, the fatty liver produced by overfeeding ducks and geese.

His 14 fine-dining restaurants, more than 80 fast-casual eateries and 43 catering venues will use only eggs from hens that have lived cage-free; veal from roaming calves; and lobsters that have been removed from their ocean traps quickly to avoid crowded holding tanks.

Puck said guests at his restaurants want to know their food is made with fresh, organic ingredients and that the animals were treated well.

"We want a better standard for living creatures. It's as simple as that," Puck said.

The move came after three years of protests by Farm Sanctuary, an animal-rights group that launched wolfgangpuckcruelty.org — relabeled Wolfgang Puck Victory as of Thursday — and organized a leafletting campaign outside Puck's restaurants.

Anti-semitism in Canada

The B'nai Brith reported a 12/8% increase in anti-semitic incidents in 2006. Here's some of the incidents....

January

Toronto, ON ­ During "Israel Apartheid Week" on campus, an invited speaker alleges that Jews are killers who use their wealth to control the world.

Charlottetown, PEI - A Jewish student is taunted at school and referred to as a "dirty Jew".

Toronto, ON - Two boys parade through the Jewish community waving a vintage Nazi flag from their car.

Vancouver, BC - The campaign manager of a losing candidate blames the 'Jewish-owned media' for his defeat.

Toronto, ON - A social worker gives a Heil Hitler salute and complains to a
colleague: "All Jews must die".

Montreal, QC - Several Arabic-speaking men use rocks and bricks in an attempt to force entry into a kosher restaurant via the window. They then throw a lit firecracker inside.

Toronto, ON - A community college teacher tells her students that the media is under the control of the Jews and that "the media make things up like the Holocaust".

February

St John, NB - The words "die Jewish scums" [sic] are found on a soccer message board.
Halifax, NS - Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, is heckled with antisemetic remarks while visiting Dalhousie University.

Toronto, ON - A school principal singles out and harasses the two Jewish teachers who work at his school.

Montreal, QC - A crowd of Arabic-speaking teenagers swarms two women, calls them "dirty Jews", and assaults their male friends outside a restaurant.

Ottawa, ON - Antisemitic insinuations are made repeatedly during a meeting sponsored by the federal government and attended by Canadian NGOs.

Richmond Hill, ON - A child is bullied at school and taunted about his Jewishness.

Montreal QC - A synagogue is vandalized on three separate occasions.

March

Montreal, QC - The owner of a kosher restaurant is threatened by a caller who warns: "You f**king Jew, we got you once, we'll get you again and this time we'll kill you."

Toronto, ON - A swastika and the message "gas the Jews" is etched inside a downtown facility.

Montreal, QC - Swastikas and the SS insignia are spray-painted on the wall of a synagogue.

Toronto, ON - The Holocaust memorial site at Earl Bales Park is vandalized and defaced with graffiti twice over a three-day period.
Regina, SK - Jewish residents are sent pamphlets telling them they will rot in hell if they do not convert to Christianity.

Toronto, ON - The entrance of an apartment is vandalized and painted with swastikas and slogans including "Die Jewz", [sic] "bitch", and "cunt".

April

Montreal, QC - Five teenagers throw rocks at a visibly Jewish man and shout "go back to your country" and "Allahu akbar".

Ottawa, ON - A house with a visible mezuzah is vandalized twice.

Toronto, ON - A supporter of white supremacist Tomasz Winnicki addresses a message to B'nai Brith: "Why don't you dumb-f**k kikes leave this guy alone? Besides you hook-nosers aren't even real Jews. You're just a bunch of Khazars".

Calgary, AB - Swastikas are etched onto two portable classrooms at an Orthodox Jewish day school.

May

Montreal, QC - Two Arabic-speaking men throw rocks at a visibly Orthodox Jewish woman as she sits in her parked car with her infant daughter.

Ottawa, ON - A prison guard taunts an inmate, calling him a "dirty Jew".

Toronto, ON - A mental health patient is harassed by a nurse and labeled a "bad Jew".

Toronto, ON - A Jewish woman living in a social housing project is harassed by her neighbors who carve swastikas onto her front door and make anti-Jewish slurs

Winnipeg, MB - Thirty-one windows are smashed at a synagogue.

Victoria, BC - A white supremacist group distributes antisemitic and anti-immigrant flyers.

June

Montreal, QC - A visibly Jewish teenager is riding on the bus when three teenagers throw peanuts at him and yell, "Jew, Jew, dirty Jew".

Toronto, ON - A Jew driving downtown is physically assaulted by the driver of another car, who hurls a bottle at him, spitting and shouting that a "pig-nose Jew should not be driving," and threatening that he will "kill you like my grandparents killed yours".

Winnipeg, MB - Antisemitic leaflets are handed out to the audience at a concert hall.

Toronto, ON - A hate rock festival promotes anti-Jewish and anti-Black propaganda.

July

Montreal, QC - A Jewish family discovers a decapitated pig floating in their backyard swimming pool.

Toronto, ON - "Death to Jews" is scrawled on a street sign in the North York area.

Montreal, QC - Three men throw rocks at a group of congregants waiting outside their synagogue, shouting "this is revenge for Lebanon".
Ottawa, ON - While walking to the Jewish community centre, a visibly Jewish man is verbally harassed with antisemitic slurs by occupants in a passing car.

Montreal, QC - At an anti-Israel rally, where open support for the terrorist group Hezbollah is expressed, a Jewish bystander is physically assaulted and a tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) is publicly desecrated.

Winnipeg, MB - Nazi-themed graffiti is spray-painted over a 50-foot stretch on a public park walkway.

Montreal, QC - B'nai Brith Canada receives a message reading: "The Jews are murderers just as bad as Hitler. We should have exterminated them when we had the chance".

Vancouver, BC - Antisemitic graffiti and swastikas are found on 12 different sites across the city.

Toronto, ON - A "Call to Arms" from a white supremacist group is circulated via e-mail calling for violence against the Jewish community.

August

Toronto, ON - While walking in Earl Bales Park, a visibly Jewish man is approached by two men claiming to be Palestinians looking for work. They ask him if he knows any "rich Jews in the area" because they want to work for "religious idiots". The two men strike the man and knock off his kippah before walking away.

Toronto, ON - A rabbi is attacked and accused of "wanting to start wars".

London, ON - A security guard in the mall shouts at kids fighting with one another to "stop acting like Jews".

Toronto, ON - A house with a mezuzah is smeared with feces.

