Is Malaysia next to go to sharia law...

It's worrying to see this casual approach to secularism...

Hardline Islamic law could be introduced across Malaysia under reforms proposed by the country's chief justice.

As the nation in south-east Asia celebrated 50 years of independence from Britain yesterday, its government was preparing to discuss a plan that would revolutionise the legal system put in place by its former colonial administrators.

As Kuala Lumpur witnessed celebrations that included parades, fireworks and a fighter-jet fly-by attended by the Duke of York, the proposal pointed to the deep differences which locals say are poisoning social relations beyond the glitter and skyscrapers of Malaysia's modern capital city.

Ahmad Fairuz, the chief justice, told an Islamic conference in Kuala Lumpur that 50 years of independence had failed to free Malaysia from the "clutches of colonialism". Sharia law should be "infused" into the gaps created by abolishing common law, he said.

Malaysia's non-Muslim Chinese and Indian communities, who form 40 per cent of the population, are alarmed at creeping Islamisation.

Abdul Badawi, the prime minister, this month joined other leaders for the first time in denying what the British-authored constitution has said for 50 years - that Malaysia is a secular state.

And, they can't even deport him.....

There's something fundamentally wrong with the EU....

A Polish migrant subjected a British woman to a violent rape only one week after he arrived in Britain, a court heard.

Michal Piotr Kwidzinski, 22, seized a 38-year-old barmaid as she walked home from work in the early hours.

The burly 6ft 5in Pole dragged his petite 5ft 2in victim into a builder's van where he raped her three times whilst holding her down by the neck and beating her head on the floor.

A policeman who arrived at the scene in Newquay, Cornwall, after a member of the public heard the woman's screams was confronted by the "enormous" frame of Kwidzinski and the victim slumped in the corner, drenched in blood.

The officer sprayed CS gas into Kwidzinski's eyes but the rapist threw him to the ground and he hit his head. However, he was rugby-tackled by builder Timothy Miller who held him down until more police arrived.

Kwidzinski pleaded guilty to rape and assaulting a police officer.

Sentencing him to nine years in prison, of which he will serve half, Judge John Neligan said it was "pointless" for him to recommend deportation after he has served his sentence because of "the current state of the law".

The end of global warming????

Some interesting new studies...

An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analysis, and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming “bites the dust” and the scientific underpinnings for alarm may be “falling apart.” The latest study to cast doubt on climate fears finds that even a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would not have the previously predicted dire impacts on global temperatures. This new study is not unique, as a host of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast a chill on global warming fears.

“Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust,” declared astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson after reviewing the new study which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Another scientist said the peer-reviewed study overturned “in one fell swoop” the climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore. The study entitled “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” was authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz.

“Effectively, this (new study) means that the global economy will spend trillions of dollars trying to avoid a warming of ~ 1.0 K by 2100 A.D.” Dr. Wilson wrote in a note to the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee on Aug. 19, 2007. Wilson, a former operations astronomer at the Hubble Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore MD, was referring to the trillions of dollars that would be spent under such international global warming treaties like the Kyoto Protocol.

“Previously, I have indicated that the widely accepted values for temperature increase associated with a doubling of CO2 were far too high i.e. 2 – 4.5 Kelvin. This new peer-reviewed paper claims a value of 1.1 +/- 0.5 K increase for a doubling of CO2,” he added.

Who says the Catholic Church doesn't change????

Yes, eco-confessions might become the rage...

Forgotten to recycle any newspapers or tin cans recently? Feeling guilty because you neglected to carbon offset your flight to somewhere, anywhere, outside England this summer?

The Roman Catholic Church is at hand with a new line in “green confessions” to help eco-sinners to find forgiveness.

Dom Anthony Sutch, the Benedictine monk who resigned as head of Downside School to become a parish priest in Suffolk, will be at the county’s Waveney Greenpeace festival this weekend to hear eco-confessions in what is thought to be the first dedicated confessional booth of its kind.

Vested in a green chasuble-style garment made from recycled curtains, and in a booth constructed of recycled doors, he will hear the sins of of those who have not recycled the things they ought to have done and who have consumed the things they ought not to have done.

This does not sound like a criminal....

My god, there is no crime here...Seantor Larry Craig should never have been arrested....here is the transcript of his interrogation...

LC: So I go into the bathroom here as I normally do, I'm a commuter too here.

DK: Okay.

LC: I sit down, urn, to go to the bathroom and ah, you said our feet bumped. I believe they did, ah, because I reached down and scooted over and urn, the next thing I knew, under the bathroom divider comes a card that says Police. Now, urn, (sigh) that's about as far as I can take it, I don't know of anything else. Ah, your foot came toward mine, mine came towards yours, was that natural? I don't know. Did we bump? Yes. I think we did. You said so. I don't disagree with that.

DK: Good. Urn,

LC: I don't, ah, I am not gay, I don't do these kinds of things and...

DK: It doesn't matter, I don't care about sexual preference or anything like that. Here's your stuff back sir. Urn, I don't care about sexual preference.

LC: I know you don't. You're out to enforce the law.

DK: Right.

LC: But you shouldn't be out to entrap people either.

DK: This isn't entrapment.

LC: All right.

DK: Urn, you you're skipping some parts here, but what what about your hand?

LC What about it? I reached down, my foot like this. There was a piece of paper on the floor, I picked it up

DK: Okay.

LC What about my hand?

DK: Well, you're not being truthful with me, I'm kinda disappointed in you Senator. I'm real disappointed in you right now. Okay. I'm not, just so you know, just like everybody, 1,1,1, treat with dignity, I try to pull them away from the situation

LC: 1,1

DK: and not embarrass them.

LC: I appreciate that.

DK: And I

LC: You did that after the stall.

DK: I will say every person I've had so far has told me the truth. We've been respectful to each other and then they've gone on their way. And I've never had to bring anybody to jail because everybody's been truthful to me.

LC: I don't want you to take me to jail and I think.

DK: I'm not gonna take you to jail as long as your cooperative but I'm not gonna lie. We...

LC: Did my hand come below the divider? Yes. It did.

DK: Okay, sir. We deal with people that lie to us everyday. LC: I'm sure you do.

DK: I'm sure you do to sir.

LC: And gentleman so do I.

DK: I'm sure you do. We deal with a lot of people that are very bad people. You're not a bad person.

LC: No, I don't think I am.

DK: Okay, so what I'm telling you, I don't want to be lied to.

LC: Okay.

DK: Okay. So we'll start over, you're gonna get out of here. You're gonna have to pay a fine and that will be it. Okay. I don't call media, I don't do any of that type of crap.

LC: Fine.

DK: Okay.

LC: Fine.

DK: All right, so let's start from the beginning. You went in the bathroom.

LC: I went in the bathroom.

DK: And what did you do when you...

LC: 1 stood beside the wall, waiting for a stall to open. I got in the stall, sat down, and I started to go to the bathroom. Ah, did our feet come together, apparently they did bump. Well, I won't dispute that.

DK: Okay. When I got out of the stall, I noticed other other stalls were open. LC: They were at the time. At the time I entered, 1,1, at the time I entered, I stood and waited.

DK: Okay.

LC: They were all busy, you know?

DK: Were you (inaudible) out here while you were waiting? I could see your eyes. I saw you playing with your fingers and then look up. Play with your fingers and then look up.

LC: Did I glance at your stall? I was glancing at a stall right beside yours waiting for a fella to empty it. I saw him stand up and therefore I thought it was going to empty.

DK: How long do you think you stood outside the stalls?

LC: Oh a minute or two at the most.

DK: Okay. And when you went in the stalls, then what? LC: Sat down.

DK: Okay. Did you do anything with your feet?

LC: Positioned them, I don't know. I don't know at the time. I'm a fairly wide guy.

DK: I understand.

LC: I had to spread my legs.

DK: Okay.

LC: When I lower my pants so they won't slide.

DK: Okay.

LC: Did I slide them too close to yours? Did I, I looked down once, your foot was close to mine.

DK Yes.

LC Did we bump? Ah, you said so, I don't recall that, but apparently we were close.

DK Yeah, well your foot did touch mine, on my side of the stall.

LC: All right.

DK: Okay. And then with the hand. Urn, how many times did you put your hand under the stall?

LC: I don't recall. I remember reaching down once. There was a piece of toilet paper back behind me and picking it up.

DK: Okay. Was your was your palm down or up when you were doing that?

LC: I don't recall.

DK: Okay. I recall your palm being up. Okay.

LC: All right.

DK: When you pick up a piece of paper off the ground, your palm would be down, when you pick something up.

LC: Yeah, probably would be. I recall picking the paper up.

DK: And I know it's hard to describe here on tape but actually what I saw was your fingers come underneath the stalls, you're actually ta touching the bottom of the stall divider.

LC: I don't recall that.

DK: You don't recall

LC: I don't believe I did that. I don't.

DK: I saw, I saw

LC: I don't do those things.

DK: I saw your left hand and I could see the gold wedding ring when it when it went across. I could see that. On your left hand, I could see that. LC: Wait a moment, my left hand was over here.

DK: I saw there's a...

LC: My right hand was next to you.

DK: I could tell it with my ah, I could tell it was your left hand because your thumb was positioned in a faceward motion. Your thumb was on this side, not on this side.

LC: Well, we can dispute that. I'm not going to fight you in court and I, I reached down with my right hand to pick up the paper.

DK: But I'm telling you that I could see that so I know that's your left hand. Also I could see a gold ring on this finger, so that's obvious it was the left hand.

LC: Yeah, okay. My left hand was in the direct opposite of the stall from you.

Hurrah for Bernier...

Yay....a foreign minister with chutzpah!!!

Canada's foreign minister, in a rare public blast at a close ally, has criticized South Korea for negotiating with Taliban militants to free a group of hostages.

"The Canadian position on dealings with terrorists is well known to all those with even a passing familiarity with the subject. We do not negotiate with terrorists, for any reason," Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier said in a statement.

"Such negotiations, even if unsuccessful, only lead to further acts of terrorism."

Demographic problems in the UK...

I don't care about white or non-white....the real issue is whether the Pakistani populations is going to rein in the radicals...

White people living in the UK's second biggest city are likely to find themselves in a minority in 20 years' time, according to researchers.

A team of demographers from Manchester University has claimed that the number of white people living in Birmingham will be overtaken by the number of those with other ethnic origins by 2027.

The news came as it emerged that 35 towns and cities in Britain have at least one ward which is "minority white".

And experts have already forecast that Leicester could become the first city in which white people are a minority in four years' time.

Ludi Simpson, a social statistician at Manchester University, said the Pakistani population in Birmingham was likely to double by 2026, but with two-thirds of this increase due to the relatively younger age profile of Pakistanis, rather than increased immigration.

How about wind farms without wind???

You'd think they'd have figured out to put wind farms where the wind is...

For anyone building a wind farm, it might seem an unnecessary piece of advice - put it somewhere windy.

Astonishingly, however, many turbines are going up on sites which are simply not breezy enough, energy consultants have claimed.

They say farms are being built in the "wrong places" because of the pressure to hit Government targets in the race to produce green energy.

But the "badly sited and underperforming" turbines are not reliable enough to keep the nation's television sets, toasters and lights switched on.

Michael Jefferson, an independent engineering consultant and former economist for Shell, said the industry often exaggerated the amount of energy each farm would supply.

New sites are assessed on the basis of average wind speeds over a year - a measure called the "load factor".

The industry recommends an average load factor of 30 per cent for a turbine to operate efficiently.

Yet although the load factor can be as high as 45 per cent in parts of Scotland and Wales, some farms achieve less than 20 per cent, he said.

Only five wind farms in the east of England achieve load factors of 30 per cent or more: "That's just five out of 25," he said.

More child abuse in Gaza....

Even the Palestinians realize things are rotten...

An Israeli military spokeswoman, who was not authorized to be named, said aircraft fired on several launch sites in western Beit Hanoun, a town of about 30,000 people near the boundary with Israel.

The spokeswoman said the military spotted "teenagers" handling the launchers -- usually homemade tripods that serve as stands for the rockets -- before the strike. She condemned "the use these terrorist organizations make of teenagers."

A member of the Abu Ghazallah family who witnessed the airstrike said a rocket launcher was near the area where the children were playing. The relative, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal, said the launcher belonged to Islamic Jihad, an armed movement responsible for much of the rocket fire into Israel.

"I hold the Islamic Jihad responsible for the killing of these children," the relative said.

Stop the bathroom stings...

People might be chortling about the sting that snared Senator Larry Craig in the US...but, do we really need bathroom stings???

A foot-tapping ritual was a common thread in many of the 41 arrests reported during a four-month airport bathroom sting that snared Sen. Larry Craig.

An undercover officer would take a seat in a stall. Soon another man would sit in the stall next door and start tapping his foot, perhaps moving it closer to the officer's. The officer would move his foot up and down slowly. The suspect might then extend his hand under the divider between the stalls, sometimes repeatedly.

That would be enough to get the man busted.

Is Global Warming Man-Made????

Excerpts from a lecture by Fred Singer....

The second reason not to rely on a “scientific consensus” in these matters is that this is not how science works. After all, scientific advances customarily come from a minority of scientists who challenge the majority view—or even just a single person (think of Galileo or Einstein). Science proceeds by the scientific method and draws conclusions based on evidence, not on a show of hands.

But aren’t glaciers melting? Isn’t sea ice shrinking? Yes, but that’s not proof for human-caused warming. Any kind of warming, whether natural or human-caused, will melt ice. To assert that melting glaciers prove human causation is just bad logic.

What about the fact that carbon dioxide levels are increasing at the same time temperatures are rising? That’s an interesting correlation; but as every scientist knows, correlation is not causation. During much of the last century the climate was cooling while CO2 levels were rising. And we should note that the climate has not warmed in the past eight years, even though greenhouse gas levels have increased rapidly.

What about the fact—as cited by, among others, those who produced the IPCC report—that every major greenhouse computer model (there are two dozen or so) shows a large temperature increase due to human burning of fossil fuels? Fortunately, there is a scientific way of testing these models to see whether current warming is due to a man-made greenhouse effect. It involves comparing the actual or observed pattern of warming with the warming pattern predicted by or calculated from the models. Essentially, we try to see if the “fingerprints” match—“fingerprints” meaning the rates of warming at different latitudes and altitudes.

For instance, theoretically, greenhouse warming in the tropics should register at increasingly high rates as one moves from the surface of the earth up into the atmosphere, peaking at about six miles above the earth’s surface. At that point, the level should be greater than at the surface by about a factor of three and quite pronounced, according to all the computer models. In reality, however, there is no increase at all. In fact, the data from balloon-borne radiosondes show the very opposite: a slight decrease in warming over the equator.

The fact that the observed and predicted patterns of warming don’t match indicates that the man-made greenhouse contribution to current temperature change is insignificant. This fact emerges from data and graphs collected in the Climate Change Science Program Report 1.1, published by the federal government in April 2006 (see www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/default.htm ). It is remarkable and puzzling that few have noticed this disparity between observed and predicted patterns of warming and drawn the obvious scientific conclusion.

China not ready to curb CO2 emissions....

I'll keep on saying it - CO2 emissions will continue to rise worldwide...let's be honest, if CO2 does cause global warming, well our only strategy is adaptation.

China should not be obligated to join any post-Kyoto Protocol international pact to curb global warming, a senior Chinese environmental official said here Wednesday.

Han Wenke, director-general of the Beijing-based Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, said China was simply not ready to join an international framework to combat global warming after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The latest way to bash men....