September

Montreal, QC - An Orthodox Jewish school is firebombed in the early hours of the morning.

Toronto, ON - A synagogue in North Toronto receives threats by mail.

Montreal, QC - A glass bottle is thrown at a rabbi's home, shattering his window.

Winnipeg, MB - Antisemitic graffiti is scrawled on the walls of a synagogue and windows are smashed.

Montreal, QC - Several teenagers outline a Star of David on the ground using tape, spit on it and invite other passersby to join in and do the same.

October

Montreal, QC - B'nai Brith's Quebec Region office receives a message stating: "You are cowards and child killers."

Ottawa, ON - A swastika and the message "F**k Jews" is spray-painted on public property.

Toronto, ON - Organizers at a major downtown venue receive death threats against a Jewish performer days before her appearance in a concert.

Montreal, QC - Several men verbally harass a young and visibly Jewish boy, taunting him and ridiculing his head-covering, shouting "why are you wearing that piece of shit on your head?" Toronto, ON - Jewish community signs and property are defaced with swastikas, pictures and the message "F**k Jews".

Brampton, ON - The message "Die Jews" is outlined in the sand of a public park.

Toronto, ON - A Holocaust survivor who uses a transportation service designed for handicapped users overhears the driver making Holocaust denial remarks.

November

Montreal, QC - A Jewish organization receives the following message "If you are not happy with Quebec or Canada policies [sic], you have only to return to Israel and continue to kill your neighbours".

Toronto, ON - The elevator of a downtown building is repeatedly defaced with the words "Jew Killers" and swastikas.

Winnipeg, MB - "F**king Jew" is spray-painted on a vehicle.

December

Toronto, ON - A hotel receives a message from a caller threatening "to kill all the Jews." The caller inquires "how many Jews do you have?"

Montreal, QC - Delegates at the Liberal Leadership convention are urged not to vote for Bob Rae because his wife is Jewish.

Toronto, ON - A menorah displayed in a Jewish neighborhood is vandalized.

Victoria, BC - Anonymous hate mail targets a member of the Jewish community who authored a letter to the editor of a local newspaper protesting the Holocaust denial of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Toronto, ON - A young man is repeatedly taunted with the slur, "Jew Boy," as he walks along the sidewalk.

Will our reaction to climate change affect our freedom?

The current President of the EU is concerned that some proposals for fighting global warming will affect our freedom.

Britain's mainstream political agenda on climate change risks intruding into people's lives, threatens individual freedom and could turn voters off the fight against global warming, Mr Barroso warns.

As the architect of EU proposals on fighting climate change and measures to set tough binding limits and reductions for CO2 emissions, the Commission President's intervention is a particular setback for ideas given high-profile personal backing by the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, and the Conservative leader, David Cameron.

Mr Barroso hails cheap air travel as "a great thing for our civilisation" and expresses grave concerns over fashionable plans, floated by Mr Miliband, for personal carbon rationing.
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He suspects that the proposals to restrict CO2 emissions from an individual's activities will lead to intrusive surveillance into private lives. "I do not see any need to establish these intrusive approaches that may reduce the freedom of our societies," he says.

"We have to find the right balance and I believe the right balance is not found if we start giving these kind of personal good or bad behaviour certificates to people."

Mr Barroso's views on tackling global warming also clash with Mr Cameron's plans to introduce green taxes and individual allowances on air travel should the Tories win the next election. "Cheap air travel is great for our civilisation. When we think now that people have the freedom to circulate instead of being confined to a small territory, it is great progress," he says.

Antarctica spoiled by Canadians...

Thanks to James for sending this.

A possible Saddam-Al-Qaeda Link?

Edward Jay Epstein looks at the confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Consider the Feb. 26, 1993, attack on the north tower of the World Trade Center. A 1,500-pound truck bomb was exploded by Islamist terrorists, intending to topple the building. Over 1,000 people were injured, and eventually five of the perpetrators, including the bomb-builder, Ramzi Yousef, were caught and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Yousef is a relative of KSM, and was involved with him in a subsequent plot to blow up U.S. airliners. Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission concluded that KSM had played at most a "cameo role" in the 1993 attack, limited to providing Yousef with $600 and having a few phone conversations with him. And it based this conclusion largely on the CIA briefings of what KSM had said during his interrogation.

According to the CIA, for example, KSM had maintained that "Yousef never divulged to him the target of the attack." The 1993 WTC bombing, therefore, appeared unrelated to the 9/11 attack--and so the 9/11 Commission had no need to investigate it, or the conspirators involved in it.

In his confession, however, KSM says that he was responsible for the WTC bombing. If so, both it and 9/11 are the work of the same mastermind--and the planning, financing and support network that KSM used in the 1993 attack may be relevant to the 9/11 attack. Of especial interest are the escape routes used by Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ramzi Yousef, both of whom helped prepare the bomb and then fled America.

Yasin (who is not even mentioned in the 9/11 report) came to the U.S. from Iraq in 1992, at about the same time as Yousef, and then returned to Iraq via Jordan. Despite being indicted for the World Trade Center bombing, and put on the FBI's list of the most-wanted terrorist fugitives with a $5 million price on his head (increased to $25 million after 9/11), Iraqi authorities allowed Yasin to remain in Baghdad for 10 years. (In 2003, after the U.S. invasion, he disappeared.)

His co-conspirator Yousef, who entered the U.S. under an alias on an Iraqi passport (switching passports to his Pakistani identity), escaped after the 1993 WTC bombing to Pakistan, where, after being involved in another bombing plot with KSM, he was arrested and is currently in a U.S. prison. But if indeed KSM had been behind the 1993 bombing--and the 9/11 Commission had not been told the opposite by the CIA--the question of what support KSM had in recruiting the conspirators and organizing the escape routes of the bomb makers would have become a far more pressing investigative issue for the commission.

Europe's Dirty Little Secret on Climate Change...

Bjorn Lomborg's article was also in the National Post today. He's a clear thinker on the costs of Kyoto.

With the EU's high-pitched rhetoric, you would be forgiven for believing that it has now single-handedly taken the major step toward solving the problem. Barroso called the agreement "historic." British Prime Minister Tony Blair extolled its "groundbreaking, bold, ambitious targets." German Chancellor Angela Merkel even ventured that Europe's promises could "avoid what could well be a human calamity."