Uh oh...I can see this coming to Canada...

Men are worse for the environment than women, spending more on petrol and eating more meat, both of which create greenhouse gas emissions. These are the conclusions of a new report by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.

"Three out of four cars in Sweden are today driven by men. Around ten percent of all drivers, mainly main, account for 60 percent of car journeys," report author Gerd Johnsson-Latham told Svenska Dagbladet.

The team behind the report argues that Sweden ought to giver greater consideration to the gender perspective when making planning decisions on matters such as public transport.

Record Low Temperatures in Sweden....

Now..I'm not saying this is evidence of anything....but you could imagine if it was the highest temperture in 60 years????

The lowest August temperatures for more than sixty years have been recorded in southern Sweden, as August comes to a chilly conclusion across the country.

Tuesday night was unusually cold, with temperatures falling below zero in an area stretching from the far north of the country down as far south as Götaland, the southernmost quarter of Sweden.

Is the Marriott being held hostage???

Why on earth would members of the black muslim clan be providing security at the Marriott in Oakland???

Over the past decade, more than a hundred thousand visitors have strolled into the Oakland Marriott Hotel and convention center, where among the first faces they encountered were those of well-dressed young men sporting bow ties. These men are the hotel's private security officers, who also happen to be members of the Black Muslim clan believed responsible for the assassination of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey.

Even after Bailey's brazen murder just a few blocks from the hotel on August 2, the Black Muslims remained at the Marriott, roaming its giant lobby and each of its 21 floors. Marriott spokesman Chris Daly said that in addition to providing security for hotel guests and the city's main convention center, the men "even perform bellhop duty if need be."

When asked why an international company with $12.2 billion in sales last year would continue to employ kin of the late Yusuf Bey, disgraced patriarch and founder of Your Black Muslim Bakery, Daly argued that the security firm is entirely separate from the bakery. Nineteen-year-old bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard has been charged with Bailey's murder, and Broussard's attorney has indicated that bakery CEO Yusuf Bey IV was the likely mastermind.

Animal Rights Terrorists Strike in the UK...

Is this going to a regular occurence???

Thousands of tubes and bottles of Savlon have been taken off shelves after animal rights activists claimed to have poisoned them.

High street shops, including Boots and Superdrug, acted after a hardline group claimed to have tampered with more than 250 items containing the antiseptic.

The Animal Rights Militia did not say how they had been damaged but it recently claimed to have injected bleach into products in France.

Tesco said it had temporarily withdrawn Savlon and would be working closely with police before it was put back on sale.

The extremists said they had also targeted "other well-known stores" as part of a continuing campaign against the animal testing laboratory Huntingdon Life Sciences.

An internet message said they chose Savlon because its Swiss-based manufacturer, Novartis, is believed to be among the clients of HLS.

The message warned: "We don't want to kill living beings but the side-effects and the inevitable hospital stay will give people an idea of what Novartis pays for inside Huntingdon Life Sciences."

There is NO consensus on global warming...

And, even if there was...that is not the way science is done...

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

An inconvenient fact...

A terrific rejoinder to the new Leonardo Dicaprio movie by Patrick Moore, former founder of Greenpeace...

The role of forests in the global carbon cycle can be boiled down to these key points:

o Deforestation, primarily in tropical forests, is responsible for about 20 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. This is occurring where forests are permanently cleared and converted to agriculture and urban settlement.

o In many countries with temperate forests, there has been an increase in carbon stored in trees in recent years. This includes the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden.

o The most important factors influencing the carbon cycle are deforestation on the negative side, and the use of wood, from sustainably managed forests, as a substitute for non-renewable materials and fuels, on the positive side.

To address climate change, we must use more wood, not less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to grow more trees and to produce more wood. That means we can then use less concrete, steel and plastic -- heavy carbon emitters through their production. Trees are the only abundant, biodegradable and renewable global resource.

BBC commentator would dance if Iran nuked Israel....

There'd probably be a lot of BBC commentators out in Trafalgar Square dancing if Israel was nuked...

The editor of an Arabic daily newspaper published in London said in an interview on Lebanese television that he would dance in Trafalgar Square if Iranian missiles hit Israel.

Talking about Iran's nuclear capability on ANB Lebanese television on June 27, Abd Al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, said, "If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."

This guy is a regular on Sky News and on BBC News 24.

India says no to cutting CO2 emissions....

Not surprising....

As countries debate a successor pact for the Kyoto Protocol to tackle global warming, a top environmentalist yesterday said it would be unfair to ask India to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"It would be unfair to expect India to cut down on emissions," Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman R K Pachauri told reporters here.

How's this for respecting religion????

No one is going to help the Israelis stop the Palestinians...

The Waqf Muslim authority, using heavy tractors, has so far excavated a trench 120 -meters long, 1.5 meters deep, crushing fragments of monumental building, pottery and glazed tiles in their path. The trench runs through the northern and eastern parts of the 2,000-year old Upper Platform of Temple Mount, where the outer courts of the Jewish Temple were situated, including the Women’s Court, until the Roman destruction of 70 C.E. Today, the Muslim Dome of the Rock stands there.

Dr. Gabriel Barkai of Bar Ilan University is leading the protest against the wildcat, unauthorized Waqf project to improve the mosques’ infrastructure and demanding that the contents of the trench be scientifically excavated and documented before they are lost.

“This issue transcends politics,” he told DEBKAfile. “It is a tragic loss for world culture, as much as or more than the effigies of Buddha destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. It affects the foundations of Judeo-Christian civilization – as well as Muslim history in Jerusalem – by ravaging one of the most important sites for the history of mankind.”

The Swedish Cartoon....

I believe this is the cartoon the Iranians are upset at. You can find it at Lars Vilks website.

Now, Iran is upset at a cartoon....

In a Swedish newspaper..but of course, the Zionists are behind it...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that "Zionists" were behind a cartoon in Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda, which depicted the head of the Prophet Mohammed on a dog's body. The drawing sparked an official protest by Tehran to Stockholm.

"They do not want the Swedish government to be a friend of other nations. I strongly believe they are behind it (the cartoon). They thrive on conflict and war," he said.

The claim came during a tirade against Israel, in which Ahmadineja accused Zionists of sowing conflict, publishing offensive cartoons and "lying about being Jewish."

"Zionists are people without any religion," Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly predicted that Israel is doomed to disappear, told a news conference in Tehran.

"They are lying about being Jewish because religion means brotherhood, friendship and respecting other divine religions," he said.

"They are an organised minority who have infiltrated the world. They are not even a 10,000-strong organisation," he said.

"Anywhere they are found there is war. Anywhere where there is war they are behind it," Ahmadinejad added.

And, this is from a country at peace with Israel.....

It's their right to be stupid, I guess....

The trade union of Egyptian actors threatened today actor Amr Waked with a ban of shooting films in Egypt if he plays together with his Israeli colleague in a TV film. A rising star of Egyptian cinema, Amr Waked was chosen to play the part of a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein in the TV film, a BBC and HBO co-production "Between the Two Rivers", about the life of former Iraqi dictator, who is played by Israeli actor Yigal Naor. "Our organisation opposes clearly any normalisation (Editor's note: with Israel) and it is expected that all its members follow this course of action," said Ashraf Zaki, general secretary of the actors' union. "Amr Waked plays the part of the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein with an Israeli who plays Saddam," Zaki underlined, adding that "he will have to be investigated" after his return from Tunis, where the film is being shot. Amr Waked, who acted in 2005 in the film 'Syriana' with U.S. actor George Clooney, defended himself in the media, affirming that he did not know, even after having signed the contract, that he would have to play with an Israeli actor.

But, don't you wish the actor would stand up for what is right???

Greenpeace's Papaya Protest!

Gee, you can't make this stuff up....

Greenpeace’s protest against the lifting of a ban on open-field trials of genetically-modified papaya was met with an unexpected reaction from a crowd of onlookers. The environmental group dumped papayas in front of the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry to make its objection to the lifting of the ban loud and clear to the government. But, after the dumping, people flocked to load up on the free papayas, ignoring the environmental organisation’s campaign against the dangers of GM fruit, a message Greenpeace has been trying to get through to the government and the public for years.

A global warming heretic confesses....

A nice op-ed from Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal...

I confess: I understand that global warming may have negative consequences. Heat waves, droughts and coastal flooding may become more intense. Temperature-sensitive viruses such as malaria could become more widespread. Lakes may be depleted by evaporation. Animal life will suffer.

But as Bjorn Lomborg points out in his sharp, persuasive and aptly titled book "Cool It," a warming climate has advantages, too, and not just trivial ones. Though global warming will cause more heat deaths, it will also mean many fewer cold deaths. Drought may increase in some areas, but warming also means both more rain and longer growing seasons. Temperature changes will harm some wildlife in some places. But many species will benefit from a bit more warmth. Does anyone know for certain that the net human and environmental losses from global warming will exceed overall gains?

Shock...Horror...the BBC is Biased...

And, they seem so surprised...

Two of the BBC's most senior news and current affairs executives attacked the corporation's plans yesterday for a Comic Relief-style day of programming on environmental issues, saying it was not the broadcaster's job to preach to viewers.

The event, understood to have been 18 months in development, would see stars such as Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross take part in a "consciousness raising" event, provisionally titled Planet Relief, early next year.

But, speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival yesterday, Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron, and the BBC's head of television news, Peter Horrocks, attacked the plan, which also seems to contradict the corporation's guidelines. Asked whether the BBC should campaign on issues such as climate change, Mr Horrocks said: "I absolutely don't think we should do that because it's not impartial. It's not our job to lead people and proselytise about it." Mr Barron said: "It is absolutely not the BBC's job to save the planet. I think there are a lot of people who think that, but it must be stopped."

Planet Relief appears to contradict BBC guidelines on impartiality. In June a BBC-endorsed report set out 12 principles on impartiality, warning that the broadcaster "has many public purposes of both ambition and merit - but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them".

Of course, the BBC's bias against Israel probably doesn't bother them...

China says no to CO2 Curbs

And, if they won't play, then why should we....it seems certain that CO2 emissions will continue to rise....

Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel encouraged China’s Premier Wen Jiabao to do more to stop climate change. “The Chinese wish, like all people, for blue skies, green hills and clear water,” Wen said at a joint news conference in Beijing. Then, the “People’s Premier” told the Germans—and by implication, everyone else—to mind their own business. He essentially said that China must finish its industrialization before it can consider minimizing its impact on world climate. “China has taken part of the responsibility for climate change for only 30 years while industrial countries have grown fast for the last 200 years,” he said.

China does not have a severely degraded environment—the world’s worst—because it is industrializing. And it’s not because of a shortage of money—China possesses the world’s largest pile of foreign currency reserves, now in excess of $1.3 trillion. Nor is it due to a lack of technology: China already possesses much of the know-how, and foreign governments and companies are tripping over themselves to supply what it does not now have.

The country has polluted its land, water, and air because its political system has prevented its disgusted and frustrated citizenry from stopping the damage. The Communist Party’s bottom-up patronage system rewards economic growth at any price, providing an incentive to dump raw sewage, scatter industrial waste, and release toxic smoke. Beijing’s leaders are afraid that an economic slowdown will lead to the collapse of the one-party state.

Hamas training in Iran...

Sounds like their using the Hezbollah strategy...

Hamas has sent hundreds of its fighters abroad for military training, most of them to Iran, the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff says, and Israel has the names of more than 100 of them.

Israel is watching as Hamas, in control of Gaza, is building an army there on the model of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, said the deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, in a wide-ranging interview conducted 10 days ago at his office in Tel Aviv. He said Hamas was constructing positions and fortifications, building tunnels for fighting and smuggling in explosives, antitank weapons and more sophisticated rockets through the Egyptian desert.

Hamas now has improved antitank missiles and mortars and possesses manufactured Katyusha rockets with a range of 10.6 miles, which it is keeping in reserve, General Kaplinsky said. But he said the military training was even more important.

But, was he black or white...or asian???

Oh, we're not allowed to ask these questions....

Doctors are treating a teenager for gunshot wounds and police are searching for at least three suspects, after a daylight shooting in the northwest area of the city.

An unidentified 19-year-old man was shot three times in the parking lot of a housing complex on Shoreham Drive, in the Jane and Sheppard area.

The incident happened at about 5:15 p.m. on Monday.

The victim was taken to Sunnybrook Hospital, where doctors said his injures are not life-threatening.

The suspected gunman fled the scene, reportedly running into a ravine around Black Creek. Witnesses described him as tall, skinny, and wearing a green T-shirt and blue jeans.

At least two other suspects ran in the same direction.

Iran and Libya on UN Racism Committee...

Yet another reason why the UN is an obscene joke.

Iran, whose President has called for Israel’s destruction and made repeated statements denying the existence of the Holocaust, was elected by the United Nations to seat in a committee which is meeting for the first time this week in Geneva to prepare the next UN World Conference against Racism in 2009.

This conference is billed as a review of the implementation of the 2001 UN conference against racism which was held in Durban, South Africa, which was denounced by Israel, the United States and Jewish groups as a platform for anti-Semitic attacks against Israel including the vote of a statement equating Zionism with racism. Israel and the US walked out of the Durban meeting.

Iran was chosen by the Asian group to be on the UN committee 20-member governing bureau which will be headed by Libya.

"How can the international community choose the most hateful government in the world to sit on an anti-racism committee?" asked Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights monitoring organization.

"Choosing Libya and Iran to fight racism is like choosing Jack the Ripper to fight sexual harassment," he added.

Why is the North Pacific Cooler???

I'm not saying this disproves global warming..but if the temperatures were a lot warmer.....

Despite fears of global warming, the north Pacific has suddenly turned a lot colder.

But don’t expect it to be a cold winter here.

The ocean cooling in this part of the world isn’t the result of an El Nino, said ocean scientist Howard Freeland, who added he is “baffled” by what’s happening.

He and fellow scientists don’t know what’s caused a huge chunk of the Gulf of Alaska to drop three degrees Centigrade colder than average for this time of year -- a huge change of six degrees Celcius just two years after a lengthy period of warmer than usual waters.

“This is quite striking,” he said. It might just be a natural “transitory event,” said Freeland who warned the sudden cooling should not be used by global warming sceptics who reject scientific evidence that clearly shows the planet is heating up.

Of course, this shouldn't be used by skeptics....nothing should. If it's warmer or colder, it's all evidence of global warming, no?

Palestinian Press Freedom????

And, where is the uproar in the western press????

Palestinian journalists on Sunday announced a series of protests to demand that Hamas and Fatah stop targeting them.

The announcement, made during several journalist demonstrations, came after a crackdown on newsmen in both the Fatah-controlled West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Embattled Palestinian reporters said such attacks had become the norm in the Palestinian territories.

"Both Hamas and Fatah are targeting journalists," said a Ramallah-based journalist. "We are caught in the cross fire between Hamas and Fatah."

Another member of the press from Jenin said he had been receiving death threats on an almost daily basis in recent months. "One day it's from Fatah, and another day the threats come from Hamas," he told The Jerusalem Post. "For the past month, I haven't been able to write anything under my name out of fear for my life."

On Friday, four journalists were beaten and arrested by Hamas militiamen during a demonstration by Fatah supporters in Gaza City.

Hours later, a large group of journalists thwarted an attempt by Hamas militiamen to arrest Sakher Abu al-Oun, a reporter working with Agence France Press.