But nobody sees fit to reveal the agreement's dirty little secret: It will do next to no good - and again at very high cost. According to one well-established and peer-reviewed model, the effect of the EU cutting emissions by 20 percent will postpone warming in the 21st century by just two years, yet the cost will be about $90 billion annually. It will be costly, because Europe is a costly place to cut carbon-dioxide, and it will be inconsequential, because the EU will account for only about 6 percent of all emissions in the 21st century. So the new treaty will be an even less efficient use of our resources than the old Kyoto Protocol.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

It is important to learn from the past. We have often been promised dramatic cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions far into the future, only to see the promises vanish when we got there. In Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the West promised to stabilize emissions, but overshot this by 12 percent. In Kyoto, we were promised a 7 percent reduction in world emissions, but will probably achieve only 0.4 percent. Of course, such promises are made by politicians who in all likelihood are no longer in office when the time comes to fulfil them.

We will not be able to solve global warming over the next decades, but only over the next half or full century. We need to find a viable, long-term strategy that is smart, equitable, and doesn't require inordinate sacrifice for trivial benefits. Fortunately, there is such a strategy: research and development. Investing in the research and development of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies would leave future generations able to make serious and yet economically feasible and advantageous cuts. A new global warming treaty should mandate spending 0.05 percent of GDP on research and development in the future. It would be much cheaper, yet do much more good in the long run.

Al Gore Continues to Come Apart...

Part of the transcript of the Glenn Beck show on CNN...

Joining me now is one of the scientists exploding in the "Times" piece, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, Don Easterbrook, and also Patrick Michael, senior fellow of environmental studies at the Cato Institute.

Don, let me start with you. You haven`t taken a dime, right, from oil?

DON EASTERBROOK, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY, WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: That`s right. I have never had any contact whatsoever with any oil company or any industrial firm. My research has been either government funded or university funded.

BECK: OK. And you say that we are on the verge of a global cooling cycle now?

EASTERBROOK: Right. My research has been in looking at cycles of climate change over the last 15,000 years, and especially in detail about the last 500 years.

And what we find is a recurring pattern which is entirely predictable and my projection is, rather than the soaring global warming that`s been predicted by the IPCC, that we are actually likely to incur a 30-year cooling period starting anytime between now and about 2010.

And by the end of the century, instead of having a ten-degree climate warming, it`s more likely to be less than one degree.

BECK: Just in the last few centuries, we have had global warming cycles that were far worse than that. I read in "The Times" piece today that there have been several times in the last, I think it was 15,000 years, where there have been cycles that were 20 times worse than this right now. True?

EASTERBROOK: That`s correct. Most of those that were of that magnitude occurred about 10,000 to about 15,000 years ago, and the ones that have occurred in the past 8,000 years or so are not as profound as that.

The big ones were then, but nonetheless, there have been at least ten times when global warming and the rates of global warming have been greater than we`re seeing right now.

BECK: So Patrick, let me go to you. And the U.N., I mean, I`ve never found the U.N. a source of credibility on very much, quite honestly, except when I was 6 and I was carrying the little UNICEF box around on Halloween.

This is not the full story of science from the U.N., and yet they`ve been deemed the source of truth on this.

PATRICK MICHAEL, SENIOR FELLOW, CATO INSTITUTE: Indeed. And in fact, if we look at that U.N. report, it says specifically that there is no basis in the scientific literature existing at this time for these claims of massive sea level rise. That`s the U.N. saying that.

BECK: So how come this has -- how come this has been so wildly spun in hype? I mean...

MICHAEL: It`s an amazing story, Glenn. I challenge you to search through the scientific literature. You know, my heart yearns for reason on this debate, and it is so nice to see, you know, that "The New York Times" finally comes out and says, "Hey, here`s a headline, folks. Mr. Gore is exaggerating something."

BECK: Don, the -- the scary thing for me has been -- because I`m a guy who, you know what, look, if we`re hurting the planet, I want to do my part. I really will. I will sell my SUV and drive a Prius if that really would help. I want to know what`s going on.

But you can`t even question -- I mean, "The New York Times" coming out and doing this piece is a milestone here, because they have created a culture of fear where you are not even allowed to question this. It`s being taught in schools now as absolute fact. How frightening is that for you as a scientist?

EASTERBROOK: It`s disturbing as a scientist, because there`s definitely a move today in the direction that anybody who doesn`t sign on to CO2 as the cause of global warming is somehow either stupid or has some political reason or just some financial reason for saying that.

And it is true that scientists are being discouraged from putting out anything which is contrary to the CO2 version of global warming.

DOBBS: You say that CO2 doesn`t cause it?

EASTERBROOK: That`s correct. If you look at the last century, the warming is about one degree. But for the first 45 years, there was no rise in CO2, so you can`t blame half of it on CO2.

The big rise in CO2 was in 1945 to the present and during that time, during the first 30 years, the global climate actually got colder, when it should have been getting warmer. And it`s only in the last 30 years where global climates have warmed in concert with rise of CO2. Otherwise, CO2 is totally out of phase.

BECK: Patrick, what needs to happen for the hype to balance this out? I mean, how do you balance this from where we are right now?

MICHAEL: You have to stop the incentive for the hype. And unfortunately, my profession doesn`t seem to have any inclination to do this.

BECK: What`s the incentive for that?

MICHAEL: The incentive is $6.2 billion in funding a year. That`s a heck of a lot.

Think about the way things work here in Washington, D.C. Issues compete for each other for our money, which means they have to be presented in extremely shrill terms. If you don`t say, you know, if you don`t give us this money for global warming, your children are never going to grow up, you`re not going to get the money.

And guess what? Then the political process says, "Your children grew up. See, I saved you. Vote for me."

More on the Great Global Warming Swindle...

The producer of the show responds to criticism...

The remarkable thing is not that I was attacked. But that the attacks have been so feeble. The ice-core data was the jewel in the global-warming crown, cited again and again as evidence that carbon dioxide 'drives' the earth's climate. In fact, as its advocates have been forced to admit, the ice-core data says the opposite. Temperature change always precedes changes in CO2 by several hundred years. Temperature drives CO2, not the other way round. The global-warmers do not deny this. They cannot.

During the post-war economic boom, while industrial emissions of CO2 went up, the temperature went down (hence the great global-cooling scare in the 1970s). Why? They say maybe the cooling was caused by SO2 (sulphur dioxide) produced by industry. But they say it mumbling under their breath, because they know it makes no sense. Thanks to China and the rest, SO2 levels are far, far higher now than they were back then. Why isn't it perishing cold?