"They surrounded my home and scared my children," Abu al-Oun said. "This is an attempt to intimidate journalists and prevent them from carrying out their job. I call on all my colleagues to be united for the sake of freedom of expression."

Last month, the Hamas government banned distribution of Fatah-controlled newspapers in the Gaza Strip. The move, according to the government, came in response to a similar decision by the Fatah-controlled government of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, which banned four Hamas-affiliated newspapers from being sold in the West Bank: Falasteen, Al-Risalah, Al-Karameh and Al-Sabah.

At least four Fatah-affiliated radio stations have been shut down since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June.

The Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said the Hamas crackdown on journalists "plunged the Palestinian media into an unprecedented dark phase."

Teenage Murderers....

Boy, the Taliban know how to raise their youth...

Pro-Taleban militants have released a video of an apparently teenage boy beheading one of 16 Pakistani soldiers kidnapped in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan.

The gruesome recording, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, will likely put further pressure on embattled US ally President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on Islamist violence in the frontier region.

The 35-minute video entitled ‘Revenge’ first shows the 16 soldiers, all of them in uniform, who were taken hostage on August 9 in the South Waziristan tribal district.

Four teenage boys with Kalashnikov assault rifles, daggers and headbands with jihadi slogans are then shown along with one of the soldiers kneeling in front of them.

One boy cuts off the soldier’s head using a knife and holds it up for the camera. The soldier’s body was recovered on August 14 from a nearby town.

The video shows the victim saying just before his death that ‘security forces should not fight against the Taleban’.

The Pakistani military strongly condemned the video, saying it had not seen the recording but was aware of its existence.

‘It proves that they are terrorists. It is an act contrary to tribal customs and is also a cowardly act to kill an unarmed human being,’ chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said.

The New Math on Global Warming....

Is the tide turning on the science???

My favorite temperature proxy is North America's fossil pollen, which shows our continent has had nine complete shifts in its trees and plants over the past 14,000 years—or one every 1650 years. In my native Michigan, the pollen says the forests during the warmings have been dominated by warmth-loving beech trees, with more oak trees intruding as the climate cools, followed by more pine trees. Today, 150 years into a warming, the pine trees are giving way again to the oaks, and the beech trees are waiting their turn.

Coifman is still talking about the planet passing a "crisis tipping point." He doesn't seem to realize that the existence of this natural cycle profoundly changes the math on global warming. The eco-movement and Al Gore have been repeating the mantra that "the earth has warmed 0.6 degree C in the last century." They claim this has been due to more human-emitted CO2, and project Big Warming on that basis. When we plug in the 1,500-year cycle, however, we have to take away from the scary computer models the 0.5 degrees of warming that occurred before 1940—and thus before much human-emitted CO2.

The earth has warmed only a net 0.2 degrees C of net warming since 1940. Human-emitted CO2 gets the blame for only half of that—or 0.1 degree C of warming over 65 years! We've had no warming at all since 1998.

Gay Marriage in Medieval Europe...

Of course, it wasn't like gay marriage today...but this sure is interesting....

Civil unions between male couples existed around 600 years ago in medieval Europe, a historian now says.

Historical evidence, including legal documents and gravesites, can be interpreted as supporting the prevalence of homosexual relationships hundreds of years ago, said Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

If accurate, the results indicate socially sanctioned same-sex unions are nothing new, nor were they taboo in the past.

“Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize," Tulchin writes in the September issue of the Journal of Modern History. "And Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures.”

For example, he found legal contracts from late medieval France that referred to the term "affrèrement," roughly translated as brotherment. Similar contracts existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe, Tulchin said.

In the contract, the "brothers" pledged to live together sharing "un pain, un vin, et une bourse," (that's French for one bread, one wine and one purse). The "one purse" referred to the idea that all of the couple's goods became joint property. Like marriage contracts, the "brotherments" had to be sworn before a notary and witnesses, Tulchin explained.

The same type of legal contract of the time also could provide the foundation for a variety of non-nuclear households, including arrangements in which two or more biological brothers inherited the family home from their parents and would continue to live together, Tulchin said.

But non-relatives also used the contracts. In cases that involved single, unrelated men, Tulchin argues, these contracts provide “considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships."

Just where are the moderate muslims????

Here's a situation that is crying out for the moderates to take charge....

Hardline Islamic cleric Mohammed Swaiti has forced his way back into Canberra's only mosque to preach anti-western messages after he was sacked for praising jihadists.

The cleric used his predominantly Palestinian and Jordanian support base to topple the leaders in charge of Abu Bakr Mosque in Yarralumla, News Limited newspapers report.

This has allowed Sheik Swaiti to continue preaching Wahabbism - a fundamentalist strand of Islam espoused by Osama bin Laden.

Islamic Society of ACT president Sabrija Poskovic, whose organisation is in charge of the mosque, said he was forced out after receiving threats from Swaiti's followers.

"They took over the mosque by force, by argument, by screaming, by calling us names," Mr Pokovic said. "There is no point arguing with him and his supporters anymore."

Anti-semitism in Australia...

It's getting worse...

A recent baseball bat attack on a young Jewish man in Melbourne has shaken his tight community and prompted fears that anti-Semitism has reached frightening new levels in Australia.

The trendy suburb of Balaclava, just a few kilometres from the CBD, is the epicentre of Melbourne Jewry with its synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher butchers and wineshops and cafes staffed by Israeli backpackers.

The sort of place where Jews should feel safe.

But as Victoria University anti-Semitism expert Professor Danny Ben-Moshe pointed out, if someone wants to bash a Jew in Melbourne they know where they can find one - in Carlisle Street, Balaclava.

He said attacks on Jews, which range from physical assault such as that on businessman Menachem Vorchheimer last October by a group of footballers returning from the races, anti-Semitic graffiti or abuse hurled from passing cars accumulate and give Jews a sense of exposure to racial and religious hate.

Earlier this month, two suburban Melbourne cricket clubs were investigated after some members posted anti-Semitic material on the internet about a rival Jewish club.

The Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) said its members were offended by vicious comments made by players from the McKinnon and Beaumaris cricket clubs on a Facebook website called "FU Ajax Cricket Club".

But Prof Ben-Moshe said anti-Semitism cranked up to an alarming new level last Saturday night when two men, who remain at large, bashed 17-year-old Alon Tam with baseball bats near Mister Glick's takeaway shop in Carlisle Street.

"The most recent attack clearly shows that in a range of different ways, and in a range of different forms, there are individuals who still feel anti-semitism is a legitimate form of activity," Prof Ben-Moshe said.

The men had returned to the scene after earlier confronting Ephraim Manshari, 17, who had seen them chasing an Indian Sikh down the road shouting "f***ing Arab" at him.

It was then that they threw chairs through the popular fast food shop's front window.

"It is a frightening new level of anti-Semitism in Australia," Prof Ben-Moshe said.

Co-owner of the popular Jewish book and gift store Golds, Miriam Goldschmiedt, said she felt upset after hearing of the Glick's attack.

She said her 13 year-old daughter came home from school recently and said someone had daubed racist obscenities and a Swastika on a playground wall.

"She came home horrified - they are not used to the sort of thing," Ms Goldschmiedt said.

A Major New Threat....

I just wish the Palestinians would have a 'peace' party...

By day, they are the middle class, putting in days as mild-mannered teachers, factory supervisors and office clerks.

But by night, the growing number of supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic fundamentalists who reject modern democracy in favour of a pan-Islamic religious caliphate, are gathering in the West Bank to recruit the thousands who have grown disillusioned with the vicious stand-off between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas.

"Any person living in Palestine now realises political parties, especially the Islamic ones, have not achieved anything for the individual," said Sheikh Abu Abdullah, a thin-framed man with a wiry beard.

His is the commanding voice behind weekly Hizb lessons at the al-Faruq mosque in the middle-class suburb of Kfar Aqab, past a crowded Israeli checkpoint where east Jerusalem melds into Ramallah.

About 50 men, young and old, stayed after evening prayers this week to listen to the sheikh's lesson entreating them to follow the Koran and stop infidels from profiting at the expense of the poor - one of an estimated hundreds or thousands of mosques in the West Bank and east Jerusalem where Hizb ut-Tahrir now teaches every week.

Though difficult to estimate their membership, a rally earlier this month in Ramallah drew at least 10,000 and, by some estimates, up to 40,000 people; their posters are plastered on every wall in the city centre.

"Any talk about a return to the caliphate, any talk about a return to religious values is something that is attractive to people," said Majid Abu Malah, 55, an Arabic-language teacher who attends regularly.

He, like many others, says he has given up on both Hamas and Fatah, and will not vote in the next election. "I believe in what [Hizb ut-Tahrir] gives."

Hizb ut-Tahrir, founded in Jerusalem in 1953 but largely dormant until recent years, is banned in dozens of countries, though it is legal and has a strong presence in Britain.

Its platform calls for the eventual overthrowing of Arab-world governments to be replaced by a caliphate, which would also encompass Israel.

The organisation argues that it does not advocate violence; however, it has been accused of inciting racism and hatred, and is known for activities such as demonstrations against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed last year.

Surprise...Hamas really is murderous....

Aahh...the true face of Hamas...

With both legs badly bruised from a vicious beating, Shaher Abu Oda can only move around with a painful shuffle. In the town of Beit Hanoun, on Palestine's Gaza strip, however, he is just one of many young men bearing limps, plaster casts, and stitches - the black and blue aftermath of an unprecedented crackdown on dissent by the strip's new rulers, the Islamist group Hamas.

Its officials snatched Mr Abu Oda off the streets two weeks ago as he was trying to find his younger brother Miqbil, himself badly beaten after club-wielding Hamas policemen broke up a wedding party. The revellers' crime had been to sing a few songs associated with the Fatah party, the rival Palestinian faction which Hamas ousted from the Gaza Strip two months ago. "They threw me in a room," said Mr Abu Oda. "From 11.30 to 3.30 in the morning, they came in every 15 minutes and beat me with sticks, fists, kicks, and a black leather crop."

As many as 50 people are thought to have been arrested in Gaza's Beit Hanoun district around the night of the wedding, and similar sweeps have taken place elsewhere in Gaza since then. The detentions and beatings appear to mark the end of a relative honeymoon period for Hamas, which seized control of Gaza after five days of battle in June.

Storm Damage...

Some common sense from Bjorn Lomborg...

Even as the clean-up continues in the Atlantic Basin, a lot has been written about Hurricane Dean. Some commentators believe nature is sending us a message. They say that the effects of climate change are getting out of hand, and it is time to take action.

We have heard this point many times before. With every "extreme weather event," passionate climate change activists ride a public wave of concern. Former Vice President Al Gore believes we must make drastic reductions in carbon emissions because weather-related disasters are on track to cost as much as $1 trillion by 2040. Mr. Gore is right that there is a growing problem, but he has identified the wrong solution.

The global cost of climate-related disasters has increased relentlessly over the past half century. Hurricane Dean has left behind many billions of dollars of damage. But when Mr. Gore links global warming to the spiraling increase in weather-related insurance costs, he misses the fundamental points.

It has become more popular than ever to reside in low-lying, coastal areas that are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather. In Florida, more people live in Dade and Broward counties today than lived in all 109 coastal counties from Texas through Virginia in 1930. It's obvious that more damage will occur when many more people with much more wealth live in harm's way.

No matter how you look at it, however, the prospect of $1 trillion of weather-related damage by 2040 is frightening. But it is just as frightening that we have developed a blinkered focus on reducing carbon emissions as a way to somehow stop the devastation of events like Hurricane Dean.

Presumably, our goal is to help humans and the planet. Cutting carbon is a very poor way of doing that. If coastal populations kept increasing but we managed to halt climate warming, then research shows that there would still be a 500% increase in hurricane damage in 50 years' time. On the other hand, if we let climate warming continue but stopped more people from moving into harm's way, the increase in hurricane damage would be less than 10%.

So, which policy knob should we turn first: The climate knob that does so very little, or the societal knob that would do 50 times more? It is obviously unrealistic to believe that we could turn either knob all the way. We cannot halt climate change entirely, just as we cannot hold back the wave of people moving into beach houses.

Is owning a Hummer a crime???

Here's a horrible case of political correctness...

What is it with the media when it comes to sport-utility vehicles? Let me rephrase: What is it with the liberal media when it comes to SUVs? Why do they hate those vehicles with such thinly veiled vigor? And how to they reconcile that hatred, their undisguised bias against SUVs, with their putative mission to report the news fairly and objectively?

The short answer is that they don’t.

Anyone doubting that should review the coverage of a heinous assault on personal property last month in a District of Columbia residential area.

The target of the crime was a 2007 Hummer H2 SUT (Sport Utility Truck), which has a base price of $54,155. It is a niche-market truck, which means it is aimed at a relatively small buyer population — usually young, single men who have a penchant for things such as extreme sports and off-road driving.

The H2 is a four-wheel-drive vehicle available as a four-door SUV — its more popular format — or as a four-door pickup, such as the one that was viciously destroyed on what my paper, The Washington Post, called a “narrow, leafy street in Northwest Washington where (Toyota) Prius hybrid cars and Volvos are the norm.” The H2 SUT, with its 6.0-liter, 325-horsepower V-8, is the workhorse of the bunch.

General Motors, maker of all things Hummer, sold 17,107 H2 models in the United States last year, down from 23,213 in 2005, a precipitous 26.3 percent drop — a clear indication that the market is doing what it so efficiently does, which is to weed out products that are becoming too expensive because of externalities such as rising fuel prices.

But zealots on narrow, leafy streets have no patience for the workings of the market. They have no respect for freedom of consumer choice. They have no respect for personal-property rights — or for anything or anyone that gets in the way of their self-righteous ideology.

That is bad enough. That is dangerous enough. But what is worse is the tendency of the media to tacitly condone such attitudes and behavior, to chortle over it, make light of it when a violent expression of media-held biases — to wit: We don’t like SUVs — occurs.

That is what happened in the local coverage of the attack on Gareth Groves’ Hummer H2 SUT. (I repeat the model designation because of the general media’s disgusting habit, which is another indication of media bias, of incorrectly describing all Hummer vehicles as being one and the same, as was done in many of the stories about the destruction of the Hummer on Brandywine Street.) Consider The Post’s headline on the story: “Hummer Owner Gets Angry Message: Vandals Batter D.C. Man’s SUV, Slash Its Tires and Scratch In an Eco Note.”

Think about that. A crime against property was committed. It was a hate crime. But because it was a hate crime against a hated SUV, there’s a headline that equates the crime to nothing more than delivering an angry message.

What if that Hummer H2 SUT had been a church, synagogue or mosque? Headline: “Congregation Gets Angry Message: Vandals Break Windows, Slash Pews and Carve In an Anti-Religious Note.” That would have been sufficient? That would have been fair?

The UN's darker side..

A good article by Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, wondering when the New Secretary-General will tackle some real issues...

Second, on Thursday, while the Geneva session is underway, the European Parliament in Brussels will host a UN "International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace." Contrary to the noble-sounding title, the rapprochement is disingenuous at best.

Consider its idea of balance: On one side will be selected Palestinian presenters like Raji Sourani, who justifies Hamas attacks as "resistance," and Jamal Juma, who says Israel is a "colonial racist apartheid state." On the other side are selected Israeli presenters who couldn't agree more. These include Michel Warschawski, self-described as a "well-known anti-Zionist activist," and Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who recently pronounced that "the Jewish head has unceasingly been bowed in worship of racism, while the Jewish mind is devising the most creative ways to devastate and demolish and destroy this country." By citizenship, they are Israeli, but only a scoundrel or a fool would imagine either as representatives of Israel's point of view.