Too many journalists and scientists have built their careers on the global-warming alarm. Certain newspapers have staked their reputation on it. The death of this theory will be painful and ugly. But it will die. Because it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Gues what is the only country that violates Women's Rights?

Of course, Israel!

Last Friday, March 9, 2007 the UN wrapped up its annual session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Guess where they found a violation of women's rights? Among the hundreds of thousands of women who are dead, dying, mutilated, displaced or raped in Sudan? Among the million female migrant workers cowering in the basements of Saudi Arabian villas from the taskmasters who stole their passports the minute they got off the plane? Among the women stoned and hanged for "adultery" in Iran? The millions of women forcibly aborted in China? The thousands murdered or forced to commit suicide for the crime of "dishonoring" their fathers and brothers across the Arab and Muslim world?

If you guessed "none of the above," then you'll enjoy coming on down to the UN. The UN's lead body charged with promoting and protecting women's rights identifies only one state as violating the rights of women in the world today – Israel.(Violating the rights of Palestinian women.) The vote was 40 for and 2 against (the United States and Canada).

Germany, on behalf of the European Union, gave a one minute "explanation" excusing its affirmative vote. It said: "we express our deep concerns for the impact on all women in the region including the Israeli women" – although Germany did not insist such language be inserted in the resolution itself. For 60 seconds, the representative of the country where millions of Jewish women and girls were murdered en masse not so long ago took notice of the Jewish mothers and daughters who have fallen victim to terrorism in the Jewish state. This is the moral corruption that the UN breeds within democracies like Germany. In the United Nations, an institution owned and directed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the European Union grovels while the real abusers cheer.

Congratulations to the Stephen Harper and the New Canadian government for opposing this horrific resolution.

We need programs like this in Canada too...

Could you imagine any Provincial Minister of Education talking like this???

Every secondary school should provide a bookshelf packed with spy novels and action stories to help boys catch up with girls, Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said yesterday.

They should choose books "containing positive, modern, relevant role models for working class boys", he said.

"Boys like books which depict them in a powerful role, often as sporting, spying or fighting heroes," he told a meeting of the Fabian Society in London.

To encourage reading boys needed "not just Jane Austen, but a necessary dose of Anthony Horowitz as well", he said.

Books that would appeal to "working class boys" included Raven's Gate, about a boy with supernatural powers by Horowitz, The Fall, a spy novel by Robert Muchamore, and Bloodtide, the Viking saga by Melvin Burgess.

Schools should also contain more male role models such as "old boys" or local boys made good, he said. The successful former pupils should be invited to return to inspire those coming after them. "Eighty-five per cent of primary school teachers are women and doing excellent work, but this can mean that many children from lone-parent families can reach the age of 11 without having any significant contact with a male role model," Mr Johnson said.

University of Leeds bans speech on Islamic Extremists...

What does he expect...this is Britain!

A leading university has been accused of "selling out" academic freedom of speech by scrapping a talk on links between the Nazis and Islamic anti-semitism after allegedly receiving emails from Muslims protesting about the event.

Matthias Küntzel, a German author and political scientist who specialises in the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, was told yesterday by the University of Leeds that a talk scheduled for yesterday evening, and a two-day workshop, on Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Anti-semitism in the Middle East, had been cancelled because of security fears.

In a statement yesterday, two academics in the Leeds German department, which had organised the event, claimed the university had bowed "to Muslim protests". Dr Küntzel said he had given similar addresses around the world and there had been no problems.

He added: "I was told it was for security reasons - that they cannot shelter my person. But I don't feel in any way threatened.

''I know this is sometimes a controversial topic but I am accustomed to that and I have the ability to calm people down. It's not a problem for me at all.

"My impression was that they wanted to avoid the issue in order to keep the situation calm. My feeling is that this is a kind of censorship.''

The Islamicization of Antwerp...

This is a disturbing case study of what is happening in Europe....

Ms. Uijt den Bogaard was an Antwerp civil servant in the 1990s, who spent many years working in the immigrant neighborhoods of Antwerp. There she noticed how radical Islamists began to take over. "They work according to a well-defined plan," she says.

One of the things Ms. Uijt den Bogaard used to do for the immigrants was to assist them with their administrative paperwork. Quite a few of them came to trust her.

About three years ago, young men dressed in black moved into the neighborhoods. They had been trained in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and adhere to Salafism, a radical version of Islam. They set up youth organizations, which gradually took over the local mosques. "The Salafists know how to debate and they know the Qur'an by heart, while the elderly running the mosques do not," she said They also have money. "One of them told me that he gets Saudi funds." Because they are eloquent, the radicals soon became the official spokesmen of the Muslim community, also in dealing with the city authorities. Ms. Uijt den Bogaard witnessed how the latter gave in to Salafist demands, such as the demand for separate swimming hours for Muslim women in the municipal pools.

Worried immigrants told Ms. Uijt den Bogaard what was happening. On the basis of their accounts and her own experiences she wrote (confidential) reports for the city authorities about the growing radicalization. This brought her into conflict, both with the Islamists and her bosses in the city.

The city warned her that her reports were unacceptable, that they read like "Vlaams Belang tracts" (the Vlaams Belang is Antwerp's anti-immigrant party) and that she had to "change her attitude." The Islamists sensed that she disapproved of them. They might also have been informed, because there are Muslims working in the city administration. One day, when she was accompanied by her superior, she was attacked by a Muslim youth. Her superior refused to interfere. When she questioned him afterward he said that all the animosity toward her was her own fault.

In the end she was fired. She is unemployed at the moment and gets turned away whenever she applies for another job as a civil servant. Last week, she learned that city authorities have given the job of integration officer, whose task it is to supervise 25 Antwerp mosques, to one of the radical Salafists. Meanwhile, the latter have threatened her with reprisals if she continues to speak out.

Now, here's two stupid women!

They wanted to trek to the north pole to show how warm it is....and one of them got frostbite...

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

Then there was the cold _ quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.

"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.

She said Bancroft and Arnesen were applying hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, but had to wake up periodically because the bottles froze.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

Even the New York Times is Challenging Al Gore...

Nice to see that even the New York Times is acknowledging that Al Gore went over the top in his film.

Some of Mr. Gore’s centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe’s warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore’s message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.

It estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist in Denmark long skeptical of catastrophic global warming, said in a syndicated article that the panel, unlike Mr. Gore, had refrained from scaremongering. “Climate change is a real and serious problem” that calls for careful analysis and sound policy, Dr. Lomborg said. “The cacophony of screaming,” he added, “does not help.”