The UN's 16-member Palestinian division is part of a sprawling infrastructure of anti-Israel committees and programs launched by the General Assembly in 1975 alongside its resolution declaring that "Zionism is racism." In the past six months alone, the division devoted vast sums for gatherings in Doha, Rome, Pretoria, and New York. Wouldn't its $5 million budget go to better use -- and actually help Palestinians -- by building clinics in Gaza or schools in Ramallah? Tragically, the Arab regimes responsible for its annual renewal seem more interested in preserving grievances than solving them.

Oh God...look at what's coming to theatres.....

If anybody is interested I have a DVD of Carter at Brandeis with Dershowitz's response....and Dershowitz just kills him...

The controversy over Jimmy Carter's book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, is set to be reignited by an upcoming screening of a documentary centered on his book tour.

The film, directed by Jonathan Demme, has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classic for distribution in North America by Participant Productions, the socially-conscious company that backed Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. According to Variety, the documentary will premiere at the Venice International Film Festival later this month and has been titled Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains. It is also rumored to be among the films to be screened at the Toronto Film Festival next month.

In the documentary, Demme follows the ex-president as he promotes his Simon and Schuster publication, which sparked intense criticism from the Jewish world. The ADL took a particularly strong position during the debate, with director Abraham Foxman accusing Carter of "engaging in anti-Semitism."

Carter, who was generally dogged by protests on his tour, argues in the book that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East." That perspective, coupled with the use of the inflammatory term "Apartheid" in the title and the discovery of errors and misstatements in the book, kept Carter in the headlines for weeks. It also kept his book on the New York Times bestseller list.

Carter has defended his book and countered in the Los Angeles Times in December 2006 that "in the real world…[response] has been overwhelmingly positive."

In early December 2006, Brandeis University invited Carter to visit the university to debate his book with Harvard University legal scholar Alan Dershowitz. He refused, saying,"I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz. There is no need to for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."

Carter did eventually speak at Brandeis in a session closed to the public. Dershowitz was prohibited from attending, but took the stage for rebuttal afterwards. While the University granted camera access to members of the news media for their broadcasts, it refused Demme's request to film Carter's January 2007 speech for the end of the film, citing logistical and legal considerations.

Gore's movie....

A nice little tidbit...

There are many other errors in Gore's film: his depiction of melting icebergs, for example; they're melting alright, but that's normal. Some melt. Others grow. My personal favourite is Gore's phony depiction of the polar bears on a small block of ice, the inference being that the ice is melting and they are in danger. Even the photographer who took the picture admits there was lots of ice nearby. It was simply a shot of the bears at play. There are more polar bears in the world now than there were 50 years ago. As former baseball manager Leo Durocher used to say, "You can look it up."

Too bad more people don't "look it up." That way, millions of innocent school children across the western world might actually be taught the facts instead of having Gore's one-side propaganda epic shoved down their collective throats.

What a concept, eh?

Local and global...

This whole 'buy local' stuff has to be stopped...

But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.

It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.

Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.

More on God's Jewish Warriors

Amanpour's first show was simply horrible and shameful..

CNN's "God's Warriors," hosted by Christiane Amanpour, is a three-part series intended to examine the growing role of religious fundamentalism in today's world. Unfortunately, the first program in the series, "God's Jewish Warriors," is one of the most grossly distorted programs to appear on mainstream American television in many years. It is false in its basic premise, established in the opening scene in which Jewish (and Christian) religious fervency is equated with that of Muslims heard endorsing "martyrdom," or suicide-killing. There is, of course, no counterpart among Jews and Christians to the violent jihadist Muslim campaigns underway across the globe, either in numbers of perpetrators engaged or in the magnitude of death and destruction wrought.

While in reality Jewish "terrorism" is virtually non-existent, the program magnifies at length the few instances of violence or attempted violence by religiously-motivated Jewish individuals - including having to go all the way back to 1980, for example, to explore a bombing campaign by a small group of Israeli Jews atwo West Bank Arab mayors. By dredging up such an old incident Amanpour unintentionally undermines her own thesis.

Settlements are likewise a key focus of the program, their residents and adherents being deemed "God's warriors" – along with those Americans, Jewish and Christian alike, who support them. American presidents and Members of Congress are said to be held hostage to the so-called "Israel Lobby," ostensibly dark forces consisting of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups who supposedly enable the nefarious expansion of West Bank communities.

Disproportionate reliance on partisan voices, some extreme figures, skews the message dramatically. Jimmy Carter and John Mearsheimer, chief proponents of the discredited canards about Jews subverting American national interests to those of Israel, are repeatedly and respectfully interviewed. Carter, for example, claims that no American politician could survive politically while calling for settlement-related aid cuts to Israel: "There's no way that a member of Congress would ever vote for that and hope to be re-elected."

That would be news to politicians like Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, who has long been a critic of aid to Israel and opposed loan guarantees to Israel in 1992. As well, contrary to Amanpour and Carter, Representatives James Trafficante, Dana Rohrabacher, Nick Smith, Fortney Pete Stark, Neil Abercrombie, David E. Bonior, John Conyers Jr, John D. Dingell, Earl F. Hilliard, Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, George Miller, Jim Moran, David R. Obey, Ron Paul and Nick J. Rahall II, have voted against aid to Israel and/or opposed other resolutions favoring Israel.

Only 80 lashes???

This 25 year old received 80 lashes for abusing alcohol and having sex outside of marriage in Iran..

His face covered by a balaclava, an official brandishing a cane repeatedly lashes the back of a man found guilty of breaking Iran's morality laws.

Two police officers hold the legs of 25-year-old Saeed Ghanbari and another his arms to ensure there is no escape from the punishment of 80 lashes handed down by a religious court.

Traffic was brought to a halt in Qazvin, 90 miles west of the capital Tehran, as more than 1,000 men gathered behind barricades to watch the public flogging.

Some took pictures on mobile telephones, others climbed traffic lights for a better vantage point as Ghanbari was marched to the centre of the square under the watch of blue-uniformed guards carrying machine guns.

A four foot long metal bench was taken from a police van and the convicted man was made to lie on it on his stomach, his fawn checked shirt pulled-up to his shoulders to expose his back and waist.

One police officer held his hands together beneath the bench, two others gripped his legs to ensure there was little movement.

Two police officers stood-by, their faces covered with balaclavas - each to administer 40 lashes.

Both men then lashed Ghanbari, taking the cane back behind their heads to guarantee maximum impact, each stroke leaving a distinctive red mark and bruising on his back.

Several wounds began to bleed.

It was unclear exactly what his offence had been as the country's strict morality laws cover many areas, but it was reported he had been convicted of abusing alcohol and having sex outside of marriage.

Amanpour's ravings...

I watched Christiane Amanpour's two shows on radical jews and muslims today and yesterday and I was horrified.

Tonight she covered radical islam and it almost appeared as if she was trying to excuse Islam from the crimes committed in its name. Totally absent in her program were the genocidal groups of Hamas and Hezbollah - groups not only dedicated to the destruction of Israel, but of all Jews. How on earth could she miss them????

She did talk to Hayaan Hirsi Ali, but did not mention that she had to leave the Netherlands and take residence in the United States.

And, while she found time to talk to a devout American muslim woman, she didn't have time to talk to Irshad Manji.

Her first segment on Londonistan was the best...and then it was all downhill.

Shame on Amanpour and shame on CNN.

By the way, her show on the Jewish radicals was equally poor. First of all - two equate musilim terrorists with Jewish terrorists and (tomorrow) Christian fundamentalists really misses the point. I know which one scares me the most and it ain't a few radical jews living in the west bank. It certain ain't some Christian fundamentalists.

Legalized Murder...

She's now going to fight for custody of her kids...