So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.

Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said on a blog that Mr. Gore’s film did “indeed do a pretty good job of presenting the most dire scenarios.” But the June report, he added, shows “that all we really know is that we are warmer now than we were during the last 400 years.”

Other critics have zeroed in on Mr. Gore’s claim that the energy industry ran a “disinformation campaign” that produced false discord on global warming. The truth, he said, was that virtually all unbiased scientists agreed that humans were the main culprits. But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

Honour Killing in the UK...

One way to stop adultery.

A married Muslim woman allegedly murdered by her father and uncle for having an affair chillingly foretold her death, a jury heard yesterday.

Giving evidence from beyond the grave, Banaz Mahmod told in a video message how she was "really scared" of her father after she broke her arranged marriage.

And less than a month before her death - allegedly in a so-called 'honour killing' - the 20-year-old warned police that her family was plotting to murder her, the Old Bailey was told.

Mrs Mahmod, an Iraqi Kurd whose family were granted asylum in England when she was ten, was garroted with a shoelace, almost certainly in her own home, before her body was stuffed in a suitcase and buried in a back garden, the jury was told.

The killing was ordered by her uncle Ari Agha, 50, at a family meeting, endorsed by her father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and carried out with assistance of their fellow Kurd Mohamad Hama, who has pleaded guilty to Banaz's murder, the court heard.

Less than a month before her death in January last year, Banaz had told the police and others that her father and uncle were plotting her murder, and two days before she was killed the family staged a failed kidnap of her boyfriend Rahmat Suleimani, it was claimed.

A chance for Iraq....

Christopher Hitchens writes about Iraq's new Oil law which splits revenues evenly among the various ethnic groups.

On the left and in the anti-war camp, the very mention of the word "oil" is usually considered profane: a Brechtian clue to the secret designs of neoconservatives. So, I was interested to see Christian Parenti, a staunch foe of the Bush policy in Iraq, saying in the March 19 Nation that "on key questions of foreign investment and regional decentralization versus centralized control, the law is vague but not all bad." What have Iraqis got to lose here? It's not as if a withdrawal of foreign investment would leave the oil as a trusteeship for the people. Remember that Iraq under Saddam had already seen the most extreme form of "privatization," with the whole industry a private fiefdom of a parasitic elite. Remember that no real investment was made in the oil fields for almost 20 years, so that when experts visited the refineries after 2003, they could not (in the words of one I spoke to) "find anywhere even to put a Band-Aid." Remember that the Baathists used the "oil for food" program to sow corruption throughout the United Nations. Remember that Saddam Hussein set fire to the Kuwaiti fields and also ordered the taps opened so that crude oil would flow straight into the seawater of the Gulf, destroying the marine habitat. After all that, even Halliburton must come as a blessed relief.

Of course, all this is still heavily overshadowed by the daily menace of vicious jihadist sabotage, of corruption in a sectarian oil ministry, and of the generally parlous state of the infrastructure. And the deal has yet to be approved by the Iraqi parliament—a body that has some difficulty in meeting. Nonetheless, a principle is being established that does great credit to the Iraqis who signed it and to the coalition forces that made it possible. If it were not for the general American feeling that oil is a substance too dirty even to be mentioned in polite society, this consideration might even influence the current debate about an "exit strategy." One would like to know, of those who advocate leaving Iraq, whether they are happy to abandon the control of its fabulous wealth to be parceled out between the highest or most ruthless bidders—say, al-Qaida in Anbar, the Turks in the north, and the fans of Ahmadinejad in the south? Or might it be better to have even an imperfect federal democracy that could be based not just on ideals but on an actual material footing? A country that might, over time, undercut the power currently exerted by Saudi Arabia and Iran? I only ask. And it's no good chanting "no blood for oil" at me, because oil is the lifeblood here, and everybody knows it and always has.

He's entitled to his opinion, but...

They should have no relevance on public policy...is this man capable of really leading the military?

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

"I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way," Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview.

Pace, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said he based his views on his upbringing.

He said he supports the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell policy" in which gay men and women are allowed in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation private. The policy, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, prohibits commanders from asking about a person's sexual orientation.

"I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," Pace said.

The Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy has been a disaster. Thousands of gay soldiers have been drummed out of the military for nothing - including more than 50 specialists in Arabic who are sorely needed. Everybody should have the opportunity to serve their country - and I should say that gay people have always served and served well.

I also believe in the separation of church and state. The issue of whether gays should be allowed to serve their country has never been couched in morality. It looks like Pace is using his religious beliefs to continue a bad public policy - instead of addressing the real issues of whether gays can effectively serve.

Of course, the military has never made a really strong argument on why gays should be excluded - afterall the Israelies allow gays to openly serve and it hasn't hurt their military.

Vaclav Klaus on Environmentalism...

The President of the Czech Republic visits the Cato Institute and gives a rousing speech, including this section on environmentalism.

3) The third main threat to individual freedom and liberty I see in environmentalism. To be specific, I do understand the concerns about eventual environmental degradation but I do see a problem in environmentalism as an ideology.

Environmentalism only pretends to deal with environmental protection. Behind their people- and nature-friendly terminology, the adherents to this ideology make ambitious attempts to radically reorganize and change the world, human society, all of us and our behavior, as well as our values.

There is no doubt that it is our duty to protect rationally the nature for the future generations. The followers of the environmentalist ideology, however, keep presenting to us various catastrophic scenarios with the intention to persuade us to implement their ideas about us and about the whole human society. This is not only unfair but extremely dangerous. What is, in my view, even more dangerous, is the quasi-scientific form that their many times refuted forecasts have taken upon themselves.

What belongs to this ideology?

- disbelief in the power of the invisible hands of free market and belief in the omnipotence state dirigism;

- disregard for the role of important and powerful economic mechanisms and institutions – primarily that of property rights and prices – for an effective protection of nature;

- misunderstanding of the meaning of resources, of the difference between the potential natural resource and the real one, that may be used in the economy;

- Malthusian pessimism over the technical progress;

- belief in the dominance of externalities in human activities;

- promotion of the so-called “precautionary principle“, which maximizes the risk aversion without paying attention to the costs;

- underestimation of the long-term income and welfare growth, which results in a fundamental shift of demand towards environmental protection (this is demonstrated by the so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve);

- erroneous discounting of the future, demonstrated so clearly by the highly publicized Stern-Report a few months ago.