Mary Winkler is a free woman—free of her abusive marriage and free of jail. After 67 days in a mental-health facility in Tennessee, Winkler was released earlier this week and has returned to her hometown of McMinnville. But is she free of the posttraumatic stress disorder and depression that her legal team said drove her to gun down her preacher-husband, Matthew, last year? After a jury found Winkler guilty of voluntary manslaughter, she was given a three-year sentence, later reduced to 210 days, but she also got credit for the five months she spent in jail awaiting trial—which left only about 60 days, which a judge ruled she could serve in the mental-health facility. Winkler's critics wonder if she ever had PTSD in the first place and say the diagnosis was just a means of getting off easy.

Should easter eggs be banned.....

Afterall, fair is fair, no???

"If headscarves are banned for employees who work at the desk at city services in order to guarantee neutrality of services, then we demand that no Christmas trees be set up in city buildings and that no Easter eggs be given out." Antwerp trade union representative Badia Miri said this on Wednesday in the Gazet van Antwerpen.

Miri is one of the seven Muslim women who were forced to remove their headscarves if they wanted to continue working at the desk. Three of the seven staff members of the city of Antwerp who wore headscarves agreed to stop wearing one. Different positions - not involving contact with the public - were found for the others. No one was dismissed. There is still opposition to the dress code however, which came into effect in March. The seven Muslim women are now urging that "neutrality of service provision be actually enforced."

"The Antwerp city government says that neutrality is endangered if staff wear a cross or headscarf," says Miri. "But in our experience action has only been taken against the Muslim women. If the city government is really concerned about neutrality, then Christmas trees and Easter eggs should no longer be allowed at work. We are asking that a contact point be set up to report all violations of the dress code."

Moose and global warming....

Looks like its time to get rid of the moose, no???

Amidst all the talk about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming comes news that Norway's national mascot may be contributing to the destruction of the environment, through burping and other bodily functions.

The country's so-called "King of the Forest" hasn't been widely viewed as having any really nasty personal habits, surely none that could be considered an environmental threat.

But now some researchers linked to Norway's technical university (NTNU) in Trondheim contend that moose are responsible for tons of gas emissions a year through their frequent burping and, well, farting.

"Shoot a moose and save yourself a climate quota," joked moose researcher (and moose hunter) Reidar Andersen at NTNU to newspaper VG on Tuesday. He's published a book on the life of a moose.

And he's only half joking. The research web site www.forskning.no has calculated that the annual gas emissions from a moose are equal to those from an individual's 36 flights between Oslo and Trondheim.

A grown moose will burp and pass so much methane gas in the course of a year that it amounts to 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide emissions.

Newspaper VG reported that a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit the same.

Saudi Arlines Discriminatory Policies...

It helps ensure that non-muslim items don't reach the Kingdom....Daniel Pipes say it's time to start stopping them from flying into North America...

Saudi Arabian Airlines declares on its English-language Web site that the kingdom bans "Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David." Until the Saudi government changes this detestable policy, its airline should be disallowed from flying into Western airports.

Michael Freund brought this regulation to international attention in an August 8 Jerusalem Post article, "Saudis might take Bibles from tourists," in which he points out that a section on the Saudia Web site, "Customs Regulations," lists the forbidden articles under the rubric "Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam."

Mr. Freund followed up by calling the Saudia office in New York, where an employee identified only as "Gladys" confirmed that this rule really is applied: "Yes, sir, that is what we have heard, that it is a problem to bring these things into Saudi Arabia, so you cannot do it." An unnamed official at the Saudi consulate in New York further confirmed the regulation: "You are not allowed to bring that stuff into the kingdom. If you do, they will take it away. If it is really important to you, then you can try to bring it and just see what happens, but I don't recommend that you do so."

More child abuse in Gaza...

The send children to retrieve rocket launchers...

IDF troops killed two Palestinian children along the Gaza-Israel border on Tuesday, Palestinian medical officials said.

The two dead were 10 and 12 years old, according to Dr. Muawiya Hassanin of the Palestinian Health Ministry. A third child, 10, was seriously wounded and six other people were lightly hurt, he said.

The IDF said ground forces fired at two Palestinians who were spotted near a rocket launcher in Beit Hanun, in an area where a rocket was fired into Israel earlier.

It was not immediately clear if there were any Palestinian operatives among the casualties.

An IDF spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post that terror organizations in the Gaza Strip often send children to retrieve launchers from the field after Kassam rockets have been fired, and it appeared that this is what happened on this occasion.

Yes, a cartoon for the ages...

Source: Glen McCoy at the National Review...

There is no consensus on global warming..

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe does a fine job of looking at the evidence...

In 2003, environmental scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch surveyed 530 of their peers in 27 countries on topics related to global warming. One question asked: "To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?" On a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree), the average score was 3.62, reflecting no clear consensus.

Asked whether abrupt climate changes will wreak devastation in some areas of the world, the percentage of scientists strongly agreeing (9.1) was nearly identical to the percentage strongly disagreeing (9.0). Another question asked: To what degree might global warming prove beneficial for some societies? A striking 34 percent of the scientists answered 1 or 2 (a great degree of benefit); just 8.3 percent answered 6 or 7 (very little/no benefit).

Plainly, the science isn't settled. It changes all the time.

Take the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unlike its previous report in 2001, which foresaw a possible rise in sea levels over the next century of around 3 feet, the new report cuts that figure in half, to about 17 inches.

Why the revision? "Mainly because of improved information," the IPCC notes in the fine print. It goes on to note that even its latest estimate involves some guesswork: "Understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood." The science is getting better, but it's far from settled.

Climate scientists are still trying to get the basics right. The latest issue of Science magazine notes that many researchers are only beginning to factor the planet's natural climate variations into their calculations. "Until now," reports Science, "climate forecasters who worry about what greenhouse gases could be doing to climate have ignored what's happening naturally. . . . In this issue, researchers take their first stab at forecasting climate a decade ahead with current conditions in mind."

Their first stab, please note, not their last. The science of climate change is still young and unsettled. Years of trial and error are still to come. Al Gore notwithstanding, the debate is hardly over.

How Hamas Indoctrinates Its Youth....

It's just child abuse...

As part of its long-term recruitment policy, in addition to its children's show on Al Aqsa, Hamas is sending tens of thousands of poor Gazan children to camp this summer where they can enjoy sun, surf, and paramilitary training.

"Life is so tough here we say our children are born men, but they're still just kids,'' says Mohammed, who runs the Abu Musab Hamas camp in central Gaza and asked that his full name not be used. As he speaks, rows of painfully polite 10-year-olds in green Hamas hats file off the beach at the end of the day. "They need entertainment and we give it to them, with a single goal: To get their attention so they develop good Islamic manners, bond their egos to the group, and integrate them into the right way of life."

The group sponsors additional education for top students, much of which is focused on memorizing the Koran. But Hamas isn't neglecting parents, either. The Islamic Group, Hamas's main charity in the territory, has built dozens of homes in recent months for Gazans whose houses were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. It recently held a mass wedding for about 50 policemen loyal to the movement, covering all costs and giving them a $500 head start on their new lives as married men.

To be sure, Fatah runs camps of its own for kids, but not on the scale of Hamas's outreach effort or with the same unity of purpose.

Though Mohammed mentions soccer, public safety lessons, and basic Muslim teaching, he fails to mention that many of the Gaza camps also include a paramilitary element. A Hamas official says that such training is reserved for boys over 16, but a photographer who recently visited a camp in central Gaza and others say much younger boys also take part in paramilitary exercises.

In one Gaza City camp, boys practiced field drills with wooden pistols and crawled under barbed wire while being harangued by an adult drill instructor. Teenage boys undergo a tougher regimen that includes hand-to-hand combat and exhausting exercise. Boys that break discipline are sometimes beaten with sticks, said the photographer.