All of these views are associated with social sciences, not with natural sciences. This is why environmentalism – unlike scientific ecology – does not belong to the natural sciences but is to be classified as an ideology. This fact is, however, not understood by the common people and by numerous politicians.

The hypothesis of global warming and the role of man in this process is the last and till this day the most powerful embodiment of the environmental ideology. It has brought along many important “advantages” for the environmentalists:

- an empirical analyses of this phenomenon is very complicated due to the complexity of global climate and the mix of various long-, medium-, and short-term trends (and causes);

- their argumentation is not based on simple empirical measurements or laboratory experiments, but on sophisticated model experiments working with a range of ill-founded assumptions that are usually hidden and not sufficiently understood;

- the opponents of this hypothesis have to accept the fact that in this case we are in the world of non-internalized externalities;

- people tend to notice and remember only extraordinary climate phenomena but not normal developments and slow long-term trends and processes.

It is not my intention, here and now, to present arguments for the refutation of this hypothesis. What I find much more important is to protest against the efforts of the environmentalists to manipulate people. Their recommendations would take us back into the era of statism and restricted freedom. It is therefore our task to draw a clear line and differentiate between the ideological environmentalism and the scientific ecology.

Stop Global Warming!

Yes, a bumper sticker that's brilliant.

From the Cox and Forkum Site.

The Great Global Warming Swindle...

You can watch the documentary here....

Palestinian Finances....Still a Mess...

They've never had a handle on finances, and donor countries don't seem to care...

A former World Bank official who is about to become the Palestinian finance minister has warned foreign donors that he has no idea where much of their money has been spent.

In the 14 months since Hamas won elections, Palestinian finances have descended into such chaos that there is now no way to confirm whether aid is going to its stated purpose, according to Salam Fayyad, 54, who is poised to start his second stint as treasury chief once the rival Hamas and Fatah factions finalise a "unity" government.

An estimated £362.5 million has flowed into Palestinian government coffers from abroad since the election that brought Hamas to power and ushered in a period of internal conflict that came close to all-out civil war.

The European Union alone provided £59.5 million last year and sent a far greater sum directly to hospitals, power generation projects and to families in need.

Now, Palestinian Authority spending is out of control, salaries are being paid to workers who never turn up, and nobody can track where the money is going, according to Mr Fayyad.

There was no way to be certain that aid was being used as intended, he admitted. "Please write this: no one can give donors that assurance. Why? Because the system is in a state of total disrepair."

Islamists on campus in the UK....

And, this is only the UK...they are active all across Europe...

Leading universities including Oxford and Cambridge have been targeted by Islamic extremists who remain widely active on campuses, a prominent academic is warning.

Up to 48 British universities have been infiltrated by fundamentalists and the threat posed by radical groups must be "urgently addressed", according to Prof Anthony Glees.

The claim calls into question the Government's attempted crackdown on Islamic extremism in universities and casts doubt on claims by Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, that the problem is not widespread.

Prof Glees will warn the Association of University Chief Security Officers (Aucso) next month that the disbanded extremist group, al-Muhajiroun, claims to have infiltrated "the main campuses such as Cambridge, Oxford, the London School of Economics and Imperial College".

His speech on "radicalism in universities" also states that at its peak before the July 7 bombings in 2005, al-Muhajiroun had a presence at "more than 48 universities and faculties", and that Omar Bakri Mohammed, the group's founder, claims it is "still operational" in several campuses.

Those crazy imams!

The latest from the Imams in Australia....

A LEADING Muslim cleric has blamed the drought, climate change and pollution on Australians' lack of faith in Allah.

Radical sheik Mohammed Omran told followers at his Brunswick mosque that out-of-control secular scientific values had caused environmental disaster.

"The fear of Allah is not there. So we have now a polluted earth, a polluted water, a wasteland," he told a meeting this year.

"What are the people now crying for? The prophet told you hundreds of years ago, 'Look after the water'."

A Sunday Herald Sun investigation also found clerics railing against "evil" democracy, vilifying Jews and Christians and encouraging jihad and polygamy.

And in a popular DVD selling locally, a foreign sheik exhorts Muslims to take control of Australia by out-breeding non-believers.

British-based Sheik Abdul Raheem Green forbade Muslims from having fewer than four children so Australia would become an Islamic state.

Behind the closed doors of some Melbourne mosques and bookshops, sheiks push for Sharia law, declare Islam at war with the "sick" West and gloat that September 11 boosted Muslim numbers.

At a Muslim information centre in Coburg, extreme literature shares shelves with DVDs by firebrand sheiks from around the globe. The centre, run by Abu Hamza, serves Muslims in the northern suburbs.

Many CDs and DVDs there feature London sheik Abdul Raheem Green, who is on an Australian Government watchlist. On one he tells his audience to Islamise Australia through a Muslim baby boom.

"The birth rate in the Western countries is going down. People are more interested in their careers . . . they don't want to have babies," Sheik Green says in one DVD.

"So don't you think, Muslim brothers and sisters, we've got a bit of an opportunity here? They're not having babies any more. So what if, instead, we have the babies?

"In Canada one in three or one in four children being born is a Muslim. What does that do to the demographic shift of a Muslim population in 20 years' time?

"To say I'm going to have two or three children and that's it -- that's not allowed. The way we overcome the people is through our numbers."

This kind of idiocy is coming to Canada....

Oh yes, soon I can see government departments moving to places like Quebec to hire more francophones...

Corby in Northamptonshire has become the first town in the country to be deemed too white for its own good.

The Prison Service has decided to transfer one of its offices (and 80 jobs) from the town to nearby Leicester. One of the reasons for the move, according to a leaked letter from the Prison Service's finance director, Ann Beasley, is that this will make it easier for the service to hit its target for employing ethnic-minority workers - or, in New Labour Orwell-speak, to "attract a more diverse workforce". With refreshing candour, Mrs Beasley points out that "93.7 per cent of the population of Corby are white British, compared to 59.6 per cent in Leicester". How very remiss of Corby to be so insular.

Will the real Bob Geldof stand up?

This is one film I want to see...

When Sir Bob Geldof, the rock star-turned-Africa campaigner, visited the impoverished town of Ajumako-Bisease in Ghana, he was hailed as a saviour.

In an elaborate and memorable ceremony full of ritual and colour, the people crowned him as their chief of development, a ceremony captured on film for his Geldof in Africa TV series.

Their firm understanding was he would help the town, and they claim he said he would. But, three years on Ajumako-Bisease remains disappointed, according to a documentary. Nothing has changed. And, despite accepting his position as chief, they have not heard from Geldof since.

Ajumako-Bisease's 27,000 inhabitants believed Geldof would help them fund a new covered marketplace. They cleared a plantation to make space for it. But no funds have materialised and weeds have slowly reclaimed the land.

They hoped he would help with funding for machinery to expand their coca nut industry, but those hopes too have faded with time. They had plans for a new hospital, a clinic, even. But those have been quietly shelved. Not one penny has found its way to them.

The claims are made in the film A Letter to Geldof, a documentary by Worldwrite, a youth education charity that retraced Geldof's steps. In it, the Chief of Ajumako-Bisease, Nana Okofo Kwakora Gyan III says what he wants now is for a face-to-face meeting with Geldof to ask him: "Why?" But, despite his best endeavours, he cannot reach him.

How many boys suffered because of this twit?

Thousands of boys have been forced to take Ritalin because of this idiot doctor.

The psychiatrist who identified attention deficit disorder - the condition blamed for the bad behaviour of hundreds of thousands of children - has admitted that many may not really be ill.

Dr Robert Spitzer said that up to 30 per cent of youngsters classified as suffering from disruptive and hyperactive conditions could have been misdiagnosed.

They may simply be showing perfectly normal signs of being happy or sad, he said.

'Many of these conditions might be normal reactions which are not really disorders,' he continued.

Dr Spitzer developed the bible of mental disorder classification in the 1970s and 1980s, which identified dozens of new conditions including ADD and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Since then hundreds of thousands of children have been diagnosed with ADD, a behavioural disorder linked to poor attention span, and ADHD, which adds an element of hyperactivity.

The disorders describe disruptive and restless behaviour that results in children having difficulty focusing their attention on specific tasks. ADHD is most commonly noticed at the age of five, and as many as one in 30 British children is said to have it.

It is often treated with drugs, with Ritalin being the most commonly prescribed.

Palestinian Journalist Prefers to Work in Israel...

Only in Israel could he express himself freely...

Last Thursday, Baruch Hillel hosted an event with renowned Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh. Toameh worked for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israeli newspapers, as well as British and German media corporations.

Toameh commented on aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He explained that the apparent bias in the international media's coverage of the situation in the Middle East stems from several factors. Many foreign journalists are afraid of of uncovering flaws in the Palestinian position, Toameh said.This applies especially to Palestinian writers working for the PLO, who are censored to ensure that they are loyal to the government. For this reason, Toameh preferred to work for an Israeli newspaper. Indeed, he felt that only there could he "express [him]self freely."

Anti-Jewish Regulations in Nice...

Hard to believe..but then this is France....

A French newspaper has revealed that a WWII regulation barring Jews from becoming tenants is still in force in the southern city of Nice.

According to the local daily Nice Matin some 1,000 apartment buildings in the Mediterranean coastal city have maintained the decades-old municipal regulation which was put in place by the Vichy government during World War II, when parts of France were cooperating and collaborating with the Nazis.

Jews who want to acquire an apartment have to pay an additional amount of 900 to 7,000 euros in order to bypass the law which is still in effect.

The regulation says that in order to acquire an apartment any person must declare “being a French citizen” and “not being Jewish” or “not being married to a Jewish woman”.

“The Nice city council is still applying the Vichy regulation,” the newspaper said.

Academic Bias...

Cathy Young looks at academic bias in the US - I'd love to see some surveys in Canada..

What is difficult either to deny or to quantify is that, especially at the more prestigious colleges and universities, the social climate fosters a strong presumption of liberal like-mindedness and a marginalization of dissent. Being left of center is the norm, and it is freely assumed that other people around you, be they students or faculty members, will share in your joy at the Democratic victories in Congress or your dismay at the passage of a ballot initiative prohibiting racial preferences in college admissions. This can translate into not only a chilly climate for conservatives but in some cases outright hostility.

If a student doesn't subscribe to the campus orthodoxy, the likely effect is not to convert her but to alienate her from intellectual life. Others learn only about a narrow range of ideas. One woman, a Ph.D. student in the social sciences at a Midwestern university, told me recently that when she started reading conservative, libertarian, or otherwise heretical blogs, "it was a whole perspective I had never been exposed to before in anything other than caricature."

When that's the norm, the harm is less to dissenters than to the life of the mind. It's not good for any group of people to spend a lot of time listening only to like-minded others. It is especially bad for a profession whose lifeblood is the exchange of ideas.

Sharia Law in Greece...

Right in the heart of Europe...

One day before International Women's Day, human rights group ROMEA reports on the extensive violation of the rights of Muslim Roma women in Thrace who are living under Sharia law within the country of Greece. Greece is a presidential parliamentary republic similar to the governmental structure in many Western countries. The Greek constitution grants extensive specific guarantees of civil liberties to its citizens.

Why then are 13- and 14-year-old child brides being sold for 3,000 euros within the Greek Muslim community?

It looks like the Greek government is basing its decision on "cultural sensitivity".

ROMEA reports that on February 16, 2007, the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Spokesperson George Koumoutsakos said that the acceptance of sharia is "an indication of a sensitivity of the Greek state to certain social realities of Muslim Greek citizens". According to a 2003 article from EU Business Greek Muslim Women Want Education First, Sharia Abolition Later, Islamic Sharia law is practiced in a 100,000-strong Muslim minority in Thrace in northeastern Greece. Thrace's three state-appointed muftis have the power to pass judgment on family issues in the traditional-minded minority, according to the Koran, Islam's holy book.

Some of the laws of Sharia regarding women are:

Daughters inherit a third of the fortune, boys two thirds. To get a divorce, a man just has to say three times he repudiates his wife. He then also automatically wins custody over the children when she remarries. A woman counts as half a man in giving evidence in a court of law. The wife must have sex whenever the husband wishes. Polygamy with up to four wives is permitted. Married men are allowed to have sex with their female concubines or slaves. In several Islamic countries a Muslim woman is not allowed to marry a non-Muslim man. However, Muslim men are allowed to marry non-Muslim women. Per Sharia, to protect morality and prevent sexual anarchy, women must cover their whole bodies, including their faces. Sharia opposes freedom of dress for women.

Sharia stipulates that the legal age of marriage varies from country to country, ranging from 9 in Iran to 13, 15 or 17 (in Tunisia). This is in keeping with the example of the Prophet Mohammed. He was married to Aisha, a 9-year-old girl, when he was 53. This must make it lawful then for 13-year old girls to be sold as brides for 3,000 euro under Sharia in Thrace.

This could be really bad news...

This is news coming out of India....

Two top nuclear scientists of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) are currently in Taliban custody. The two were working at PAEC’s facility in North West Frontier Province. Zee News investigations reveal that the two scientists were kidnapped about six months ago. To avoid international embarrassment Pakistan Government has kept this information under wraps.

According to information available with Zee News, nuclear scientists have been kidnapped by Taliban at the behest of Al-Qaeda. Further investigations reveal that Al-Qaeda may be using the expertise of the scientists to produce nuclear bombs. The two scientists are reportedly being held somewhere in Waziristan, near Afghanistan border.

Are Barbers on the way out in Northern Pakistan?

The Taliban is thriving and that is very, very scary.

In the tribal areas of Pakistan, a shave may cost your life.

"The government is unable to protect us so we will abide by what the Taliban tells us to do and stop shaving beards," said Niamat, a barber in Khar, the headquarters of the Bajaur tribal agency along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

And the Taliban mean business, On Sunday night, bombs destroyed two barber shops and three others suffered partial damage after the owners refused to follow the orders.

"I am a Muslim and I know that no one can force me to shave or not to shave. This should be my decision," said Nasir, a regular customer, wearing a green turtleneck sweater and jeans. "But I was threatened. They asked if I will obey the new laws; I will obey because I am afraid."

A couple of weeks earlier, in the middle of the night, someone slipped leaflets under barbershop doors throughout the Bajaur Tribal Agency. The warning was hand-written in Pashto, the language of the Pashtun tribes who inhabit the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The leaflets read: "SHAVING BEARDS AND TRIMMING BEARDS IS UN-ISLAMIC AND IS FORBIDDEN. VIOLATORS WILL BE KILLED."

The customers panicked and the barbers panicked too. In almost every barber shop the owners put up signs begging their customers not to force them to give a shave.

Some hope in Iraq...

Two Iraqis, who have a blog, see some progress in Baghdad...

The brightest image of the past two weeks was the scene of displaced families returning home; more than a thousand families are back to their homes under the protection of the Army and police. This figure invites hope that Baghdad will restore its social, ethnic and religious mosaic.

Marketplaces are seeing more activity and stores that were long shuttered are reopening--including even some liquor stores that came under vicious attacks in the past. This is a sign that extremists no longer can intimidate people and hold the city hostage. All of this gives the sense that law is being imposed.

Checkpoints are not seen as scary threats to the innocent. They look more professional and impartial as they include members of the police, army, multinational forces and even traffic cops with laptops verifying registration papers. We've lost the fear that checkpoints might be traps set by death squads; they search everyone, even official convoys and ambulances.

We feel safer about moving in the city now, and politicians who used to hide behind the walls of the Green Zone are venturing out. Watching Mr. Maliki walking on Palestine Street in central Baghdad gave a positive impression that the state, and not the gangs, owns the streets.

What horrors...she wanted to be a beauty queen...

Well, must be grounds for an honour killing!

A beauty queen finalist has dropped out of the Miss Israel competition after police discovered an honor killing plot against her.

Angelina Fares decided to withdraw from the pageant after police arrested two men from her village in northern Israel for conspiring to kill her because they believed her participation in the competition "would defile the honor of the Druze community," YNetNews reported.

Fares was the first member of Israel's Druze community to compete in the Miss Israel pageant, the newspaper said.

Sheikh Muwaffak Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel, had urged Fares to remove herself from the competition.

"There are many ways to integrate into society while keeping to tradition and values," he told reporters. "If we do not preserve ourselves, the values will crumble and what will we be left with?"

A Meteorologist dissents on global warming...

Gee, more and more dissenters are coming forward....

Robert Cohen, A Meteorologist, wrote this article for the San Jose Mercury News in which he notes some discrepancies in the global warming mantra.

There are a number of inconsistencies in the report. The most glaring is that the models on which the conclusions depend do not agree with various sets of observations. Following are a few specific examples: The summary notes an increase in mean sea level of 7 inches during the 20th century, with a forecast rise of an additional 7 to 23 inches by 2100. Observations, however, do not agree with these predictions. Stockholm, which has the world's longest sea level measurement record of about 1,200 years, has shown increases in sea level of only plus-or-minus 0.06 inches per year, with an average very close to zero; these observations are well below the model predictions.

The Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu , barely above sea level, has requested permission to move its people to Australia or New Zealand, based on the predicted sea level rise. However, satellite data and sea level measurements indicate falling sea level at the island. The models predict that temperature increases will appear first at the poles. However, data published after the release of the IPCC Summary indicate that temperatures in the Antarctic have not increased during the previous 50 years. Those data frequently quoted in the media of increasing temperatures are only from a small region occupied by scientists; the Antarctic region as a whole does not show rising temperatures.

How's this for a poll?

I find it distressing that so many people think that Israel has the most negative influence on the world.

A majority of people believe that Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in the world, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

It shows that the two countries are closely followed by the United States and North Korea.

The poll asked 28,000 in 27 countries to rate a dozen countries plus the European Union in terms of whether they have a positive or negative influence.

Canada, Japan and the EU are viewed most positively in the survey.

And, Canada, Japan and the EU are viewed most positively. The BBC article doesn't state who did the poll...nor does it name the 27 countries it was conducted inl.

Nothing like Saudi Justice...

Gee, only 90 lashes...they're getting way too lenient in Saudi Arabia...

A SAUDI woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother was sentenced to 90 lashes - for a meeting a man who was not a relative, a newspaper reported.

In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, the 19-year-old said she was blackmailed a year ago into meeting a man who threatened to tell her family they were having a relationship outside wedlock, which is illegal in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.

After driving off together from a shopping mall near her home, the woman and the man were stopped and abducted by a gang of men wielding kitchen knives who took them to a farm where she was raped 14 times by her captors.

Five men were arrested for the rape and given jail terms ranging from 10 months to five years by a panel of judges in the eastern city of Qatif, near the woman's hometown.

But the judges also decided to sentence the woman, identified by the newspaper only as “G,” and the man to lashes for being alone together in the car.

Unrelated men and women are forbidden from interacting in public in Saudi Arabia, which strictly enforces Islamic Sharia law.

“G” said one of the judges told she was lucky not to have been given jail time. “I was shocked at the verdict. I couldn't believe my ears,” said the woman, who has appealed against her sentence.

The woman also told the paper she tried to commit suicide because of her ordeal and was beaten by her younger brother because the rape had brought shame on their family.